it doesn't appear to me that these are really good comparisons, regardless of which one might prefer. The texture sizes are different on the ground, and there appears to be a front light source showing specular reflection on the Carrara scene, or am I wrong?

Both renderings are decent in their own way, it shows that Carrara is a good renderer, and as you noted a very fast one too, and it also  shows that Bryce is not a bad alternative either, when it comes to rendering with global illumination from a HDRI. But there is sooooo much more to it before doing a comparison of C vs B.

you might want to have the same spaceship rendered standing on a plain grey (50%)  or white ground, no texture on the ground, and making sure there's no lights in the scene, and no ambient component in the rendering or scene, and leave it all only to the GI lighting, with  and another without indirect lighting.  Try one at lowest/fastest parameter settings, and another at highest levels (for nuymber of rays, depth of rays reflections, anti-aliasing and shadow quality etc...

Also.. in the Bryce... you need to smooth the mesh on the ship...

interesting renders...     are you re doing it for the lighting as well?......nice renders ..

Carracas seems to have special quality to it... but.. Bryce 6 is fallowing right there on its own...

I like that angular look to the Bryce rendered version. Maybe a low angle smooth to round out the round parts but leave the edges intact.

Carrara's looks to have better lighting, Bryce's looks to be more accurate. Abiout what I'd expect from a side by side.

What quality level did you use for the Bryce HDRI?

EDIT - were the windows on the Bryce render left opaque on purpose?

I think the Carrara version looks much better in every way. Lighting and the model's appearance just make the overall rendering much better IMHO.

Stan

Smooth out the model and then see....

Hmm, the Carrara version also seems to have a yellow lighting cast to the whole render. The color on the Bryce is much more to the blue side. You see it especially in the grey colored areas or the midtones.

sphere with 100% reflection, same hdri, one pixel render for antialiasing in carrara and default aa settings for bryce. bryce takes 8m14s. carrara does it in under 30 seconds. end of story.

Rendertimes for certain things are vastly improved though,.............I've been using madmax's Zenith Studio Quality light rig,(which in B5 had very prohibitive rendertimes), and it rendered them with comparitive lighting speed,...........B5 was 3 hours and 22mins, for a very simple scene, B6 is 18 minutes ! And it has a better look to it also. And, IMO, the skylab clouds are vastly improved !  I will try to post some images in the next day or so. I'm having a fair amount of crashes though,.................very annoying to have to save every minute or so. The bug reporting app is crashing also ! As far as the rendertimes,..........I'm enjoying the multi-threading abilities, both processors and all 4 cores are pegged at 100%,.......WOOHOO !!!!!!!

I definately like the coloring from the B6 render, especially on the model. However, I like Carrara's ground better.

IMHO; The Carrara's lighting is too harsh upon the model, almost as if it a bit of a spotlight. I would prefer the more overall diffused day lighting of the Bryce render.

But, that's not even a critique, just personal preference.

depends a lot on the settings, i guess. but yeah, it is a question of taste :)

Quote - oh for crying out loud...

sphere with 100% reflection, same hdri, one pixel render for antialiasing in carrara and default aa settings for bryce. bryce takes 8m14s. carrara does it in under 30 seconds. end of story.

WOW! look at the range in that Bryce pic! Now that's HDR.
You can get something close to that with Carrara. I've found that by checking 'Full Raytracing', 'Full indirect Lighting', 'Light passes through transparencies', and enabling some low percentage caustics, you can get sort of close to Bryce with Carrara.  You'll have to fake specular transmissions, since Carrara won't calculate those. Carrara's non distributive raytracer is, of course, never going to be able to equal Bryce, but it can get close. Don't expect 30 second render times though.

I thought the Carrara pic's look alot more real world, and Bryce alot like a high end "future" video game. Im not bashing Bryce in the least. For price to quality ratio, I haven't found better than Bryce. But you can't compare apples to oranges either.

ummm

the mapping of the hdri is different between the two.

different coordinates, different effects for the lighting and of course what is reflected will also change.

click the image and look at the placement of the image sky in the reflections of both spheres.

:)

but, bothhave their strongpoints.

