LOL- the spine on my copy blew out too. The damn thing is too huge! Brycecamp is really great. I taught texture mapping at the first 3 Brycecamps and texture mapping and the treelab at the last one. With this economy I don't see a future bcamp on the horzon, but who knows - if they call I would be glad to do it again. We had a great time with Clay at the last one and the class really liked him. In Susan's DTE class we replicated the textures in rocks found on an actual beach. Nothing can touch the DTE in Bryce - Mojoworld has much more complex fractals but nothing can touch the easy to use UI of Bryce. Learn the DTE in Bryce and you will put your personal brushstroke on all the images you create in Bryce. RWB4 will stand the test of time. Metaballs, trees and network renders are great but the DTE , skies, and the terrain editor are the meat of Bryce and Susan covers them perfectly. RWB4 easily covers the most important aspects of the current version of Bryce - buy it you'll be glad you did! Scott