I'm having a break at work and I read the thread below and was thinking about what I'd like to see in Bryce 6. Actually, this is more a description of a dream 3D program. :-) 1) Faster renderer. Faster. Faster! I downloaded the Cinema 4D R8 demo yesterday. I put a volumetric light with noise in the scene with a Woody, and lighted him from below with an ordinary light. 800x600 rendered in 2 seconds. Wow. And I hear that Electric Image has even faster renderer. So, a renderer that can do volume, soft shadows, GI and stuff like that without spending tens on hours on a 1024x768 picture. 2) Keep the initial ease of use of Bryce, with good presets and default lighting. 3) Keep DTE, but make it more accessible. 4) At least enable the proper Booleans in Bryce. Though: 5) I'd also like a semi-proper modeller module. With splines, revolves, rails, lofts and so on. Therefore: 6) Make it possible to include modules/plug-ins for higher-end 3D. 7) When I'm talking about modellers, I'd also like to have one that behaves like Rhino. Of all the modellers I tried, I like Rhino the most. Easy to learn, can do quite a lot of things. And I really like their zoom and rotate function. You don't have to click on a button, but simply right-click and rotate, while the wheel zooms in and out. Excellent. 8) If Bryce is good enough, you wouldn't need another program, but enable proper exports for all elements of Bryce, please. Trees, primitives and so on. Also, enable imports of things like Poser's pz3 scenes, or possibly the future format for scenes from DAZ Studio. Including formats like max or something like that wouldn't hurt either and I think that would help sales. Of course, I'm certain that there are problems with proprietary formats, so this is just talking. 9) Keep the price of the Base Bryce at around $300-350, with additional modules/ plugins depending on what they do. But do not price modules/ plugins higher than the Base Bryce. And DON'T maim the Base Bryce. 10) Distribute the SDK for plugins, so people can make their own. 11) Document every feature of Bryce. Shortcut, what it can do, and so on. Do not hide anything. Better yet, get Susan Kitchens to write the manual. :-) I'm certain that I'm forgetting tons of stuff and hope you people will add your own suggestions.

No, no, please not more modelling. If you try to tack on too many features to a program it becomes unstable. It's much better to have a GOOD rendering program and a GOOD modeller (Rhino) than one program that tries to do both and falls over.

How about a module for modelling? That way while you're modelling, you are in modelling mode, able to save the model to the object presets, then switch to scene mode, pull your model in, and hit it with textures. That way you don't need to have the whole Bryce Base in memory while you're modelling, or modelling in memory when you're in scene render mode. Many programs I've worked with work very well this way, it takes only a button click and a few seconds to switch modes.

I agree with Phantast. Just enabling export for Bryce objects would be enough and quite feasible. Want to model something more complex, go to Rhino or Max. Im comparing Bryce with the WB3.5 demo. Except for texturing, WB is a killer, and I believe that is the way Bryce should go: instance rendering, fluid and wind dinamics. That is, if Corel ever gets to Bryce 6. Fernando

how about proof that they're working on Bryce 6?..;)

Pakled, that would be good - do you have any news? The last reliable info i've got about Bryce6 was from Conan in 11/5/2001 (see Spotlight). After that, not even a whisper. Fernando

Since Bryce is a landscaping 3d program at it's heart, I suggest that they add the ability to simulate wind and gravity effects. This alone would allow for easier and more realiastic waves. Also give the water plane more fluidic properties of water which would allow for waterfall. These water properties could turned on and off like the render options under the premium setting. The program should have the ability to interact with poser scenes, and the new Daz program. As for a Bryce modeler. Give the bryce terrain editor the ability to allow objects created within it to take on properties of diferent objects. For example you make a greyscale map of a double helix, have an option that allows the item to either be built out of individual cubes, spheres, etc. or to take the shape (properties) of an object (cube sphere, pyramid, etc.) Just my 2 cents... :)

I forgot to mention the ability to handle dual processors.

Errr... Why not use the processing power provided by some of the more common graphics cards? It would make some of the lighting effects go that much faster. It seems that some games look really good, and they're moving around with animated textures. No reason why every aspect of the image has to be generated by the CPU. There should be a way to batch aspects of image rendering to the graphics card and then process the composite result using the CPU.
I've heard a rumor that Bryce 6 exists. Supposedly it's somewhere at a place called Groom Lake. Of course if you find it, you might not be seen again. And you thought regular Bryce was addictive.

Paul, DAZ Studio uses GL rendering for preview. If you search in Poser for the thread on DS, you'll see pictures that look as good as a finished render, with transparencies and stuff like that.

Corel keeps dropping the price of Bryce (down to $169/$79 upgrade). I hope that's a sign that a new version is on the way. "Corel, which fights for market share against such technology leaders as Microsoft and Adobe, will launch more than a dozen new products or upgrades this year and said that it could see an increase in sales." - zdnet