Attached Link: http://www.patriciahartman.com

I am a longtime Bryce user and a medium time Vue user. I currently use Bryce 7 and Vue 9. My question is why Bryce always renders in lightening speed compared to vue. Bryce is 32 bit and vue is 64 bit. I have an X6 1090T processor. I can set up a scene as similar as possible in each application with alpha plane objects and a bare minimum terrain, water and maybe a couple of 3d plants. I have been rendering the vue version for an hour or so with an estimated time remaining of 36 hours. The Bryce scene rendered in about an hour total. I know the atmospheres can be render intensive in vue, but the time seems always to be a lot longer in vue no matter which I pick. I mention this because I am trying to move to vue, since bryce isn't really being supported anymore and it is buggy. I find myself going back to bryce over and over due to the long renders.

Well this is a surprise. Bryce has always had a bad rep for long render times. As for Vue, I know just about zip.

I see on your website you do landscapes for sale.  In reality, Bryce renders always look 3D (to me anyway - I can almost always tell a Bryce render a mile off!) but if you're wanting a more natural looking render, Vue is the way to go.  Google for tips on render settings.  Often, just using the default settings like Final, Broadcast, Superior or Ultra, you're using elements that may not be needed for your scene which adds unneccessary time.

"Estimated time left" - Vue nearly always lies

I got the opposite results.  Bryce renders took longer than Vue.  I'm on Windows XP 32-bit and will admit that I have not used Bryce 7.  I stopped using Bryce after version 6.

Vue render times depend on a whole lot of different parameters. If you're using the standard atmosphere with straight ray-tracing, no blurring, or depth of field, one light, and the renderer set to final, Vue will absolutely blaze. If you're doing an animated spectral atmosphere on radiosity with the quality setting bumped up to 5.0, 27 lights with blur set to 10, depth of field turned on for the camera, and the render quality set to ultimate, you'd better either have a large render farm, or be prepared to wait days if not weeks for your render to finish.

Having not used Bryce in ages...and I really do mean ages...I have no idea what variables it has that affect render times. I don't even know if you can ask as much out of it as you can of Vue, but my guess would be that if Bryce is rendering faster, it means you're asking Vue to do a lot more than Bryce in terms of render calculations.

I think I had the same sense of surprise as Bryster lol. Vue's render speed advantage over Bryce was one of the reasons I moved to Vue.

Having said that though, one thing I have noticed in Vue is that sometimes you can have a material that will just blow a render time to huge levels for no real readily apparent reason. Once did a kitchen scene and a single doorknob pretty much stopped the render - changed the material on the doorknob to somehting that looked the same but was simpler and it flew through. Never had that same kind of (to me) unexplainable effect in bryce.

(And in Vue - avoid placing your camera in a cloud - that can really slow stuff down...)

Vue will spend time rendering air mass that is unseen.  So a nice clear blue sky can still take hours to render.  Check your atmosphere settings.  Then check for reflection and transparent amounts in your materials.  Then check for the number of lights you have that you may not need.

I know the long render times in vue relate to the atmosphere. I picked apparently simpler atmosphere and the render was greatly shortened. However, it is difficult to tell how intensive the sky is until you try it. also, even when I create a complex sky in bryce, I get usually under 2 hours render time. Sometimes, the bryce version looks better. I know...

A little tip - you can always cheat in Vue and use a sky backdrop  Literally a good quality sky photo and use it either on an alpha plane or apply it as a camera backdrop

Bryce is usally a heck of a lot slower, and yeah I jumped ship ages ago ;)

 

Some tips on render settings (from Vue9 though)

http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/tutorials/htm/48.html

 

ususally as folk say, it's atmosphere settings that can make render times go crazy, so have the quality slider sin atmosphere at -1 or so! Unless you wish and need better, all kinds of tweaks you cna do, and sometimes high quality setting doesn't improve things

OR

one thing that makes renders slow hellishly, is if the camera is inside a volumetric object, say a cloud or a sphere with smoke etc, for effects perhaps