That said, I want to say that I think Bryce is a truly extraordinary software application. One reason I think so is simply because I am so much more productive in Bryce than any other application, there is no comparison. And I learned Bryce so easily, as compared to how I struggled with other software I tried, that I can only assume that Bryce has an intrinsic greatness that I am happily discovering. To give you an idea of my productivity in Bryce, I currently have several gigabytes of Bryce files in my computers now, and that's not counting the several gig's of files I threw out during the frequent house cleanings of my hard drive in the last two years. I have nothing of significance to show from the seven other applications I've tried, except a few Lightwave animations that are still awaiting rendering and output to video.

Once I reached a point where I trusted my own observations about Bryce's excellence, I started speaking up when I heard or read descriptions of Bryce in the media which belittled or under-estimated its potential. I am especially indebted to Bill Allen at 3D ARTIST magazine for letting my opinion be published in issue #32 of his magazine. Click here to read the article.

I continue to think about why the computer graphics industry misunderstands or under-estimates Bryce, and another thought comes to mind. In my opinion, many of the industry's old guard and reigning experts are afraid of how revolutionary Bryce actually is. And the reason I can say that with confidence is because I've seen an innovative tool or process revolutionize an industry before, and the patterns of then and now are very obvious to me.

That revolution occurred in my former profession, as a movie makeup artist/creature maker. It was 1968, when I was in college and just starting to learn makeup. Two movies had come out the year before that presented ape make-ups on human actors. One was "Planet Of The Apes", which Hollywood hailed as a major milestone; the other was "2001, A Space Odyssey", which actually was a milestone and Hollywood largely ignored it.

The ape make-ups in "Planet Of The Apes" were certainly ambitious in terms of sheer volume of work and nice looking as far as general appearance goes, but (with no disrespect to John Chambers), they were no more technically innovative than the "Wizard of Oz" appliance make-ups done 30 years before. They were just blocks of foam rubber with little plastic teeth inserts attached to the inner area of the foam lips.

The apes in the "Dawn of Man" sequence opening of "2001" were designed by Stuart Freeborn of England, and he recognized that teeth should be a hard structure secured to the skull or jaw and the lips should be soft and very pliable structures that moved freely independent of the teeth. So he designed a tooth/skull substructure that secured to the actor's head, and a soft foam lip structure that rested over the teeth/skull and could be animated to move freely and create expressions of the mouth. His design was brilliant, innovative, elegantly effective, and completely ignored by the makeup experts in Hollywood.

As I was just entering the profession then, I was curious about everything and I had a chance to speak to many of the veteran professionals I'd met. I'd often ask them what they thought about the 2001 apes, and I was continually told words to the effect that "we don't talk about that here". The Hollywood makeup establishment did all they could to completely ignore Stuart Freeborn's innovation, while enthusiastically praising the "Planet Of The Apes" work as an example of the profession's excellence and state-of-the-art. The were actually afraid to embrace a truly innovative tool, because it meant that they would have to change their methods, learn new skills, and cease being the "masters of their craft" while they learned the new process. So they ignored Stuart's innovation. They turned a blind eye to the process, and belittled it whenever it was mentioned.

They did not stop the innovation, since it has emerged as the current industry standard. But their resistance to it was a sad commentary to their using their authority to impede innovation and obscure the emerging truth. 

So, having once before watched an industry's reigning leaders and professionals ignore, belittle, or fail to recognize a brilliantly innovative new tool, I could see the pattern easily when I started using Bryce and studying the industry's appraisals of it. Bryce is as revolutionary in its design as Stuart Freeborn's apes were in their time. If the computer graphics industry cannot see how innovative Bryce really is, I must conclude that they are actually afraid of the boldness of Bryce's innovation, afraid to concede that so simple an application succeeded where their supposedly more sophisticated applications failed, and afraid to give up their status as "masters of their craft" and let an upstart newcomer (Bryce) into their private snobbish club.

But history will repeat itself. Innovation will win out. Bryce's truly brilliant design and innovative form will re-define the computer graphics industry. If you can't see it yet, watch for it. It's happening.

These are my opinions. I welcome your replies, and I'll be posting other opinions soon.