Rings for planets
A Bryce4 Tutorial

First we have to prepare our background. We don't need the sky or the infinite plane for this job. They would just make it harder to work with the rings when we get them back to PSP.

Please note that Bryce only allows for one undo so if something bad happens to your image, go Edit/Undo right away. The Edit menu is hiding up in the top left corner of your monitor when Bryce is open. I would also suggest that you save your image when you get something you really like before going on to try something else with it. This way you don't have to worry about remembering how you got that effect.

1. Click on the arrow to the right of  "Sky & Fog"

2. Choose plain black or plain white. Neither of these has any atmosphere and that's what we want. Click on the checkmark.

3. Select the infinite plane (the grid in red) by clicking on it, then press your delete key. Your drawing canvas will be pretty plain looking and your preview window in the top right corner will be plain white or black.

4. Ok, now we're ready to make our rings. Click on "Create" and then on the Torus shape.

5. When the torus first appears on our drawing board, it's pretty small so we need to resize it. Click on "Edit". Move your mouse over the center of the Resize tool - you know you're in the right place when the middle of this gets bigger as your mouse hovers over it. Click and drag slightly and slowly to the right and your torus will get larger.

*If your torus gets too big, just drag back to the left a little.   *If the bottom part of your torus disappears, don't panic. We'll fix that in a minute.

6. Ok.. If your torus is missing part of the bottom, here's how to fix that. Click on the very top of the Reposition tool and drag slightly to the right. (You will see a little "Y" and the square in the middle of the tool will jump up to where your cursor is) This will raise your torus up on the drawing board.

7. Now let's get the angle we want. Move your mouse over the Rotate tool until you see an "X", then click and drag to the right or left slowly. Your torus will rotate on the X axis. Position it where you'd like.

8. Our torus is too fat to be a ring around the planet so we need to make it thinner. Move your mouse up the to the top left corner of your monitor and the menu will appear. Go Objects/Edit Object.

9. Change the number to about 30. You can type your number in, or click and drag to the left to change it. Click on the checkmark to set the change.

• Your ring should look something like this now.

10. Now we need to duplicate our ring. With the ring still selected (it should be red if it's not, click on the ring once to select it), hold down your control key and press the letter "D". You won't notice much difference but you now have two rings and the new one is selected.

11. Click the middle of the Resize tool and drag slowly and slightly to the left to make this duplicate smaller. Don't make it too small. We need to put one or two others inside it yet. :)

12. Duplicate this new ring by holding down your shift key and pressing the letter D again. Repeat step 11 to make this third ring slightly smaller than the second one. If you'd like 4 rings, repeat again.

13. Now we need to select all of our rings to apply a material to them. You can select them all by holding down your shift key and clicking each one individually OR by clicking on the torus just below your drawing area and choosing "Select all of type"

If you don't see these shapes below the drawing area, click on that little white wire ball on the right. The red arrow in my capture is pointing to it. This will toggle the shape selectors into view for you.

14. Ok.. Got them all selected? Now click on that little "M" just to the right of the shapes.

15. The Materials lab will open. Click on the little arrow on the right of the preview window

16. Now you'll see the materials list. I chose the "Complex fx" group and then the "Gas Planet" preset. It's in the fifth row down, fifth preset from the left. Of course you can choose whichever one you like.   :)  Some work better than others. Click the check mark on the preset screen and then the check mark on the Materials lab screen to apply your choice and go back to the drawing board.

17. Allllll Righty Then! Click on the large sphere right under the camera view track ball to render your image. Sit back and relax a minute while the rendering takes place. Don't interrupt it. When it's finished, a "Render Report" screen will pop up. Click the checkmark to accept the report.

18. If you don't care for the way the material looks, go back and repeat steps 14 through 17 until you like what you have. If you're happy with your preset choice, let's export the image. Move your cursor up to the top left corner of your monitor and go File/Export Image. I usually export them as .bmp files, but there are a few other choices there as well.

Now you can open your rings image in PSP and get them ready to turn into a tube for use on those planets you made in the kpt spheroid planet tutorial.