Does rendering support 3d aceleration now, or is it still cpu driven? I can't find out on the bryce site, but maybe im just blind...

the rendering is still done by the cpu.there is an open gl option not for rendering

Generally speaking, 3D acceleration only helps 3D authoring, which is to say the redraw and display properties of the program while you are building the scene. 3D acceleration does not assist in rendering, which is pure CPU horsepower. The Direct X and Open GL modes in Bryce 4 are authoring modes, not rendering modes. Even the highest end 3D cards that you'll pay thousands of dollars for only help in rendering, not authoring. TomD

I have a modest system. AMD K6-2 380. Will Bryce 5 render faster than 4, or will this "upgrade" require a chunkier processor?

My copy of Bryce 5 is still "on the truck" as they say, but here's my guess - it'll be about the same as long as you keep the rendering options exactly the same as they were in Bryce 4. Bryce 5 adds in soft shadows, high-detail textures, and other things that will totally slam your render times if not used judiciously. There is a chance that your average render time will go down slightly because of changes made to the render code to accomodate the additional options, but that's hard to say. Bryce is a real ray-tracer and a CPU power hog. IMHO it does a damn good job for what its doing at the price point its at. For reference, I work in a shop were the real artists (me, I write for a living) use Max4 and Maya in a production environment, and believe me, their real raytracing options are slow too. :-) TomD

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