COVERDISC GRAPHICS ▲

Bryce

●Produce stunning landscapes ●Animate your creations ●Endless creative variations ●Difficult to use for beginners

It’s now possible to create impressive

computer-generated graphics on a

home PC without the need for

expensive software. Bryce 5.5 is a

freeware version of the powerful

commercial Bryce design package

(currently up to version 6), which

provides all the tools you need to

generate stunning digital landscapes.

For the average PC user, Bryce can

appear baffling. The menu systems and

shortcut buttons aren’t always labelled

▲The rendering process in Bryce can make your designs come to life in a stunning 3D world

▲

Create whatever kind of landscape you wish – from a country meadow to a futuristic city design

clearly, making it difficult to know what

you’re pressing. It can take a lot of time

and patience before you can achieve

effective results.

After inserting an object onto the

landscape, its shape and size can be

easily manipulated by dragging and

dropping any edge of the selected

polygon. There’s a large choice of items,

including basic shapes like cuboids,

cylinders, pyramids and cones – to trees,

stones, bumpy terrain and more

complex objects. The number of options

on offer in the free application is

extensive. Shapes and elements can be

textured with thousands of different

preset designs, whether you want to

create a futuristic cityscape or a simple

countryside scene.

Lighting is an important aspect of

Bryce, and once again there’s a

multitude of ways to enhance your

scenery. The main way to do this is by

using the sun control, but there are also

other techniques, which enable the user

to tweak and adjust their virtual

atmosphere perfectly.

The freeware package also installs

DAZ Studio 1.5, which will enable more

experienced users to create human

figures to add to their backdrop.

Animations can be created from your

designs, too.

Bryce 5.5 won’t be useful for

everyone and its steep learning curve

may put many off. However, the effects

the program can deliver are stunning.

Given a little patience, this Bryce has

some impressive capabilities.

Location \graphics\Bryce5_5_Free_Setup.exe System 98/Me/XP/NT/2000/Vista Licence Freeware; registration required Contact www.daz3d.com

PaintStar

●Image editing and graphics suite ●Dozens of brushes and filters

●Work with natural-style media ●Supports layers and paths

PaintStar has been around for a few

years as a shareware tool but as of its

latest release, it’s now completely free.

This means that everyone can now enjoy

the wide range of image-editing and

graphics-creation tools the program has

to offer.

In many respects, PaintStar acts like

a professional product. For example, it

includes a number of textures, brushes,

shapes, sizes, filters and colours, and

many of the brush options are

comparable to those offered in Corel’s

Painter X program. There are fewer

▲Filter effects can be applied to entire images or painted onto just select parts

▲The Morph Maker function enables you to create an animation blending one photo into another

brushes on offer here than Corel’s

commercial tool boasts, but the use and

functionality of the tools will be enough

for all but the most serious artistic user.

Sponges, watercolours, chalks and

crayons are amongst the good

selection of natural media you can

work with. There are some ingenious

filters too, all of which can be applied

to either the entire image or painted

onto selected regions using the Filter

Brush. There are 40 colour palettes,

each with 256 colours, and over 100

www.pc-utilities.co.uk issue 90 48 ▲

textures on offer, too.

Layers and paths can be added for

the advanced user to play with, and

there’s also an option to change the

amount of Undo functions available to

the user. The default setting is rather

low, so we would recommend you

increase the number if your PC has

enough memory and disk space. Click

on the File menu and select

Environment.

The Morph Maker is yet another

superb addition. This enables you to

create an animation morphing one

image seamlessly into another. Simply

select your start and end pictures then

click on the matching points in each

picture – such as the corners of your

subjects’ eyes – to create morph points.

PaintStar will then do the hard work of

generating an animated .gif of the

transformation.

PaintStar has a good range of options

for creating graphics or editing existing

snaps, making it a useful addition to

anyone’s graphics suite.

Location \graphics\ paintstar.zip System 98/Me/XP/NT/2000 Licence Freeware Contact http://wang.zhenzhou.googlepages.com
ADUIO & VIDEO ▲

COVERDISC

Roxio Buzz

●Edit your video clips ●Easily upload clips to the Net ●Create photo slideshows ●Limited editing options

The video-sharing site YouTube is one of

the hottest sites on the Net, with

thousands of new clips posted each day.

If you want to get your movies online fast

you won’t want to tinker around with a

complete video-editing suite. That’s why

Roxio has created Buzz – a streamlined

tool designed to help you edit your clips

and upload them to the Web fast.

The Keep and Delete mode makes it

easy to trim down home videos. Just

mark out sections on the video’s timeline

and choose whether to save them or

throw them away. Edits can be made

frame by frame, so it is effortless to make

very precise cuts. Buzz supports the AVI,

MEPG and WMV video formats, as well as

QuickTime’s MOV file type. Mobile phone

video types are also supported.

Sharing your movie clips online is easy

too. When you’ve finished editing your

clips, click the Share button to upload

Upload your videos to YouTube, Microsoft Silverlight, or GoFish in a few clicks ▲

your video to Microsoft Silverlight,

YouTube, or GoFish. If you already have a

user account for one of these sites, you

can use it. If not, you can create a new

one by following the links.

The program can even be used to

produce slideshows from digital photos.

Drag your pictures onto the Buzz window

to add them to the slideshow you’re

working on. The application can add

▲Roxio Buzz can be used as a standalone player, as well as a decent editing tool

transitions between photographs and

pans across them while they are being

shown – a small effect that actually adds

a lot of value to the finished show. Finally,

music can be added to finish off the

slideshow. When music is inserted, Buzz

will let you know how many pictures you

would need to insert to fill the entire

length of the track.

Location \audio and video\roxiobuzz.exe System XP/Vista Licence Freeware Contact http://labs.roxio.com

CREATE A SLIDESHOW OF YOUR FAVOURITE IMAGES IN ROXIO BUZZ

1

▲Open the folder that contains the images you want to use. Select them then drag them onto the Buzz window. When prompted, decide whether you want the photos to be arranged by date taken, date added or shuffled randomly. You can always add more pictures later, if you wish.

▲ Press Play to view your slideshow so far.Notice the automatic fade and pan effects between pictures. If you want to delete a specific image from the slideshow, click the Remove The Current Photo button on the toolbar when it is displayed in the video. 2 ▲ Adding music to the slideshow adds a furtherdimension to the movie. To do this, click on the Slideshow menu in the top right corner of the window and select Add Music Track. Browse until you find the sound clip or music track you want to use. 3

4

▲ After inserting your music, Buzz will tell youhow many photos are required to fill the entire length of the track. However, if you don’t have enough pictures, or simply want to create a shorter video, the sound will automatically fade away after the final image in your slideshow.

▲ The default transition between images is theDissolve effect. To create random effects in your slideshow, click on the Slideshow menu and select Random on the Transitions sub menu. Play the slideshow again to see the changes. 5 ▲ Finally, you’ll need to save your video. Click onthe Slideshow menu and select Export. Choose a location where you’d like to save the slideshow in WMV format. This file type can be opened by popular media players including Winamp and Windows Media Player. 6

issue 90 www.pc-utilities.co.uk 49

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