Attached Link: http://www.colacola.se/show.asp?pic=6

I do my modelling mainly in Wings3D and use Bryce for texturing, lighting setup etc. You may have seen my post here before with setups that take up to 40 hours to render. I got Cinema4D a week ago and I have very mixed feelings for Bryce now. Take a look at the 2 down scaled renders of my wooden toy model below. The first one is Bryce and took 2.5 hours to render (with simulated radiosity/light dome). The 2nd is a C4D render that took 3 minutes with all kinds of options enabled. I know you can't compare them just like that but... And I'm new to that application so I don't know exactly what I have done. :) I don't know if one looks better than the other but that's not the issue here. Whoever develops the next version of Bryce really has to do something about the rendering engine and do something about the lack of hardware support instead of just adding more presets and all kind of generators. Befinning with details in the interface is surely not the way to go (Bryce 6 discussion some time ago). The full size images are accessible from here: http://www.colacola.se/show.asp?pic=6

Bryce version

Other version

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=591053&Start=1&Artist=Gog%5FCA1&ByArtist=Yes

Bazze, thing is this just isn't comparing like with like. yes the next version of bryce could do with a faster render engine, preferably 2 a scanline and a raytrace. But with any of the more complex apps (C4D, Max etc) the moment you start using Raytrace they slow down rapidly, still not as slow as Bryce but as an example the car scene linked takes about 30 seconds - 1 minute to render with no raytracing, with the water rayraced it takes about an hour! (in Max)

"still not as slow as Bryce but as an example the car scene linked takes about 30 seconds - 1 minute to render with no raytracing, with the water rayraced it takes about an hour! (in Max)"

Well, there's tons of different ways to get faster results in your raytraced water in Max. That's the beauty of a powerful render engine... options and tweaks. I'm sure those knowledgable about Bryce could tweak it's renderer to move faster too, but there's simply not that many options.

Max's renderer is a hybrid scanlineraytrace engine. It's really not the best render solution out there either. I use a plugin renderer when working in Max. My renderer of choice is Vray, but Brazil is also very good. Both of these plugins for Max will blow away the rendertimes benchmarked with the standard scanline hybrid, and also the engine in C4D. I'll bet you could render your scene with true GI as well as raytraced water in one of these plugins in under 30 minutes at 1600x1200 standard resolution.

My point is, Bryce is VERY slow, and if indeed someone takes it over, that should be the very first thing they address... the render engine.

Message edited on: 06/23/2004 06:20

If DAZ has taken it over, presumably that's one thing they aren't going to be fixing in a hury?

Lets hope that Daz takes their time to make their changes and QA. We don't need a buggy app cough Truespace 6.5 rushed out the door. Also how much is Cinema 4d? If its near Bryce's price range then the comparision makes sense.

C4d version 8 is $800 dollars ish

$600, actually, without the various add-on modules (which means without radiosity, among other things). Whereas Bryce is, like $80. Vue D'Esprit is also faster than Bryce, and $200 or so, but it doesn't produce as pretty a render IMHO. The bryce image you show above has that beautiful "perfect" look to it that you just don't see in Vue renders.

Hmm..I got C4d 6 for about $15, Truespace 3 for about $14 (magazines), so I can't complain..though the Truespace 'Qbert' interface is still beyond me..;) Just have to read the 400-page tutorial for C4d, and peruse the 700-page manual..should be done by..uh..;)