grrrrr...accidentally hit Ctrl+Q while reaching for the copy-and-paste...can we say "POOF! No more eloquently worded post."? Oh, well...here goes...again. No offense taken. I'd have to agree that Bryce has rather limiting features. It does not do accurate caustics, has no support for HDRI (or any GI format), does not properly handle bounced light, etc., etc.; the list is pretty long (at least my list of gripes is). However, Bryce does some things remarkably well. Bryce has very nice procedural texture engine (gotta love that DTE), it handles landscapes wth great aplomb (gotta love that interactive terrain editor), almost any of the aforementioned effects (caustics, radiosty, etc.) can be faked with a bit of elbow grease and finesse, and it's got a pretty intuitive interface (and thus a prety shallow leraning curve). For serious work, you'll want to stick with the "big boys" (LW, XSI, Maya, Houdini, MAX, etc.); but they packages also carry "big boy prices" and have "big boy learning curves". Bryce is a pretty decent package for the price (comapre it to Flamingo and Bongo, for instance). I think that Bryce is very useful, particularly in one respect. It is an easy "quick renderer". Scene setup is fast and rendering is not-too-pokey (not blisteringly fast either...but not bad). It's got a pretty short training period; almost anyone can produce fairly good images after a bit of "fiddling around" (we've all made our "glass-balls-floating-on-endless-water images"...anyone who says otherwise is a liar), and it's got an okay animation engine once you learn the quirks and are willing to put some time and effort into manually keyframing/pathing your objects. All-in-all, I think Bryce does what it claims (user-friendly rendering), and a bit more (animation and "faked effects"). It may not have the best customer service (but I understnad they're being "acquired" again?...maybe it will clear up after the takeover). There are admittedly some shortcomings (some of which are workaround-able). Some features are poor (or completely lacking), but what app is perfect? Everyone wants something changed about their favorite program, why should Bryce be any different? It's not the best package out there, but it's certainly not the worst; and the price doesn't hurt either.