First, this tutorial will not teach you how to create landscapes using Bryce. Instead the focus here is using Bryce to create 6 images to make a skybox.

* A special thanks goes to Gavin Bell who wrote an earlier tutorial on skyboxes for Gamasutra.com back in October 1998. He mentioned a quirk in Bryce's FOV camera setting, which would yield unwanted results if you used the typical 90° FOV, he suggests using a 112.5° FOV. That is what will be used here.

Go to "Document Setup..." under the "File" menu. Macintosh (Command Option N) / Windows (Ctrl Alt N)

From the dimensional choices on the right, click "Square". This should make the "Document Aspect Ratio" 1:1. Then change the "Document Resolution" to 256. Click the check mark in the lower right.

Click on "Sky & Fog", then disable or uncheck "Link Sun to View". Click on the little director's chair at the top left. This will switch the view to the camera.

Next double click on the "Camera TrackBall". This will bring up the camera's settings.

For our first view. Set the camera's three "Rotate" fields to 0, 0, 0. This will be for our front view. Set the FOV (field of view) to 112.5 as mentioned above. Click the check mark to approve the settings.

At the top left, click the next open "Saved View" button. This will assign that camera view to that button.

Repeat steps 4 through 6 for the rest of the views. Each time changing the camera view as follows below. Also assign each camera view to the "Saved View" buttons. As you may have guessed, the resulting Bryce file will be your template for future skybox production.

front [ 0, 0, 0 ]
right [ 0, 90, 0 ]
back [ 0, 180, 0 ]
left [ 0, 270, 0 ]
bottom [ 90, 0, 0 ]
top [ -90, 0, 0 ]

At this point, you can use Bryce's "SkyLab" to select a type of sky. Also under the "Create" options you can create a ground plane and select whatever material you like. I wanted a farmland look with a calm sky before an impending storm.

Click on your first "Saved View" buttons which has the camera settings for the front view. Double click on the "Render" ball/button to render the front image. Macintosh (Command R) / Windows (Ctrl R).

Under the "File" menu item, select "Save Image As...".

For convenient sake I suggest naming that file "front" and include the extension of the file type you have selected.

Repeat steps 8 through 10 to render the remaining 5 views. You should have 6 images total when you are done. As mentioned before, save this file as a template for future skybox production.

[ Download the files from this tutorial ]

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