The dialog you will see next looks frighteningly unlike the rest of Bryce's user interface. (That's why it's "hidden" under the option key.)

Bryce textural interface

The most important thing we can tell you about this formidable dialog window is that the underlying organization is not reflected in version 1.0 of the user interface. However, once you puzzle out the underlying organization, the textures are really not all that difficult to understand--there are just lots of options which can produce startling variety.

The step-by-step texture methods are all like this:

(1) All textures start with a pattern, called a "noise function". This pattern can be regular, like stripes, or irregular, like television static. This pattern has a certain orientation in space (horizontal, vertical or diagonal stripe, etc.) and a certain scale (big stripes, small stripes, etc.).


Some horizontal noise


Same noise, increased frequency


Rotated noise

(2) This pattern can be selectively "amplified" by another pattern (phase function). You might want to do this to make the stripes wavy, to make the stripes irregular (like crinkled paper or animal hide), or to do any of a dozen things!
(3) The amplified pattern may be "filtered". You might want to do this to control the width of the stripes, or to make the edges of the stripes sharp rather than fuzzy, or to make the color of the stripes change as the altitude in the scene changes, etc.
(4) The filtered pattern may be "output" for different purposes: to determine color or to determine roughness (bump height) are the most common.
(5) There are two more features that make all this appear very complicated. First, the sequence of steps (1)-(4) above defines one textural component; there can be up to three textural components per texture. Second, the way the patterns are colored requires you to pick a coloring method and supply several colors.