DEM Tutorial
Renato! Sigmon
Part 2 of 6
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STEP 2 - IMPORTING DEM TERRAINS

Mac users: before launching Bryce, make sure that you have allocated sufficient memory to the application. For this tutorial, at least 50MB should be sufficient.

Once you have your uncompressed DEM file, launch Bryce 4. In the Menu Bar, select 'File' and then 'Import Object...'. Find the folder where you placed grand_canyon-e and select 'Open'.

STEP 3 - MAKING A SCENE

3a - Document Setup

You may find it easier to work in a larger window than Bryce's default. Select "File" in the Menu Bar, then "Document Setup". In the dialog box, select "Standard" from the column of buttons at the right; this will create a 640x480 work area. Accept your new document size with "Return" or by clicking the check mark.

3b - Isn't My Canyon Grand? (Adding Height to the Grand Canyon terrain)

Imported DEM -- before resizing vertically

You should now see what looks like a flat, rectangular object, oriented on a diagonal to your view. Trust me, the Grand Canyon is there... just add height by scaling it up on the Y axis!

Interface Guide - Raising/Lowering the Terrain

Move the mouse over the middle of the terrain, where you see two black dots stacked one on top of the other. You should see the letter 'Y' appear when you mouse over either of the two dots. Click and hold the upper black dot; you should see a double-headed arrow. Drag to the right to raise your terrain, drag to the left to lower your terrain.

It is possible to give this terrain object a height that's the same scale as that of the real world Grand Canyon; for this tutorial, give it whatever height seems right to you. I chose to make the highest point about 3/4 of the screen height.

I also chose to widen my terrain; you may or may not want to do this.

Later on in this tutorial, you'll create an animation. If you wish, you can follow in my footsteps and use the Object Attribute values I'll give you as we go through the tutorial, to create a Grand Canyon animation very similar to mine. The movies are shown here. (You can also view them at my web site: http://www.30fps.com/gcanyon.html.)

So if you want your animation to look like mine, start here by entering the following Attributes for your Grand Canyon terrain:

Interface Guide - Changing an Object's Attribute values

To bring up the Attributes dialog box, select the terrain and click the "A" chicklet at the top right.

OBJECT ATTRIBUTE VALUES FOR GRAND CANYON TERRAIN:

SIZE: X = 112.42 Y = 53.72 Z = 107.51

ORIGIN/POSITION: X = 0 Y = 27.73 Z = -25.25

3c - Take Me to the (Colorado) River

If you've ever seen the Grand Canyon, you know that a river runs through it! So, let's first add the Colorado River before positioning the camera; having water in the scene might make a difference in where you place the camera.

Interface Guide - Entering the "Create" menu

At the top of the interface, you should see the word, "Create" highlighted. Just below "Create", is a set of three planes; at left is the Water Plane, at right is the Ground Plane, and hovering above them is the Cloud Plane.

To create a Water Plane, click the Water Plane icon; to the left of it, in the Nano Preview, you'll now see your Grand Canyon surrounded by a lake, instead of resting on a grey surface.

By raising and lowering the Water Plane, you can raise and lower the river's level. In order to best see how full of water your canyon is, you'll want to be in the "Top View".

Interface Guide - Changing from Director view to Top view

There are two ways to get to Top View:

1 - in Director view, click twice on the Select Views icon, which is in the upper left of the interface, just below the Nano Preview window, or;

2 - use the keyboard shortcut by pressing the 2 key.

Let's do a little cleanup before going on. First, to make things easier on ourselves, let's name our terrain and water plane objects. With the Water Plane still selected, click the "A" chicklet at the right of wireframe to bring up the Attributes dialog. Enter "Colorado River" in the space for "Object Name" and accept the change with "Return", or by clicking the check mark.

You'll notice that you have three overlapping objects in the center of your screen; they are:

1 - the Ground Plane, which your Canyon is sitting on;

2 - the Terrain Object (Grand Canyon), and;

3 - the Water Plane (Colorado River), which should be selected.

While you still have the water plane selected, let's take care of one of these overlapping objects. The material of a plane object will stretch into infinity in all directions, no matter where you position the object itself; so drag it in any direction away from the other two objects in your top-down view.

The square object overlapping the Grand Canyon terrain is the Ground Plane. Select it and drag it someplace else.

Now, select the Grand Canyon terrain object. Open the Attributes dialog and enter "Grand Canyon" for Object Name.

Look in the Nano Preview and you'll see that we're too far above the Grand Canyon to judge the water level very well. So, let's zoom in on the terrain.

Interface Guide - Zoom In

Mouse over the lower right of the interface, and you'll see two magnifying glasses stacked on top of each other. The one with the "+" is the icon for Zoom In.

Make sure your Grand Canyon terrain is still selected, and click Zoom In three times. This should give you an acceptable close-up, top-down view of the water level in your Grand Canyon.

Now we are ready to set the level of the river. If yours is a dammed Grand Canyon, you would set the Water Plane to a high position, relative to where you would position it if it were a free-running Colorado River. Where you set it is up to you. Move the Colorado River up and down on the Y axis until you like its position.

Interface Guide - Nudging the Colorado River on the Y axis (up and down)

Bryce provides keyboard shortcuts to help you 'nudge' objects, in either large or small increments. Nudging is probably the best way to precisely place Brycean objects.

First, select the Colorado River water plane. To move the Colorado River's level up or down on the "Y" axis in large increments, use the "PgUp" and "PgDn" keys. If you want to move it up or down in small increments, hold down "Option" (Mac) or "Alt" (PC) while using "PgUp" or "PgDn". As you would expect, PgUp moves the object up, PgDn moves it down. As you do so, you'll see the lowest elevations in your terrain fill up with water; they'll turn pale blue in the Nano Preview.

Once you think you have the river where you want it, you can render your top-down view to see if you like where it is before you move on.

Interface Guide - Rendering your scene

Below the trackball at the left, there is an array of five smaller spherical buttons. Select the first button to the left of the middle, larger button; this toggles you to "Fast Render" mode. Next, click the larger button to the right of it; this is the Render button.

If you want to set your Colorado River to the same level as the tutorial movie, change the water plane's position attribute value to Y = 21.90.

3d - LIVING IN THE MATERIAL(S) WORLD

Let's add a couple of material presets to liven up our dull gray scene.

Interface Guide - Entering the Materials Lab's Preset Library

Select the Grand Canyon terrain; click the "M" chicklet at its right edge. This opens up the Materials Lab. Click the triangle to the right of the Nano Preview; this will bring up the Materials Presets Library.

The Materials Presets Library has a material which is ideally suited to our terrain; it's called, oddly enough, 'Grand Canyon'. Select "Planes and Terrains", then select the Grand Canyon material; it's in the 4th row, 5th one over from the left. Accept your changes and exit Materials Lab.

Now let's change the material of our Colorado River to something other than the default water plane material. Select the Colorado River and enter the Presets Library again; this time, select "Waters&Liquids". Choose any liquid that appeals to you; I used "Waves of Reflection". It's in the 3rd row, 3rd over from the left. Accept your new water material and exit the Materials Lab.