I am still waiting for the arrival of Bryce 6, which I ordered from a reseller, because that's the less-complicated way of doing things in the hospital where I work. Direct is problematic, because of credit card, etc.

Anyway, I haven't gotten a chance to check rendering speeds on B6. I will say, though, that, unless they are massively faster than they were, I'd have to see a quantum leap in render speed from current releases to the pro version to shell out big $$s for Bryce Professional.

I was rendering a couple of glass containers last night on default, with a two-light setup, and it rendered all night only to be 50 percent complete this morning. It was only about 950x950 pixels at, what, 75 dpi or something like that.

I understand all the reasons glass and refraction slows render times down, but, when I could go to AIR and render some rather nice glass in a fraction of the time, it makes me scratch my head and say, "hmm."

I have always liked the Bryce interface and the way you can get some nice renderings with a little less techical knowhow than with Entropy, AIR or BMRT, but those render times in Bryce just kill me.

My piece that I did last year, for example, for the Traugs project had one of those characters in it, Professor Lug,  and it took two whole weeks to render, because I had several glass items and some tubing, etc., on a lab apparatus. I got the exact result I wanted, but it rendered in the background day after day, while I pumped out several major projects.

Just one poster-sized render. Ouch.

My .02.
John