Attached Link: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=13406

As stated above.

Well, that emptied this forum out in a hurry ;) Thanks for the link.

NP....LOL...not to sure if some peeps are going to like it or not.....

Faster render speeds, which is nice, but not much else there for my liking (or money).

Looks like a lot of focus on Daz Studio......

Seems pretty good, but the only thing that really is hitting my buttons is the no-lock taskbar and the various shading/wireframe views. Other then that... so so.

A lot of the changes look to me like workflow improving things - like all the opengl stuff, the multi-threading, the various render speed improvements. Those things should help in speeding up scene creation to my mind. The new thing (well, the other stuff is new as well, but hopefully you know what I mean) they are adding is the internal daz studio/figure support. I have in the past tended to use figures a fair bit in scenes, so this bit looks useful to me (how useful... I'm not sure - haven't done too much with the various Studio beta's yet).

Multi-threading ???!!!??? Holy Xeons Batman ! They have been paying attention afterall. Multi, Multi, Multi,......

Hahahahahaaaaaa....Told you guys to wait and see...

The render speed improvements are less than I'd hoped for (considering I'll probably be living at the darlisa end of complicated renderings rather than the simpler end of scene renderings). But we'll see (which has always been my feeling about this) - rendering huge ass scenes can introduce a lot of strange variables in to render speeds...

Message edited on: 01/11/2005 22:54

:) Know what ya are talking about flak...

Anyone wanna make a list of the specs in here? I'm not Daz registered and don't plan to get registered unless absolutely neccesary (except for the part where they saved bryce I don't like them)

here ya go, sparky: Before I give an update, I wanted to quickly introduce myself. My name is Brett Nord and I have been with DAZ for about 6 months. Since I have been at DAZ, I have been focused on distribution and setting up retail channels (commercial, education, govt) for DAZs products (my background is 10 years of retail sales with three different software companies). I also have been involved with training retail employees and sales reps on the virtues of Bryce and have really enjoyed getting to know Bryce. Since December, I have moved into Product Marketing for Bryce. Im really excited to focus on Bryce strategy and to have such great resources (thats you) to help assist us take it to the next level. Im amazed at how much brand awareness there is for Bryce and how loyal its users are. I see it every day as I work with educators from around the world that are using Bryce year after year in their curriculum. ok, enough of that...now on to the update on the progress of Bryce 5.5. Both the programmers and the beta testers have been hard at work testing Bryce, tracking down bugs, fixing bugs, etc. We'd like to tell you a bit about what has already been fixed/added in Bryce 5.5. The PC version is extremely stable with a few bugs being tracked down, while the Mac version is fighting us almost every step of the way - but it's losing and we're winning! Now on to the good stuff ... are you ready? Well, so far Bryce 5.5 has implemented the following: 1. The Windows Taskbar is no longer locked while Bryce is active. 2. New OpenGL options have been added: Textured Shaded, Wireframe, Lit Wireframe, Hidden Line, Wire Shaded, Smooth Shaded, and Wire Textured Shaded. 3. Bryce 5.5 scenes, materials, skies, and objects can be opened up in Bryce 5.01. 4. The Turbo Importer has been added as the default OBJ import plugin. 5. Integration with DAZ|Studio - now this doesn't mean that Bryce and DS are one program ... far from it. Instead, a Create DAZ Object button has been added to the Create panel. You click on the button and DS opens up. Load your saved Poser scene or create a scene from scratch. Add figures, clothing, hair, textures, objects, pose the figures, etc. (just don't load dynamic hair or cloth), then close DS and the scene is loaded in Bryce. You'll even get an import status message in Bryce telling you what percentage of the objects have been converted. Just remember that the more items you have in the scene, the longer it takes to import into Bryce (just like it does in Bryce 3, 4, and 5.01). Now say you want to change the pose of one of the figures ... well, click on the DS button, the scene will be loaded back up in DS, change the pose, close DS, and Bryce will be updated. By the way, any Bryce objects, terrains, lights, and sky settings aren't affected by the DS import so if you've set up your lighting already, that won't be affected. 6. Rendering is faster depending on the objects, materials, lights, and render options selected. For example: the first image below is the original scene saved in Bryce 4 format with imported trees and default Bryce materials: - Bryce 4 Render to Screen - 5:47 - Bryce 4 Render to Disk - 5:32 - Bryce 5.01 Render to Screen - 8:03 - Bryce 5.01 Render to Disk - 7:47 - Bryce 5.5 Render to Screen - 3:35 - Bryce 5.5 Render to Disk - 3:16 The second image below shows the same scene modified in Bryce 5.01 with the imported trees replaced with Bryce 5 trees, more detailed textures from Jonathan Allen, and a different sky: - Bryce 5.01 Render to Screen - 33:20 - Bryce 5.01 Render to Disk - 29:58 - Bryce 5.5 Render to Screen - 21:56 - Bryce 5.5 Render to Disk - 19:10 Of course, a scene that takes up a lot of your RAM because of complexity may not show as much of a difference, such as Darlisa's Gothic Cathedral which consists of 744 lattices, 1,310 spheres, 787 tori, 2,727 cylinders, 3,410 cubes, 16 pyramids, 88 cones, and 12 lights with a total file size of 204 MB: - Bryce 5.01 Render to Screen - 1:24:02 - Bryce 5.01 Render to Disk - 1:20:24 - Bryce 5.5 Render to Screen - 1:15:57 - Bryce 5.5 Render to Disk - 1:19:39 Rendering is also more efficient as shown by the third image from a beta tester. The CPU Usage History is for the same scene rendered in 5.01 and 5.5. Notice how the 5.01 graph wanders all over the place (the beginning of the render has already scrolled off the screen) while the 5.5 graph goes up, stays up, then drops when the render is finished. 7. Multi-Threaded, which means it is up to the OS to determine how to distribute thread tasks between multiple CPUs. There are some bugs being worked with these features and some other bugs as well, but overall, the features work well. Again, thank you for your continued support of Bryce. I can assure you that we will work hard at it to assure a strong future. I'll be back with more info soon. Sincerely, Brett Bryce Product Manager DAZ Productions

