I want to create a time lapse from supposed past - when the earth was dry, like a cracked riverbed - to the future, today. I have a REAL picture of a road with some trees on it, I want to make a past picture that will match it when I put the two together with a dissolve between them. I hope this makes sense. Does bryce have the ability to use backgrounds so I can try and make the models and images look similar? Thanks

depends on what you have in mind. Photorealism is possible, but you're going to severaly tax your PC or Mac..;)
Sounds like you could do 2 renders, then use another program to go between them (there's bunches on Nonags.com, Shareware.com, Ulead, Sourceforge, the list is endless.;)

I've been using Pinnacle Studio video editing software lately. It would be an easy thing to load up a still and then use a FADE transition to move into a second still....Transitions can be just about any length time-wise and you could output as an avi...even adding music to the result! I think Pinnacle Studio can be downloaded as a demo, but you'd need to check that.

I don't care about the transition, that is a piece of cake, I just want to know if I can USE a background in BRYCE (see it while I am modeling). And how good is Bryce at matching scenes - modeled and real picture for the background?

If I understand your question correctly, I'm not sure that it's a question of how good Bryce is (or Vue, or Terragen, or MojoWorld, or anything) but how good is the artist using Bryce (or Vue, etc) in matching a photo...

put the pic on a 2d plane.go from there.

Here's how I would go about it. Print out the picture you're using as reference. Tape it to your cpu tower or what ever so you can A B it with what you're creating in Bryce on screen. Try to get the size of the printout to match the size of the Bryce working area as possible. You can use a ruler then to check relative lengths on screen with your reference. This should help you to get a fairly good fit when you make your transitional fade between the two.

i agree with guslaw and wildman2. a 2d plane mapped with your image then placed strategically behind your bryce scene and aligned to it will give you the effect your looking for. matching the picture will be the toughest part and is more a test of the user than the program. depending on allot of things like color saturation, contrast and clarity (grainyness/pixelation) - it will all have some affect on how the bryce portions match the photography portions of the image.