Brycetech: Bryce Animation Tutorial Part 2

Edit

This sets your compression settings.

Choose a compression setting from the dropdown menu.
Bryce does not have any tutorials for high quality rendering of animation. Therefore, you can start with the following.

The best methods at present are Indeo and Cinepak. Cinepak ships with Windows, you can get the latest Indeo at their site.
Indeo for mac

Set the Compression Quality to 100% (this provides the highest quality image)

Compression Quality determines the degree of strictness that the compressor uses in following the colors in your animation. For example, 100% may make the image copy purple as purple...50% may make the image copy a range from light purple to dark purple as the one color purple.

Set Key Frames every 1 frame. (A key frame copies all necessary data for your computer to render a frame)

Key Frames will determine the degree of quality throughout your animation. A computer animation is made by determining the color change for each pixel in the picture. Lets say that in frame one the pixel is black, then in frame 3 the pixel is green and in frame 5, the pixel is orange. The computer must copy that information to complete the animation. This is done in Key Frames. Drastic color changes as indicated above create a key frame automatically on most compressors. However, if the colors were light purple, purple, and dark purple...the compressor might miss these subtle changes unless you told it to create key frames every 1 or 2 frames. Instead it might just produce one tone of purple, which can severely decrease the quality of your animation.

Uncheck any kb/sec options.

The kb/sec option is used to determine the number of kilobytes/second that the compressing program compresses each second of video to (some programs use kilobits/sec instead). For example, setting this at 300 kb/sec will force it to compress the animation to conform to an average of 300 kb/sec regardless of the keyframe settings, fps, quality or resolution. Imagine creating a video that needed 350 kb/sec to look good..and you set it to 300. The un-accounted for 50 kb/sec has got to come from further compression of the animation this would result in over-compression. If you know how much your computer can handle and want to force the animation to conform to that, you can set this option. This will provide an even workload for your computer throughout the animation, but setting this option can decrease the quality of the animation severely unless you know the limits of your computer and its hardware.

Set

Choose the location and name of the animation.

Wireframe Animation

If you want to render a wireframe animation instead of a full render. Follow all the above steps then hold Shift + Ctrl while clicking the OK button.

Shift + Ctrl +

Cool Wireframe Animations

If you change the paper color

and change family colors

you can make some really impressive wireframe animations.

If you want to render a wireframe picture instead of a full render, render an animation to individual files (.bmp format) then render an animation but set the output module to BMP instead of AVI.(see above)

Then follow the steps for rendering a wireframe animation.

Trouble Shooting

Banding of a Rendered Movie

Banding (or splotchy animations that lack clarity) are usually a result of over compression or too low of a key frame rate.

Be sure to

Use Indeo (the best) or Cinepak compression methods
Set the key frame rate to a low number (<5)
Use a high Compression Quality (>90%)
Turn off kb/sec info if present

Rundll.dll error

Usually a result of a bad compression program. Try reloading the compression program or using another one.

Nothing is moving

There are several reasons for this.

No key frames were added

Be sure Auto Key is checked
Be sure to add the key frames manually
Be sure that you moved/resized/rotated/changed materials or otherwise changed the properties of an object at a different time in the timeline

The key frames were added at the same time for the same object.

Move the time line for the next key frame

Jerky or jumpy play back

Try all of the following in order.

Compression is necessary on ALL computer animations. You MUST have compressed the movie.

Think about it, one frame at 640 x 480 resolution is close to 2 megs in size (uncompressed). Multiply that by 24 for a computer animation...that means 48 megs for 1 second of video! 10 seconds = 480 megs, 100 seconds 4.8 gigs...you get the idea.

Some recommend no compression/sequential file rendering/and rendering at 1.5 times the desired resolution, but remember these people are using super fast computers and have tons of RAM and hard drive space. As well as a team of people and budget to work around any such limitations. If you are not doing it professionally and do not have the necessary power, then your animation MUST be compressed! Don't kid yourself into thinking you can work around it.

If you did not set a compression method then you must

Re-render the movie using a compression setting
Re-compress using a third party animation program such as Adobe Premiere

And/Or

Turn off all TSR programs (such as Norton, screen savers, or other background operating programs..these are in the system tray. Look in the lower right hand corner of your screen [next to the clock] You can leave the speaker [or soundcard settings] without effecting the playback.)
Be sure only the movie player is running. Close any other programs.

INCLUDING

Internet Explorer
CD players
Antivirus programs
Schedulers
Bryce
Screen Savers
ANY OTHER OPEN PROGRAM THAT IS USING THE PROCESSOR OR MEMORY!!

Older computers can not support high frame rates or high resolution renders even if compressed. FPS over 18 per sec that are over 480 x 360 in resolution will most likely jerk on older computers due to slower processors, slower video cards, or slower hard drives.

You can

Render at a lower resolution (try 320 x 240)
Lower the compression quality (this will greatly decrease quality on some movies [<80])
Increase the key frame settings ([>5] this will greatly decrease the quality on some movies)
Turn on any kb/sec settings (this will greatly decrease the quality on some movies)
Use a different compressor (Indeo or Cinepak)

Note 320 x 240 at 30 fps will run on most computers. If this skips frames, your processor or hard drive are suspect. Also turn off all TSR programs (such as Norton, Screen Savers, etc.)

Won't do a wireframe animation render

Be sure you are pressing the Ctrl + Shift + Clicking the "OK" control at the same time. Follow the instructions to setting up an animation.

Ctrl + Shift +

How do I decrease the size of my avi?

You can

Render at a lower resolution (try 320 x 240) on playback play the avi full screen or regular size. (Change the monitor resolution to 640 x 480)
See Compression Settings
Lower the compression quality (this will greatly decrease quality on some movies [<80])
Increase the key frame settings ([>5] this will greatly decrease the quality on some movies)
Turn on any kb/sec settings (this will greatly decrease the quality on some movies)
Use a different compressor (Indeo or Cinepak)
Use a 3rd party program to compress the avi to a mpg. Adobe Premiere is a high dollar excellent avi editor that will not only edit the avi 's you produce, but will recompress to mpg format (~$500).
DVMPEG is a program that does not edit! However it will recompress an avi to broadcast quality mpeg format (~$190)

I can't render sequential files.

I only have the AVI format available for output module.

You must render to individual files.

Bryce4 ships with this ability already.

My animations "shimmer" what can I do?

This isn't an easy question to answer, however here is one option. Render the movie 1.5 times larger in resolution than the one you desire...then reduce the resolution in an animation editor.

This shimmer has been referred to as "high frequency noise" and is very difficult to fix. However, this will reduce the "shimmer".

Remember, each frame is different..and thus Bryce renders it differently therefore producing the "shimmer".

Site Note:

Are you interested in making a sunrise/sunset animation? Check out this tutorial by DesertDirk.

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!

1 Setting up an Animation	2 Make an Animation	3 Rendering an Animation
4 Compression Settings	5 Wireframe Animation	6 Trouble Shooting