Eh, Global Illumination? Or shaping up the render engine in order to get pro quality pics like from the freeware Bender?

Thank ya Dracy-poo ;) hmmm... sounds like not too many real usefull improvements yet other then increased renderspeed for scenes that aren't too heavy. Only prob is, most of the scenes with problematic rendertimes are heavy... lol The DS integrations don't mean a thing to me :P I hardly ever use anything poser or daz related. I was hoping maybe we could export bryce models, complete with texturemaps and some decent quality settings for the mesh settings as well as individual texture resolutions. Or maybe, as attileus said, GI. Also Caustics would've been cool and HDRI support.. sounds like Bryce 5.2 rather then 5.5 lol I'm a bit disappointed so far.

I'm very VERY disappointed; we waited 4-5 years for a decent update in order to obtain Max/Ligthwave/Bender/C4D-quality rendering and now they are busy with integrating DAZ-Studio...:-(( Yes, Bryce is alive but it's a zombie in my eyes but ok, maybe in another 5 years it'll grow up to a pro level. :-| Also checked Bender; amazing software for free and stunning rendering quality; why can't Bryce do what a freeware can?

Yes, that's right, render times, ..... But, if we use bryce to make virtual realistic worlds, where is motion vegetation, motion water, particles system, obj sequence or 3ds sequence importing, for me, those are the thing bryce needs just now if the program want to survive beside AWB or Vue. Better render times, well, always welcome, but a real update, a needed update for bryce have to have the thing I say.

You guys can't expect the kind of improvements you've mentioned here for 5.5. Give them a break people. There's still Bryce 6 and 7 and ... You may have waited 4-5 years but DAZ has only had the program a few months. They've had to figure out what the code was doing before anything could be fixed, updated, or added. People have been asking for an easier way to import Poser figures into Bryce and this was a major addition that DAZ could do in the time they had. Don't use it if you don't need it but for those of us who use figures in Bryce a lot ... well I for one am delighted. The render time examples were just from one person's scenes. Someone with a different machine would have different results. Just the second scene alone saw a 30% reduction in render time. That's nothing to sneeze at folks.

Folks... Be happy.... Bryce will move on...It does take time to FIX what others might have broken...Got Cash...?Donations..I will give...Will YOU...! Either way you look at it I am in for the long Haul Because DAZ at Least got ahold of it and is doing something to a Program THAT WAS DEAD for all intents and Purposes...Daz could have gone out and INVESTED their Money into another Program and where would BRYCE be then... It takes time and Money to Develope what we need... The DS and Bryce intergration,The way I see it is an EASY way to get OUTSIDE 3D models into Bryce with ALL textures intact ready to Render...This means other TREES,Ships,Buildings,ANIMALS...And Yes Poser folks.... Poll time...HOW MANY OF YOU...? Have pulled your hair out because you couldnt get a Model into Bryce with the texture map looking RIGHT....? Have screamed and Moaned because your Poser models look like Crap in Bryce do to the Transmaps all screwed up or the Model needs smoothing and Bryce just takes years to smooth,Well as to what I am understanding that when you use DS you wont have to Smooth your Models and the Textures are all where you need them to be so Bryce finds them automatically... How about this...You want to make imported grass field to sway in the wind or Imported tree's to bend in the wind...Well with Poser,DS and Bryce you now can do total animations inside of Bryce with everything (Frame by Frame) I personally see this as a VERY GOOD thing for us Bryce users... And as LOng as DAZ gets rid of most of the BUGS left over from OTHERS then I will be very happy...

