Bryce 5 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Who needs, directors, special effect experts, location permits, robots, trained animals, movie stars, costume and set designers, etc.? Bryce 5.0 is all that in a single box and a heck of lot cheaper!
But, there's a fairly hefty learning curve! Bryce isn't easy to master. It's easy to use once you learn, but starting out on your own is tough. I did, but I wish I would have spent the money to buy Susan Kitchens book on Bryce 4.0 first! 'Would have saved me hundreds of hours.
I struggled with Bryce 4.0 in making prehistoric environments from geologic history and the plants and animals that lived in them. Bryce 4.0 easily makes phenominal landscapes, city-scapes, castles, or whatever, but just try to make a person or animal that will move through your scene and you've got your work cut out for you!
But now thanks to Bryce 5.0's Metaball technology where basic sphere shapes better blend into each other my T.Rexs look like the could stand in for those in Jurassic Park. Hopefully Bryce 6.0 will make meta technology for all the building block shapes. Perhaps Corel will even embed a sound generator in 6.0 so you don't have to dub with other software?
A lot of attention has been given to the new tree lab. As long as you don't expect the prefab trees to look anything like what they are named for you'll like it too. However as a forester I was disappointed! This is not to say you can't make fantastic looking sequoias, I'm just saying it's going to take a couple of hours of tinkering. On the other hand this is to be expected. You can't demand software "Industrial Light and Magic" powerful to be "Mickey Mouse" easy.
What I'm most thrilled by is the power and beauty of the animation capability. Long gone are the days of frame by frame adjustments. To make my T. Rex walk all I have to do is carefully link objects together, then show Bryce what I want my dinosaur to look like at this place at this moment in time and than what I want it to look like at a new place, a few seconds later. Then pitch, yaw, roll, zoom the camera as desired or set it to auto track and the software smoothly animates the 100 frames in between. It short you make and put the parts together to make a body and Bryce will bring it to life and make it a movie star!
I've worked with a lot of graphic design and animation software and all others (for public consumption anyway) pale by comparison. Here's the fun thing! Once you get to know Bryce, you'll see it everywhere. It's technology is used extensively in "B" Fantasy & SciFi movies and on prime-time Fantasy & SciFi TV shows.
The old philospher once said, "Give me a fulcurm and a big enough lever and I could move the world." With Bryce 5.0 I say "Give me enough time and enough hard drive space and I can simulate the world!" at any time period.....

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Bryce 5 lets you create realistic 3-D landscapes and animations. Striking an optimum balance between power and ease of use, Bryce is an ideal way to integrate 3-D technology into your creative process. Smooth network rendering saves time by letting you render images on multiple computers. The new Light Lab gives you robust control over lighting direction, and the new Tree Lab ensures a more accurate depiction of real-world environments.

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SketchBook Pro 2010 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Drawing and sketching programs seem to fall into two general categories - very powerful but excessively complex, or simple to use but lacking in options and power. SketchBook Pro successfully combines power and simplicity into one package, such that even a weak artist can be productive and successful.
I ran into a problem when installing the application - the installer crashed, giving some odd internal error and number. I tried again immediately and the second try went without a hitch. I assume it is a configuration issue with my system as I have occasional strange issues when installing software.
When first launched, the application asks if you have your serial number and key handy. If you are new to SketchBook Pro, I encourage you NOT to enter them just yet but instead specify that you want a 15-day trial. The reason is that you get presented a quick pictoral tour of the feature set when you run in trial mode (which is really just a time-limited demo mode with everything enabled), which is a nice introduction. Afterward, registration information can be entered through the help menu.
Being new to SketchBook Pro myself, I was startled by the sparse interface when opening a new canvas. There was little on the screen other than the main menu up top and the lagoon in the lower left. Most drawing applications clutter the screen with an assortment of toolbars, palettes, wizards and other things that just get in the way. Autodesk keep their application simple instead, putting the essentials out there and leaving everything else off the screen until it's really needed.
Most elements of the application are available in radial menus, accessible either through clicking on icons on the lagoon or right-clicking on the canvas. All menu items have help tips to guide along the way so you know what option you're choosing. Radial menus can be a surprise to those who have never been exposed to them, but once used to them they are very powerful and easy to use.
Plunging into the various options available, I immediately discovered a couple of things I have never before used in drawing applications. First, I discovered the symmetry options, which makes creating mirror images easy. Using the axis, I was able to draw a crude figure of a person in about 10 seconds without even expending any real thought. Even more productive for me, though, was the ruler, especially in combination with the layering tool. The ruler is a slight misnomer, as it is actually more of a straight-edge against which to draw straight lines.
Another interesting surprise was the help system. When I launched the help system, rather than bring up a compiled help file, my default web browser launched and I was presented with one of the best help systems I have seen. The help is easy on the eyes and very straightforward to use. There is sufficient detail with pictures to address almost any conceivable question that might arise.
SketchBook Pro is very fast and very responsive on my system. I am running Vista with 3GB of ram and a dual-core 2.1G Intel processor, and there is only the slightest hint of hesitation on rare occasion.
Having never played with SketchBook Pro before and being a poor artist, I was shocked that I could create viable results in minutes. In the hands of a professional artist, this is a powerful and easy-to-use package. Emphasis was placed on productivity, but power was not taken away.

