Are You Kidding Me, Bryce 5 For Free?

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006

For a long time I have had Bryce 4, a very cool environmental 3D rendering program. Bryce was formerly made by MetaCreations, for a short time Corel, and has perhaps changed hands numerous times since I followed it. Now it is made by a company called DAZ. I also have an earlier version of Poser, another former MetaCreations program for making realistic characters and animations that has also changed hands numerous times (currently owned by e frontier). I have been on DAZ's mailing list for quite some time, but usually I just delete the emails. Now all-of-a-sudden I got an email informing me Bryce 5 is a free download! WHAT!? Let me tell you, That caught my attention! I immediately downloaded it.

Bryce is up to version 6 now, but I'll settle for version 5 for free! I don't see any catch either. I downloaded it, and it appears fully functional and packed with the normal features plus some extras. Compared to version 4 that I own, it has a new tree builder (completely awesome to the maximus!), MetaBall modeling (never liked it - I prefer NURBS), and some other small enhancements. Very cool. Bryce has long been my renderer and animator of choice - simply because I cannot afford to get into the high-end, multi-thousand-dollar programs (like Maya and 3D Studio Max and others). Ever since I discovered free Blender 3D, if I dabble with 3D, I usually use that over Bryce. But now that I have a new version to play with, I might just make a scene or two. Bryce is still the best program in the world for making a quick natural 3D scene. Trees, water, mountains, sky, you name it. It is not a very good modeling program, but it has most of what you need to animate. And the rendering engine produces very realistic images. By the way, Blender 3D deserves more than a passing mention. It is the ultimate 3D program, and it is free, open source. I have the feeling it will surpass even the huge name apps pretty soon because there are so many geniuses dedicating their time to develop and expand it. Download it too! It's a little less user friendly than Bryce, but not impossible to figure out, especially if you have any background in 3D! And boy is it fast and sleek. I luggit.

Judith - a quickly spewed scene arranged and rendered in Bryce 5 — I just made this little image to demonstrate Bryce 5's tree builder, a very cool feature. Don't judge the program by the quality of this image. I literally threw it together in just a couple minutes for a demonstration. Completely photorealistic or surreal images are possible using Bryce. You just need a little talent and patience.

Click here to download Bryce 5 for free. Act fast because the offer ends very soon. Download it even if you think you have no use for it. Some day you might develop an interest in it, and then you'll have it at no cost to you! Make a little image and show me your work! Maybe if I get enough examples, I'll make an EsoShow with your guys' work! Make sure to sign up on DAZ's site to get the registration code in time - plus you really need the extra download after that which includes extra (standard) program content and presets. Once you've registered and received your serial number, you are okay. You can let it sit on your computer until that day you are bored and decide to play with it. Just don't less this pass up if you are at all interested in experimenting in 3D on the computer. As Tom Peterson says, "Free is a very good price!" He also says, "Wake up! Wake up to a happy day!", but that is less related to this EsoBlog entry, and I don't know why I mentioned it.