Quote - Yes, I've had Bryce Lightning for many years now but only now am I almost ready to try using it.  At last I have the option to use some other hard drives as well as my four core main computer, plus I may have an eight core in the future.

However, not having used it before I could do with some help in figuring out how it works, and how you connect things up for it to work.

I'm away from home at the moment, but hope to be back with all these options and extra hard drives at the end of July.

The trouble is that since so few people use Bryce Lightning is very hard to get information on this subject, from users. So we may be stuck with the kind of information you get in a manual -- hopeless!

I understand that Bryce Lightning is not a render farm itself - it is merely the program to connect and get a render farm working - the farm being an array of harddrives/ or other computers acting as slaves to the main computer, and that you can either send all the rendering to the slaves, or include the main computer in the rendering job...

I think the reason it's hardly used is that most people just have one computer at a time, not many have extras PC's or Macs lying around available for such a task.

You are right about it being a way to connect and get a render farm going; however, if I understand it correctly, it is also a way for multiple users to create a project by working together. I figure than anybody working with me on a project, no matter what part he or she is working on, will have the right to own a copy of it. Naturally the person that conceives the project would own it as intellectual property; but if it is the brainchild of more than one person, all contributers to the concept should own it as intellectual property.

Of course I'm not saying that Bryce Lightning is for anything more than the rendering process; however, if you have a network of fellow artists, friends, and associates that are willing to work with you on your project, Bryce Lightning would be a great tool to have in your collective arsenal. Speeding up render times can cut your production time  way down, allowing you to reach publishing readiness much sooner.

I could see a team of artists getting together to form an online production company. They would work toward mutual goals to create a production, and use things like Bryce Lightning to speed the rendering. And they could discuss ideas among themselves, vote on the issues at hand, and decide what to work on. Any profits made would be split as evenly as possible. Also, if one of them has a problem that needs to be addressed, the others can help find the solution.

Although Bryce Lightning is a way to link several computers to speed up the rendering times, (and I think this is great), it may be due to trust issues that it is not used as much as it could be. People don't want others taking control of their machines. This is why I suggest an association of Bryce Artists that would be an environment with rules and regulations that all members would adhere to. In this way, each member would be able to trust all other members. The work that could be produced this way would without a doubt be phenomenal.