OK, wow, lots of replies in such short time! I'm in Oz, so I'm generally sleeping for some of your day time, so excuse my delays.

Many of the features you asked for, I AM adding to the designs, I just have not announced them yet as I have not publically uploaded the screenshots yet.

But... quick responses:

1. Windows & Sidebars - can be moved anywhere if need be, or set to auto appear as you mouse over that area, so if you mouse over the left side, the camera controls slide out quickly. Also, You can set the attributes window to auto slide when you click an object, or even set if if you click an object's [A] button. There will be lots of interface preferences.

2. Colour Scheme - like Carrara, you can change the colours using just TWO colour boxes. I am using my fav colour, aqua with a grey to make the darker areas. You could use any colours you want.

3. Pricing - This won't be a free upgrade, and honestly, I really don't mind if the price is jacked up to a normal level again, because the publisher's need to make money from this, so it stays alive, and I think the amount of extras will warrant the price - its going to be much more than just bryce from now on!

4 - Deformation Tools - Yes, they will be there, u will see them in further screen shots.

5 - Particle Generator - ALREADY there in my screen shot. Although I have not publically given a description, you see the little plane with grass on it... that is a highly sophisticated vegetation tool, which lets you grow grass on a terrain for example. It works by using a grass model from the presets and applying it all over the terrain - you can control randomness etc within the vegetation lab. OK, but since it uses model presets, you could.. for instance.. use models of huts, bug trees, people, anything you want, as it essentially works like a particle system. So, now you can grow hair on a head etc.

6 - Anisotropic Materials will be there. Most, if not all of the modern day lighting and texturing techniques will be there.

7 - Background images. Yes, you can disable the sky and use an image if you please, also accepts HDRI images!

8 - Faster Rendering Engine -trust me, this is one of my big gripes with bryce. It WILL support dual processors, and all the latest chip technologies, ie: Hyperthreading and the G5 processor etc. But the actual engine will need to be revamped, and this is something that the developers will need to work on, rather than me!

9 - Booleans... while they are not going to change a whole lot, there will be a function to merge the boolean group, which makes the objects into 1 object which can then be exported...

10 - exporting... yes you will be able to export all your shapes as regular file formats, although I don't know why you would want to leave Bryce

11 - Modeling... ALREADY there is a spline modeler, its the little glass icon. The spline modeler is teh quickest and easiest way to make custom shapes. Hell, I bet almost everyone here has to frequently open up another 3D app just to use a spline modeler! No there will not be a NURBS or Subdividion modeler, perhaps in the next version of Bryce but not this one.

12 - Metaballs, what was going to happen is that each ball has a colored ring around it when you are working with it. This shows its gravity field. You can expand or shrink this field my easily clicking and dragging it, and this will control how powerful the attraction is to another ball! SIMPLE!

13 -Animated Textures - a MUST.. yes! As you will see from upcoming screenshots, all objects, materials, movies, and... ahem.. SOUNDS will be located in a presets window which you can easily access any time. So, yes, movies can be textures, or even just a channel of a texture, not just the colour. Imagine a texture with a movie as its bump channel!! NICE!

14 -Brian Wagner, I honestly didn't know about hiim. If anyone has contact details shoot them my way!

I'll post this up on my site too, so its always available!

Regards

Scott