Alrighty then.  Yet another question in Bryce.  I am a scifi nut.  As such, I like to make a lot of space battle scenes.  Unfortunatly for me, whenever I try to do something complicated, with a lot of lighting effects and lasers and engine glow, the program freezes on me and crashes.  Now, I don't have photoshop, so making it piece by piece is out of the question for me.  

And before anyone asks, my virtual memory is already at the highest it can go.  Now, at maximum, I have been able to get three detailed ships into the picture.  One fighter, one smaller heavy ship, like a tug sized one, and a super sized one.  I have been able to get these into the program and start rendoring, before it crashes.  

Any suggestions on what to do to stop the program from crashing?  Cause it happens quite a lot with me, despite whatever failsafes it may have.

Render to Disk will cut down on GUI taxing, so test your image first with a smaller res render, change the image render size(save), and Render to disk (Do not save the file when exiting Bryce). (faster too)

Cut down on reflective, glass, and high-res textured objects.
Volumetric Mats are expensive too.

Save,Save,Save, using altered file names....file001, file002, file003, etc

A starfield can be accomplished using a jpg(made in Universe Image Creator) applied to a sphere or 2D primative with Trans map set.

Also, an alternative to Photoshop is Project Dogwaffle, It's FREE, and from what I've read & seen, is a decent piece of artware.

Good Luck

Oh, btw
If you're still not into post work, you can render a scene with low res materials on your objects, change the materials, and then Spray Render those changes. It can be time consuming though.

Hmmm...
Thanks.  I'll try that.

When you render to disk also remember to change the render name. If the name of your original file is "spacebattle" add something to the default name like "RDspacebattle" for render to disk, or "spacebattlebig". If you render to disk and make a big bitmap with exactly the same name you will overwrite the default preview image for your bryce scene. The next time you open the file bryce will try to load this large file. If you are already pushing your memory you could find that you cannot open bryce again without crashing. All is not lost, even if this happens you can just rename the bitmap after the fact. Bryce won't be able to find it and will make a new preview image.

Read the making of siege by flak. http://www.3d-digital-wasteland.com/tut_siege.html  You can render ships and masks one at a time in Bryce and apply them to 2D plains without buying photoshop or other image tool. This will allow you to get many more ships into your render.

@_@  Ahh!  Yes!  And I know exactly how to do that too!  Thanks!

Change the colors for the diffuse and ambient settings by clicking on the dots next to the sliders. If you hold the "Alt" key while clicking you will bring up the better color wheel for a greater control.

Click on the down to the right of the sliders area and to the left of your triple lasermask material box to bring up the pull down menu. Because it pops up and hides your lasermask material in the "A" position I made a composite out of two images. When the menu comes up the "Blend Transparency" should already be checked. Click on the checkmarks in front of the words "Cast Shadows, Receive Shadows," and "Self Sadows" to turn these off.

Attached Link: Celestia

Another thing you can do (quick fix), is use the Starfield sky, turn up the number of stars, and turn down the intensity (makes the individual stars smaller). I cheat using a magazine copy of Mojoworld (the irony of using a landscape program for it's skies isn't lost on me..;)

Universe if from diard software, if you're looking for it.
There's another program called Celestia, haven't used it, but it does skies.

can't have too many space pics..;)

The Bryce starfield star's size is dramatically affected by the FOV of the camera. The higher angle of FOV, the smaller the stars are; but you get more distortion (stretching) on the edges of the picture.
I've had more luck with image planes or domes/spheres for starfields.

EDIT - Camera's scale affects the star sizes too.

Since you don't have photoshop get the GIMP.  It's free and works great!!
Celestia makes great starfields but the pics need to be edited.

Hmm....  So 2d pics for laser effects work better than 3d primatives?  Hmm....  Sounds interesting.  I'll have to give that a try.

One other piece of advice: if you are importing a 2d pic as your star background be sure to turn off cast, receive, and self shadows in your material options. If you don't do this you may get very odd shadows on your background when you light your ships or planets.

another thing is that I've imported pictures, but they come in as 1 Bryce unit (like everything else...sigh..;)  stretching them reveals a wealth of problems..;)  I'm sure there's a better way of doing it, so if anyone wants to chime in on how to do that...;)

Attached Link: Bryce nebula example

I'd like to point out one thing I didn't do and another thing that danamo did when doing space battle scenes.

I forgot to turn gamma correction off. With gamma correction on if you turn up the light on the scene gamma correction will turn tthe light back down for you. The beams look much brighter with gamma correction off.

danamo put lights at the actual points where the beams were coming out of the ships. If you are going to 2D or postwork lights having a beam shine on something it gets near to makes it look more realistic. It's a touch people often forget when doing postwork effects. Well done!

You should work smart with lights. Use limited ranges for lights, dont fill ur entire laser-beam with loads of lights, dont use soft shadows unless the effect really visible ánd neccesary.
For the lasers themselves, using 2d planes with images of laser effects on them is much faster then using complicated bryce textures and lights or even volume textures and stuff like that. Even if you dont have photoshop you probably should be able to make something nice in something freeware like the Gimp or something similar. All this will speed up your renders and most likely make things less heavy on ur system, which might well avoid crashes.