I made a quick pic up in bryce 4 (320x240) with 20% viewable using glass textures - reflective sea and a terrain. Test system is a amd 1.2gig with 512 megs ram. Bryce 4 5 seconds - no antialiasing Bryce 4 26 seconds - normal Bryce 4 80 seconds - high Bryce 5 6 seconds - no aa Bryce 5 30 seconds - normal Bryce 5 89 seconds - super Bryce 5 340 seconds - supreme ray per pixel 64 maximum ray depth 6 total int reflections 2 Bryce 5 806 seconds - supreme ray per pixel 144 maximum ray depth 6 total int reflections 2 Bryce 5 952 seconds - supreme ray per pixel 144 maximum ray depth 12 total int reflections 10 Bryce 5 952 to - supreme ray per pixel 144 1200 maximum ray depth 24 total int reflections 22 Bryce 5 952 to - supreme ray per pixel 144 1200 maximum ray depth 100 total int reflections 98 Bryce 5 1860 - supreme ray per pixel 256 maximum ray depth 100 total int reflections 98 15400 seconds - all above and volumetric Didnt make much of a difference with maximum ray depth or total int reflections but id assume if i had a larger number of glass type objects it would up the numbers even higher. Given my new system is 4.53x faster the the old p2-400 i use to have, looks like just going to supreme eats up the cpu and spits it out even with my old intel chip. Soon as i increase the ray per pixel up im actually worse off then before upgrading. (anyone have 4 or 8 elcheapo 1 gig boxes to lend me?) Im quite concerned since i always render at 1600x1200 for my final pic (desktop size) and have render at 3000x4000 for a 100 dpi 30in x 40in photo print at work. My guestimate for that very simple pic is: 12+ hours at 1600x1200 and 72 hours for print quality. Given a real picture is 10's of times more complicated i think im doomed.

shit!

TIR and Ray depth are used mainly for multi-faceted objects like gems, diamonds, rubies etc, it's what gives them the sparkle, simple TIR on what you have with 98 really won't do anything because you have a fairly constrained geometric shape, with not many sides. As far as Premium renders, Corel stated that it would take longer, they make no fuss about it, reasons, the higher the RPP setting the better the quality of render, for things such as soft shadows ( which is slow even in LightWave 6.5) of course in animations it's hard to use soft shadows etc, it goes by so fast the viewer usually doesn't even notice if the shadows are soft or not.But for still images it would be noticable, so I reckon it's just an artist preference thing, like using this brush or that brush.

"Bryce 4 5 seconds - no antialiasing Bryce 4 26 seconds - normal Bryce 5 6 seconds - no aa Bryce 5 30 seconds - normal" How come Bryce 5 slower than Bryce 4?

I got the same thing, odd So I went and gave rendering a B5 scene in B4 hmmm... darn B4 couldn't even render it. I would suggest if you want to render a B4 scene render it in B4. If you want all the cool new stuff in B5 then use B5 Griggs

Bryce5 is "relatively" lower in render times on windows. It is not a memory leak, nor is it an actual "setting" from within the render settings. My initial bryce4-b5 render was 14% difference. However, now that I have a bit of grip on Bryce 5 and its rather picky settings... I now have it to ~4% difference. I will be reviewing this necessary bryce setting and OS settings (yes it appears to be your OS!) that will reduce it significantly. Still waiting on other confirmations before I post this as fact, so thats why Im not telling what you need to do now. hopefully, in a day or so...I can give you better info. However, there is little need to experiment with Bryce settings in this matter if you are experiencing significant decreases in render time. In preliminary tests, it definately appears directly related to your machine and "background" behaviours of Bryce5. More soon! BT

umm..that should say..."slower" not "lower" BT