Yes, this is my first time getting involved in this forum. I recently made a Bryce animation of an underwater scene of dolphins which has since been made into a retail lenticular 3D piece. I'm presently working on a killer whale scene, but low and behold, with volumetric lighting the render time just shot through the roof. Since I'm planning on creating more scenes that may involve even larger rendering times, I would like to know if anyone can suggest just what I need for the rendering speed to improve. I know RAM is important, but after that, what? Video card, processor speed? Please help me out as I may be producing these scenes to a large format 3D display (10' x 8'). Right now my 6" x 4" displays are killing me with the lighting.

10'x8' ! Well you mentioned everything you'll need. More RAM , the fastest processor you can afford and a powerful 2d card ( preferably 32 megs or higher ). Honestly though if you feel the render times are longer with volumetrics then build another system and make it your render farm so it can work continuously day and night churning out works for you.

Bring back the `Connection Machine' project! That was a clip-on coprocessor that could do the same thing in genuine simultaneous parallel to up to 65536 = 2^16 values! Within limits it would be able to render a movie as fast as it could be shown!

Anthony < I've never heard of that but I am interested in reading about it if you have an url for me. 8-D

10X8, man, you're gonna have long render times at that size no matter what you do. If you're going to make a habit of it, then quik is right, you need to build a second machine dedicated to rendering or move up to an SGI workstation

Hi, I also avoid volumetric lighting, which renders incredible slow. What I once did in my Bryce4-Win for an animated underwater-scene was, using a spotlight with a gel (texture looking like caustics), changing its position and esp. its vertical-angle slightly in some keyframes. Then I added a cone (stretched object-texture, high transparency, its peak at the spotlight-position) to fake light-beams. All together in combination, it looked fine, for a first impression (although far from being perfect). And it was fast. Didnt do underwater scenes since then. Hubert

I don't use volumetric lighting either. Tried it a couple of times and it just takes tooooooo long.

RAM and video card have to do with modelling speed mostly. If you don't have to sit and wait every time you adjust something, then probably RAM and video card is OK. And if not, you can try some of the stuff mentioned in the manual to decrease modelling "delay" speed. If slow rendering is the problem though, go for a fast processor. I recommend getting as fast an AMD as you can afford. AMDs are usually quite fast, optimized for 3D operations, and quite cost-worthy. If you've got money to burn though, I guess you could go for an SGI.

Stuie the only way you will be able to get a 10'x 8' rendered is to send the file to a farm. I rendered a 2'x 1' and it took 6 days and fifteen hours and I run NT on a dual PIII 700 mhz with 1GB of ram and a 3D labs oxygenGVX1 card. The problem is probably not your machine the problem is Bryce. As much as I liked using Bryce 3 and now Bryce 4 they have got to have one of the slowest render engines available Chris-S

Hey have few speed tips for bryce. Not just speculation. I provide some data to go with each one. http://www.planet-3d.com/garage.htm

10X8, man, you're gonna have long render times at that size no matter what you do The Connection Machine could do the same thing to up to 65536 = (256 squared) values at once. That would have made almost any 3D rendering operation take only a nerest fraction of the time!

In the Bryce 3D Handbook it talks about an accelerator to improve rendering times but Im still trying to find out more about that myself. I hope to have answers to this question myself soon. Good Luck