"Bryce renders a LOT better than Poser. I only do this as a hobby and even I can tell a big difference."

What you're seeing isn't a cause/effect of how good/bad the renderer is, because the P5 Firefly renderer is based on PRMan, which is one of the best renderers money can buy in the 3D world (albeit not the fastest at certain things).

The quality of renders is based almost exclusively on the artist, and their willingness to know their app. Bryce users have turned their application inside out over the past few years, learning everything they possibly can about what it does and how far they can take it. Most Poser users do not get nearly as involved in their application, and instead choose to postwork the majority of the needed effects.

Firefly is perfectly capable of producing high quality stunning renders every bit as illustrious as Bryce or just about any other renderer. The problem is, it's harder to get to that point because Poser tends to put up roadblocks to achieving what you want, and 99% of it's users aren't willing to fight through them (it could be a tough struggle). Also, Poser still doesn't have network or distributed rendering, so very few people will want to wait for what could very well be a rendertime long enough to make Bryce rendertimes seem cutting edge. ;-)

If you want evidence of what is actually possible with the Firefly renderer and P5 materials, just look up some professional galleries done in Pixels3D (their renderer and materials are basically the same thing as what's found in P5, just under a different name, with a few additional features). Message edited on: 09/25/2004 00:04

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.