Let me preface my rant with this.  I love Bryce.  I love Bryce better than my own brothers.  If I had a son, I would name him Bryce, but I would still love Bryce more than he.  However the long render times associated with Bryce really get me down. 

I love to do scenes with explosions and flying water, clouds, foam, etc., but the render times stop me cold in my tracks.  I have been developing a series of explosions for Bryce that use multiple volumetric textures with transparency and two lights in each explosion.  My problem is if you put three of these in a scene with volume clouds, you will be rendering for a month.  And a scene with only three explosions is kinda lame.

  Anyway I am rendering a scene to disk now.  No explosions.  I have four airplanes, a water plane and volume clouds.  No special render settings and normal anti aliasing.  I started rendering at five o'clock in the evening yesterday and it is now nine thirty in the morning and I have only rendered 3 percent.  At this rate my image will be done in 23 days.

I forgot to mention it is only 1200x900 pixels.

Yeah it gets me down, but I use it because I love it.

 

Dan? This is why Brycers drink.

(Hands Dan a bottle of scotch)

I cannot drink anymore.  But thanks.

Give the scotch to the hampster running the wheel in your computer.

Just kidding.  It does seem the price we pay for a realistic render is too high some times.

Dan, 

We love you.. and we know what you feel..and we all love bryce.. 

hugs and hugs and hugs.. 

Thanks Rosie.  I stopped the disk render and am rendering to the screen now.  The display says it will take 4 more days.  That is better than 23.

UVDan

Know how you feel....my last image took 10 full days to render due to both IBL and soft shadows.

I can not afford nor want to stay without my only computer for 24hrs.  much less 10 days...   There is such thing as putting together multi-rendered scenes in PS or PS pro

Attached Link: Basic Multi Pass with Max

Yeah...I think it's time the Bryce programmers took a look at the MultiPass output offered mainly in my experience testing, Vue. you can literally save every feature including light schemes etc out as a Photoshop .psd and if it's an animation every frame can be accessed singly to tweak...saves a lot of re-rendering, and I forget the Adobe Layered compositors name but it reads .psd and animation sequences so you'd need that app as well but the time you'd save...You can "hand roll" amultipass situation in any app as I was doing iy=t i  Imagine years back but ti's best to read up on it and then design a method that works for you in Bryce.I've posted a link for  Max tute but it's the concept that you'll get explained...you'll see how each layer is rendered...in max they're saved to a file and you'd have to do that manually on Bryce...the hand rolling..explore more links...I just grabbed one...look for a text explanation as well.

Is it possible to export a Bryce scene for rendering with an external render engine? Say V-Ray or Blender Cycles for instance. I've never tried, wouldn't know how to go about doing such a dastardly action. Has anyone attempted such?

Thanks everybody.

Quote - Is it possible to export a Bryce scene for rendering with an external render engine? Say V-Ray or Blender Cycles for instance. I've never tried, wouldn't know how to go about doing such a dastardly action. Has anyone attempted such?

you'd have to own max to do v ray, and then how to convert Bryce to max?...not do-able I fear

UVDan: When I first started using Bryce, overnight renders were common for me, but I no longer have the patience for that. My approach to any piece of software is to try to figure out what it does well & efficently & to try to adjust my working methods to exploit it's strengths & avoid it's weaknesses. In effect, I view it as a kind of symbotic relationship & almost equal partnership between my creative impulses & the software. I know there are a lot of much more powerful & faster renderers than Bryce out there, but I feel so comfortable with the Bryce interface that I am willing to work within it's limitations (which really aren't that limiting for me personally). And if I get a slight bump up in capability with a new release, that keeps me happy.

Trying to bend a piece of software to your will to get it to do something that it's just not powerful enough to do can lead to great frustration & banging of the head against the wall. When you have a very specific thing you want to do - as you do here obviously - that's probably of little comfort to you. Just wanted to share my approach & will leave off with a nod of sympathetic commiseration - good luck with your render...

Thanks eyeland.

Gday folks,

I for one gave up on bryce a few years ago for that very same reason, renders not in the hours but in days.

Also dont forget going to save a file, find out its gonna take hours and hours to save, get to 99% saved and have something fall over and you have to start over again.

The funny thing is in the years that I've not touch bryce, I've missed the damn thing :)

It allowed me to make the images in my mind come to life.

Now with bryce7 pro free and a much much faster computer, either my images will save and render faster or the files will just get much bigger.

I really just think its part of being a bryce fanatic :)

I see you are a science fiction guy fozzibear.

Yep, definitely a sci fi guy here.

Been revisiting some of my old stuff with better computer and the new bryce.

Looking forward to redoing some of the old stuff as soon as I get my head around all the new stuff in bryce and remember what all the buttons do and how I made all my models then I might start posting some pics.