I started creating a scene with many characters imported from Poser. Up to 2 characters it's OK, but with 3 or 4, it becomes very slow. Not only for rendering but even just to open a window or save the file. Yet, I have a P4 2.6 GHz with 512 Mo and a 128Mo videocard. Will it make a difference with 1024 Mo RAM ?

Sounds like you have more than many artists have here put together. What's slowing you down is most likely to be the textures you are using. If you are simply setting up a scene in Bryce, try rendering without textures at first till u get the scene that way you want it. Use a low rez (AA or default) setting and lose things like soft shadows and true ambience. Finally, change the nano-preview to wireframe view. That should speed things up no end. Of course, others will have their own ideas but this works for me.

I also have a P4 2.6 GHz with 512 mb RAM but I have no problems working with large Bryce files. Largest I've tested was 250 Mb. Maybe you have a slow hard drive or your memory settings need to be adjusted?

I think its the Poser figures that do it. Ive got an Athlon 2000 which runs at about 1.7 and I find Im okay until I start bringing those Mikes and Vickies in. I had a thought on this recently. Once Ive posed the figure, assuming its clothed and not one of those nekkid Vikkis, a lot of the mesh that is hidden beneath the clothes could be dispensed with in the hierarchy editor before exporting to Grouper or Bryce. That may make a difference. Anyone use this method? Also, a lot of the Poser figures I use are tiny, just background bods, and I put those on 2d planes.

Be careful adjusting your memory settings if you're not sure about what you're doing. I had a catastrophe when someone advised me to adjust my memory settings, and gave me outline instructions. I went clickety clickety click with gay abandon, and DISASTER! finished up having to reformat the whole pc :o(

I don't really have much in the way of problems, but I'm using lo-res versions of Mike and Vicky..;) that's a possibility..one thing recommended by Poser folks for 'crowded' scenes is to use your higher-res characters close to the camera, and lower-res (the lovable Posette, the doughty Dork) in the background..a hundred yards away, you could even use Poser 3 and 2 characters, far enough, and the stick figures...er, well, anyway, I've heard it being done..and more memory never hurts..

My file is 373Mo so far. I don't know if this is above the average. I noticed that the render slows down on the hair. I have used mostly the Goddess Hair which contains 5 or 6 textures and transmaps. This may be part of the problem.

373Mb is pretty big for a couple of Poser figures... I seem to remember from one of the Bryce manuals that you can get away with a file up to half the size of your RAM, but any bigger than that and things get a bit problematical. I've got files with six or seven Poser figures in that are only just over 100Mb, but they are all P4 or V2/M2 figures. If you want to use a lot of the top-end figures, a Gb of memory would probably be of help to you. I would second the advice above to delete any mesh that's hidden under clothes or behind other objects, and stick your background figures on 2D planes. It saves a lot of memory. Cutting down of the specularity settings may speed up your renders a bit, and if things are slow even in the wireframe view, like when you try to move something, lower your wireframe resolution; this helps a lot. I don't know whether you're fairly new to Bryce, but unfortunately it is quite slow, and if you are doing complicated renders you may just have to be patient. The good-quality Poser hair does take a long time to render, and running other applications alongside Bryce can be slow -it can take me up to 30 seconds to open an image with ACDSee when Bryce is running, and I have 3GHz and a Gb of RAM. Also running other stuff against Bryce will slow your renders down unless Bryce has priority.

My largest scene file was 457Mb's and I'm using a P4 2.4mhz with 1Gb of DDR ram. Try rendering the Poser figures seperately and then as an "object mask", then use them in your scene as 2D planes(picture objects). Of course you could have a virus or worm messing with your system,....do you have an anti-virus app ? How often do you run scans ? My system was running quite sluggish for a bit, then I discovered I had msblast.exe running on my system as well as a couple of malware apps. I downloaded a popular anti-virus program trialware and it found and corrected the problems. Running smooth as silk now. Just something to consider.

Hi Simbad6! I've only been using PCs for less than two years now and Bryce for less than a month but I found a few things that helped me. Take a look at http://www.blackviper.com/ there's a wealth of information here that will help veterans and noobs like me too! Things like a thorough "services" list detailing what's safe to disable for a more efficient PC or just for privacy and what NOT to install from your Windows disc (system restore and indexing eats up resources and are inefficient if not worthless). Also I installed Spywareblaster and Spybot Search and Destroy. They can be downloaded here: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/downloads.html and here: http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download Before I open Bryce I disable my Norton Antivirus, Block traffic on Norton Internet Security and close Norton System Doctor. Pretty much anything that might start up or slow down my rendering. I have a P4 2.0 Ghz with 512ram and 128 Vidcard Hope this helps somewhat. I just wish I knew more about all this stuff so I could be more helpful.