Bryce Camp Image Map Website

Image Map How-to, Continued

HTML Export dialog box: Left, Bryce 4 Mac; Right, Bryce 4 Windows

Title
This is the title that will appear in the title bar of the web browser window.

If you are familiar with HTML, the text you are entering here is what is contained inside <TITLE>The Title Tag</TITLE>

If you do not specify a title, Bryce will automatically supply the title "Bryce Image"

Server Location
This contains the link for one of two places -- your webserver where the webpage is located, or the location of your webpage on your local machine.

Translated into HTML, the contents of this window are the URL that is provided in the <BASE HREF> tag located inside the <HEAD> tags of your HTML document.

Bryce automatically enters the information for the current location of the html file based on the information you supplied in the Save As dialog box in the previous steps. You may also supply the Absolute URL for the location the file will reside on your web server.

Due to the collaborative nature of this project, and the fact that pages were generated in one location, then transferred to another for additional work, before being uploaded to the web server, we simply deleted the <BASE HREF> tags from the HTML files to make our work simpler.

Email Address
If you want to generate a link on the page so that viewers may email you, supply an email address here.

If you leave the area unchanged, Bryce will not include an email link

JPEG File Name
This is the name of the JPEG image file, the second file generated during this HTML Image Map process. Bryce uses the name of the first file, the HTML file (from the Save As dialog box) to suggest a name for this JPEG File.

You may alter the name of the JPEG if you like.

If you are using Bryce on the MacOS, and inserted ".html" at the end of your file name in the Save As dialog box, you'll need to take it out of here. The Windows version does not have this problem.

Image Link
The purpose of Image Link is to make the entire background of your image a link. So, in addition to hotspot links in portions of you rimage, the remainder of your image can be a link. The result is that Bryce, when exporting the HTML with hot spots, makes a rectangle that covers the entire area of the image, and links that to whatever you place in the Image Link area. However, different browsers don't successfully interpret this; we discovered that Internet Explorer (on the Mac, at least) will not load the image in the page when there is an Image Link. Use Image Link with caution, then.

Hotspot Tolerance
Bryce generates area polygons based on the shape of the "mask" of the web objects. Here (opening into a separate window) are different Hotspot Tolerance settings and the resulting polygon shapes and the HTML text to describe the polygon.

Setting to square (left end of slider) results in shapes that are not as accurate: there are fewer points in the polygon, making for a smaller HTML file. Setting to circle (right end of slider) results in more detailed, accurate polygons, with a larger HTML file. You'll need to balance between space and accuracy when you set this slider.

JPEG Quality
This option determines how much the image is compressed in the process of making it a JPEG. Here is a sample test strip of a portion of an image, showing the final size (when uploaded to web server) and the location along the continuum that the JPEG was exported from.

Note the large jump in file size between a setting about 75% quality and the highest quality setting. (for the scenes that we did, with the dimensions of 550 x 300, that jump meant a difference between image sizes of 30K versus 150K)

What we discovered:

Be aware that you MUST render the images in your scene with the linked objects SELECTED! Otherwise, it doesn't work. (It's all too easy to skip this step in the midst of some last-minute fine-tuning of the scene.)

As mentioned previously, we had trouble with the <BASE HREF> tag generated, so we deleted that from the text file. Some browsers are not able to find the image.

Re-Exporting

When you have rendered an scene with web links selected, you can export the HTML more than once while the scene is still open. This is good for trying different settings for the hotspot tolerance and JPEG quality.

Once a scene has been rendered with HTML Web Links selected, and saved in that same condition, can you open the scene later and re-export? The answer varies. Yes, if you open it up immediately while Bryce is still launched. Yes, if you have not opened up--and rendered--any scenes in the meantime. However, if you've rendered a different scene and then open the first scene in the same work session, you may get different links. If you quit Bryce and re-launch later and open up a scene rendered with links, you cannot re-export from there. (This may change with the update)

Bryce doesn't "see" obviously selected links?!

If a work session involves both scene construction and then the final render with Web Links, then sometimes the final render and HTML Image Map export results in an irritating alert:

If this happens (and you did clearly select Web Links and render the entire scene), then quit Bryce and relaunch it and try again.

Do you want to put your images in a different directory?

For this site, all the contents—HTML and JPEGS—went into a single directory.

Bryce's HTML Imagemap export is structured in such a way that you cannot choose two locations for exports—one directory for the HTML file and a different directory for the JPEG file. If you're the type that's inclined to create a separate directory for images, you'll have to go through and hand-edit the HTML code to place the JPEG images in their own directory. However, you can divide the site into different directories for different portions. For instance, this site might have had several directories, each one containing both HTML and JPEGs:

garden
den
tomb
grotto

Participants

We hope you have found the results of our efforts enjoyable and helpful!

Calyxa
Peder "Dr. Evil" Morgenthaler
Renato! Sigmon
Scott Tucker
Kwang
Sandy Birkholz
Kenn "RabbleRouser" Louis
Susan Kitchens

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