I got bryce 2 ages ago (as a cover disk on computer shopper, just when bryce 3d was launched) and used it for a long time before upgrading to 5 earlier this year, the addition of the tree lab, groups that work, the sky lab, and metaballs make 5 a much more useful product. An interesting point is that the 5 upgrade is from ANY version, so you should be able to upgrade from the freebie to version 5 (it worked for me and the guy on the helpline said it was ok to do it)

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Toolset: Blender, GIMP, Indigo Render, LuxRender, TopMod, Knotplot, Ivy Gen, Plant Studio.