"but it's better to think of them as all-purpose render engines"

Phantast, wouldn't most 3D apps outside of Poser then be considered the same? I mean, what do Bryce or Vue's render engine offer that isn't available in most other apps in the same price bracket? At the core, both apps offer terrific landscape tools and capability (which is what's really special and unique about them).

I already own Bryce 5, and I've been waiting for the release of Vue 5 Pro. I find Bryce more than satisfactory for outdoor environment creation (aside from animated vegitation, etc.), but I can think of many things I would need from a render engine that it just doesn't do currently, at least not without extensive and time-consuming workarounds. Same with Vue 5 d'Esprite. Of course, my primary focus is on animation compositing. I'm hoping the Pro version of Vue or the next version of Bryce will address some of these things, like more extensive G-Buffer output functionality for postwork in video fx software, which would really help make the render engine "all-purpose" as you said. Currently, only depth and alpha channels are available in Vue I think, but there's no output for a velocity pass, specular, shadow, ambient, diffuse, etc. etc. :-) Message edited on: 12/24/2004 03:01

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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.