Just got B5 yesterday so hav'nt had much time to play with it. I loaded an old b4 scene then set the render options as close as i could to those used in b4 but it took an extra 35 mins to render? I have a pIII with 300 and my god megs of ram so what am i doing wrong?

Hard to say - what were the settings in B4 and B5, and how long did it take under B4? TomD

What were your render options set to in Bryce 5? That will make or break the render times. What raydepth, rays per pixel, premium or regular AA? kaom

I have found B5 renders to be a bit slower than 4 with similar settings.

There has been lots of comments that indicate that B5 renders slower than B4 on PCs. I see a ten percent hit on my machine. But Bryce has always been slow, and now there are higher resolution settings and tree objects that make Bryce even slower. Will I give this software up? No, but I won't be using a volumetric world setting anytime soon.

It's the same on the MAC. I have gone through rigourous testing here. B5 is slower no matter what. Yes Bryce has always been a bit sluggish. And always deathly slow when any volumetrics are involved. But even at the lowest settings in B5 it is slower than B4. Sigh. I also won't give up on it, but it would be nice if the engine got an overhaul. Now with soft shadows and all the NEW options available I just can't wait the 12 plus hours it now takes to render some simple scenes at medium settings. So surfice it to say, I will always be using somewhat low settings unless it's something professional that has to be done. So a hint is: render at lowest settings until you're pleased with that result and THEN crank up the settings and go on vacation, and when you come back it will be done, barring a power failure. ;-) James

The key is processor speed. Upgrade that 300 dog to something outside the dinosaur era. While I don't have B5, someone told me recently that by reducing the render quality helped and it came out better than B4.

Ok thanks but i wont be giving up on B4 soon (when i get my new atlon)

It was suggested elsewhere - unfortunately I don't remember who in these forums made the suggestion - to turn Maximum Ray Depth down to 4 from 6. I've done this and not noticed any difference and brought my basic render times back in line with what I was seeing in Bryce 4. TomD