Well, after 5 final renders in Bryce (long) I've decided this is it-for now. Diane has made a good suggestion about the pose of the woman over in the Bryce forum which I just read. I may go back and repose her at some point (today I deleted her, regrouped her with wine glass in hand-much easier--and yes, I now realize the glass is larger than the others-tough to tell with so many meshes until final render-so called 'quick' renders w/o materials leave a lot to your imagination LOL). I've redone it with so many perspectives and something has created a visual problem in all of them-for instance, in one the eagle 'sat' on her head, another you couldn't see the head of the peacock, etc.--it was a fine line to see all. Dropping down created major problems also and made it much less interesting, IMO. I still feel the left side is visually weaker, but haven't hit on a solution unless I move the cardinal, pull in to the right and put the focus of the image more to the middle right (I also think I must have deleted a small light I had in front of the peacock's head-was there in last render-gosh, I discovered these things easily happen with so many meshes and you have to pay attention to what's inadvertently selected and NOT delete or move). Don't know. I think when I learn more I will be able to solve these problems better. For now, I'm pleased that I was able to handle such a multi-object (both Poser and Bryce objects), multi-texture image and not go completely nuts. It was a good learning experience, that's all I can say (and not admit I was approaching pulling my hair out-VBG). Thanks to all-the swan is Bloodsong's, not sure about cardinal (Funstuff-need to find out whose), peacock is Anton's, casual woman figure and Zygote eagle. The chandelier, roses, palm (made from ferns found on the net), chairs all found on net and the rest of the objects were made by me in Bryce or Nendo, materials in Bryce are mine or adapted by me. Diane

Very nice! Technically speaking, the eagle would actually take up most of the right side of the image, those are very large birds. BTW, is that a snake on the eagle's plate? Newc

Her arm looks better in this render. Did you shift her a bit? If you do go back later, you might still try my suggestions, but this is a stunning image just the way it is. I admire your patience. We'll see if I have anough to ever do anything this complicated when I get Bryce (in the next couple of days I hope). Keep up the good work. You are getting better day by day! Diane G

Wow, this is so much improved over the other one you posted. I like this a lot. If I remember correctly, I think the cardinal is Upir's. now I've got to start using those birds. I've only worked with the eagle once (so many ideas so little time) Tina

Beautiful! It was definately worth all the effort. The peacock tail turned out great. By the way, the glasses are fine. If the birds had larger glasses, they'd get drunk and start falling off the chairs. Not pretty. Coldrake

Thanks all (and LOL at Coldrake's image). However, I checked out newc's point and the eagle should be about 30-31" tall so I've enlarged him, moved the cardinal, changed the perspective and when I have time, plan to repose the woman and reREPLACE her. (I also put the light back in, but when I duplicated the light near the eagle, I got 31 extra lights LOL--that took awhile to delete all those-could NOT figure out what the huge glare was in my nano picture in Bryce). Oh, and yes, Diane, I did shift her a bit when I deleted the first, grouped her with the wineglass and brought her back in. Diane (the other)

heyas; looking great! gee, it's 'final' status didnt last long. another picture thing, up in the corner above the cardinal might balance things out a bit. um, and the swan should have dark legs and an oranger bill. (unless you looked up the mute swans and found they had orange legs, i'm not 100% sure.) you can also check the swan species spec txt file, it had measurements for them, too. cant remember off the top of my head, but they might be 60" and some have up to 7' wingspan.

Yes, you're right-final didn't last long-but I won't post it for awhile (it was all relative anyhow VBG). I'm going to work on other things and come back to the one I've adjusted later. I will check out the swan. Gee, a 60" swan would be 5 feet tall-the ones I've been in contact with have been closer to big geese, but I'll check that one too (and the colorations-I admit I took some artists' liberties here). I considered pics or a sconce(s) for the wall on the left, but was afraid it would detract from the center of the image. However, making the eagle much bigger allowed me to change perspective reasonably and moved away from the left side so it might be irrelevant. We'll see. Since this is kinda' a learning image for me, I'll probably continue to just play with it for awhile-off and on, but its getting really old for me right now. Diane

You could also add a mirror to the wall over the cardinal. Of course, that will probably increase your render time dramatically. It took 19+ hours to render a scene in Bryce 4 I did recently for the USOC (now if I can convince them that they NEED it - 8-)). I used three very reflective materials, two cloud layers, and a ground plane, and made it render at 2880 x whatever. With all that reflective material, and plenty to reflect, I'm surprised my poor Pentium 233 didn't roast. lol I started it about 7-8 pm then let it finish rendering while I was asleep (turn monitor brightness down), and when I awoke it was done. It's a big@$$ image, but worth the wait. Newc

Joker that you are. Yes, I know what THAT would do for the renders and I just don't have that much patience. On one of the Bryce forums, several talked about 29 hour renders. I've been rendering overnight, but they have still only been several hour renders. Newc, I'm going to open this conversation over in the Bryce forum tonight when I have time to compose a reasonable question. I'm interested in how others deal with knowing/not knowing how it will turn out until its rendered-quick renders (w/o materials), partial renders, etc. BTW, I've been rendering to disk. Hopefully see you there and you can answer some of my questions?!? Diane

bah, you guys are spoiled! nothing like starting a bryce render, and discovering, yes, it IS calibrated up to DAYS. :) (you guys really need to do patch rendering, and resume rendering.)

I'll be there with bells on! ;-) Newc