I pretty much always avoided using lights. I should have been doing this experiment when I 1st got my hands on Bryce 4 in 1998, but I was too busy arranging spheres over reflective water, LOL!!!

Seriously, its because of render times. Thats it in a nutshell, and its really sad that my imagery and work suffers due to my impatience. To defend myself however, Im sure you guys understand how much longer a render w/ lights will take (dare I say lights AND shadows :P), and when trying to get large format output (my largest size is 40x30 now, but what if I wanted to produce larger prints?!?) it just takes too damned long. Imagine a GI set up, and trying to get a 40x30 image using GI or IBL... I consider myself patient enough, Ive let a few renders take 3+ weeks to render... Ive done benchmarks, and while I may not have a super powerhouse, my PC is "ok"...

I took a serious dive into lighting as its such a crucial component to art, because for far too long Ive neglected it. My gallery now is full of lighting experiments, when it should be full of pipes coming out of peoples asses :P

Now, Im finding that I like to use them, but cannot wait the required time for large output renders. That last experiment took 5 plus days to render... Only 1200x900. I tried some of the newer stuff Ive done, and after days, the render not even the double digits... Theres no way in hell my pc can run that long. PC's need to power down every now and then, and refresh themselves... Utility bill up the wazoo, lol, I think not :P

I even considered linking several pc's together to make use of the Bryce Lightning feature, but I dont think you can render to disk (and increase size and resolution) in order to make printable renders. I used to think the amount of memory in your system would help boost render times, nope... A better video card, not gonna happen. The PC itself will make a dramatic difference (cpu being used rather), but this (an AMD Sempron 2400 :P) is what I got, so thats that, LOL!!!

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..