Zygote's Michael is a rare case where the product actually lives up to the advertising. But if you're using Bryce to render this model, you've got to be aware of a few things to get the best results.

I'm assuming you've already created your model in Poser and post-processed the Wavefront OBJ file with Grouper. If not, everything here still applies but you'll be spending a lot more time grouping and applying textures.

As an example, when you import your model into Bryce, much of the texture information is lost in the process and you're likely to see something like this. This is the stock Michael model with the stock Zen pose.

A typical Poser model after importing.

The same model with textures correctly applied.

Missing Maps

Zygote's textures for Michael include the following:

• Color and bump map for the body (MMBodyM, MMBodyB)
• Color map, bump map and transparency map for the head (MMHeadM, MMHeadB, MMHeadTR)
• Two color maps and transparency map for the hair (MMWedgeCut, MMWedgeDark, MMWedgeCutTR)

These all work great in Poser but, since Bryce doesn't read the .bum format, you can't use those maps in Bryce. Also, there are no specularity maps. This isn't an uncommon situation. If you're using alternate texture maps you'll find that they frequently don't include everything. Fortunately, it's easy to recreate the missing maps. Check the other tutorials in this section for the details on how to do this. Let's assume you've already done that and you have the following maps ready:

You don't need all these maps to get good results but if you're doing close-up views you'll get more realistic results.

Mapping Materials

Since Bryce has four channels, and we have four kinds of maps, we can keep things organized by assigning each kind of map it's own channel.

• Channel A - Color
• Channel B - Specularity
• Channel C - Bump
• Channel D - Transparency

When you import your model, you'll typically have either 20, 8 or 7 separate objects to texture depending on the options you chose in Grouper (you'll see up to 88 otherwise).

In Bryce, turn on the selection palette. If you aren't familiar with the selection palette, dig out the manual and check page 46. You can select multiple objects by holding down the shift key when you click on the triangle between the object types and the VCR controls.

Select the objects, group them, then open the materials lab and set the textures as follows:

EyeBall Use the Bryce preset "Water" or "Moderate Glass".
SkinBody, Nipples, Fingernails, Toenails
SkinHead, Lacrimal, Teeth, Tongue, InnerMouth, Nostrils, Lips
Iris, Pupil, Eye White
Eyebrows, Eyelashes, UpperEyebrows The Diffuse color comes from the Poser file.
Hair Diffuse and Ambient color set to color channel. Diffusion set to 75, Ambience to 25. Gives a more natural appearance to the hair. Specular and Specular Halo colors set to 127/127/127 (medium grey). Specularity set to color channel. Adds highlights to hair.

Tips

• Ambience and diffusion should sum to 100 for a realistic texture. Keep the diffusion high, 90 or 100% for better results.
• If you want to use alternate texture maps start with the stock mapped Michael in Poser. Import and texture as above. When you've finished, select the body group so you'll only have to assign the alternate map once. For an alternate head map, do the same for the head group.
• Save each material as a Bryce preset so next time you can just assign the preset to the object groups.

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