the main difference between multi-pass in Bryce and render layers in other programs is that in Bryce you have to set up several scenes to do so, or at least make changes to one scene. imagine if Bryce had "layers" just like Photoshop! well, the big-dogs all do that... but they are two separate things. render-layers and scene layers in Maya, for example, are totally different, giving you a vast amount of flexibility which is of course the name of the game with that proggy. but yeah, my main point was this : sometimes it IS faster to render out different layers! I see all kinds of people wasting their time with Bryce's internal DOF settings, for example, which are garbage. multiply your render times?!?! WHAT?!?! just render a distance mask, and do the blur in postwork. Save yourself hours and hours of waiting for low-quality results anyway... ICM, good workaround for the specularity render! an interesting approach, thanks for the tip...