Bill M. Tracer

I am an artist, and the Computer is my palette. I especially enjoy using my 3D graphic tools to create images astronomical, science fiction, and / or fantasy. Bryce is my 3D program of choice. While Bryce may have a rendering engine slower than most, I've always considered the beauty of the end results, worth the wait. Bryce's popularity waned, while under Corel's care, but now in the hands of the folks at DAZ, I predict a much brighter future for Bryce. I stuck in there with Bryce, through it all. To some, it has a quirky interface, but that has never bothered me. In fact, it probably has more to do with why I like it so much, and find it an endlessly useful tool in the production of my computer graphic art, and animations. The current interface between D/S and Bryce has improved since it was established. While 3D is my passion, not all of my computer art is 3D. I also enjoy doing fractal and 2D abstract and kaleidoscopic images. So for, I've used 3 different fractal generators to create my fractal images; Vchira, Chaos Pro, and XenoDream. XenoDream is especially good for creating fractal based 3D models.

Last year, and this year I did some multimedia animation projects for two
different clients. Both of these jobs involved animations demonstrating the use of medical devices. The animations I produced were mixed in with film footage and voice over narration to produce promotional media. In the first of these projects I used both Victoria 3.0 and Michael 3.0 with the muscle maps, and conforming skeletons. They wanted the muscle map in blue tones, so I had to do some texture customizing. I posed them and then exported them from D/S and imported the figures into Bryce, where I rendered several stills, and did a set camera animations, with the muscle map opaque and halfway transparent, so the conforming skeleton could be seen through the muscle map. In the mixing some pretty cool fades were done between the opaque and semi-transparent. If you'd like to see the end results, you can see the Streaming Video about the Juvent 1000, which runs 4 minutes and 46 seconds, at http://www.juvent.com/uk/news/platformdemo.php.

Early 2006 I did an animation, also in Bryce, illustrating the movements of a ball joint of an artificial knee replacement device. It was a very cool little project. Further animation jobs of this type would be of great interest to me. If you're looking for quality Bryce animations, drop me an e-mail at billmtracer@comcast.net.