Well, that's all very nice, but except for the DS integration option this is no more then a bug-fix patch with some added render-engine tweaks. And yes, there are 30% speed increases or more on these simple scenes, but really, I don't give a sh*t if my 5 minute scene renders in 3 minutes.. But as we can clearly see, as scene complexity builds the speed increase get a lot less, and rapidly drops to no more then 1 or 2%. I would like my 5-day-renders to become 1-day-renders, not 4-days-and-23-hour-renders. And don't say that's imposible 'cause there's so many other renderengines out there proofing it is possible. Poll answer: "Have pulled your hair out because you couldnt get a Model into Bryce with the texture map looking RIGHT....?" I honestly never have done that. "Have screamed and Moaned because your Poser models look like Crap in Bryce do to the Transmaps all screwed up or the Model needs smoothing and Bryce just takes years to smooth,Well as to what I am understanding that when you use DS you wont have to Smooth your Models and the Textures are all where you need them to be so Bryce finds them automatically..." Well, that's some nice poserization yeah, cool for poser users, but since I do not use it (and I bet I'm not the only one who doesn't?) it's just stuff I'll never use but still pay for. Now maybe if they added some other things, like I mentioned in my last post I would mind less, but currently this functionality represents half of the added features, and thus half of the price. "How about this...You want to make imported grass field to sway in the wind or Imported tree's to bend in the wind...Well with Poser,DS and Bryce you now can do total animations inside of Bryce with everything (Frame by Frame)" Nice but then I need to buy Poser and DS.. Bottom line, I'm not paying more then 50 bucks on this upgrade the way it looks now.

Ray, you don't need to buy DS. It's free. It has the same basic abilities like Poser. Not all of them, but the posing it does have. I have to admit I was also a bit disappointed what Bryce 5.5 will do now. But then I thought better of it. 5.5 will be an incremental upgrade. So we should accept it as such. Yeah, some incremental upgrades are more equal than others, but still, an incremental upgrade is an incremental upgrade. Bug fixes, minor things. Occasionally major things. DS integration is clearly a major thing. Another major thing is the multithreading. Yeah, 3D Studio Max supports multithreading since version 2, but look how much it costs. And look what it could do with multithreading: "Max2 can be searching the drawing database, updating the video display, performing rendering calculations, and doing many other simultaneous operations, each of which can be "threaded," or assigned, to two or more CPUs under Windows NT 4.0." I'll have to ask whether the multithreading will support the Hyperthreading processors, too, but it's clearly a progress. Finally, I think we went slightly overboard with the wishlist. At least for one incremental upgrade. OTOH, version 6 should clearly have many more things that we wish for. In the same vein, you (or I for that matter) don't need to use Bryce 5.5 at all. We can wait for 6.

The things I said before is for Bryce 6, I know 5.5 is only the first Daz Bryce. I love bryce but I like to see those things in version 6. Think that bryce survive if it can be competitive with vue or AWB, so bryce can take more new users, not only old users updates.

hmmm... okay, it is incremental.. but, they should've named it a 5.1 or 5.2 then or something, I mean look at the .5 incremental upgrades of most other packages!

yes, Rayraz , that's ok

guess I'll be saving my pennies for version 6, which should better have significant new features, or I'll be switching to one of them pricy thingy's

Here's a twist for you then Ray, I wish my pricey thing (C4D) has bryce's terrain system in it! (grin)

Well, actually NONE of this news should be a surprise to most of us. When DAZ FIRST announced what they would be doing with Bryce 5.5, well...it was as they say now; *Increased rendering speeds *Bryce/Studio Integration *Updated OpenGl *Turbo Importer and backwards compatibility were planned, but not officially reported until now. And, like I have said...(many times before)...Bryce 5.5 might not have a hold on everyone, some might not want to upgrade until 6.0 But, I gotta tell you when my 60 minute render only takes 30-40 minutes, that in itself is a welcome update. (Much less cutting my 4-8 hour renders down 30%-50%) Yet, I side with a lot of you, it was something like 6 months after B5.0 came out before I upgraded from 4.0, I was like, "why do I need meta-balls"?! (Now you can have my Bryce 5.0 when you pry it from my dead hands, you damn dirty ape) AS

Btw, as DAZ/Bryan B. had stated (at some point in their forum), Bryce 6.0 will hopefully take increased rendering speeds a little bit further even, with using your video cards gpu to help out with the rendering. DAZ is repotedly talking with NVIDIA. AS

As a non poser user im quite happy with just the bits and pieces added to 5.5. The opengl usage will be welcome even do we cant render with it mayorly. Any speeds upgrades will be welcome, and yes even 2 minutes faster will hopefully become 20 minutes, 2 hours and so on. Again all hats to DAZ for not chuking the program in the bin and kept it alive. :> This update will just the tester for Bryce6 and all other goodies that will be added. Maybe GPU usage for renders, GI, HRDI. I wouldnt mind somebody adding a "automatic rendering set up" depending on a final output time. It would be nice to tell the cpu that i only have 20 hrs to render and let bryce decide on the best settings to achive that. (hardware dependant ) Bryce7 i guess. Good for deadlines and better than waiting for 20hrs then changing something AND having to render again. Thanks Daz anyway!

