Bryce 5: Making a Realistic Looking Mountain in Bryce
Step 9: Colouring it in
It's way beyond the scope of this tutorial to cover the material lab. So for the sake of keeping it basic, I've given the mountain one of the presets that come with the program which I know to apply differences related to slope and altitude.
With your terrain still selected, click on the triangle to the right of the Edit button up on the top toolbar (1). This reveals the material editor. Select 'Planes and terrains' (2) then 'Mud and snow' (3).
Click the check mark to leave the material editor and your terrain will now be wearing a wonderful mix of snow and rock. Try rendering it to see.
Now I'm not a big fan of the basic presets and there are masses of free downloads of materals that look much better.
Here is the same mountain with a mat from Bob Cox (Meski) to whom I owe much of my ability to shape terrains at all from his 'Walk with me' tutorial; which this tutorial in no way matches!
And finally.
Yesterday I did a dry run when I was considering writing this tutorial. I decided to go ahead and make the mountain I got into an image. It's still a work in progress, not only is the scale not quite right yet but I'm only just starting to place foliage in the shot. However… despite my bashfulness, I'll let you see it in all it's naked .. ahem.
As inspiration my friend has given me permission to include a link to some of her shots of Irish mountains. She's a much better landscape photographer than I am so I was looking to hers for guidance.
Realistic Mountain Tutorial © 2004 Kathy Estibeiro (Kathye) and used here with permission.