Bryce 5 still available to download anywhere?
lanelm_887116c888
Posts: 6
Hi,
I am an oldschool Bryce user and have not used it for a good many years however I would love to be able to re-download Bryce 5 and have a play again. However, I have noticed when I log into my account I can download all of my purchased content again but not Bryce itself, is it still available anywhere or will I have to purchase Bryce 7? I still have my serial number for Bryce 5 :(
Thanks
Comments
Chohole will hopefully confirm this but no, Bryce 5 is no longer available.
But Bryce 7 Pro is only $19.00 or so and it's ever so much more functional than Bryce 5, I'd highly recomend getting it.
All the basics are the same so you will still be able to what you did in Bryce 5 and it Bryce has always been backwards compatible so you will still be able to open and work on any old Bryce5 you may have.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for the response, as you say at that price I cannot really go wrong, I have always loved the quality of the renders in Bryce just something about them, but since moving home, families etc my version got lost in numerous PC moves etc and I then ended up playing with Vue in its various forms but never quite fell in love with it like I did with Bryce. looks like I will be making a purchase then, I know that Bryce never supported Radiosity or full global illumination, was anything ever implemented to emulate global lighting etc?
DId you purchase Bryce 5 through Daz 3D store? THis version is the one that was current when Daz bought Bryce from Corel. My version is a CD version and from Corel. Daz did release Bryce 5,5 shortly afterwards. There was also a special offer for it again in 2006 through the ArtZone store. If you purchased Bryce 5 trough the store here it should show in your product Library, and still be downloadable, as an .exe installer.
Go here and check by typing Bryce 5 in the search box.
https://www.daz3d.com/downloader/customer/files
Otherwise, as Dave said, it is no longer available.
Yes, Bryce 7 now has full HDRI and IBL lighting support in the Sky Lab and True Ambience option in the render settings... Loads of new lighting options since Bryce 5.
Thanks Chohole, I did purchase through the store and I can see both Bryce 5 and Bryce 5.5 including the content kit in my downloads but the link does not have the .exe for either when I click on the download its not the actual application :( All my other historic purchases are there for content I bought from the DAZ store.
This is good new :) I have been away far too long, Thanks Dave
That is very strange. I have the 5.5 upgrade and it showws a full exe. br_ap003_Bryce55.exe 118.26 MB
Same here, the only thing I can download for Bryce 5 is a zip file with a "manifest" in it.
For 5.5 I have a "Bryce 5.5 FREE Dnld.com" entry in the product library which includes the program.
Hi, Same here for 5 and then under Bryce 5.5 I have listed:
Bryce 5.5 Hi-Bandwidth & Content Kit Bundle
but the only file I can download is:
B55_Manual_Tutorial.zip 411.11 KB
no program?
That's what I see for that product entry too. As I said I found the program download under "Bryce 5.5 FREE Dnld.com". This one was probably a separate "purchase" though, I know I had two versions of 5.5.
If you really need a copy of 5.5 then I can only suggest that you fill in a help ticket here https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new and give the details. They may be able to help you.
It's called True Ambience (TA), a misnomer because when Corel introduced it with Bryce 5, it was based on Ambience. With Bryce 7.1, it is based on Diffuse and it does global illumination, including colour bleed, nicely. Once you've got your Bryce 7.1, we're here to help you make it work.
Many thanks all, Horo I just wanted to be able to have a play again as no free cash until I get paid at end of the month but then I will definately be purchasing Bryce 7 and will check out the (not so) new lighting. I used to love the renders from Bryce and good to see there is still an active community to support it.
Stick Bryce into your wishlist and watch it like a hawk. DAZ is having a lot of sales at the moment ("March Madness") and it's possible that Bryce will be on the list any day. It's a bargain anyway, but if you're strapped for cash then 40% off doesn't hurt. If it does get included in March Madness you can get it for 50% off if you buy it with another March Madness item. And what could be a better matching item than a Brycian one (or more) from Horo's and David Brinnen's stores:
http://www.daz3d.com/horo
http://www.daz3d.com/david-brinnen
If your pay doesn't arrive until after March Madness ends - don't worry, there's always another DAZ sale right around the corner.
