From the Bryce 5.5 Site: "Add wildlife, people, props and more to your Bryce scenes, in addition to the terrains, waters, skies, rocks, clouds, fog, vegetation, and architecture for which Bryce has long been the standard." "Bryce 5.5: Powerful 3D Landscaping and Animation" Plus the box has a giant, sweeping landscape on it...I'd say the focus is still on landscapes (and other solid bodies). Maybe the Daz|Studio plugin will finally grant us the ability to have dynamically-updated deforming meshes (changes in Studio would be reflected in Bryce). I know such a Poser scene plugin exists for another renderer (LW perhaps?) which allows you to import even animated Poser files, but something similar for Bryce would definitely be a welcome addition.