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Autodesk SketchBook Pro software offers best-in-class sketching capabilities for professional designers and artists from all industries. A paint and drawing application designed specifically for use with digitized pen tablets and Tablet PCs, it can be used in any creative process where pen and paper would traditionally be used. With a patented user interface that is fast and intuitive, even new users can be productive within minutes. Autodesk SketchBook Pro represents the next generation of digital design products that focuses on the user, translating technology and functionality into a natural drawing experience.

Your Digital Sketchpad So versatile and easy-to-use, it can be used in any creative process where pen and paper would traditionally be used:
Concept sketching and ideation
Illustration
Character studies
Set and level designs
Story boarding
Annotation and review

High Quality Results
The look and feel of traditional tools that experts demand
Custom texture brushes
Interactive brush symmetry
Interactive rulers and ellipses

Fits into all Digital Workflows
Reduce time scanning and touching up paper sketches
Reduce the use of paper
Open and save common file formats, including Adobe Photoshop: TIF, BMP, JPG, PNG, PSD

Streamlined User Interface
SketchBook Pro is designed to maximize flow, offering a natural drawing experience
Highly discoverable UI
So easy-to-use, any user can be productive within minutes.
Patented Marking menus provide access to major tools with just one-flick
Do-it-yourself custom brush creation


Communicate More Effectively Share visual ideas quickly with integrated e-mail feature Instantly email sketches and annotations
What's New With 2010, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro continues its tradition of delivering an affordable, easy-to-use, natural drawing experience with the quality expected by professionals.
New: Rotate Canvas
The navigation puck now has a rotate ring for smooth rotation of the canvas view.
Automatically snap to 90 degree increments

New: Blur & Sharpen Brush
Two new brush types in the brush palette.
Paint blur effects directly in SketchBook Pro
Use the sharpen brush to tighten imported photos or images.

New: Symmetric Brushing
Easily draw anything symmetric.
Horizontal & Vertical interactive mirroring brings drawings to life instantly... and fun too.
Great for character design, product concepts, graphic design, automotive sketches, and vehicles of all kinds.

New: Custom brush features
Create your own Custom Textures
Capture and reuse graphics
Make specialized brushes
Export/Import custom brushes
Save out XML with a TIFF map that you can share with other SBP users.

Customizability
Set up your preferred tools in the Lagoon, including your custom DIY brushes
Access marking menus right at the cursor
Hotkeys for each lagoon item
Assign these to a pen-button or tablet keys
Now you can work completely in full screen mode, calling up tools as you need them.

DIY Palette items can be reordered

New: Numeric color input
Direct RGB input fields in the Color Editor.
To support the custom color palette on Windows, you can now accurately define RBG values before saving them.
The Mac version continues to use the Apple Color editor.
Preset primary colors & gray scales now available for customizing in the lagoon.

New: Guides
Create perfect straight lines, circles and ellipses.
The Ruler and Ellipse guide bring a new level of precision to refine your sketches.

