Hi, _Got Bryce 5. I am disapointed at first sight: The first pix I made came out with a really nasty rendering. _Maybe it's my fault and I have: 1) to read the new tutorial 2) to practice 3) to discover that happily it is REALLY definitely better than Bryce 4... _In the meantime, I'd liketo ask some FAQ, however, because I would have to spend my life studying millions tutorials & books BEFORE I can begin to work activly, and get any "artistic" or "would-be" artistic results doing art-works, I mean, you can't stay a reading student all your life, meanwhile you don't produce nothing. Well, maybe I'm wrong about this...and not only only because my english is bad... These are my questions, thanks to you for helping if you can: _1) Grey arrow on bottom left of Bryce 5 screen. What do I do to get the best renderings ? I don't make animations: Should I chose then in "Render Options": Rays per Pixels: from 4 to 256. _ What do I chose as the best number ? _2) _ What do they mean (in simple english) by "Clustered scenes" in opposition to "Uniform Scenes" ? _3) _ Always in "Render Options",in "Quality Mode", should I use (for Fine Art): _a) Super Fine Art AntiAliasing. _b) or Premium Effect AntiAliasing and in which specific cases ? _4) _Always in "Render Options", Optimization..Normal or "Agressive". What kind of Art-work is supposed to demand being "aggressive" or "Normal". (This is Bryce kind of Hebrew-Language for me...xx?';-0??!!!) I am gonna learn to read some hieroglyphes anyways, hi hi, I think I have to...back to worse & more complicated mysteries than in Ancient Egypt with today's new technology stuff... I tell you, worst than Hebrew to understand, sometimes... ...Could Computers speak any human language, some day ??? Thank you for all users !!! (Derision & desperate "LOL") _5) Always in "Render Options", => Optics: Always about getting the best renderings, which number for "Maximal Ray Depth" ? in which case do I have to change this number, what's the one to chose as the Default one if I have to? In the same place, which number for "Total Internal Reflexion" ? When do I have to chose it or disble it ? In which specific case ? Thanks a bunch for answering...Well, maybe just answer: " Please just F...READ the f.....g Tutorials !!!!" I will understand... _ But maybe you have more simple words and ideas than a technical book...hi hi... I'm pretty sure you do ! Thanks for your attention. Bye ! Jean-Pierre Mayet. (Alf/ alias liftan for Renderosity.)

They are simple questions with answers already typed out in the manual. The manual won't hurt you. Just look up the specific words you question in the index. In brief, might I suggest making a VERY simple scene and keep your render options very simple. Make some benchmarks. Increase the numbers and compare your pictures and their render times. By keeping picture resolution small and the contents simple your render times will be fast but will give you scale by which you can measure the consequences of certain settings. This is better than doing a multi-character scene in a dense forest and finding out three days later that depth of field wasn't the way to go. There is nothing wrong with you're Bryce5. Have fun.

Personally I didn't like B5 but it grew on me and now I love it as much as I loved any of the earlier versions. It's still not the powerhouse I wanted it to be but neither were the other ones, but at 200 bux it's a great deal. The only gripe I have is it's unstable sometimes when importing .3ds files of all things. Sometimes 3ds meshes will import completely in pieces and of different sizes. Other than that like deci6el says those questions you asked are in the manual and in the gui for the most part.

ok this is a easy one here........ yes to the question of you being what you said,the m word and yes bryce five sucks its much slower than the other and more complicated also it started as a simple landscape creation tool and now its grown into some thing very complex deci6el is right though it takes some thinking and lots of planning to get the affects you are looking for my advice read alot of tutorials you can get on the web at least follow the advice of others that have already been through the bryce turtle race mill theres lots of ways around the complexitys of bryce five but like always bryce delivers great renders its only just now that you really have to apply yourself not only into your art but also into your software cheers!

Attached Link: http://bryce-alive.net/bryce5review/

Lol...nah Bryce 5 doesn't suck....;o) And, it's actually only marginally slower than version 4...until ya start clicking the new settings... Okay, all your problems seem to revolve around rendering and all those new settings. It seems Corel needs better explainations for their new settings badly. Up these settings just a little, or just plain invoke some and you will drastically increase render times. In the "Render Options" window 1. Don't use "Premium" under quality mode if you can avoid it. You HAVE to at the very least look up the effects that become available if you use the "Premium" quality in your manual, and see what they do. Just invoking "Premium" at its lowest setting will not only make your render longer but make it look like crap if you don't set it to at least 64 rays per pixel. And, at 256 rays, you might as well leave it rendering for the weekend or longer. If you are not using those effects in your scene, do not go to "Premium". 2. In fact stay at "Regular" for a while, stomping on the Bryce 5 gas pedal and maxing everything out will only turn you into a Bryce 5 is scrap kinda person. Um, clustered vs. Uniform...I have found that setting it to "Clustered" and "Normal" will be the best settings 8 out of 10 times. 3. Optics: Max Ray Depth/TIR very basic definition - How many windows and mirrors does your light pass through/bounce off before it stops. Increase these numbers as high as you like (as far as I know). Is there anything transparent or mirror like in your scene? No? Then don't touch it. Note - as with anything here increase numbers and you increase your render time, more is not always better, high values (set to 10 and 10) can make some glass look abnormal. I set mine to 8 and 4 ONLY when I had a scene that called for it. (a scene with two lenses and three mirrors). 4. Next...take that link I put up, now. It is a review on Bryce 5 in the area of all it's new settings. It will quickly explain a lot. Hang in there, read your manual. Agent Smith

