before to long when everyone has bryce 9 and poser 7 photo-realism will be the standard. if you look on the terragen gallery this may already be the case. what then? anyones thoughts on this matter

Yeah, but we'll be able to create and render by thinking at a computer mounted on a single flat sheet of glass held in the air by magnetic fields...from your office at home with megagigabit speed connections to work...ahhhh... Hopefully the strengths of Bryce (a fun interface, powerful features if you want them but that aren't shoved in your face) and Poser (the ultimate people-tool) will continue, with improvements for things like smoke and fire, vegetation and other hard-to-model natural phenomena, and better and better animation. Probably behind-the-scenes stuff like better raytracing, caustics, refraction and internal reflections, lighting. And who knows - maybe they'll actually let us model things in Bryce AND EXPORT THEM!! mumble grumble. Good thread, red! May the Force be with you.

Once the the race for photorealism is achieved, hopefully even more people will fall back to creating more artistic work with their software, instead of just trying to constantly render the better looking mousetrap. -`course, who am I to talk? I'm also in that race right now.

Ok, by bryce25 and poser18 0r whatever you will be able to create a photorealistic 3d world and plug it directly into your brain, aka the matrix. I just hope it won't be running on a microsoft operating system or the 'blue screen of death' may take on new meaning! :(

I don't really go for photorealism, if I did, I don't think I would be very successful.

Two words: Faster Renders! :-)

IMO it's the Artist who achieves photo realism not the software. True options like radiosity and global illumination make it easier. But even with these options the best tex maps and models it's still the artist who sets them up properly within the lighting. Also getting the little details right, like highlights, refection, refraction, bump to name a few. Personally I didn't see anything in the Terragen Gallery which couldn't have been rendered in Bryce too.

"I didn't see anything in the Terragen Gallery which couldn't have been rendered in Bryce too." Gee, Stephen Ray - that sounds like a good challenge ;) As for me, just plug me into the machine and I'll be happy...till a lightning storm comes along and fires my brain ( even more than it is already ;)

Kate <> Hey I live in one of the most lighting strike capitals of the world ( west coast of central Florida ). I keep all my stuff on surge protection, not that it stops the surge, but it does make it easy to unplug everything when the storms move in.

In my vision Photorealism is not the main thing to go for. It is in fact a barrier on the artistic intuition of the artise. There's so much more able with 3D than photorealism. Making things you can't photograph in the real world is what makes 3D worth working with at the moment but when we accomplished the goal of replicating the real world in CG there's more to gain in completely new styles.

The photo "realism" may not be the goal, but it's a very nice way station, because if you do fantasy things, they still have to look "natural". Be them mercury androids like in Terminator 2 or giant fairies like the one I made. I mean, the light still falls on them and the texture interacts with the environment.