More 2-cents: I at least started with Bryce back with version 1 on the Macintosh, and had a love/hate relationship with it ever since. I've needed to buy every edition of Susan Kitchens books in order to figure out the features, and I'm still not getting close. However it is the ONLY application I've been able to pick up where I can easily create a whole world. If I need to model complex objects, I suppose other applications are better, but I curse everytime I need to do something in TrueSpace (please, no flames). I import back into Bryce as soon as possible. The rendering engine takes a long time because it does a good job of it. I'd like to learn (from this forum) if there are now better alternatives, (maybe Vue or Terragen?). I'd drool for a chance to play with Maya or Lightwave, just to see if I've really been missing something. If this was my job I'd maybe have different views about "production tools." But my #1 reason for using Bryce is because it is FUN.