Grrr! Either I need more RAM (640 currently), a faster processor(1.3GHz), or a new video card. It's going to take 2 hours to render my May Challenge work now since I finally to Rayraz's and Dash101's advice and played with a light dome. Oh well, at least I can have about 3 instances of Bryce open at a time without the computer crashing :) Squeeka frustrated at rendering that takes forever, reading forums and looking at much better artwork then hers

Tell me about it. My latest May challenge render had been running for 27 hours when my brother accidentally cancelled it.

OMG! One thing I'm glad of.... no one touches the compuer when I have something rendering :P If they do they're in deep trouble for weeks :P My son did it one morning when I was rendering the Chateau and I could have cheerfully strangled him when I got home from work to find I had to start over(38 hour render). Well, hopefully, it will be enjoyed when it's done :) I think if the lighting comes out right this time, it's headed for PS and a few touchups and then posting :)

2Hours?! That's nothing. :) Render farms help a lot with render times and definitely make sure any power saverschemes and screen savers are turned off.

Welcome to the joys of light domes! I use them often, and they take forever to render. They look so nice though. Doug

With what you have, your best choice is faster processor. Bryce uses CPU for render and the Video card means nothing. Ram is adequate and as long as you're not getting model import errors, then your ram is fine. CPU, CPU, CPU, CPU and that's the way it is!

the longest rendertime i've had is 48 hours, 17 minutes and 12 seconds. and unfotunatly the image turned out crap.

My longest rendertime on a single pic was 19 days. Luckily it looked great, even at 6K. My longest rendertime on a single animation-project was 28 days and 23 hours.

There's a saying that when you get more then 3 monty python fns toghter in a room they will at some time recite the Parrot sketch. I think us brycers do the same thing with rendertimes. :-) Worst I've had was a comparatively short 154 hours, but that was on a pII 450, just left it in the corner whirring away....

EYECON, isn't it the button to the right of the render button that restarts a render?

Eyecon, catlin is right. It's the smaller button on the right that resume a render. The big one restarts it from scratch. As far as my rendertimes goes, my longest was 8 days (with the Old One). Now that I changed PC with a faster CPU (Athlon XP 2400), I can use ligthdomes and Premium Settings, that's so good, but my longest render was 70 hours ... So, CPU, squeeka. CPU is what really matters. S.

uuuuhhhhhh the re-render button? you know what i just use the hot keys and thats ctrl+r... boy oh boy... i sound so stupid.... duh!

Next to the big 'RENDER'button, there is a little 'RESUME RENDER' button...........So, save yor work, begin render, hit the RENDER button again to stop work. SAVE. Go away, come back, fire up Bryce, load work, hit RESUME RENDER' and so on. EASY!

hmm.. i couldn't tell you what system i have.. not a computer wiz or anything accually quite stupid about these things at times.. but my longest render time was only 8 hours.. and it had couple hundred trees in the background for a nice forst scene.. maybe i just don't do good work.. or my system is fast..

You also have to go to EDIT/PREFERENCES and make sure Image with scene Save/Open is checked. Also a nice little tip that may save people time and is what I'm doing in my Ambush render. As you have most of your scene done and are just going to be adding details and/or objects, render the whole scene with whatever settings you want then save the file. Now one or more objects or make changes and if you have done any pre-rendering to see if you have it in the right place and textures,etc just go to File/Open Image and load the .bmp that was saved with the file, plop render and resave. Continue to do this and your image will slowly complete as you work on it. The above won't work if you are rendering a huge resolution or something like that but is useful if you render at the size you are working on or smaller. Of course you can always just do the whole thing render/stop/save/continue to render.

I've reduced my render times by making all my lights ranged instead of linear. I usually have around 30 lights in a scene, but because I use them just to light the bits I want it doesn't really increase render time. For stuff with volumetrics in the background, this can speed up renders by - I reckon - at least 20X. I now used the saved time to render big (3K x 3K) on "default", or sometimes even just "preview", which when reduced for the web gives a better smoothing than 9 pixels "superfine" on, say, 800 x 800.

This is an interesting bit of info, tuttle. I use often much "fill" lights in a scene, never tried and/or thought to make them ranged. One other good trick to add to the very loooooong list, so thanx :) S.

geez i feel so stupid... but anyway thnx guys... never really explored the bryce interface that much... eheheh come to think of it, i never really took time to learn the whole program itself, but anyway tnx tuttle for that great info!

