Let's see...jumped through the 40-leven hoops to get the thing, waited a day for the serial number. Got it, and it doesn't work.
Uninstalled Bryce.
Spent all Friday and half of Saturday rebuilding my computer because uninstalling Bryce also disabled scripting in web pages, disabled scripting in anything that used scripting, actually...including the Restore applet.
Running just fine here, already done a spinning sphere with a logo mapped onto it.
The UI takes a bit of getting used to but way easier to grasp that TrueSpace or any of the other 3D apps I've tried to wrap my brain around. I wouldn't recommend it for anything serious apart from fun but for DVD menu elements I've yet to find anything easier to use regardless of price.
BTW, the support fora are excellent, posted a whinge about the registration screw up and got a reply from an admin within an hour. Judging by the speed of posts and replies there has to be a huge user base out there.
ends up the 5.01 SN is everything before the ":" in the free SN. At least on my copy.
But now I've got two copies! :) It looks like the Free & 5.01 are the same, except 5.01 includes the presets & manuals/tut's in the same installer. The free has them broken up.
Just another tip if I may.
There's TWO products available for free. Bryce and Daz|Studio.
Now on the Daz3D site one is offered quite a few free models and my initial efforts were to try opening them in Bryce but it seems that that's not how it works.
You open the models in Studio, I'm certain buried somewhere is all the info on this but if you're like me and just want to try everything out before wading through 100s of pages of documention it was at first frustrating.
Now that I've seen the capabilities of these products I'll invest the time to do more learning, might even plonk down some hard cash for the latest release and buy some objects.
Just be warned though, this looks like a highly addictive passtime.
No, didn't get that error. Try to unzip (or copy) it into the default C:\ProgramFiles\Bryce5FreeVersionPC directory. There may be some hardcoded paths in there. I would hope not, though. Most programmers learned long ago to be flexible in where the users put their install folders.
Don't forget that once you register, go back to Daz3d, sign in. The full Bryce v5 download will be waiting for you.
After signing up at DAZ, I clicked on "My Account" and then "Available Downloads". It came back with the answer, "You currently have no available downloads". Do I need to actually download the 24meg version first? Thanks.
Download the 24MB. Install and register it. Go to the About screen. copy the registration code string (I think a message above said it was the first part, before the first ":").
After I did that, the true full version with the manual appeared as available for download.
NOTE: the big 90+Mb download is version 5.01 whereas the FREE version is version 5.03. Not sure of the differences. The free consissts of the 24mb part plus the free components piece of 23 mb so the total will be about 48 mb.
Bryce is clean modern looking gui which I hate. Where is anything? Where are the words that tell you anything? Horrible until you find/learn it.
Serial number for the big 90mb 5.01 version: use the serial number from the free version except skip all after the first colon.
Oh boy - you betca... when it first came out, I went to forums with Kai (whatever his last name is), the developer, and totally got into Briyce.
I made dozens of otherworld scenes, castles and who-knows- what - all lost when I made the big shift from Mac to Windoze in '98.
Wish I could share some of them with you,
BUT -
one thing I DO remember - and a wonderful "seed for thought" to those of you just discovering Bryce.
It is the BEST and easiest way to make fantastic "other world" cloudscapes.
Checi it out - you just put in some weird clouds and keyframe them rushing across the sky. Then export to QT or (possibly) AVI and key them behind whatever. Instant and easy "Red Sands of Mars" stuff.
FYI-
Looks like there's a prize for figuring out how to properly install this software- if you log iinto your account at Daz3D and scroll to the bottom, there's a coupon for 30% off Daz Originals.