Gimpdome

Here's a 3ds version of the Boolean Ball I used for this image:



The new Bryce (version 6) has the capability to export booleans, which is a big plus, and how I created this model.  There is no texturing to it, as a big minus in Bryce is that doesn't export textures well at all    So, if you want to use it, have at it!  You can download it by clicking on the attachment below this post.

Art

Man... I gotta get bryce 6

Well, Bryce can open quite a few different formats....most of the common ones (3ds, lwo, obj, dxf, etc.)  However, in previous versions you could only export objects created from meshes (couldn't be a primitive object - toruses, cylineders, etc. and there could be no booleans involved in the export feature).  The new version allows export of booleans (it's actually made of 3 spheres and 4 cylinders). 

Does that help?

Well, it's a 3d model, so you'll need a 3d program to do anything with it.  Most 3d programs can open up 3ds files.....Blender, Wings3D, Anim8or, Art of Illusion.  All of those programs I mentioned are free and have links to the respective sites elsewhere on the board.  Wings3D is a modeler only, which means you can open up the files and modify the 3ds file, but you can't add textures and render it (to make it look real) for that you'll need a separate renderer like yafray, povray, et al.  Don't ask me how to render in those programs as I use Bryce.  However, I will be experimenting with some of those renderers so we can do some tutorials for the dome.

Blender, Anim8or, and Art of Illusion are all complete package programs (modeling, rendering, animating,etc.) with Blender being the most sophisticated of the group.

Art

Here's a version of the ball rendered in Art of Illusion (Right click and choose View Image to get a little bit better version):



It certainly isn't polished like the one in Bryce, but this is my first time rendering anything in something other than Bryce.  Art of Illusion has Boolean capabilities as well and, maybe if there's enough interest, I'll figure out how to create this ball and render it in Art of Illusion and do up a tutorial for everyone.

You can download Art of Illusion here: http://www.artofillusion.org/ (it's Java-based so everyone should be able to run it).  Here's a thread with links to a bunch of tutorials: http://www.gimpdome.com/forum/index.php?topic=2828.0