@dann-o
Smoothing?...
You mean subdividing, right?
Third party renderers would be cool. DAZ is supposed to be releasing the SDK for Bryce, so there could be a lot of plug-ins made available eventually. All kinds of shaders could become available too, if DAZ decides to put the ability to use shaders into Bryce. Seems crazy not to.

Friends don't let friends use booleans.