On my last image ("Lost Soul") I remarked that I couldn't believe what DAZ had done with Bryce 5.5--you get almost no new features and if you don't have that other product of theirs, only Bryce5 like I do it's $70 for almost nothing. lordstormdragon suggested that this is a better topic for the forums, so here I am. =) I would say no. Sure it's a bit faster, I would imagine that maybe they even got it back down to Bryce4's render speeds. And yes, I hear that they improved the importing capabilities quite a bit. But $70? FOR AN UPGRADE? They should price the upgrade at something more like 10 or 15 and sell the entire package with no upgrade for 100. This seems very fair to me considering the near absence of new features.

Let me find the links to the other 7 threads that have this subject header. I'm serious, hold on....I'll be right back...

Sorry, I was wrong about there being 7 threads.

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Enjoy all the reading, lol.

AS

Hahahahahahahaa... Since you asked...And only since you asked...NO if you had to ask... For me and at least a couple of hundred others...YES

Message edited on: 05/02/2005 00:58

i dont mind paying for an extra 500 textures, faster render speeds, more excellent models, and dAZ integration. I paid the full $99 which in is LESS than what i pay to get to work every month. No complaints from this end! ;>

Yeah...I remember paying about that ($89 usd) every month years ago when I use to take a bus to work. It was a long ride. AS

I always took the short bus. drac

Rofl...well, so did I at one time. (I was a teachers asst. for handicapped children)

Well, I haven't installed it yet, but from what I keep hearing in various places, it may well turn out to be worth it. For instance, I just heard that the pov no longer jumps back when you're doing a big render, plus you can have just one object rendered and keep it that way while you work with other parts of the image in wireframe... I think I've got that right... haven't I? Is it one or more objects rendered? Or is it just the one? And there are other little things I hear, add them all together and if true it could well mean it's definitely worth it - I'll let you know once I have it installed later today. Fran

"pov no longer jumps back" I heard someone else say that, what does that mean?

Sometimes the main pov moved after you'd been somewhere else, like RV or LV and back to CameraV...I think

Message edited on: 05/02/2005 07:08

Ah...that's why. I have never used those. but, good to know, lol! AS

Oh, I didn't think it meant that, I thought it meant the view in the main window; when you have a large image (rendering it ready for posting) and you try reducing the image in the view so that you can see it all, when you press "Resume Render" it jumps back to big again so you can only see a small portion of the sky - I thought it meant that B5.5 didn't do that, the view stayed where you put it. Doesn't it?

lol well I should have known. Thanks, but I still don't think it's worth it (starving college student budget and all that). As for the pov thing, I noticed when I was using Bryce for video game graphics that if you changed the aspect ratio of the window, the pov would zoom out. This was not caused by the window changing size, for instance the top and bottom of the pic moving, and so you can see more of the image there; the pov actually zoomed out. This was especially noticeable when you went from default to a very small square (say 50x50 pixels--which I did all the time for vg's). Cheers

don't forget the 5.5 thread in the Poser forum; apparently they're miffed because (as I understand it), it automatically loads Daz Studio, and there's problems, and Daz advises you to unload Poser and use Daz instead (if I got that right..;)

Hahahahahaaaaa.... Bummmer...

Hahahahahaaaaa.... Bummmer...

don't forget the 5.5 thread in the Poser forum; apparently they're miffed because (as I understand it), it automatically loads Daz Studio, and there's problems, and Daz advises you to unload Poser and use Daz instead (if I got that right..;) As i understand it was an individual (perhaps a brokered artist, thus causing confusion) expressing their personal opinion (not DAZ's) that D|S was better and that you should us it, not poser.

It was MallenLane and he's title is DAZstaff. It did seem more of an opinion but it does seemed shared by several dazstaff/mod on the boards.

There are NO problems with having Poser and Bryce 5.5 with Studio on your computer at all. I have Poser 4, Poser 4 w/pro Pack and Poser 5 on my PC. I have NEVER had any "problems", and I have had Studio on my PC for the last year. AgentSmith

Well, I hate to contradict the DAZ staff ;), but, No, D|S is not better than Poser. It has quite a few glaring problems - with poses, parenting, props, animation, textures - all of which would need to be addressed prior to 1.0 and it being better than Poser. Now that Poser (6) has OpenGL support, they cannot claim that as a unique feature over Poser. Now, for the On-topic part of my post: Well, I have Bryce 5.0 (not the bundle which reduces the overal upgrade cost to $19.95) and am a PC member. I'm still debating on whether it is worth the cost to upgrade or just stick to Poser, Shade, C4D, Vue5I, etc. (I have too much software!) :) Is it really worth $49.95 (and then whatever more that'll be when 6.0 arrives)?

Exactly! I don't think it is. And as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong) but it actually ends up being $70 not $50. Personally I'm waiting for Bryce6, but I read on the forums on DAZ that Bryce6 isn't going to have many major improvements either (yet another reason save my money and wait). Though maybe they were really talking about 5.5, having changed the title after the forum was started? I dunno, but I think that DAZ needs to reduce the prices of their upgrades in the Bryce area if they are going to offer so few real improvements.

Just to deflate AS a tinge, I have the following installed: Poser 4 Poser 4 ProPack Poser 5 Poser 6 Shade 7 Std Bryce 5.0 DAZ|Studio C4D CE6 C4D 7.3 XL C4D 8.012 XL C4D 8.207 XL C4D 8.503 XL w/BP2 C4D 9.1 XL w/BP2 Vue 4 d'Esprit Vue 4 Pro Vue 5 Infinite UVMapper Pro 2.0 UVMapper Pro 3.1 (and a couple of other non-3D apps) ;0) No conflicts between any of them. All of those C4D's are for plugin development and customer support in that respect.

