I've got my update already. I just can't figure out where from? As long as you can get yours and I don't need to email you one the problem is solved.

I've had the black object problem myself. It's very inconsistant and has several cures. 

Lot's of poser objects come in with the texture mapping all screwed up. Figures would be dark or look like a Vicki character with a P4 woman texture applied. Hand textures would be going across the belly, eyeballs on the knees, lots of white spaces where the edge of the texture got mapped to skin, etc. I found that changing anything like tweaking the diffuse or ambient setting caused the map to reorient and everything went back to normal. If you do this with the object grouped you may mess up the eyes because they often don't use the same map.

I've has the same or similar experience with other imported objects. Objects textured in Bryce 5.5 will open completely black. Most times the colors are there but the ambient channel has been turned down all the way to 3. A tweak of the sliders usually brings everything back.

Another problem I've had is with created obj or 3ds formats. A viking helm I downloaded was 3ds with ten mesh objects. When it was imported in from Bryce 5.5 all the objects were black and grouped together. I could assign bryce textures but I didn't want the rivets and the bands to be the same color, plus the scale was way off on the mapping.
I pulled the original 3ds file straight into bryce 6 and got the same results. I tried ungrouping and the U went away but when I clicked the object was still in three pieces not ten.
I opened the file in rhino and found out there was only one name for all the meshes (helm_1) and only three colors. I assigned slightly different colors and named each piece. The modified mesh came in black but each part could be given a different texture and the mapping looked a lot better.

Bryce 5 dealt correctly with a greater variety of objects than bryce 6 does. Many 3ds files won't even load but can be fixed by importing into wings and exporting without even modifying anything.