One major leap I had was CANDLES! Candles, of all things, ever-elusive to me. This one modeled in Rhino, and rendered in Bryce, with meat-ball flames and a radial volume... The cool part for me isn't the model, or the flames, or the radial material, but the candle material actually looks, well, like a LIT CANDLE! (doesn't it...?) At least until the base, which is easily corrected by a well-placed metaball (unnecessary at the angle I'm shooting the scene, so far)...