I'm not doing Poser 6 yet. No 16-bit displacement support. I thought that would be a slam dunk...apprently not.

"but I read on the forums on DAZ that Bryce6 isn't going to have many major improvements either"

Please post links. Trying to locate a He said/she said on another site, in a another forum makes gray hairs shoot forth from my head.

Thanks.

AS

Message edited on: 05/02/2005 16:48

Attached Link: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=5296&highlight=bryce6

Sorry. I didn't expect anyone to want to check up after it, silly me =) If you look anything like your namesake AS then a few grey hairs shouldn't trouble you lol =P This topic is on suggestions for Bryce6. I thought I posted something on there, but I don't see it now. Maybe it's just taking a while to get posted, or on another page, or something. The part I was refering to is there, however, in the very first post (the one that introduces the topic). It sounds like they're talking about Bryce5.5, hope they are it would be a real bummer if DAZ decided to release an expensive (but ultimately not terribly useful--yes I know people disagree with me on that, and that's fine, but I still maintain that they have uncharacteristically overpriced this new "version") new version of Bryce, and then do exactly the same thing over again. Bryce6 should have some MAJOR improvements over Bryce5 or 5.5 in my opinion. Sorry again

Never mind, found myself in there, under the name "Oleth Saelu". I'm page 41 lol. Seems this is a popular subject. I wonder why? <--essence of sarcasm Cheers

didn't mean to stir up that much dust..;) Agent smith was counting threads, and I thought it was a doozy. I also had my BS meter pegged in the red about this..tongue firmly in cheek.

The way I see it, if you want a quick way to use Poser stuff in Bryce 5.5 use D/Studio. If you want precision in your characters maybe like REMO use Poser. It's just that simple. For years I've seen thread after thread of peps complaining about importing Poser characters into Bryce. Now that DAZ has made it easy peps are complaining....sigh You may not like D/studio but nobody is forcing you to use it. And it doesn't conflict with Poser.

Hold it. I never said I didn't like DAZ studio, nor did I say that I didn't like Bryce5.5 I just don't like the pricing for the upgrade, that's all. They don't provide a very large number of improvements, and they are asking very nearly the entire retail price. Admittedly this is not much, but honestly, they seem to be giving even less. My point is that it's not worth it to buy Bryce5.5 when all of the improvements will (presumably) be in Bryce6, and Bryce6 will have still MORE improvements. Funny thing, I've never had any trouble importing figures from Poser. Both Bryce4 and 5 have automatically imported the models correctly and applied the textures properly, only thing I had to do was point it to the cleverly hidden default textures. The only thing I can't do is import dynamic hair, and I personally dislike Poser5's dynamic hair, finding it much much easier to just draw my own (and then I can use Bryce's better renderer!). And you can get DAZ|Studio for free right now, which lets you import dynamic hair anyway. So essentially you are paying $79 for lots of new models and mats. After DAZ's promotion you won't even get those, as I understand it. Peace shinyary

shinyary2, OH, okay...yeah, I know that thread. Yes, I DO believe that is either a mistake, or it was a loose assumption that the next version of Bryce would 6.0 when it turned out to be 5.5, actually. That first post is dated June 2004, and it was in August 2004 when I met the DAZ Staff and Corporate at Siggraph, and that we had discussed what was to come in 5.5, and what they wanted in 6.0, which is a LOT more than what is currently in the 5.5 version. ;o) AS

Well i just hope they don't have the same people that worked on Bryce 5.5 working on Bryce 6.. CD (God help Brycers if they do)

Lol, I think it could even be a mix of everybody (DAZ, farmed out programmers, and possibly/hopefully other known software companies) They (regular staff & corporate) honestly looked and sounded excited at the prospect of Bryce 6 and the things they themselves were hoping for it. They really come off as a group of artistically minded group, that just happened to work at a company. Like most Bryce users/fans my hope and encouragemnet is for DAZ to iron out and make 5.5 all it really is, and for a great 6.0 Time will tell. ;o) AgentSmith

Well said. Bryce6 could have a lot of potential, particularly if they provide support for direct vertex and face manipulation (i.e. a better modeler) along with their current boolean operations and metaballs. This would tend to end up making Bryce6 a conglomerate of several other programs. Also if they had a dynamics system attached for animation. Bryce's current animating capabilities are quite limited IMO. Although I have seen some amazing things done with it, you just can't beat equations! =) Cheers

BTW, did they say anything about potential prices? DAZ usually offers good deals on things (which is one of the reasons why I have issues with the pricing of 5.5), but their other software that they have actually made themselves is priced significantly higher than Bryce.

Mimic pro 3.1; (Studio/Poser $100 & $200, or Lightwave $100 & $300) It is quite the complex/specialty software, there aren't too many packages out there, that aids in the animation of character speech. The other couple that I can think of; Ventriloquist $400 Voice-O-Matic $300 Of course, those are for 3DSMax but just trying to give some comparisons off the top of my head. AS

Potential price on Bryce 6? They haven't ever said, and I don't know.

But, purely, PURELY as a GUESS...since they would stay competitive, I would say, look to the prices of VUE products.

Vue 5 $250
Vue 5 Pro Studio $400

It will ALL really depend on how much can be/will be packed into Bryce 6.0

Again, just a guess.

AS

Message edited on: 05/03/2005 23:57

Hmm well thanks, that makes sense. Suddenly I don't know whether to hope that they will stuff a LOT of new features into Bryce6 (and thus raise the price), or leave it pretty much the same as they did with 5.5 and just improve a few existing features (and thus leave the price alone). Wouldn't it be nice if they stuffed a TON of new improvements into Bryce6, but somehow left the price the same? =) Wonder if something like that will ever happen in my lifetime lol. Thanks AS.

THAT would be the event of my Bryce life, lol. AS