Brycetech: Bryce Building Explosion Tutorial

 

Download the PDF of this tutorial.

Explosion Tutorial #1

Here you can learn how to make this basic building explosion in Bryce.

This tutorial assumes you know the basic interface functions.  If you don't understand a term, you should refer to the manual or complete the basic tutorials first.

Click to see full size image!

Make the Building

Create a new scene.  Then create a stone.  You will need to create one that is very rectangular for the building.  So keep deleting the rock and creating a new one until Bryce creates one that suits your taste.

 

Next apply the texture of your choosing to the stone.

Here the rock was antialiased, but you may like the texture better if you turn off antialiasing for the rock.  

  1. To do that select the rock
  2. Select the "A" for attributes
  3. Then hold down Shift + Ctrl and click the checkmark.

 

Now it's necessary to change the display of the stone, this will aid in placement and speed redraw while building the wall.
  1. Select the stone
  2. Select the option "Show as Box"
  3. Click the checkmark to apply

 

Next duplicate the stone (Edit : Duplicate)

Reposition the duplicate so that it slightly overlaps the first stone.  It's important that you do this step in one motion for the next step to work. 

 

Assuming you did the above in one motion, you now can build one part of your wall easily with multireplication.  The object must have not been deselected and you must have repositioned it correctly with one fluid motion for this to work.
  1. Go to Edit
  2. Select Multireplicate
  3. Type 10 in the quantity box.
  4. Don't change offset.
  5. Be sure that the Size is set to 100 in all the planes.

 

You will now have laid the bottom row of stone.

It's also easier if you delete the ground plane.

 

  1. Select all the stones and group them by selecting the "G".
  2. Duplicate this group and raise it so that it slightly overlaps the original.
  3. Reposition it so that it now sticks out to one end of the wall.
  4. Reselect the first group and duplicate again
  5. Reposition it so that it is above the second group
  6. Select all the groups and group them.

Note: The resultant wall base will look like this.

 

Reposition the camera so that you are above the wall and set a camera memory dot for this position by selecting a gray dot next to the preview window in the upper left hand interface corner.

 

Next set the attributes wall base origin to 0 for all planes (this will make it easier to reposition)

 

  1. Look at the size of your wall base.  Divide this by 2 and put the negative of that number in the Z coordinate Origin plane. In this case 515.02 divided by 2 is 257.51...so we put -257.51.
  2. Duplicate the wall base and rotate it 90 degrees.
  3. Reposition it so that it overlaps the first wall at the end.
  4. Duplicate again, rotate and reposition until you have the following wall bottom

    5.  

    Note: Now is an excellent time to decide what angle of the building you want to render the scene from. Position your camera to that location and set a memory dot for it.

 

  1. Group this wall base
  2. Look at its attributes for height
  3. Now Multireplicate the wallbase and put in the Y coordinates for position a number slightly less than the height of the wall base. In the rotation in the Y plane, put 90.  I put 10 in this example for quantity. You decide what you want here.

The multireplicated wall base from the position I selected to see the action from.

 

  1. Ok, so this is a large file, and we aren't going to see all the building and so it isn't needed, let's get rid of the unnecessary parts.
  2. First "Select All Groups" and "Ungroup" them.
  3. Next select the above view that you saved earlier by click its memory dot.
  4. Since we now know where the camera will be located, select the unnecessary blocks.

 

and delete them

 

 

Now it's time to decide what part of the building is going to explode!  I selected a full frontal explosion, so position the camera so that you can see the front and select the stones that are going to move in the explosion

 

Now do a 3d Disperse/Rotate of these objects. To do this satisfactorily, I recommend doing this a small bit at a time. This will provide much superior results than just one quick 3D Disperse/Rotate

Drag the green ball to make this happen.

 

  1. Reposition the exploded stones so that they extend to the best angle from the front of the building It may be necessary to move some individually.
  2. Deselect all and then select one of the dispersed stones. 
  3. Copy its matrix.
  4. Copy its material.
  5. Create a new stone.
  6. Paste the matrix you previously copied.
  7. Paste the material you previously copied.
  8. Multi replicate it about 10 times
  9. 3d Disperse Size Rotate this stone
  10. Do this again for different stones to create a little variety.

The result.

 

Create the Explosion

 

  • Go to Solo mode and create a sphere.
  • Apply a smoke texture to this sphere from the presets
  • This is important! Turn off Cast Shadows and Accept Shadows for all these spheres!

 

  • Apply a fire texture from the presets to these duplicates (they will still be selected so this is easy unless you deselected them)
  • This is important! Turn off Cast Shadows and Accept Shadows for all these spheres!
  • Disperse/Size these fire spheres
  • Select all spheres and exit solo mode
  • Reposition the spheres so that they extend out from the wall.

 

This is very important! You must have the sun shining on the explosion, otherwise it will be a jumbled dull mess!  So reposition the sun so that it is shining on the the explosion! NOT IN SHADOW!!!!

Yeah that looks like a jumbled mess.

But after you create a ground plane, add a couple buildings and some haze for the smoke from the sky palette for the explosion

Here is the result!

Site Note

This should have laid the seed for your own building explosion scenes!  There are lots of ways to create complicated explosions which will be touched on in further tutorials. 

Hope this one gave some insight!

Also 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!

See the Explosion Tutorial #2 for more ideas.

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