Ok...before we start I had better explain myself a little bit. I'm a professional multimedia development specialist for a medium sized company. I've been doing this for a long long time now and I don't usually complain. But that is about to change. Lets run this down shall we... I waited for a little while to see what kind of problems Bryce 5 was having. Nothing really alarming popped up, so I bought it. I finally got my copy and then the problems started. 1. I put the disk in (upgrade version) and tried to install it. It asked for my Bryce 4 key...fine. The only thing is it would not accept it....ever. I finally called corel (waited on the phone for 1 hour) (i'm not kidding) and they gave me some super code or something and I finally got it installed. (wasted time 1.5 days) 2. I played around with it and it locked up all the time. So I decided to check the forum and see what was recommended....I know windows sux at memory managment so I downloaded the RamBooster and It seemed to help....that is until Bryce 5 killed it. I'm running a larger than average machine, 1 gig with 1/2 gig of ram. Well bryce 5 decided it needed 100 percent of that ram just to run...lets also note that this monstrosity decided to use all, everybit, not an ounce left of my CPU.....and hey its still a DOG!!!!. I know this is a rant but, I'm very angry and I have nobody to gripe to...my wife, bless her soul, has no idea what I'm so worked up about. Back to the program from hell... I have yet to render and save a full image yet...I rendered a small sample 576X324 to see some of the new lighting stuff...well it rendered but when I tried to save it it locked up and I lost it all....including the source file...he he he. Why oh Why can't these companies TEST TEST TEST these programs...When I design an application I have to test it on multiple systems...everything from windows 95 to windows 2000 and NT. multiple configurations and processors and the like...I don't get it. For now I'm going back to the trusty Bryce 4...until the evil people who unleashed this beast on the world fix it....knowing corel's reputation in that department it will likely be ....hmmmm NEVER. So there you have it $150 bucks and several days wasted.......what a bitch. thanks for listening to me wine... KAP

OH YA....one more detail I forgot to mention....I realize that depth of field and soft shadow will take longer to render. However, Bryce 5 seems to think that everything should take 3 times as long even with all the "cool" stuff turned off. I waited 3 1/2 hours for that small render I mentioned earlier...it took 35 minutes in Bryce 4. And I know what your thinking..man this guy's computer must be junk....Bryce 4, 3d studio MAX, and Lightwave 5.6 all run on the same machine....they have NEVER locked up and still haven't to this day. Thats my two bits. WAIT TO BUY BRYCE 5!!!!! It'll save you alot of headaches....

Hia. Only have the standard suggestions. First unistall Bryce 5, Defragment your harddisk. Then close all other programs and install Bryce 5. See if that helps Griggs

The rendering times between Bryce 4 and 5 aren't really that different. If it's 3 times as long, it sounds like you had Premium Anti-Aliasing turned on, but all of the effects turned off, and left the rays/pixel at the default 32 or 64. (Which is twice/four times as many as super AA) That's what it sounds like anyways.. I may be wrong ;)

I have Bryce 5 and its running on a 966 PIII with 512 megs and haven't had any problems at all, except sometimes on lauch.. I get an .exe error... reboot and runs fine, but that only seems to happen when I launch Bryce work for awhile close it...reopen it, close it and then reopen it again... 3 times with no reboot seems to fubar it.

Methinks you haven't figured out the render settings yet. And if Bryce 5 really 'locked up all the time' then you have a problem on your machine. I have yet so see Bryce 5 lock up. The only time it may SEEM to lock up is in the treelab with some extreme settings. Just hold the ESC key and wait a little bit and it will dump you back to your wireframe. Spit

Bryce 5 hasn't locked on me yet. A little lag here and there,but overall it runs fine. It sounds like your system has the flu though. But who knows, mabye a possible conflict somewhere could the villain. akom

duron 600 128M win 2000 never locked up on me ever. no other problems either renders OK - as fast(!) as B4, but you have to tweak the render settings. Go to render options, use regular aa and max ray depth of 4 (instead of 6) - there seems to be no diff on the render quality