BT

I guess I have to say that I've just found out that C5Pro actually has distributed raytracing.
So, for a mere $299 upgrade fee, I could get my $249 program to have the same quality as $6 Bryce! What a bargain!

Ya BT....

Bryce is also lighter on the shadows Ambience by Default too...

I like apples and I also like oranges,..............I also like (wait for it) Cinema4D. I think C4D has both Bryce and Carara beat hands down. However (having now offended as many people as I possibly can), as I am still a newb as far as C4D goes,  Bryce 6 has something C4D does not, familarairity (spelling), I am sort of used to working in Bryce, so as far as Bryce 6 (in spite of repeated crashes), I am overall quite pleased with it (multi-threading support, woohoo ! Good multi-threading support, WOOHOO !!!), and at $6, worth it at 10 times the price ! I will have some images in a day or so. As I have stated previously, the skylab is better(clouds and atmospheres are much improved), the light lab is markedly better, parametric textures render and map slightly better and so on. Overall,. all things considered, I say BRAVO to the folks over at DAZ ! A job well done. You have taken an app that had languished for years in 3D limbo and brought it back into the light ! I see a hopeful, bright future. With one important caveat,......fix the freakin bugs (and they a numerous,.....there are some workarounds though),..........please don't make me wait until January or later for a lousy point upgrade to fix the problems.  I found Bryce 5 to be a virtually crashproof app, so all the crashes are a bit vexing. Anyhow,..........that's my opinion,.........not that anyone actually asked for it.

Quote - I like apples and I also like oranges,..............I also like (wait for it) Cinema4D. I think C4D has both Bryce and Carara beat hands down...

Does that mean C4D is a banana? or a pineapple.

Depends on where it is put...

Ouch, lol. (I'll stick to grapes...or anything smaller, thank you)

I don't have C4D, but I love it. Love what I see in the galleries, love how I interacted with it (at siggraph) If I were to go buy another 3D program right now, for the money vs. abilities, it would be C4D.

But, right now I have Carrara, Hexagon, and ZBrush. My learning plate is full.

Don't mention C4d, last thing I ned is another 3d program. I still have to finish learnign Lightwave and carrara (in addition to Bryce, Vue, poser and 3dsmax)...

Anim8tor,tSpace,Maya,Blender,wings3D,And te other 25 ones I didnt mention like XSI,Houdini..

what a world we live in...

I just have Carrara, Bryce, Wings3D, Blender, D|S, & Poser5. I was looking at C4D demo. That looks to be the next app if I get something else, unless it might be ZBrush.

my opinion, i like both images and both are what i would expect from either program. remembering carrara is a bit more of a top end program than bryce is, i think bryce did well to even come close in both tests.

Just the opinion of a wayward bryce user who is coming home.

CD

Since were mentioning apples and oranges, no one ever speaks of Shade 8. The standard version is $199us and price breaks for Poser users etc...AND it has native 64bit OS support for free. No other package on the market has that, at that price, with the features. XSI/C4D/Maya/LW/Vue etc... you have to buy the higher end app to get 64bit. Anyways, Shade 8 looks just as good as Carrara or any app I've seen at that price range. Much better/faster renders than Bryce. But Bryce is a great Terrain making app, and it will compliment any big app out there. I use it alot for my main apps. Bryce is a work flow for me for a long time to come. I think its about what you pay for that matters. Bryce=great for the money.

edit:btw, if I had the $$$ I would go with C4D as well, I didn't like Carrara's interface. To each his own, I guess.  Can't beat Bryces ease/simplicity though.

I had Shade 8 Pro, but I just couldn't get into it. I recently sold it (but I still have shade 7 designer LE which I use to convert shade models for use in other apps.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to go or sound OT with Carrara/Shade 8 or any other app, just babbleing I guess(late night here), lol,... was just showing that Bryce can be integrated into the workflow of any big/small app out there, no matter how much better looking any HDRI renders are. I also believe that the OP just wanted to show a compare with HDRI, and not say which app was better. Unfortunately, Bryces older code is no match for Carrara, and my apples to oranges statement meant; compare the HDRI, not the 3D apps. Hope I said right...all in fun.