I know alot of bandwidth has been spend on the Bryce versus Vue4 issue. I am a Bryce devotee. I can whip up scenes in Bryce in no time and have a high confidence level that I can achieve pretty close to whatever I can imagine using it. But I have no experience in using Poser to create actual scenes. I am absolutely blown away by the high quality of character renders though using V3 and Mike 2. I did my first successful render this weekend of a Vicky 3 character, and yesterday completed a project for a client that blew me away. I just never imagined the control and quality of scene creation would ever arrive. And as much as we bitch and complain about Curious Labs, they still have a damn good product for the price (thanks DAZ). So now I am ready to take the next step and start using scenery, props, Cyclorama type backdrops, etc. I may be jumping the gun a little bit, but in my current work environment, I really have to plan ahead. The question I keep asking myself is: if I am already proficient in Bryce, will I be able to achieve the same high quality renders of complex scenes in Poser and import them into Vue 4? Can I achieve high quality output using Poser alone with backdrops and the many canned scenery sets available for Poser or is the Poser to Vue4 export necessary? Or should I concentrate on learning to import Poser 5 characters into Bryce using the tedious procedure I have read about in numerious tutorials on the subject. I have seen some pretty incredible work done exculsively in Poser alone and using Poser imported figures into Bryce and Vue4 many with little or no postwork. I have seen many posts of people who said that once they used Vue4 they never went back to Bryce. I have read posts from Bryce users who have said that they would never consider Vue4. I have read other posts which complain about the output of Vue4 as being somewhat "grainy" and not a crisp and clean as Bryce (I love crisp and clean). I have not heard from anyone who prefers using Poser for complex scenes over the others.

Poser bogs down tremendously in complex scenes, so you are better off using Vue (and maybe Bryce, although I understand it's renderer is a little slow on complex scenes). Vue is really speedy at rendering, though you're right, the renders always seem a little grainy. If you don't already have Vue 4 and can afford it, you might want to look at Cinema 4d to really increase your control over rendering.

Yikes! Not another piece of software to agonize over. Isn't anything simple anymore? Haven't I lost enough sleep over this already. When I was young, when you wanted to play serious tennis you had one choice for sneakers: Jack Purcells, and one choice for racket: Wilson Jack Kramer. That was it. Now you have to be have a degree in chemical engineering, bio-physics, and graphic design to make an "informed" decision.

Though it is coming Vue does not support Poser 5 for imports yet. As for bryce, it isn't that hard...go to castironflamingo.com and get grouper...that will help with redundant materials and time. Or get cyclorama, nerds back drop or the free RND infinity cove or cyclodrop make your background in bryce then map the render to one of those props. I tend to switch between rendering in bryce or poser depending on the kind of scene I need.

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OK, before I say anything, I am a solid bryce user (have played with the vue demo, but stayed with bryce). I have made some "big, really big" scenes in bryce (check gallery if you want). I imagine you could do the same sort of "big" things in Vue. To my mind, bryce is a bit more versatile than Vue, but if you're looking at using poser stuff heavily, then I'd definitely consider going with Vue mainly for that fairly good Poser/Vue compatibility.

Poser lacks basic scenebuilding tools. It's difficult to move/rotate and place objects and hard to see what you're doing. Lighting is a bit difficult to manage and there are no tools for duplicating objects and such. That said, I enjoy building scenes in Poser anyway. :) I use Bryce 5 and Vue 4 as well. Importing pz3 files to Vue from Poser 4 (and soon Poser 5) is dead easy. But using Grouper on exported Poser objects before importing to Bryce is almost as simple. Most of the tutes out there for PoserToBryce are pre-Grouper and also, IMHO, overcomplicate the process. Since you already grok Bryce, you might find Vue a bit frustrating in terms of cameras, views, and manipulating objects when building a scene. At least I do. Those who don't grok Bryce or have never used it, love Vue so you're better off not knowing Bryce at all.

Personally, I often find that "total production time" is worth a bit of thought. You can get utilities that make Bryce as Poser-friendly as Vue, But jumping between apps takes time. So does scene-building in Bryce and Vue - and Poser, of course. 2D backgrounds used within Poser is the probably the fastest way to do a scene. Scratch-building in Bryce, Vue (or another model/render app) is the most flexible. Using stock props and sets (in whatever app) is somewhere in between. Depending on how many images you want to get out of your head, you have to decide on a trade-off between those factors. Even the Final Fantasy movie used matte paintings - I was a bit disappointed when I realized that, but I can understand why. As some editor used to say way back in my freelance illustrator days : "I don't want it to be ART, I want it to be FINISHED!" ;o)