ok, so to split scenes of this house file, first i deleted all the trees and saved, then i reversed it (but some trees were groups with the alternate selection, so had to ungroup them..... now I'm assuming I render both, then merge? and when rendering, AA too? or merge, then render and AA? experimenting now....LOL (experimenting, all drugged up....not a good thing...(or is it? hahaha)) Jen

ohhh and what about shadows.....if the trees cast shadows to the ground and house, will those shadows not show if the trees are rendered seperate?

For the shadows - I'd make a few renders... one would be of the house and ground one would be of the trees and ground (to get shadows on ground and trees) one would be of the trees near the house and the bit of the house that has shadows on it (to get the shadows on the house) Then merge all the images in a painting program later and you'll have all the things rendered with shadows in the right places (I think).

As for the AA thing... what I do is render against a screen that is coloured (single colour) close to the actual background of the pic then use AA. That way, the AA blurring (around the edges of the object you want to render) will match up to what it would've been if you had rendered the whole scene in one hit (hope that makes sense). The single colour screen is easy to delete as well, which is why I use a single colour.

you can merge the scenes for the final render by opening the first scene normal and then go to file/merge to open the second scenefile into it. that way it renders as if it where just one scenefile. The advantage of having 2 or more scenefiles however is that you can move objects around faster if you only load one of those scenes. It's more of a workflow increasing technique then a technique to allow for bigger scenes, but when bryce thinks the scene is to big to handle you already thought it was too slow to work on much earlier.