Manufacturer	DAZ 3D
Website	DAZ 3D Bryce
Platform	Windows OSX
Price	$99.95
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Bryce is a software package designed for creating breathtaking landscapes. It is a 3D package designed for the beginning 3D graphical designer and therfore has an amazingly simple user interface, but although more limiting that the more professional products can easily create very detailed movies.
When you first start to use Bryce you notice how simplt it has been set up and how it is designed for an 800 x 600 screen. The plane is viewed in 3D although the view can be moved, flown-aroud or viewed in a 2D (X, Y or Z) perspective. This allows the userface to be easy to view and very non-technical looking.

Objects can created from simple primatives (cubes, spheres, cones, pyramids etc) or can be desiged using "Labs". The main labs are for terrains, water, sky and trees. These labs, again with an easy interface allow you to alter aspects of the said item. For example the terrain lab allows you to draw in grey-scale the terrain then apply modifiers to it such as errosion or fractal-ism. The tree lab - a new feature for bryce 5, allows you to create any type of tree and modify aspects of it from leaf type to branch density.

The light lab allows you to place light sources in your scene either as shaped points or as shaped spots. The intensity and softness, colour, beam and gobo can be edited greatly allowing the placement of any light to suit your scene.

Textures are easily selected from the large array of included or can be created from bitmap or bryce's procedural texture engine. The options, though easy to use, allow you to modify the texture to your own spec.

Animation is created using a timeline and keyframe idea, with bryce creating motion paths. You also have the option of creating your own motion paths or using premade paths and appyling them to objects.

Rendering is available in several qualitys, from less than a minute crap quality to many hours/days wow! Movies are saved as avi's and have the option of encoding as it's rendered. Using the free bryce lighting program you are also able to render over TCP/IP so if you have a network it can speed things up.

Overall it is a very good app for beginer to pro. Although more limited than the professional apps, it is easy to use and you can do some great stuff. Also for the price you cant go very wrong. If you are creating your own footage (as you all should be ;) ) and havent got a spare helicopter, this is the next best thing!