Hi, How does Vue d'Esprit 4 compare with Bryce 5? I have Bryce 4, and am at a crossroads: Get Bryce 5 or take advantage of the competitive upgrade offered for Vue 4. Among other things, I would like to know which has better features. Also, which renders best. And which renders fastest. (How much faster?) Which animates best? (Animation is important to me) And overall, which is easiest and most intuitive to use? In case this info is helpful, I have a 1.4 ghz Athlon with 256 MB DDR SDRAM and a 32 MB Matrox G450 card. Also, where is the least expensive place to get the competitive upgrade? The E-on site lists $169. Thanks.

LonRanger, I think what it all boils down to is what you feel you will be most comfortable with. I think for you (someone who has never used Vue) it would be a good idea to wait for the Vue 4 demo to be released. That should be in a few weeks. You may even want to try the Vue 3 demo. Play with it and see if it's something you think you will like. As for rendering speeds, I really believe that Vue is faster by far. From what I've heard from Bryce 5 friends, version 5 doesn't render that much faster than version 4 if at all. And from what I've seen of Bryce 5 images, they look very Vue-like, so I would think that they make similar looking renders now since they both support soft shadows and blurred reflections. I cannot speak for animation, because I don't use it. I'll leave that question for those that are better informed :D. You seem to have plenty of power for either program :). Laurie

I don't have Bryce 5, so I can't describe any direct comparisons from Vue 4 to Bryce 5. I've got Bryce 4, however. First off, you should know you're in the Vue d'Esprit forum, so when you're asking questions about "best", "fastest", "easiest", I think you'll get responses choosing Vue, hands down. ;) Those kinds of questions are usually quite subjective. What is "best" for one kind of work might not be "best" for another kind of work. Because this question has come up many times recently (with the releases of Vue 4 and Bryce 5), you can probably get most questions answered by checking out a few of these previous threads. :) http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12368&Form.ShowMessage=351836 http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12368&Form.ShowMessage=345895 http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12368&Form.ShowMessage=344806 http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12368&Form.ShowMessage=342422

Forgot to mention - I believe the competitive upgrade is available only through E-on. And the Vue 4 demo is due sometime in August. I agree with Laurie that you might want to wait and give the demo a try. :)

FYI Varian and the rest of the forum, Corel is offering a Competitor upgrade for Bryce 5. I currently have Bryce 2, 3D, & 4. I also have Vue d'Esprit 3 and 4. In answering the LonRanger's original question, I feel that I am basically a fairly neutral party when it comes to the two programs. I upgraded from Vue 3 to 4 instantly. I am in a wait and see mode for upgrading to Bryce 5. This is not because I do not like Bryce 4, in fact I love it, but the upgrade for Bryce 3D to 4 was in my IMO not a full upgrade. I am getting the same feeling for the Bryce 5 upgrade. So I will wait, watch, view and read a lot before handing over $149.00 to Corel. Bryce has it's good points. I think it's interface has a steeper learning curve than Vue. As a Bryce user LonRanger, you have no trouble turning out a decent render with Vue. A Vue user though I think would have some studying to do before hand to figure out Bryce's GUI interface, and in paticular Bryce's texture editor which is a monster compared to Vue's. Bryce 4's volumetrics features still have a slight edge over Vue 4's. It is dead easy to make puffy volumetric clouds and light rays by just turning on the volumetric feature in the atmoshpere editor and using the default textures that came with the program, but this really increases rendering times to the point that it can be a pain. I had one space scene in which it took around 20 hours to do a volumetric gas cloud. It was a beautiful thing to behold, but a pain to render. Vue takes the rendering times trophy hands down. When it comes to vegetation Vue just flat out clobbers Bryce. All of the pictures I have seen made with Bryce 5's tree lab, the trees looked similar but not quite as convincing as Vue's. My understanding is that the more trees you add to a Bryce 5 scene will cause the render time to increase quite a bit. This does not occur in Vue. Plus with Vue you just simply click and you a lovely tree. If you click the same tree type you will get another tree of the same type, but grown differently. Vue also has a direct import of Poser 4 scenes which Bryce 5 does not. If you use Poser a lot, this is a priceless feature. Just tell Vue to bring in the poser file and it brings in all the textures etc. with no fuss at all. Basically both programs are great pieces of software. Even if I elect to not upgrade to Bryce 5, I will not ever remove Bryce 4 from my computer, and I will continue to use it. I tend to jump to Bryce when doing indoor scenes, as I have not mastered this art in Vue yet. Happy Rendering, JAS

Thanks for the view, JAS. The biggest tip for doing indoor scenes in Vue: remove the Sun and rely only on point or spot lights. That said, I'll also say I've done indoor scenes with a window showing the outdoors and a sun is outdoor. But my indoor area isn't lighted by the sun. Hope that makes sense. :)

Actually, Vue makes really nice indoor scenes, I think :) You just have to adjust your lighting, that's all. Laurie

Thanks for the tips on the indoor lighting techniques. Lights behave a little different in Vue vs. Bryce. I just haven't played with it enough, but I will try your suggestions and see what happens. JAS

You can pick up the Bryce 5 upgrade at COMPUSA for $99 right now. I just got it the other day. Vue does render faster than Bryce, but each has it's strong points. I'm a longtime Bryce user, but I'm intrested in getting Vue 4, I think it looks like a very worthy program, the vegetation is something Bryce lacks. Bryce 5 now has a great tree generator, but no plant generator. Tough decision for you, they are both incredible programs for the price. Good luck, kaom