@ AS, if you see this

How many times did you crash Bryce while doing this?  This is a serious inquiring.  I have spent the last few days experimenting with picture based mats, with and without hdri, various settings of anistropy, etc... because of what you have inspired in this thread. Some of my results are fairly decent but not without problems.

It is frustrating how many times Bryce crashes.  Is there a secret to minimize crashes? Or is this type experimenting just pushing the software to its limits?