I've bought Bryce4 just now, and 've always worked with Rau Dream studio and Poser4 . Bryce is good for small and not complexes scenes; I've tried a scene with 4 imported and multitextured Poser models, and a few imported objects from RDS : the result :a scene file of 70 MB space, and no possibility to render at 300 dpi (for publication artwork)and 2000/2000 pixels. So big files are quite easy to render in RDS, but not at all in Bryce . Have somebody an idea ?

I normally render scenes without antiallasing and then use a slight blur filter in photoshop. Can't see any need to soften the render in Bryce & then sharpen it in photoshop for printing. There are some "tricks" to speed-up time and keep file sizes smaller but i'm not too familiar with them. I believe there might be some info in the tutorial files.

You are able to save image as 300 dpi for printing. I recently had the same problem and was told to go to file and select render to disk and there you can set your resolution. Hope this helps...

Also btw, I recently got rds about 2 months ago because it was a great price in order to create models for poser or bryce. Is there any good cd tutorials out there for it since it's hard to find stuff for it now that it doesn't exist anymore?

RDS is not so difficult to work ; except maybe the free form modeler, the rest is quite logical and fast to use. Load at the beginning the 3D assistant to help you create conventionnal forms. You can find some specific tutorials on the web (b.e.http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/5696/)

I only use the on screen render for tests. For final output at full resolution, I will always use render to disk. It is noticeably faster than a screen render.

I've never had a problem rendering complex scenes in Bryce. Yes, they can take a while, but if your work is good, it's worth it. I just like the way Bryce renders look

Yes, bryce files can get fairly large. I'm looking at my vault and noticing that my "Temple of the Lovers" file is 60mb and "Vampires in the Mist" is 35.5mb. It is worth it though. One thing that I have noticed is that on my machine, when I'm dealing with high ambience .mats or lots of transparence/reflection, imported meshes seem to render faster that bryce primitives. Don't know why, that's not what the tutorials tell me should happen. One way to speed up and cut file size is to: a) work w/o textures untill you get final positioning, b) one every thing is where you want it, eliminate the details that cant be seen. Then texture and render. With groups, work in solo mode as much as possible. Also, group complex objects: the raytracer calcs wether it hits the group, then the sub group, then the object. Wherever you can, use image textures. They don't necessarily cut down render time, but they're smaller than geometry. Hope this helps...