does anybody know how to create a firefly effect that doesn't included hundreds of little light sources or if not a way to do it that doesn't take forever to render?

How about just painting some random points of light and placing them on a 2D plane with alpha transparency?

Try lots of little spheres set to the size and position you want(I hope thats not as bad as lots of little lights) texture set to Fuzzy, and ambience and diffusion set to the colour you want, and both set to 100%, turn off cast shadows, self shadows and receive shadows, turn your sky to night, but keep your sky ambeint colour white...I just tested this idea as I was writing this,(I was curious myself) and it took approximately 15-20 seconds to render...with about 30 little spheres, and no other objects, using Bryce's default sky set to "nightime" here is a picture...hope this helps :) PS: my computer has 64 meg of ram, and is, generally, very out of date, (about 4-5 years out of date, as far as the motherboard, ram and processor is concerned) so this would be even faster on newer machines/processors ect.

And remember, you can create a sphere, ctrl+c and then ctrl+v 50 or so times. Select all the spheres and do one of the dispursals.

Attached Link: http://wyndwalker.50megs.com/Download.html

There was someone who called themselves "arielwyndwalker", who made a material (see thumbnail) that looks like fireflies (or little nats) I used to have this .mat but...since my hard drive crashed...I lost everything. I have been back to that page, but I am unable to download that .mat anymore, maybe you will have better luck. Here is also the old link to that (non-working) download. Also, there are two members on renderosity that have the names "WyndWalker" and another, "mwynd", try them also. AgentSmith

you can also find wyndwalker's mat in Free Stuff at 3D Commune - at least that's where i got my copy. http://www.3dcommune.com Jade

Yes, the link that I gave above is the one that 3d Commune will eventually lead you to. It doesn't work, perhaps you can contact the author through that website, I'm not sure.