New: Scale enhancement
The transform puck now allows non-proportional scaling
Tweak the horizontal or vertical proportions of a selection or entire image directly in SketchBook Pro

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Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 2011 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 2011 is the best digital sketchpad I've ever used! I majored in art in high school and have always used art, crafts or designs in many of my jobs. I've designed t-shirts, done miniatures, sewn clothes for antique dolls, silkscreens for cloth patterns and general art work and photography. Once I owned a computer, I found many great photo programs over the years, but up until now, I really never found a great sketch or art program. I own Corel's Painter, which is not only time consuming to learn the media applications, but it's slow, misses strokes and has several bugs in it's applications. Corel keeps giving me patches, but it has become tiresome to keep downloading patches all the time! I actually would rather do my art by hand than deal with all of Painter's issues.
I've been using this Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 2011 every day, to see how smoothly it runs, and it not only runs smoothly, it's unbelievably fast! I have a Windows XP, and it took only a few minutes to download this great program. Once downloaded, I skipped the directions, as I wanted to see how quickly and easily I could learn to use this program on my own. Talk about easy to learn- anyone from 5 to 95 could use this without reading a direction! I am truly amazed that I could draw a sketch, a complicated geometric design for a piece of dress fabric and a dress pattern all in one sitting! The sketchpad itself is uncluttered with a small corner interface control, that allows you to bring up the nicely small tools window, brushes window or colors window. There is a brush property circle that allows you to choose both the brush size and flow for coverage. You can place these windows anywhere out of your drawing area or keep them off the screen completely.
The Brushes window includes a nice array of media types: pencil, airbrush, marker, chisel tip pen, ballpoint pen, paintbrush, felt tip pen, smear, blur, sharpen (does a great outline), hard eraser, soft eraser, flood fill and flood fill for all visible layers. The Tools Bar window has undo, redo, select, lasso, crop, zoom, rotate, ruler, elipse, symmetry X (top and bottom), symmetry Y (side to side), free hand, line, rectangle, polyline, oval and layers. Those symmetry features made my geometrical fabric design take only minutes to complete! What a great feature! The colors window features a color wheel, where you can create any color imaginable, then save it in the blocks below it. For your image, it has image size or canvas size, crop, adjust, rotate, mirror canvas, flip canvas vertically, mirror layer, flip layer vertically and both symmetry X and Y. Your finished art will work on the standard image formats- TIF, BMP, JPG, PNG and PSD.
I wish I had this program years ago, before I wasted so much time, money and constant patching on Corel's Painter! I'm just happy to have this Autodesk's super fast and easy Sketchbook now! For anyone who just sketches or draws, the inexpensive price of this program will pay for itself on the money you'll save on paper, pen, paints and inks! It's a wonderful, fast and easy money saving way to do story boarding, concept sketches, illustrations, fabric designs, pattern designs and anything that you would normally use a sketchpad and your choice of media for! Artists, designers and crafters will love the professional results they'll get with this BEST digital Sketchbook that I've ever used!
(With my review, I've included 3 images. If you don't see them on the top of this page in Images, you can find them by clicking on my name, then going to My Profile-Customer Images. The first image is of my computer screen, so you can see the corner interface control called the lagoon, which can be moved side to side or removed completely when sketching. You will also see the great moveable tool bar, brush window and color window- which you can move these three anywhere on the screen or remove, when sketching. It's simplistic screen design needs no directions! I made a City Skyline In Fall sketch in 5 minutes using the paintbrush and air brush along with the freehand, line and rectangle tools and spent another 5 minutes coloring it.
The second image I made in 20 minutes for a fabric print design using the symmetry tools. I used both symmetry tools X and Y along with flood fill, airbrush and paintbrush. The third image took me the longest time to create- 35 minutes, due to more detailed floral designs I wanted to create for a scarf print. I again used both symmetry tools X and Y along with flood fill, airbrush, paintbrush and the felt tip pen.
The fabric designs that used to take me endless hours by hand to create, now takes me a mere 20 to 40 minutes with these great symmetry tools! For fast painting, the airbrush and flood fill take seconds to use! The flood fill, which is a paint bucket, can be used to cover an entire area, or you will quickly learn like I did that you can also use this little paint bucket to splash a little color on for a beautiful effect! I did all three of these using only my mouse.
For more professional art, you will want to use a pen and tablet connected to your computer port. Wacom makes the best pen and tablets in all sizes and prices. For a beginner, try the inexpensive Wacom Bamboo or Bamboo Fun tablets and pens. For professional use, the more expensive Wacom Intuos4 Larger sized Pen and Tablets give you the ability to draw, design and paint anything with total pen control for hairline detail! I couldn't believe how easy and fast this program is to use- now everyone can be an artist!)

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Relied on by professionals, adored by everyone who loves to draw... SketchBook Pro translates sophisticated technology and professional functionality into a natural drawing experience; use it anywhere you would traditionally use paper and pen!

A Natural Sketching Experience A dynamic and streamlined UI that is easy to learn and fun to use.View larger.

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