And yes, Bryce7 is definitely the one to restart your interest. I loved Bryce5, but 7 is streaks ahead whilst being comfortably similar. Bryce is consistently near the top of the "Most Popular" list view for the store (of 18000+ products), even when it isn't on sale and lots of other stuff is. The "Most Popular" view is purportedly total revenue based (rather than just numbers sold), with a time element, so Bryce is bringing in a ton of money for DAZ despite them paying so little attention to it.
8
Yup I can truthfully say Bryce 7.01 is the best DAZ did with what they wanted..Personally I feel us Steering committee members were hoping that after several years we could have more...But we all know that sometimes wishes and money isnt enough...
Bryce 7.1 is now 4-1/2 years old (August 2011) and I still discover new uses for options. Bryce IBL is the most advanced I have seen or read about so far. Daz 3D does not realise what pearl they own.
I absolutely HAVE to leave a comment on this thread, so much so that I just registered and signed in for the first time to do so.
I have been using Bryce to create scene files since 2001. I upgraded to 5, 5.5, 6 and finally 7, then 7.1Pro, as they became available.
What I have learned, ( the hard way...through sorrow ) over time is that many of the scene files I started creating 15 years ago can no longer be worked with or rendered in 7 or 7.1. Bryce 5 would happily and smoothly allow me to merge various files into a huge conglomerate and render at maximum size, maximum quality, without a single hiccup. The exact same files, opened in 7 or 7.1, cause a crash, every single time, before they are even completely loaded. Most of the separate scene files used in the conglomerates will themselves crash the program/refuse to render. The file size limit in 7 seems to be around 150 MB. Anything larger than that is non-workable.
What does this mean for me/my work? An example; the attached file is from my Nautilus project, circa 2005, created in Bryce 5, origin source image rendered at 4000 pixels wide. As can be seen, all compartments, fixtures, machinery, lights, etc., of the entire submarine have been merged into a single file and rendered with no problems, on a windows XP platform with only 4 gigs of ram, in about 6 hours.
Bryce 7 will not do this. The best I can achieve with 7 is about 1/3 of the total sectioned hull contents before the sytem crashes. I regard this as a tragic circumstance, since it brings to a halt the ongoing work of 15 years of research, modeling and publishing on this subkect, which is far from complete. In addition, 7 takes 36 hours to render that 1/3 section at 4000 pixels.
There are other glaring flaws in Bryce 7 that no one else appears to have discovered;
(1) the program is not large address aware. This is a serious flaw that should be immediately corrected, as contemporary workstations, ( such as mine ) with over 48 gigs of ram and $2000 graphics processors, are completely useless for faster processing/rendering Bryce scenes. One could use a 2010 vintage computer and achieve identical results/render times.
(2) the color-picker function throughout all functions of my version refuses to work correctly, whatever one places the picker cursor on, the result is mud gray, seriously crippling the ability to create textures/colors for anything, which is a huge pain in the ass.
(3) the 'sun' lighting direction control refuses to accurately track mouse inputs, swinging wildly/more or less at random when I try to select a precise angle, which is also a huge pain in the ass.
(4) not only does 7 not allow merging and rendering of complex scene files, but simply attempting to work on a file over 10 mb will cause a creash after 5 or 6 modifications.
(5) in Bryce 5 , when one modifies a scene file by deleting some of the content, the resulting file size is reduced. But, in version 7, deleting file content increases the size of the saved result. This means that any attempts to work around the file size limitation by 'stripping' old files of content is counter productive.
I have registered these observations with Daz support; I received a single response that they would 'look into this' in 2016, and no further communication since. I would rate the support team's performance in this instance as less than one star.
So! you say to yourself, stop whining and go back to working in Bryce 5, right? Can't. Two reasons; one, like a complete fool I removed 5 from my system when I upgraded to 6, then 7....and my original disc has developed foil cancer/become corrupted over the years of laying in storage. no way to go back. Can't find a download anywhere. Second reason, a lot of newer file content created in 6 and 7 is of course not able to be loaded into 5 in any event, making hundreds of hours of work essentially useless, not just in the Nautilus project, but my Space Elevator project, my Orbital Habitat project, and my Generation Starship project, all in progress for years, so now to forge ahead I must re-create all those files from scratch in 5.
