thuleke, let me apologizes for cluttering up you tread with stuff you may not be interested in. Bryce's render engine does exactly what is told to do. When breaking angles are set to objects in 3D programs ( Bryce's smooth option ) it is telling the computer how to view the vertices of connecting polygons at the assigned angle ( weather they will appear smooth or not. ) It also tells the rendering engine to cast a shadow at the vertices according to the light's direction and the object's set breaking angles. To test this simply check out Bryce's smooth option under Open GL, the computer tells the video card's open GL accelerator the same inf. And the video card draws the image on the screen ( minus shadows ). Open GL has nothing to do with Bryce's rendering engine. And any of the Open GL setting will view the same as rendering minus materials shadows and raytracing. Breaking angles in all 3D apps should be set to the lowest vertices connecting angles ( in most cases the majority of connecting vertices are at the same angle).To over shoot, breaking angle in any 3D app can have unpleasant outcomes. Example: if you set breaking angle to 90, then any 90 degree corner the object may have ( like a cube ) will appear to have shading problem around the edges. ( this is true for all the 3D Apps I have rendered out of ). True some 3D apps are more lenient with breaking angles than others, that's why 3DS and DFX models always seem to have more triangulated facets then other formats. But the true problem is tessellation, not rendering engines. I mean look at the gaming industry, it does not matter how good your rendering engine is, if you do not put enough polygons in the model, the computer can not fake it looking round or smooth with no facets. I will say Bryce does have a problem in this area, that is, it does not recognize when an object has double points on the edges. When a line of vertices make up an edge ( like a cube ) Some modelers will let you put double points on that edge. So the polygons do not share the same edge. Think of a cube, the top piece polygons and a side piece polygons share the same edge, and there is a 90 degree angle between them. With double point on the edge the side piece and the top piece polygons have their own edges where the 90 degree angle meet. So the polygons do not share the same edge. With some apps when you set the breaking angle to 90 it does not smooth across this edge, because the polygon's vertices on each side of the 90 degree angle do not share the same edge. It's like it sees this double point edge as being 2 different objects. Well Bryce does not recognize this feature and smoothes across these vertices anyway.

Stephen Ray