I tried again to see if I could recreate the problem your having by setting up a scene as close to the one your using as I possibly could. Still no luck though. I'm at a loss to find a reason for the splotchy, striated, and overly pixelated render. (I'm using Bryce 5 with the patch.) After continued close study I'm convinced that the rendering problem is affecting your 'entire' scene and not just the decanters, shadows and curtain. I can see traces of the problem in 'every' object within your scene. I still suggest saving out the individual objects in your scene and bringing them one by one into a new file. Try a quick plop render after bringing each object into the new file and before bringing in the next one. I bet this scene file renders exactly the same with or without the decanters in it. Not having the patch installed could possibly be the cause, but I would try things like changing your radial lights to spot lights before installing the patch. Also try change the position of the lights and the sun a little. (The patch causes Bryce to crash on you when you work in the DTE? I've never experienced crashes of that nature in either Windows NT or XP.) About the decanter polygon meshes... The render of the decanters with what looks like the default gray material applied to them has me worried becuase the decanter on the far left is rendering with black areas typical of a mesh with missing, reversed, or otherwise tangled polygons. Even though the decanter has a complex shape it should still render in the same smooth grays as the other decanters, which look ok, and should not exhibit the black, splotchy areas. It is possible that this is the rendering problem showing up again and not a problem with the polygon mesh, though. Try removing this decanter from the scene and fixing the rendering problem before examing its polygon mesh for problems. Also, as Erlik noticed, the last two renderings you have posted here look as if they were rendered without anti-aliasing... and yet, your screen capture of your Rendering Options shows that you have Regular Rendering Quality Mode with Anti-Aliasing selected. Is this a sign of yet more rendering trouble I wonder, or did you actually use the Default rendering mode without anti-aliasing? Damn, I really wish I could be of some help with this problem.