Brycetech: Bryce Going in Circles

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Bryce's QTVR panoramic render and how to get the most out of it. Though you will see primarily how to do this in Bryce4, we will also cover how to do this in Bryce 2 and Bryce 3d.

What is QTVR? Quicktime VR allows you to take 360 degree panoramic pictures of your Bryce world. Exporting your image to QTVR will allow you to make a "movie" that enables you to look around a scene by moving your mouse within the image. With additional software, you can even make "hotspots" that will allow you to create links to other places on the web (or to other QTVR movies).
The standard method of creating QTVR movies is as follows. 1. Make sure your camera is level. Do this by double clicking the trackball. When the popup window appears, set the angles of rotation to 0 for all planes. This can be for either the director or the dolly camera, but this will work BEST from the dolly camera. Of course you want to have your scene set up first. You will want to have something to see at all angles of the camera (in front, behind, left, right, etc.) With this in mind, QTVR files are excellent for interior scenes.
2. Choose "File" and go to "Document Setup".
3. Once in this window check QTVR panorama. Notice the document aspect ratio is 13:4 for the default document setup for QTVR of Bryce.
4. Apply your changes and return to the Bryce window. Once there, click the triangle next to the render controls and select "360 degree Panorama" from the menu.
5. Choose "File" then choose "Render to disk" and apply. It is not necessary to do a "Render to disk" in Bryce, however this saves a lot of RAM and this form of image rendering is extremely RAM intensive!
Don't change any of the settings here, simply click ok. In Bryce 2 and Bryce 3D it is necessary to click the button that rotates the image 90 degrees counterclockwise unless you export the image and rotate it in an 3rd party image editor such as Corel PhotoPaint or Adobe PhotoShop.
6. When the save dialog box appears, choose the location that you wish to save your file. Name it and change the type of file to QuickTime VR Files as shown in the image. For Bryce2 and Bryce3D choose an image format such as .bmp.
You now have made a QTVR file. Find it on your computer and open it. Check out what you have done.

Take it farther

Ok, so you can now make a panoramic movie. To be honest, Bryce's default setup for dimensions and aspect ratio are limited. To illustrate this point, look at the image to the right. This is a reduced image cut from a panoramic render. Notice the limited area that is visible vertically. Note: A panoramic render is different than a QTVR panoramic render. QTVR images have a distortion necessary to make it work, Panoramic images do not have this distortion.
This is as far up and down as you can see in your QTVR file unless you change some of the settings. It's kinda like squinting your eyes and only turning your head left and right. However in the real world you can look up and down too. By changing the setting in the Document Setup dialog, you can have this ability too. When changing your document setup aspect, there are two things that must be remembered. The Width MUST be evenly divisible by 96 The Height MUST be evenly divisible by 4
If I change the document setup to 1248 x 1920, I can now see higher up in the scene. Notice that 1248 is divisible by 96 and 1920 is divisible by 4.
The above resolution for the image will make the room look long and narrow because in the panoramic render where the room was 1284 pixels wide this was only for 1/2 of the room. (Panoramic renders only renders a 180 degree scene, not 360 unless you check the option as you did for the QTVR. Remember Panoramic is different that QTVR Panoramic.) So in effect, we are forcing twice the image in the same width resolution. However, if you double the width to 2568, you can remove this effect. This is something you will have to experiment with in your QTVR renders. An image that is 2568 x 1920 will take a long time to render and will take a lot of RAM. Don't forget this in your renders. You could choose one of the other settings once you have the aspect ratio set.
To see what a panoramic movie is, place your mouse inside the image and move it. You can actually look around the whole room. Hold the Shift key while placing your mouse inside the image to zoom in. Hold the Ctrl key while placing your mouse inside the image to zoom out.

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!