Since nearly everyone that uses Bryce plays with the grayscale picts included with the program, it is a natural extension to try and use real topographic data in a Bryce image to create real landscapes. In fact so many people have asked us about using digital topographic data in Bryce, that although not really part of the DTE, we feel that this is such a valuable technique that we asked Ken Badertscher to make his neat shareware available here. Furthermore, to help you understand what is going on we asked Susan Kitchens to write a short synopsis of the technique because she covers the subject in her book on Bryce.
DEMview, by Ken Badertscher, is a freeware application that converts real world topographic data into Bryce's grayscale-to-height pict terrain information.

How does it do this? The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has digital topographic maps entitled Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). DEM files are massive (about 9 megabytes apiece) text files with elevation numbers samples that have been taken at regular intervals from any given geographic area.
DEMview opens up the file (or files), converting the numerical information to grayscale information. The higher the elevation, the lighter the gray. The lower the elevation, the darker the gray. Sounds, familiar, right?




Once you have the pict information before you (the conversion process is a bit time consuming), you can drag a selection marquee around any area. DEMview automatically constrains the selection area to Bryce's terrain-sized increments, 64, 128, 256, 512. Then save the selection to a pict file, and import it into Bryce later.

Where do you get Digital Elevation Models? The USGS has many great web sites and you can download 1:250 000 scale DEMs by anonymous ftp. Fortunately, the 9 megabyte files are compressed to a size that is usually just under 1 1/2 megabytes. You will need to use GNUzip (146K) to expand them. (ed. note: it is important to remember that it is difficult to accurately scale the 3-D attributes to these data sets within Bryce; however, it can be done: just take a look at the DEMview Tutorial! If you only care about images of the western US you can get grayscale topographic images (GIFS) directly at Los Alamos Natl Lab.)
Besides being available here, DEMview is also available on the CD that accompanies The KPT Bryce Book . There are some sample DEM files and the GNUzip utility available. Either here or there, Ken's documentation for DEMview is thorough and very informative.

Furthermore, Ken has prepared a detailed on-line tutorial that describes how to use DEMview with Bryce. Once you have DEMview and the sample files, head over to the DEMview Tutorial where you can get a lesson from the master himself!!



DEMview application 227K

DEMview sample files 670K




Sierra Nevada east to Death Valley