listen to me...everyone thinks if you are having problems with the speed then the person is doing something wrong,wrong!even at 90%free resoures,386megs of ram,800mhz processer,30gig hard drive running at 7200rpm all of the render options set at minimum including no textures at default fast preview throw in a few trees a terrain and no added lights and bryce5 crawls along like its had the stuffing smacked out of it compared to other raytracers and i dont know where eveyone gets this stuff "its only a little longer than 4"little?little?never mind i guess i need to buy another desktop and link it to this one so i can just see if i got that tree on the ground or to see if i got that light pointed right,i think they shouldve told eveyone that bryce5 takes a monster of a system to have good render times,just think theres some poor sap out there somewhere with a little 64mg ram-200mhz pentium-10gig harddrive dreaming of buying 5 and then discovering he needs about twelve more computers to render a pic...

Before the inter-personal render wars start to flame too high, let me interject a quick question to liftan, if you're still tracking your own thread. While everyone is taking the time to write out their explanations to your questions, what makes these densely packed paragraphs more readable than the manual? Don't get me wrong. I hate wading through complex bulky blocks of text too but if you're at the beginning why not start with the manual. It has to be faster than waiting for someone to reply and regurgitate the same info from the book. I agree it is worth it when a friendly voice can distill a chapter into one wise sentence but you still eventually have to put your time in. Wishing someone could save me from the GIANT Lightwave 7 manual and just pour the info into my brain, deci6el.

LOl, wgreenlee1 you were almost directly on the bullseye! I run my Bryce 4 on a Pentium 1...yes 1...200Mhz cpu with 32Mb ram, and two 2.5 Gig 5400rpm Hardrives. Oh, and my video card? A $12 trident 1mb card, no agp, no direct 3d, no open gl. What are you, psychic? Startin' to scare me, man, lol. I have said before that I now know for a fact that 5 is around 8% slower than 4. How do I know? I made a scene in 4 with a variety of materials and timed the render. Then I opened that scene in 5 and timed the render, result was about 8% slower. Just in case, I replicated the scene from scratch in 5 the SAME EXACT way as I did in 4, same result. Even in my longest render time ever of 25 hours, 8% only adds 2 more hours. Most of my renders average a couple hours, so an additional 15 mintues won't kill me. But, it's all in what you render. Render a complex scene, pay the price of time. Now...results will be different pc to pc, don't take 8% as gospel, some people notice up to 15%. And, tree's in 5 can't really be compared to 4's render times, 4 just didn't have them. Tree's can be very complex and can slow render times, I've noticed my rendering slowing way down by adding a handful of tree's, that's just the nature of a complex model, sucks but oh well. I don't think anyone is doing anything wrong, I just know how I acted with 4's settings when I first got it and man, can I relate. Also, don't get me completely wrong...Bryce is not a fast renderer, never has been, but that's just the nature of a true raytracer. Point is this...somebody looks around the Renderosity gallery and they are inspired and/or excited and they spend the $150 or $300 for Bryce 5. Then they get stuck, frustrated, and want help. In the forums they should get help, direction, a prod in the ass to read their manual, etc. But to just state a quick opinion of "Bryce 5 Sucks"...come on, man...that ain't helping at all. Just because you don't like B5 and can't make it work like you want, doesn't mean I don't/can't or that someone else won't. But hey, it's a public forum, state whatever you want. And as far as Lightwave 7 goes, no thank you! I looked at the guides for it at my bookstore, it's looks like quantum physics. Best of luck deci6el, I remember your "cyclops" pic, always really liked it. Agent Smith

Agent Smith, Thanks so much for the compliment. I was trying to sell LW7 to anybody here (or there) only brought it up because I am currently at the bottom of that particular learning curve and yeah, it might as well be quantum physics, it's dense! I haven't given up on Bryce, I just needed something to get my character into animating in a better environment and Bryce won't let me do that. Good to see this is still a friendly forum. deci6el

Is it a little Freud in here or am I just slipping? LOL, that was supposed to be: "I wasn't trying to sell LW7.." I really wish it were as intuitive as Bryce.

Ive been with Bryce since version 1. I looked at the options available in 5 and decided they really werent the price of the upgrade. Im more than happy with 4. Now lets see what they do with 6.........

Ha ha ha...LOL...sems that I'm not the only one thinking what I think...still work with Bryce 4 too. Thanks to understand what I tried to mean...I'm not a mean guy, but...never wanna be taken for those same old clowns that some people think everyone is. Same for Poser 4, I prefer Poser 3...Where is this world going if doing more is doing worse ???!!! Thanks for your support saying what you said. But I am not here to fight, this kind of fight takes forever, and the ones who have won are dead. I'm not Harry Potter, though !!!

Actually, Ive found Poser 4 worth the upgrade, certainly in light of the closer-to-real possibilities. But Bryce 5 seemed all bells and whistles and not much more - a tree lab? Not useful for me, but thanks anyway. A new render possibility that allows softer shadows? Again, not a real necessity right now. The metaballs function looked interesting, but I can model that in several other 3D programs and import the results. My wishes for Bryce 6 are two-fold: a Boolean function that totally eliminates the subtractive pieces (instead of leaving them as "negatives") and a Poser animation import function. These two programs are meant for each other; I dont understand why Curious and Corel cant bring them together.