Hi, I'm still trying to learn things about Bryce, but most so far I've been having a good deal of success learning by myself except for one thing that's really getting to me. When I have alot of objects close together, such as radial lights all over the place and whatever else, including object groups, I find it almost imposssible at times to select what I want. Here's an example: I had a Poser character in a Bryce 4 scene, all grouped as one object, and I liked the lighting as it was, but I wanted to turn her head just slightly, so I ungrouped her and selected the whole head, hair, eyes, and neck, and was able to turn it around just a bit. A little while later I decide to change the atmosphere, and then I had to add some new lights. Eventually Vickie is completely surrounded by radial lights and spotlights, and other stuff and I liked everything about the scene, except I wanted to rotate her entire body on the Y axis just slightly, but no matter what I tried, I could not get her entire body selected to regroup it as a whole. I tried from every camera angle and everything, but the stuff all around her kept getting in the way, and I didn't want to move anything because it took me a long time to get it the way I had it. I know about ctrl+click for selecting and deselecting. So what did I do wrong? Is there a way to avoid all the other junk without moving something? I would have had to move more than one or two items to get a clear shot at her, too, because in addition to the radial lights I had a ground plane, a water plane, two cloud planes, and some rocks, all of which were exactly where I wanted them. Can it be done? Or should I just be planning a little more ahead? ;) Thanks, Mike

well well... at the right of the menu at the bottom of the interface - the one that can be the anim control menu or object select menu - there is a pointing down arrow and under that you'll find an option to select meshes, groups. You can then begin the tedious task of selecting each poser body item one by one but adding to the selections by keeping the shift key down (PC). Also you can select multiple objects with the ctrl-click method you mention but also keep the shift key down as well as the ctrl keyt and you can move around and add to the selection. Also tedious certainly. I can't think of another way - solo mode in someway, or maybe select other objects and set their attributes to locked or hidden.... One way I can think of for the future so you don't have this mess is this: after you ungroup the poser body and while everything is still selected, assign a family color to the lot (by clicking the solid colored box in the object menu). Then at that object selection menu at bottom of interface you could select them all by that family. Whew! - Dave The

Wow, Dave, thanks---that's far more info than I would have expected! I didn't know about the "family" thing or what you're talking about at the bottom of the interface. I mostly use Vue d'Esprit, but I'm starting to really like Bryce 4 too for different things, such as the ease of using the cameera controls and the flexibility in rendering, and of course all that great volumetric stuff. I'm only now getting to the point of learning the things involved with using multiple objects. Thank you very much. Cheers, Mike

Yeah, I hoped that wasn't too much of an onslaught... Here's more... The menu at the bottom is in object mode at default I think and you can switch it to an animation time line menu by clicking the faint wireframe globe all the way to the right. It acts as a toggle switch. But when you see a menu of little bryce object icons you can use those to select objects. A single click on one (lets say the cube) will select all cube objects in scene - if you hold mouse down on the little cube you'll instead get a drop down list of all the cube objects (or whichever shape you click on there) in your scene and you can select at random - which is why it's helpful to name your primitives and objects so when you want to select in this manner you can easily select "window1" or "cabinetdoor" rather than guessing cube 1, cube 2, cube 3, etc. That should do it - happy selecting : ) - Dave www.citizendave.com

Thanks again, Dave. :) Cheers, Mike

Also you can use the Tab button to select between objects

Solo mode can help. At bottom right of screen (by the down arrow mentioned previously) there is a little sphere. Select the group or item you want to work on and click this sphere. All other objects on screen will dissapear. Now ungroup the object you want to work on make changes and reselect/regroup parts. Using edit select all from menu will select camera so be sure to unselect camers before grouping or you'll go nuts chasing the da?n thing all over as you move objects. Getting in habit of naming ALL iimportant parts immediatly after creation will help a lot. Good luck.