Is Bryce 4 any different from Bryce 3D? Is it worth the update?

On the surface they do appear to be the same but the Sky Lab has apparently been completely rewritten (not just the UI but the code that does the hard work as well). I hadn't got into Bryce3D that deeply before upgrading to 4 but the main things I noticed were the improved render speeds and when a Poser figure was imported the meshes were named (ie head1 instead of meshX). Initially I was slightly disappointed with the upgrade as it didn't appear to have many obvious new features (certainly nothing as spectacular as the upgrade from Poser 3 to 4) but now I've dug deeper into it's capabilities I would definitely recommend you go for the upgrade. -Tony

OH YEAH!! I would definitly say so. First-of-all, the scrolling through different catagories is a pain. You have to push the arrow and it is all weird, in Bryce4 you have a nice, easy to use scroll bar. Bryce4 has many more options for skies and scenes (if that is what you are looking for). If you are thinking about animation, Bryce4 has a little preview to see if you like your animation before you render, whereas in Bryce3D you have to render everything before you can see if you made a mistake. I can go on and on, but the biggest + is the sky options...