I love Bryce but I have not used it for a long time, now they have the upgrade for 20 something dollars. Extremely cheap but is Bryce pretty much the same? I have not seen a render with the hdri yet, all I see in the forums is mosltly the fractal terrains with funky skies and a water plane. I thing Bryce is a beautiful program but I have seen incredible and realistic landscapes with Terragen, I mean great skies, waves etc. The Bryce trees are cute but no realistci at all. Is a new Bryce in the making and is this reason for the wonderful price? Would my user materials of Bryce 5.0 work with Bryce 6.0?

Thanks for your help.

Andres

 Do the upgrade...it's quite a bit better in some ways but keep 5.0 around as well as some members rely on it fo certain features.. ...

Would my user materials of Bryce 5.0 work with Bryce 6.0?

Yup!

And B6.1 has a cool way of converting booleaned groups into meshes that can exported. However, it doesn't handle big complex scenes well in the memory department - hence the need to keep B5 installed.  The HDRI thing is awesome and there are a few renders using this in the galleries.

Thanks ! So having both Bryce on my Cdrive would not conflict with each other?

So having both Bryce on my Cdrive would not conflict with each other?

Absolutely not! I have both on my Cdrive and they work just fine.

On your other point, I'd copy my presets (those that you've added) to B6 rather than hunt for them in the B5 installation. B6 has a much better preset system than B5.

B6 is worth it for the hdri alone.  Terragen has some awesome sky capabilities but Bryce can import photo produced 2d planes for skies.  You may notice that quite a few Terragen users import their terrains from GeoControl.  GeoControl will export to Bryce also. 

When you tire of landscapes, Bryce does interiors also.  Go Bryce.

(Puts Willi on the list for mentioning the 'T' word.)

 skiwillgee....how dare you mention that nasty T word....roll out the comfy chair already! Oh, btw....Bryce on my machine laughs rather loudly whenever it hears the forbidden T word. The sound woke me up from a deep sleep with a start and made me spill hot coffee on the cat, who is now running around the house screaming and hissing.

Wha... wha.. what?   I don't use "T"  Just making a point that "T" can produce an acceptable landscape but that is the total of its capabilities.   Even at that, the better of the images were generated using another app that is friendly to Bryce.  (humbly accepts punishment for heretic inference, mumble, mumble mumble,,,, dons my kevlar vest and iron undies) 

  <------ Evil laugh!

Ang wonders if Iron undies are expensive.

She also thinks sleeping so close to hot coffee can be dangerous Vangogh, poor kitty.

You might want to hold off spending your money as I believe Computer shopper, well at least the english version is giving away Bryce 6.1 free. This I heard from Daz3D forum.

Confirmed, just bought the magazine, and sure enough, there it is on the cover disk. Since I have an upgrade of 6.1, it's nice to have a single install package.

 Sound like they're getting ready to maybe give us another version ?...Don't companies sometimes do this before announcing a new version.. ...

Quote -  Sound like they're getting ready to maybe give us another version ?...Don't companies sometimes do this before announcing a new version.. ...

Yeah...Version 6.5 Bobby, mostly fixes upgrade. There won't be a version 7 for sometime yet, unless Daz are really holding back, but I doubt it.

 sigh.. ...

Computer Shopper...the big, phone-book-sized magazine that carried 'Basic is the People's Language?...;) woopsie, I just really dated myself there...but how else would I get lucky?...;)
Hmm...this stuff always happens when I'm broke...sigh...;)

Wouldn't Bryce 6.5 be a free download for the users of 6.1? Does the 6.5 manages better RAM? I have 4 gigs would that be enough to handle scenes on B6.1?

Quote - Wouldn't Bryce 6.5 be a free download for the users of 6.1? Does the 6.5 manages better RAM? I have 4 gigs would that be enough to handle scenes on B6.1?

One would expect so but there has been talk of making it a payable upgrade. As for the specs of 6.5, your guess is as good as mine, Daz is keeping tight lipped about it.
I have 4gigs of ram and Bryce 6.1 runs fine on that.

I have 4gigs of ram and Bryce 6.1 runs fine on that.

Just depends on the size of the file you're trying to build/render.

Quote -
Just depends on the size of the file you're trying to build/render.

As yet, i've not had any problems with anything i' ve rendered, and my renders are known to push Bryce to the limits..... not that i've used Bryce for the last few months.

Bryce 5.0 is worth keeping around for the ability to animate terrain/lattices and materials alone. I don't know from personal experience, but I have heard that Bryce 6.0 was "broken" in that respect. Perhaps the 6.5 upgrade will fix this,

Yep, Ithink I will wait for the next generation Bryce, not jus the payable fix. I hope they fix and improve on a very nice program.