I have noticed tht if I am rendering in Bryce and alt-tab to another program that my render times increase A LOT. I was rendering an image earlier that only takes 6 minutes.When I alt-Tabbed todo something else (just writting in notepad) then render took 25 addidtional minutes. Im running on 512 megs of RAM and I checked bmy virt memory and it isnt being used so why does Bryce slow down so much when in the background? I have other 3D programs and they do not do that.

When Bryce is put in the background, it goes to low CPU priority. Which increases render time drastically, because Bryce rendering is pure CPU driven. Ram really has nothing to do with it, except for maybe saving a little time by storing info instead of it swapping to disk.

Yes, I noticed that too. I usually surf the net while rendering on screen, and it takes a whole lot more. Sadly, I'm not patient enough to just stare at the screen while it renders lol. Any of the gurus here know why?

lol Sorry. Crossposting. Thank you, Stephen! Now I remember that's exactely what my hubby told me some while ago.

It actually doesn't even put it on low priority, it places it in "idle" mode, which is bad... There are 4 priorities, idle normal high and realtime. It sucks, especially when you render overnight and are online and a popup window takes top priority!

Try this, Render to disk without the display drawing on the processor. Quicker still.

I altered the priority of the bryce.exe process to try and speed up rendering... but no it wouldn't work :o( then I got an email about a background rendering post in the forum... thank you ICMgraphics for the render to disk tip... Mine are zipping along now :o) NEOII

Ornlu, I'm on cable, so I unplug my computer fron my network while rendering when I'm away from the computer. Hate those stinking pop-ups.

Bryce is very jealous and sulks when you start seeing other programs. :^) Sort of. Apparently Bryce was designed to optimize its functionality by making use of all your available memory resources, including your hard drive as virtual memory for temp files when it deems necessary. This approach allows it to function well (?) on almost any system set-up, and naturally it has trouble sharing space with other programs. After fighting with Bryce for months, trying to multitask efficiently, I finally decided to run Bryce solo. It crashes MUCH less often that way, and I can finish projects much more quickly. It's best to save while rendering often, and I try to do the longest renders while sleeping, and do net surfing and other things on my computer without Bryce running.

i know i'll get heat from this, but: Mac OSX does not have this problem because of adaptive multithreading. ie. the program doing the most work gets the most processor and memory resources. With the imac at 1800 dollars at 1GHz with a built in 17" the prices are coming down too...

Actually I like the fact that Bryce takes a back seat. I have other 3D programs that let you multi task while their rendering, but its a joke cause any other open programs just come to a crawl, virtually unusable IMO. But with Bryce everything keep flowing smoothly. When I want Bryce to render fast I just go take a nap...or a 2 week vacation...lol

Yeah, that's an advantage and it's nice you brought it up. I hate when I can't do several things at a time!

Well, you could always chip in for another computer. Nothing too fancy, since Bryce likes the main CPU. It could be your stand-alone Brycing/graphics only 'puter. Then just get one of those fancy switches so you can use the same monitor, printer, and keyboard. Checking up on Bryce would then just be a matter of hitting ctrl twice. :)

Or you could do like me and swap images via disk. I render on my ol' beater of a Presario laptop and use whatever other computer is accessable for going online. Then when I want to post my pics it's just a matter of grabbing the floppy (which is being phased out in favor of my SmartMedia cards these days.)

I have only one PC and I do my real job on it, almost 14/16 hrs a day, so for me it's nice that Bryce don't affect too much the other software I use while it renders. And most of the times I render overnight(s) <-- the plural is mandatory heheh. When I'll have the money, I'll buy a monster PC only for the graphics and I'll stick with this beautiful, slender laptop for my writing... Word don't ask for much CPU, so I will be able to use this one for years to come... This to say that what could be felt as a flail by someone (and I'm sure it is), for others like me it's the only way to render Bryce images while working for the bread&butter... :) Stefano

I find it depends on what other app has the foreground. It seems to me that I can run IE in the foreground without much effect on render times, but if it's a Visual Basic program, Bryce grinds almost to a halt.

When I render, everything in the background gets turned off and since I'm using XP Pro I set Bryce to high priority in the task manager, then go to sleep. Apart from that I have another computer that is totally for rendering when work and other things take priority. The only problem here is that my partner and I usually fight over whose going to use the render machine first. 8) Catlin

If you hate popups then go to www.analogx.com and get POW! That gets rid of any popups, but you first have to get them into POW! by clicking on the icon (it lives in the system tray next to the time) and double-click on the name of the popup. Then POW! no more pop-ups! Tankred

Are you getting pop-ups while surfing or just being connected to the internet? You could try AdAware.

AdAware is brill, I didn't realise how many spy cookies were being left on my machine until I installed it.

POW!?? Heheheh... Good little program. So how big is your .dat file? Putting ":*" or "Casino *" in the list couldn't hurt either. Editing the list with the use of the wildcard * in mind seems to make it more efficient. Thank goodness 'osity hasn't sold out to the popup barons.

Watch out if you have Microsoft's visual studio(programming environment) installed, POW and VC don't work well together. Had to uninstall POW because I could not work on my programs. Have to render pictures with yellow and red lighting on a pc because macs and pcs don't see eye to eye on colors. I wonder if I remove all the uneeded processes, will my renders end faster?