Just thought of another bit of info about the ranged lights - to judge how far the light reaches, preview the scene in the light lab and turn the light's intensity up to 500 (or something big so that the light extents are clearly visible). Then you can alter the range to the value you want and when you're done, reset the intensity to its proper value.

and I was worried about a 90-minute render (record so far..so far to go, so much to learn..;)

Aye, squeeka, a two hour render time is bliss! My most complex scene, this stupid hunting cabin by a pond, takes that long to PLOP render! One day I'll finish it, but might I suggest perhaps taking a nap while rendering? (I know, I know, plenty of time for sleep when we're dead, but it's just an idea!) Also, I'm sure you know this but in case you didn't, if you have multiple instances of Bryce open, it will slow down ALL of the renders. Of course, you can set priorities with XP, but believe it or not the processor can only handle so much. And a 1.3GHz machine is plenty fast for Bryce...

A bit off the thread, I reckon, but... ShadowDL, how do you set priorities in XP? (It's not necessary for you to explain, it's enough to point me out where to look for an "how-to" and I'll read myself :)) S.

Aye, I know, I use WAY too many commas when I try to explain stuff! (laughs at self)

Oh yeah, try pushing Ctrl-Alt-Delete. You should be fine from there, Sir S....

I always give Bryce high priority in XP when it's rendering. Every little bit helps.

Thanks, SDL... that's the task manager, I would've known it :) S.-

(bows to Doublecrash) Funny, but I don't even use XP yet! Do you think it's any good? I wonder if it will make things run any smoother...

About a month ago i got XP and installed it on my 800mhz, 256mb RAM(probably too little for XP) computer, and I must say that it made my 'puter nuts. I can't even run photoshop anylonger, . Luckally Bryce is still working. As soon as I can get my burner up and runnign I will save all my brycefiles and go back to good old win98.

Aye, I own and run a computer company, Dragon PC, here in Seattle, and between Windows 2000 and ME we lost waaayyyy too much money for me to take XP seriously, yet. I should start experimenting with XP, see what it can do, because '98 is five years old now. Windows, schmindows. It's not even 3D yet! Hell, Morrowind has a better operating system! I think the UI (user interface) people from Metacreations should have got together and made us a new OS, call it Portals or Warper or something silly! But I could rant about Microsoft all day long, and Win '98. At least it's not fruit-based!

My favourite name for Windows.........MURKYSOFT! 8)

Not just windows - I have an inate dislike for everything Microsoft, then again I'm regarded by the folks at work as being in the 'Linux Geek' arena. I have 2 pcs running Win 2k, 2 running 98, 1 running Smoothwall Linux and 1 running Caldera Linux. They're now all relatively stable (The Linux boxes always have been), the art is not to change them just for the sake of change... Bryce for Linux that's what I want :-))

I'm still using ME. I've been using it in this setup now for years, and I know excactly how not to let it crash and how to get out of most near-crashes without losing my bryce-scenes or PSP-images. I have had to use Linux a couple of times though. For instance with a corrupted XP-installation on an NTFS-partition. Then the boot-disk can't find the harddisk, because it only recognizes FAT 32. A copy of knoppix linux however could be used instead and it read the NTFS-partition just fine. So far I've seen Suse, Redhat, knoppix, Mandrake and many other linuxes, but unfortunately none of them run bryce, so I'm doomed to using Microsoft shit.

Aye, the alternative is NOT to be imagined, apparently, under any circumstances! (read : Apple) I'd love to use Linux, as well... But alas, Bryce is more important than anyting else on most of my machines, except for the LightWave rig sitting (nearly unused) in the corner! I can't imagine spending three times the cash for something half as powerful, just to show my friends how shiny my case is.

The thing I always liked about Linux is that it will run great along side Windows and you can import Windows files to Linux no problem. So even if Windows crashes Linux will still be purring along like a kitten. Catlin

I've tried bryce via WINE using Bryce 2 and wasn't nice :-( never tried it since I upgraded to 5. Just got used to the fact that I will forever be plagued with a windoze box or 2. 3ds max is also windoze only :-(

Ah! it is a sad windoze world we live in :(

Unfortunately the once promising lindows project also seems to be liveing up less and less to it's expectations. Why don't those people at microsoft use their knowledge from the intelli-bug routines to create an intelligent OS instead of an intelligent self-adapting bug-generator?

Ouch... again out of the chorus, but since I have this new machine with XP (Home) I didn't have any problems at all, apart the annoying taskbar things when I run Bryce (just annoying, nothing to worry too much about). The same wasn't with my 98SE.

I can keep my windows relatively stable, but as soon as you start installing, uninstallnig and re-installing all kinds of software or if you install service-packs and patches and as soon as you get spyware and shit you have to uninstall with force, it will just become more and more instable. And then there's also the fact that Windows will always crash after it's been running a while. Even if it doesn't do anything it can't run much longer then 2 months without rebooting and often it crashes within 2 weeks. Linux on the other hand can run for years. My father, who frequently repairs linux and unix based systems often runs into servers with uptimes of more then 700 days. That's just impossible with windows.