Just to get this straight; there are a number of different styles and schools of Japanese garden. This image was strongly influenced by a photograph of the Ryonji Temple Garden in Kyoto. I also read up on my onigawara and ichimonji and karakusa, trying to get tiles that at least looked close. Still, one can't take this as in any way authentic, rather, look at it as an image inspired by certain real traditions.
These days I use Bryce mostly as a stage, as a photography studio; I like the ray-tracing render engine, and the interface works well for me in positioning models and touching up the textures. All the serious modelling I do outside, in other applications.
Still, it is possible to create a complex scene using only Bryce. This image, for one; my first published image, and winner of two awards.
That is, Bryce3D and Adobe PhotoShop. The trick is to paint up an elaborate gray-scale image to import into Bryce's Terrain Editor. There, levels of gray are converted into heights, and a 3D shape is produced.
Take the lantern to the right. It may take a little time to start thinking in gray-scale, but the results are worth it; the resulting models can be quite complex and very organic looking. The lantern hardly needed the stone texture to make it work.
The sand is a more traditional use of gray-scale. To get the raked sand effect I set up all the other models and took a screen-shot of the wireframe from the top view. (you need to do it this way; rendering introduces perspective distortion). I made some soft undulations in PhotoShop using a large airbrush. Then I carved the grooves into the sand with dodge and burn tools, using the screen shot as a reference to where the rocks were.
Since the wooden veranda was created in PhotoShop (as yet another gray-scale terrain), I could also create a color texture for it in the same document. Thus, I could be sure each board had a slightly different shade, with no overlapping. It always works better to work in layers, adding new layers for color maps, bump maps, decals, and so forth. I like to make only one layer visible and "Save a Copy As," but that's just me.
