Bryce 2 and Bryce 5

[Typo]

A couple of questions for anyone that may be able/willing to help.

1. Some time ago I designed a bunch of documents in Bryce 2 (a 3-D design program). To store them I burned them to CD. After going back to said CD, I notice that the icons for the document are black and will no longer open in Bryce 2.

HOWEVER.....they're still about 6-7 megs in size. Is it possible that I can do something to "raise them from the dead?" I found a place online that listed extensions for various programs including Bryce 2 (.brc), but adding that extension didn't help at all.

Anything else I can try?

2. I have Bryce 5 on my imac G5 (NOT with intel chip) and Bryce 5 opens and allows me to work in it all I want, but I can't save anything. In fact, after a few seconds of trying to save, I freeze up.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

Typo

 

[RacerX]

Assuming that you are talking about Bryce 2 for Mac, the documents would have had a resource fork associated with them... and if they were burned onto a CD in a format that didn't save resource information, then you'll start running into problems (that would be the icon issue you talked about).

Further, Bryce 2 is a pretty old application (1996 or 97 as I recall). Many applications won't fully support file formats from that far back (which would explain some of the issues you are having in Bryce 5 with these documents).

As you say the documents open in Bryce 5, so one question comes to mind... are you using "save" or "save as"? You would most likely not be able to "save" because the original document is a Bryce 2 file, but you may be able to "save as" a new Bryce 5 file.

 

[Typo]

Thanks for replying, RacerX.

I'm sorry, but I think I miscommunicated something in my first post.

I cannot open the Bryce 2 documents in Bryce 5. Bryce 5 lets me create new stuff, but not save (either save or save as).

You're correct, Bryce 2 is pretty old, but it functions well on my imac (with Classic Support, of course). I'm able to create new stuff, save them, render them to hi-res, etc. with no problems. I just have a bunch from a while back on CD that I'd like to be able to render to hi-res also, but can't.

Could you explain the "resource fork" you mentioned?

typo

 

[RacerX]

Rather than using an extension, older Mac apps use a resource fork with the document to store things like creator type and icons.

Also, if you are trying to use Bryce 2 on a new Mac, you are going to run into issues with volume size. Older Mac apps (and the older Mac operating systems) weren't designed to deal with the sizes that we see today.

The best way to work with an app as old as Bryce 2 is to create a disk image (about 2 GB in size) and copy over both the Mac OS 9 system folder and the Bryce 2 application folder. Then fire up Classic from that disk image and then Bryce from that disk image. When saving or opening documents make sure that they are also on that disk image.

Basically, don't use the actual hard drive when using Bryce 2. When you have the final rendered image, you can drag it to your hard drive from the disk image and use it as you want.

I've seen that type of issue with many older apps running in Classic on newer systems with massive hard drives. It is better to make those apps feel like a big fish in a little pond rather than the little fish in a big ocean of the current drives.

 

[Typo]

That's interesting. Thanks for the advice!

So, I gather that my old Bryce documents are gone forever?

typo

 

[Island Dog]

I have Bryce 5 for Mac and it will not save either. It's a common problem in Bryce and Mac's and from what I read it will not be resolved. Bryce 6 is supposedly coming out soon so we will see if it's a worthy upgrade.

 

[Typo]

A new Bryce coming? I didn't think that would ever happen.

What company owns Bryce anyway?

typo

 

[baleensavage]

Daz now owns Bryce and they also recently purchased Eovia (makers of Carara). If they hand Bryce over to Eovia's R&D then Bryce may get a long needed overhaul. Either way Daz is getting to be a big player in the 3D software world, so it's doubtful that they will let Bryce die any time soon. And if E-on doesn't get their act together with Vue 6 (Vue 5 is crashtastic), then they may see the market pulled out from underneath them.

 

[Sdashiki]

ArtMatic Voyager is a sweet distraction from Bryce for now.

I love it.

 

[Typo]

Sdashiki,

Thanks for the link! Wow, what a program!!

typo

 

[baleensavage]

There's also Terragen which is free and Mojoworld which isn't, though I still like Vue the best even though version 5 is very buggy. I use it for the backgrounds on my Webcomic and for most of my Poser rendering. Hopefully 6 will fix some of the bugs.