Attached Link: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=9110

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=9110 This is thread where Dan Farr was talking about using the GPU for rendering in Daz Studio - now if they could shoehorn that into bryce sometime down the track :)))))) At some point, I also thought he talked about some (hardware using probably) rendering improvements they want to make for (in the) future versions of bryce that should speed things up "an order of magnitude", but I can't find that thread over there now. It was in a thread where he was talking about bryce and how the opengl preview they're putting in was making scene construction so much faster and more fun cos you could see how things were progressing without needing a full test render if anyone can remember it. I'm pretty sure it was a thread about bryce and not Daz Studio where he said this last bit (don't think my brain is sunfried enough to have been imagining this ... but who knows).

Well... Think about it...How many times do you render a scene just to see what it looks like...?I render each scene maybe 20-50 times before I am done...With OpenGL you can cut that down to maybe 5-10 at the most because I want ot tweak the final Textures...That in itself with the faster render times is worth the Minor Upgrade...

Oh yeah - thats the huge advantage I see with this opengl thing they are putting in - less annoying time consuming test renders. That's what I meant by the workflow improvements in my first post in the thread. Trust me, I wasn't complaining... just wish I could find that thread again lol.

"Using the GPU for rendering in Bryce", yeah as I understand it, that is one of DAZ's items on their own wishlist for Bryce 6.0, I to had seen thhis in a DAZ Forum thraed, and discussed it with DAZ at Siggraph. OpenGL - Exactly, the biggest use of this is cutting down on test renderings done while constructing a scene! It might take a little getting used to, but I'm looking forward to that vs. all the 3 pass renders and plop rendering I do while building a scene. Not that the OpenGL will completely replace that, but it will be a great tool to help quicken my workflow. AS

Here's a twist for you then Ray, I wish my pricey thing (C4D) has bryce's terrain system in it! (grin) lol, the newest version almost does! it's got sub-poly displacement making it possible for high-quality terrains created from DEM's just like we'd do in bryce, only then, with a one poligon polycount :)

"Using the GPU for rendering in Bryce" So my... Nvidia FX5600 256mb Video card would really rock then huh....?

as would my Radeon 9800PRO 128mb :) It's almost half as fast as my dad's budget vid-card! lol But then again, my dad tuned his up to and almost top of the list model.

There goes my old machine with the TNT2!!!!!

OpenGL is not the final all you need answer though. You will still want plop render, OGL doen't handle GI, Caustics, reflections or transparencies (sharp or blurry) easily, It helps with composition/modelling though. I have subpoly displacement and I like it! But the ability to create and manipulate terrains and tile them a la Bryce is a sweet thing.

"There goes my old machine with the TNT2!!!!!" I might still have my dad's old voodoo banshee for you? :P it's got 3DFX technology! WOOT! LOL I wonder if renders come with an added 3dfx-splash if I'd render with that card :P lol I agree the bryce terrain editor is probably still ahead of c4d on the tiling and manilupating ease :) on the other hand, Mojoworld makes Bryce look old in that aspect :P (too bad it won't render on my pc anymore 'cause it's being too hard on my hardware and presumably causes a tiny little hardware error which causes the render to crash where any other program would continue running...) And the terrain editor isn't new in Bryce 5.5 ;) lol Bryce fanatic or not, I would love to try my hands on C4D or any other package some time :)

What we need to be able to do is...export a 16-bit grayscale .tif outta Bryce and into C4D, to be used as terrain displacements. Well...you could do that now, but you'd have to export the terrain(s) out of Bryce as .pgm's, and use bikermouses utility to change the .pgm into the said 16-bit grayscale .tif, for use in a program that uses displacement maps. AgentSmith

Sub poly displacement (or even regular displacement)is very sweet, but it is a rendertime function. Very hard to interact with when setting up a scene. Test and plop render time. So far I have found the best way for hero terrains is to export from bryce at a big scale and use a low level texture driven spd in C4D (how I did the terrains in "Star")

sounds logical :) low-res terrain with high-res spd

It works (grin). Makes it a lot easier on the graqphics card OpGL while creating the scene but you gotta have the RAM when it comes to rendertime though. Thinking about doubling up to 2 Gb.

Message edited on: 01/14/2005 21:10

2 gb?? wow, I'm at 512mb myself :P