Quote - Can we review the reviews?
Quote - "And multi-core support didn’t work on our test PC. Supposedly it’s been included, but in tests, processor use stayed pegged at 50 per cent."

Somebody never heard of task manager, have they? (Yeah, Bryce defaults to low priority so people could do stuff while it rendered in the background. Not to mention it was made when computers were slower and single core.)

I don't see Bryce as a toy. But rather as a tool of sorts. May not be as fancy a tool as other stuff out there, but if you learn to use it and apply it well - there's some vast potential with it. Where it really shines is where you need that detail and have a lot of things going on in the scene and the timeframe for production isn't an issue. Then you're more likely to run into limitations of your PC rather than Bryce.

Only real faults Bryce has have to do with time efficiency and animation. It's a ray tracer and does a lot of calculations compared to some other apps way of doing things. Which hurts it badly in a production environment where you need stuff done yesterday. Also since it never did bones or deformations/morphs, it really limits what can be done. With long render times and no decent animation features, Bryce does suck at doing animation.

As for myself? I use Bryce for two reasons: 1. Ease of use. 2. Cost. It would probably be in trouble if any Blenderheads would ever consider making a comparable GUI. And I wouldn't hesitate to take a look if there's any truth to that Carrara 5 rumor. Regardless, I still probably wouldn't give my Bryce up completely. For the few things it still does well, I can't find much that's comparable.

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Barbequed Pixels?

Your friendly neighborhood Wings3D nut.
Also feel free to browse my freebies at ShareCG.
There might be something worth downloading.