Hey, I finally downloaded the Bryce 5 demo to play with and... I go to sky lab, set the sun/moon shadows to "soft shadows", I go back to main interface, the preview updates and shows soft sun shadows, but it won't render that way and the setting will not stay, every time I go back to the sky lab that setting is unchecked. what can I do? p.s. - I have, under render options, checked the premium a.a., depth of field and soft shadows. Which doesn't seem to matter either, default settings don't make this bug act any differently. AgentSmith

listen go read the comment i left on this thread http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=107&Form.ShowMessage=434510 save yourself some time and get vue4

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Yes there's a bug with the soft shadows. You will have to enable soft shadows for each light you want to have the softer shadows for. Wgreen- Bryce 5 renders scenes a bit faster than 4 did, and is a good deal stabler than 4 was when it was released. Yes, there a some bugs, but you have to take the good with the bad. What settings and what scenes gave you long render times? Bryce 4 scenes supposedly render a bit slower in Bryce 5 than native Bryce 5 scenes. Adding lights will dramatically increase render times, especially with soft shadows. Materials and volume materials can also hurt rendering times. Bryce 5 also offers more flexibility with the premium render settings, as well as the ability to change ray depth and total internal reflection. You can also take advantage of network rendering if you have multiple computers. What are you doing in B5 which is convincing you to switch to Vue?

NO...you misunderstood, or didn't fully read. It is not a radial/spot light I am having trouble with...it is the SUN/SHADOW settings inside the SKYLAB. It is the SUN itself. And as far as "wgreenlee1" goes... Well...that doesn't answer my question, and...I cannot altogether agree with your opinion on Bryce 5. I had a chance to play with a co-workers PC, whom had both Bryce 4 and Bryce 5 together on the same PC. I created a scene in Bryce 4, and rendered it in 56 seconds. I then re-created the same scene absolutely exactly in Bryce 5, and it rendered...in 63 seconds. I also took Bryce 5, opened the scene first made in Bryce 4, rendered it, again 63 seconds. This makes Bryce 5 about 8% slower than Bryce 4. That amounts to a little less than an extra 5 minutes per hour added to rendering time from version 4 to 5. This was just my experience with 4 vs. 5. Now, where this comparision ends is when you increase the quality settings in Bryce 5. Yes, you will absolutely get slower rendering times, no doubt. I have demo-ed Vue 4, I do not like it myself, but that is just purely my taste talking. I think it is a very good product but I have also read from 3D artists who dwarf my knowledge and expertise that the rendering times of Vue 4 are about the same if you jack up the settings to match Bryce 5. As far as you getting a Bryce 5 manual that had pages missing....? I would think that your Bryce 5 CD should have a .pdf copy of it on it, Corel knows this and I'm sure that is why they would not send you one. Now can anyone answer my original question? AgentSmith

Try disabling sunlight, then putting a point light where it will match the sun. Or better yet where the shadowing looks great then use soft shadows. Set the point light's fall off to none, and set it somewheres less then ten power (depends on the lighting condition). This will give you much more control over lighting and keep the skies look you worked for. Griggs

Let me explain myself- I believe if you set the soft shadows in the skylab it'll essentially enable them for the lights in the scene as well as the sun and possibly the moon. That control in the initial release is broken/buggy. Grigg's suggestion may help to solve your problem.