Brycetech: Engraving in Bryce Tutorial

In this tutorial, several methods for engraving models in Bryce will be discussed. There are many ways to accomplish this which will add realism and interest to your renderings.

First we will build a headstone then we will engrave it. Several methods for this approach will be introduced to allow you to make the engraving appear the way that you expect it to appear.

Creating a headstone

There are many ways to model a headstone. Here I will make one with the terrain editor (you could do this easier and quicker in an image editor), however you may want to make one from primitives. Create a lattice. When the terrain editor opens, click the new button. Then click the invert button. You will now have a white terrain base. I like to model from the top down (carving the model), however you can model from the bottom up (building the model). To model in the terrain editor takes practice! So keep trying!
Select the terrain resolution size and change it to the highest setting (1024). This makes it possible to draw on the terrain more precisely because when you set the brush to its smallest size, it is small enough to give details.
I like to draw a black line around the white base to start with to give me a basis to work with.
Drag the clipping control up a bit to get rid of the base of the terrain model. When the background turns red..that is what is clipped in the bottom of the terrain. Keep an eye on the terrain preview when you do this. If you drag the top of the control it will clip the top of the terrain.
Set the brush color to black. Set the brush hardness to the hardest setting. Drag the flow control to its maximum. Then make an outline of your headstone. Change the size of the brush as you need to help create your base image. Keep your eye on the terrain preview. If you make a mistake, remember that you can undo a mistake by clicking...ummm what's the name of that control? I forget. Reminder: Holding the shift key while dragging the brush on your terrain will constrain the brush to either straight lines up, down, left, right, or 45 degree angles.
Now give that baby some detail. Drag the brush size to its smallest size and make some gradient changes. Think in 3D! In your model, you may want to set a different hardness for the brush. Reminder: In the terrain editor..white is high..black is low!
While you're in the terrain editor, set the terrain to act as a solid or it may not behave the way you want it to in boolean operations. Building this model in the terrain editor actually took me like 5 minutes. So learn to use the terrain editor

Directly engraving

For this option for engraving, you will need an image editor. With the terrain editor open for your headstone model... press "Ctrl + C". Doing this will copy the terrain's grayscale into RAM. You can now open your image editor and paste it as a new file.

(The method depends on your editor, but in Corel PhotoPaint you can choose "File", "New from Clipboard".)

Once you get your model into your image editor...you can now put letters right onto the model. Just pick a color slightly darker than the part you want to engrave and add some letters.

Then take that image back into Bryce as the basis of a terrain.

A quick way to do that is:

Go to the edit menu of your image editor
Copy the whole image
Open Bryce
Create a Lattice
Select "E"
Press Ctrl + V

That will paste the image (at its correct resolution) into the terrain editor. There are lots of other ways.

Boolean Engraving

In the final image I made, I used boolean engraving.

To do this, it's easiest if you have an image editor. Just create a new file in the image editor and make the background black. Then type in white on the new file whatever words you want to say.

Use whatever font you feel gives your effect.

Now go to Bryce and select your model. Set its attributes to Positive.

Once this is done. Create a terrain and then edit it. Once the terrain editor is open, apply the pict that you made earlier to the terrain.

Don't forget to set it to a solid like you did above or it won't behave in booleans! Also drag the clipping control too. Can't have any unwanted background stuff here.

Set its attributes to negative.
Then position it so that it intersects the terrain. Group the two and it will cut the object. Remember if you want to have the terrain's material used (for instance white) in the letters, check the "Transfer Material" button. It will then make the letters white regardless of the material on the stone. You will have to set the lighting for this to show.

In the gallery image I created a different terrain and then applied this boolean to engrave a cube. This allowed me to give the stone two materials. The terrain used in the gallery picture.

Lighting Considerations

So you decide that the lettering is too dark and doesn't show well enough. What can you do? You can add a light to illuminate the image. However you must look at the image and think about what you have made.
Look at this image. Here a light was added to attempt to brighten up the foreground and make the letters stand out better. What do you see wrong here? If you answered "unnatural shadows", you win! Win what? Only better lighting for your picture.
If you decide to place a light to add to the effect. You must explain that light. Explain where it came from by putting up a light source such as a spotlight or some other mechanical or environmental visible source.

Site Note:

This is not meant to be an all inclusive instruction on every possible way to have made the final image or produce the desired results. Bryce offers zillions of wonderful ways to replicate, multireplicate, reposition, etc. in its powerful interface. Experiment!