great looking render Agent, i dont think anyone of us is going  to use "quality" anytime soon....

;)

Oh, quality up to 15-20 is quite bearable. But no real advantage to it.

Yup, I haven't used anything higher than 25. It nicely smooths out the quality of the shadows, but until I actually need great looking shadows.......

Seems like you´re having a ball with 6.0 AS

ok sooooo when was bryce 6 released and why do i not know about it?? ARGH!!! I've been consumed by ignorance! eek! get it off me! get it off me!! eeeewwwwwwyy icky ignorance!

DAZ is playing Santa, leaving presents when you're not looking.

That billiard ball looks great.. I have looked for a tutorial on making billiard balls.. but I cant fnd a link.. I am brand new to bryce and 3d ( yesterday ) .. and would love to start with something that I love.. ( billiards) .. I spend more time looking at all of the cool images here then I do trying to figure out Bryce..

The ball is just a normal Bryce sphere. Now, the image texture for the ball, I did make that myself in Photoshop.

But, what can be done though....there is a download that you can get, and although it is for 3DSMax & the Vray renderer...the zip contains basic image textures for an entire set of poolballs.

The only thing I did different when making my own image texture is I added a slight yellow to the white areas, some subtle overall "dirt", which was also used as a seperate bump map. (I usually like things to look older/used/dirty/rusty as it can lend some visual realism.

The download is on this page, look for the link called "Rendering pool balls Link";
http://cgindia.blogspot.com/2006/05/vray-tutorial-rendering-pool-balls.html

When you apply the image texture to the sphere, just leave it at the default wrapping method, which is "parametric".

Above is a screenshot of the camera settings, and the Freebie HDRI I used is called "Dock" and is available here;
http://www.hdrimaps.com/downloads.html

Inside the zip download, you will use the "Dock-Sphere-FREE.hdr" image to load into Bryce, and the HDRI settings I used are;

Quality = 0
Intensity = 50
HDRI Effect = 55

The sphere was in right in the middle of the scene, I tilted it a little here and there to show off the image texture a bit.

That's it.  :o)

AS - howdya get that cool reflective black floor in wireframe?

Ok, I feel like an idiot for not thinking of that... I'll have to have a look later.

It's kinda hard to build a scene with a black background, though. So, I switch between black and white.