I've looked at Bryce, Vue, and Max as the next step up from Poser, but the price and such is a bit daunting. Also, I'm more interested in creating more urban backgrounds, rather than the landscapes in Vue and Bryce. Any suggestions on the best program for this without taking out yet another mortgage?

I think you could do that rather well in Bryce. However, I haven't been too enamored of the reviews I've read of the new Bryce 5. It's one reason I'm not upgrading anytime soon although I'd love to have that tree generator. If you're also daunted by those reviews, maybe you can find Bryce 4 someplace - if that's possible?

Black Cat, I currently use Bryce to build city scenes for my Graphic Novel. It does take a bit of practice and excellent reference photos to get it right. Lately I've been experimenting with using Nendo to create accurate buildings and then texture mapping them in photoshop. Once there saved as obj files I can import them directly into Bryce. If you want I can post a test render from Bryce and you can see if it will satisfy your needs. Good Luck J.B. Settle

You could try 3dworlds, it's here in the store or Daz might be having a sale on it. I love it because you can do your animation and renders in Poser. Marque

I wasn't too thrilled with the negative feedback on Bryce 5 when it first came out, so I had decided not to bother getting it. I decided just to stick with Bryce 4. But then a friend decided to buy me the upgrade. I was completely thrilled with the program. I found it to have more depth and texture in the final renders. And the tree lab is tons of fun. Now, I'm wondering why I was so hesitant. I'm glad I have it now, thanks to my very generous friend. Melanie

Yup, it is nice, I got the Bryce upgrade and the Vue upgrade, they each have their good and bad points. Marque

Black, if you're comfortable in Photoshop, you can always create urban settings by using the primitives in the Poser library and applying a photo-texture on top. There used to be a site on the web for a never-finished computer games called GOLGOTHA; when the company went bust, they posted everything -- texture work, sound effects, music files, modelling work, even coding, for people to come and take for free (I'd heard they were trying to build the game again; does anyone know about that?). There are some great phototextures of buildings in there that would make an excellent start to an urban landscape scene, and again all you'd need would be primitives to do it.

I went and did a search for that game (As I would love the textures) and found a site that's been partially abandoned but I think they still ahve all that material for download. Here's the sites address. http://golgotha.sourceforge.net/ Not 100% what's there because they basically have 2 links, one takes you to this long dead page. The other is a tar.gz file. I'm at work and can't get it from here so I'll leave it up to someone else or get it when I get home to see what it is.

I took a look around, and it looks pretty empty. I went into some of the download mirrors, and there wasn't much. However, I remember that a guy on 3DCafe had taken the textures and posted them, claiming, of course, credit for everything. Last time I checked he still had them up, although he's now acknowledged where they came from. I'll track down his site and let you know.

Thanks! I went there too and found very little. There were some pretty cool sounds, though.

I went there and I couldn't find anything. The site was very confusing. Melanie

I guess the Golgotha stuff is gone. I tried to find that site where the textures were stored, but he's disappeared as well. Are you on Mac or PC? I have the full library, but it's huge: about 200 megs.

I'm on a PC. Whatever building textures and backgrounds you've got, I've got room.