You can't help but notice how ingenious Bryce 2 is after using it for only a few minutes. The sleek, beautifully rendered interface, the way the icons pulse slightly after the cursor has been over them for a few seconds, the anti-aliased object wireframes -- they are all products of a well-designed and carefully thought out program. Programs costing well over a thousand dollars more don't have the same flexibility and ease-of-use that Bryce 2 features. What's this? A 3-D modeling and rendering program...easy?! That's right. I have used 3D Studio, Fractal Design Ray Dream Studio, Caligari TrueSpace, and several other programs -- but none compare to Bryce 2. There's a reason, of course. Bryce 2 is specifically designed for creating beautiful landscapes and virtual worlds. 3D Studio, Ray Dream Studio, and others may be more adept at just pure modeling of 3D objects, but Bryce 2 is in its own field for being the best program available for creating 3D ray-traced landscapes.
The Interface
The interface of Bryce 2 is unlike any I've ever seen -- and certainly unlike anything I've seen in a 3D modeling program. Most 3D modeling programs have interfaces that are dry and confusing, or else just plain weird (like Caligari's TrueSpace) -- but Bryce sports an interface that anyone could use, graphic wizard or no. The anti-aliased wire-frames and background paper texture may not seem like much at first, but if try using another 3D program for a while, you'll wonder why you ever settled for anything less. One of Bryce's most winning features is that it packs an amazing amount of tools into such a small screen space. Bryce's interface seems light and airy, even with a 640x480 screen size -- and the reason is that Bryce put its tools in palettes, all but one of which you can hide at any time to save screen space. At the top of the Bryce workspace is the Create, Edit, and Sky&Fog palettes; of which only one is displayed at a time (the Create Palette is selected in the above screen shot). Only the Control Palette, which you can see is on the left of the workspace, is displayed at all times, because this may be one of the most important palettes in all of Bryce. The Display Palette, Zoom/Pan Controls, Display Selector, and Selection Palette are normally hidden along the bottom and right edges of the workspace (they all are visible in the screen shot above), for you wouldn't be using them much during the course of your scene creation. When you do need them, all you have to do is move the mouse cursor over where one of the palettes would be, and they pop right up for you to use. When you don't need them anymore just move the cursor away, and, after a few seconds, they'll fade right out of existence. And, of course, Bryce has a menu bar, which is normally out of view. Just move the mouse to the top of the screen, and the Bryce title bar and menu bar will pop up, giving you access to commands such as New, Open, Save, Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Duplicate, and others.