I am NOT a happy camper. I would, however, greatly appreciate any leads to a fresh Bryce 5 download link.
hpairpower I operate a far lower spec system than you do, do not have LAA loaded on this computer and I experience none of the problems that you are describing. I frequently open older Bryce files to work on them, even some from Br2 and 3. I have Bryce 7 files of around 400 mb, just on a quick check, and they render fine, so do not understand why you have problems with files that are less than half that size.
As has been stated several times in this thread Bryce 5 is no longer available unless you actually bought it, or Br 5.5 through the Daz Store. I have a full download for 5.5 available in my product library, as well as my Corel Br 5 CD.
hpairpower - welcome to the Bryce forums. I'm very sorry to hear about the problems you experience with Bryce. I have still all Bryce versions installed: 4, 5, 5.5, 6.0, 6.1, 6.3, 7.0, 7.1 and all work fine provided Bryce is started first and then the file loaded.
(1) I made all my Bryce versions large address aware and all work fine, even though some folks at Daz 3D warned that this might crash Bryce. It doesn't. LAA is free and installed in a few seconds. I have a video on my website where to download, how to install and how to configure LAA. It covers also the use of the free Process Monitor that can show you the memory Bryce uses, much better than calculating from the Task Manager. Link on my sig, go to Bryce & 3D CG Documents > Videos > Horo (near the page end) 19. Bryce Memory Shortage - and what you can do about it.
Bryce does everything in memory. In my opinion, saving the scene compressed as was introduced with Bryce 6.0 was an unfortunate decision. Sure, a compressed file stores and loads faster, but to compress and uncompress the file, additional memory is needed and it may happen that you can work on a scene and the moment you want to save it, Bryce crashes. Process Monitor helps you watch the memory usage.
Bryce has a buffer that stores up to 16 manipulations you can revert to (ctrl-z). Depending what you loaded (e.g. from the Objects Library) and deleted (because it's not the one you wanted), the memory is not released. One idea to clean-up the memory is creating 16 cubes and delete them. However, the better strategy is to save your work regularly, quit and relaunch Bryce. Again, Process Monitor is your friend, check memory used by Bryce regularly.
(2) Never experienced this, I have no idea what's going on here.
(3) I use the trackball seldom, I enter azimuth and altitude numerically and get the sun where I want it.
(4) I've never merged scenes but I know others have and have not complained. I don't know what's going on.
(5) See last paragraph from (1). It's not the number of changes that can overrun the available memory but the memory needed. This is also so for Bryce 5.0, deleting an object does not reduce memory usage as you say. I just tested with Bryce 5.0.0.1 Dec 5 2001 00:40:41 by Corel (German version) and 5.0.3.0 Aug 11 2006 16:05:17 by Daz 3D (English version). Memory usage: Start 22 MB; added a terrain and set resolution to 4096: 131 MB; added a second terrain and set resolution to 4096: 195 MB; deleting 1st terrain: 195 MB; deleting second terrain (empty scene now): 195 MB.
I may be wrong but in my experience, there is no staff left at Daz 3D proficient enough in Bryce to help. Help you may get in these Daz Bryce forums by "brycers", some know more about a specific thing than others.
As Chohole suggests, check your account if any or all of your purchased Bryce versions are still listed. I got my German version of Bryce 5.0 from Corel at the time and have a CD, the English version I got from Daz 3D. Bryce 7.1 does load scenes made in previous versions: File Open, then select version from the file type drop down in the Open Dialogue. It does work for me, though there may be a few things that don't work correctly (volumetrics that touch other volumetrics, more than one visible light are two examples I remember). Bryce 7.1 is quite good, better than 5 and 6, but unfortunately a bug or two was introduced on the way.