I, as well, have yet to see 5 lockup my system anywhere except the tree lab, and even then, it wasn't locked, just processing TONS of stuff. So use caution when sliding those sliders all the way to the right just to see what happens. LOL Waited it out.. 1 1/2 hrs after playing with a couple sliders until the disk trashing stopped and I had my tree. Nice looking tree, but it took my PIII 600 w/256 megs, under Win98 SE, to it's knees! laughs - James

Ok...I'll go through and try some of the suggestions. This is just tickin me off...by the way the average file I'm opening is kinda big..(264 megs) Its an entire island detailed to death..i.e. grass trees, lagoon. Its for a VR project I'm working on....anyway I'll keep trying...thanks. KAP

I'm one of the luckier ones with Bryce 5...and I'm wondering how the problems map to the operating system being used. I'm using Win2K/SP2, not a lick of glitches. Kap, what OS are you using?

264 M file GEEZ! that probably doesnt help much either

I'm running Win 98 SE, and NT service pak 6 on the other machines. I think I'm gonna drop some more ram in them...Also this problem only seems to happen with imported Bryce 4 scenes so...maybe I'll just redo them in Bryce 5. Thanks for all the responses.

The problem with the Bryce 5 upgrade serial numbers was infuriating to me as well, so I feel your pain. Corel is a commercial enterprise and should have had the professional wherewithal to make their mistake easier on us consumers. They didn't, but that's the past. I'm running B5 on a MAC with most of my 320MB of real RAM lovingly dedicated to the program. Although I find it a bit more sluggish in rendering comparably set (to B4) files, it's not locked on me. In fact I find the damn thing pretty elegant. My advice in rendering a 264 MB file: take your family on a small vacation. By the time you return, it'll almost be done...

I get the occasional lockup as well but not after a fresh start. Usually, if ive been rendering all night and next day pause the program to do something; when it comes time to start it again it appears to render at 10% usage thereafter or lockup. Only way ive found around it was to save after the evening, then restart bryce from stratch when its time to continue the picture. Given im playing with the diamond tutorial in a 1600x1200 pic it appears to want a few days to render at a quality of 'super' with maximum ray depth 30 and tir of 28. Take into account the raw file is 94 megs and uses 240megs total in win2k. It does seem though if i leave bryce 5 running not doing anything for a day or 2 just playing around, the whole system gets laggy. Ive never seen this before in win2k but it happens all the time in 98 or me.

I did some checking, some of you may find this interesting. It appears on Win98 or NT that windows does not free up the used memory when you shut bryce down...again windows memory management sux. Anyway, Things have calmed down quite a bit. I killed my original bryce 5 install, defragged (again) and reinstalled. Bryce 5 seems to work ok now..ecept for the B4 files I import..I'm tellin ya it does not like .3ds files or converts...very odd. Anyway I'll work around it. I do like the new features (NOTE: DON"T EVER ADD A TON OF SEGMENTS TO A BRANCH OR TRUNK. (LOL)) Well I guess I was hoping to walk into B5 with out too many problems but...hey the renders are worth it. Later KAP

Windows has a tendency to drop memory in all sorts of different programs. I get crashes in normally stable programs if I have had the system running for awhile without rebooting. Also some programs use up more resources that 3d programs thrive on. Winamp seems to be one such program, at least on mine. I only have the test version (mine is coming Tuesday), but so far it hasn't crashed on me. I did notice when saving, that after it saves, it seems to lock up for several seconds, but it's not really locked up. It comes back and works fine, so I'm not sure what that is. I haven't had any trouble with the .3ds files.

(((264 M file GEEZ! that probably doesnt help much either))) My commercially available artwork usually has a Bryce file that big. Takes about 6 days to do a render to disk. 300dpi at 36" X 25" full anti alias.