Hi All, I've just purchase Bryce and have a couple of Noobie questions. 1. I hope to map out a preexisting area, (in my mind) which is quite large and detailed. I wonder what is a realistic map size? Is it ok to just layout a grid of terrains or should I just build the distant landscapes and a different foreground for each setting? 2. If I have lots of objects, such as trees, in a scene but they are not seen in the current render, do they effect the render times? 3. Does BryceLightning work with single frames or is it designed for animation rendering? I realize these questions are very dependent on unknown factors, but some general guides would be great. Thanks Kaveman

I think I can tackle #3: Bryce lightning can do single frames. Instead of telling the thing to do a bunch of frames, have it do just 1.. that will be the current scene. Read the Readme file for lightning incase there's a problem, and the help manual is good to get started.

#2, I am not sure because I have not wondered about it myself. I would think no because it's not in view. Lots of my stuff have junk off the side which are not in the scene. Doesn't seem to impact the time. It still takes up memory, though, and that itself could be a burden.. but that's a different scope of issues.

#1, the way I do it is without a particular method. I usually start off with what is close to the camera first then work my way outward. The reason is the wireframe can sometimes be a problem when selecting small objects. Sometimes, like with trees, the mouse will miss a solid part of the tree and get the background mountain. On large complex scenes, it's usually easier for me to have more than one file. A file for background stuff. A file for close up stuff. A file for middle stuff. Then when they are all ready, I'll merge them all into one scene for the final render.

I would add that for #1 use mutliple terrains, with high res in the foreground and low res in the background, also use a different material on the distant terrains and tick the 'distance blur' on the texture

Oh, btw, welcome to Bryce!

 ditto on what Gog_CA1 said.

Cutting down on resolution of background terrains cuts down on polygon counts which conserves memory.   Reducing unseen details again conserves memory.  More memory equates to a faster render.  At least that is what I have gathered as a consenus in other threads.  If that is all true, then extra trees and their location means using unnessecary memory that could be available for render tasks.   My 1/2 cent worth.