I'm sorry you're an unhappy camper at the moment and I do understand your feelings. Nevertheless, I hope we'll see more from you. The example looks great.
_have in Product Library under Bryce 5.5 FREE Dnld.com
I would recommend trying to obtain a legitimate copy of Bryce 5 as well as getting Bryce 7.
This first image, "Teamwork" was built in Bryce 5. The scene file will load into Bryce 7 for rendering, but it cannot be saved from Bryce 7 as the program crashes every time. So the scene had to be put together in Bryce 5 and then I used Bryce 7 to render it more quickly. Bryce 5 cannot use more than one processor core, Bryce 7 can. The scene file is 811.1Mb on disk and takes several minutes to load. I would not have built this image in Bryce 7 Pro as it could never be saved to disk, so Bryce 5 was essential.
The next image "On The Move" was assembled and rendered in Bryce 7 Pro. I used instancing to make the big herd and the forest. I could not have made this image in Bryce 5 as it would have run out of memory, neither the plants nor the animal are low resolution items. Bryce 7 Pro instancing made this image possible.
So you can see why I suggest having both Bryce 5 and Bryce 7 Pro if you can.
Fire Angel - The "problem" the scene shown will not save in Bryce 7 is because since Bryce 6 the source file is compressed first in memory and then saved to disk. This compressing takes a lot of additional memory. Compressing the source file was already a "bad move" in my opinion considering Bryce is still a 32 bit application and memory is soon at a limit. If compressing would be done streaming directly to disk - and again when loading the scene, compression could work - though it would be much slower.
Whew. posting that took some effort! The forum software gets worse with each new revision. Images should be resized proportionally, but the width-to-height is messed up in both of those. If you want to see them properly please click on them.
Fire Angel - set the width in the picture dilogue and the height is automatically adjusted to the correct aspect ratio. The width limit is 800 pixels and if you don't set it, the sofware squeezes the picture. I won't argue with you about the quality of this forum software, I'm actually not a big fan of it.
The reason for the problem with width on image display is not entirely due to this forum software. It is because people are using a plethora of different devices with which to browse the forums and transmit their image files, these include, as well as laptops and desk tops, ipads ,notepads, smart pads, not so smart pads, note books, iphone, smart phones, dumb phones, ebook readers, kindles etc. Some of these are not really meant to be used in landscape view, and some have a width limit of 768 pixels. You will note that it is not all images that corrupt. The poor software is doing the best it can with some of the different formats that get thrown at it, but sometimes it is the device that has been used to upload with that causes the distortion.
As you say, if you use the image dialoguw, with the padlock enabled, and set the width to 800 you sould still have an original image that can be displayed at full size when cilcked on.
Agree with you, Chohole...I've wanted to many-a-time include larger files - images, videos, pdfs...etc.,, but access by others has to be considered for, say, those lacking high-speed internet connections etc.
The best one can do is supply a simple link to the higher data avilable (allowing the user an option to 'connect' to such). Data-rate/connection is a curse, especially when one lives way-out in the countryside.
Jay
The forum doesn't resize the original image. It uses the 800 pixel size to produce a place holder image that fits into the forum. The original image and size is still there and is accessed by clicking on the image in the post which will open it in a new window, if that is set in the file upload window, at the original image size. With my Opera though it fits to window and I have to click on it again to load the full image and then scroll about to view it.
Thanks, Sandy
Jay
Those with more knowledge and experience in Bryce have answered as well as they could. One thing that has not got a lot of attention is the colour picker. That is an issue that Horo does not recognise and I have no problem with the colour picker at all. It works great. Maybe you should delete your version of Bryce 7 and re-install it? Perhaps something has gone wrong. I had issues like that in Hexagon, which is also very crash-prone, that after some crashes it would stop working correctly, but after re-installing it worked well again. Maybe you could let us know after re-install what works and what not?
By the way, Bryce crashes on me several times too, also during working on a scene, for example instancing. Usually, this is because there is still some process working in the background and I try to do something additional. So, after giving a task to Bryce, always be patient. The Process Monitor can also help you there. Wait untill the memory use is gone down again before the next action.