Author: moonrancher

Tools Needed

• Poser 5 or 6
• Bryce 5 or 5.5
• Particles 2 from PoseWorks
• An OBJ file to use for your balloon

I want 99 red balloons to fly up into the air all at once in Bryce. This is an easy job for Poser with Particles 2 from PoseWorks. In this tutorial, I'll show you how it's done. When I have my cloud of balloons the way I want them, I'll export the entire group from Poser and import it into Bryce for a balloon texture and my final render.

I start the Particles Generator. I name my cloud of balloons 99RedBalloons, and I click on Custom geometry and navigate to your balloon object file.

I need 99 particles (balloons in this case.) I don't want them to be different general shapes, but the size can vary from 100% to 400%. I think they may rotate a little as each one lofts into the sky, so I set the rotation to vary from 0 to .3 on X and Z. (I don't set a y rotation because in this case it wouldn't show anyway.)

Using the Range Editor, I set the distribution is to the Easy Trig: Sine Wave.

I don't plan to texture the balloons in Poser, but I do want to be able to see them easily, and maybe move a few if they are too close together. This is most easily done if I set them all to be 100% opaque and solid color (white.) After assigning these in the Materials Editor, they are produced and I'm ready to export them.

At this point, the cloud of balloons is ready for export to Bryce. If a few balloons are too close together, it's easy to move a few of the single balloons by clicking on them and moving them as desired now. Of course, they can also be rescaled or rotated at this point.

To export the objects as a single group, I choose Export Wavefront Object, and Single Frame. At the Hierarchy Selection, I uncheck the Universe checkbox, and, since I didn't want to have to check every object individually, I check-marked the figure, which automatically puts a check next to each of the particles/balloons. I name this geometry object 99redballoons.obj.

In Bryce, I choose a sky that I like and go File) Import) Object and navigate to the 99redballoons.obj. After positioning the camera and changing the material for the balloons to a variation of red glass that I like, I render the final scene.