Can anyone recommend a good book for Bryce 5? I bought the academic version, and it does not come with a hard copy manual. This is very frustrating, I have been trying to get this one single image rendered for over a week now. It finally finished the first time, after 4 days and many hours, minutes, and seconds, but I haven't a clue how to set DOF, so my main figures face was completely fuzzy and I had to start over. I shut of DOF, and tried again. My comp locked up for another reason, and I had to reboot...so I start yet again. This time, I am tired of waiting so long, so I change the resolution from 200dpi to 72dpi and just hit the big red render ball. Sometime during the night, it just shuts down and stops rendering. I figure maybe the cat screwed with it, so I start it AGAIN. AGAIN, it stops rendering in the middle of the night, not even halfway through. I had slid the keyboard under the desk so the cat couldn't mess with it. I can't think of any reason why it would just up and stop like that. I have started it A G A I N, only rendering to disc, since that seemed to work the first time. I am about ready to toss this friggin program out the #$% %&*@ window. I figure if I give myself a break from staring at the UI in utter confusion, and sit down and read something about it; I might be able to learn enough to get me to stick with it. But right now this is completely depressing me. Is there any way to make that utterly useless nano preview window any bigger? As it is, I can't see anything because it's so small, so what is it's purpose?

I found susan kitchens "Real world bryce" to be very useful,although written for bryce4,many applications obviously adapt to Bryce5,the book retails for around 50$ US,but I utilized my public library's unique system,they have a library sharing system,I paid postage of 2$ & they had it delivered from another library ,ciao

I second the Real World Bryce book too...it's not cheap thats for sure, but it's over 900 pages of info try www.amazon.com they usually have used books for sale for a few dollars off, do the search by "Bryce" in the software section... Now for your render problem try saving that render/file with a new name ...file is probably corrupt...just rename it and do whatever you wanted to fix then do your render...also try this.... the "big red ball" render button, just to the left of it, is a smaller button....press that, then press the render button should speed things up here's a helpful item.... at www.vtc.com they have training programs (movies that play, with an instructor talking too) for tons of software programs....one of them is Bryce 5 they offer the first 3 chapters free just need to download and watch ...the free stuff will get you a lot farther then you are now ....I would suggest a monthly subscription for $25.00 ....but the book ( Real world Bryce) is more in depth

The problems you have sounds like a problem with windows, and not with Bryce itself. Had this with win98 when the RAM wasnt enough. (XP works better) About the DOF settings, one tip is to select the model you want to focuse on, then go to the rendering settings. Select "Premium" and click on the "Set to current selection". Dont worry about the Focal length, but to get the most realistic result, the Lens radius should be set to a maximum of 0.04. I usually use 0.02-0.03. I have used these settings on my images "Dreampeople part 2", "Pac Man" and "Panic". Check them out and see how the DOF looks on these. Hope this helps & good luck.

Also I've noticed if you have a power save scheme going or screen saver turn all that stuff off before rendering. My renders would always lockup when the comp would go to low power mode or the screen saver would mess it up.

Seeing that you have internet access, I would suggest visiting either Google or Yahoo and trying to find tutorials there. If you are a total reading nut, then I would highly recommend Real World Bryce 4 by Susan Kitchens!!!! It costs a pretty penny, but as far as I'm concerned, it should have been titled "The Bryce Bible".

I have no reccommendations but I completely sympathise with you, I've had it happen to me.

Momcat- I have power management disabled on my machine and my screen saver does not interfer with any of my renders. What OS are you working under? (W98SE myself). Do you have any other apps going at the same time? Anything scheduled in Task manager? As to the nano view window, it is to give you a quick and dirty preview of your scene. For myself, I tend to use the plop render tool a lot! Run a partial render, then pause it and create a local plop render to tweak your details with. Richard

Incaradine: power management and screensavers do the same thing on xp (FYI). Momcat: If turning off power management/screensavers doesn't do it ... you may be running out of memory - try turning all the fancy stuff off and lower the resolution - try again. If that works you should turn the options back on one at a time between renders until you find the culpret.

I found something yesterday, when you step the windows hardware acceleration setting (under advanced) back from the full on setting, the screen saver will interrupt/suspend/slow Bryce! A fifteen minute render turned into 4 hours. Any else seen this? (w98SE)

Momcat, I had the same problems when I initially installed Bryce 5. I disabled screen savers and turned power management to never for the monitor and harddrive and the problem went away. So that might be a good place to start.

Thanks all. I have all the power management and screensaver stuff shut off. I know why it's taking so long. It's a very detailed high res hair mesh with a transparency. Still don't know why its stopping in mid render for no apparent reason. Maybe I'm running out of space or something. I've got plenty of RAM, a p3 processor..it's a fairly good machine.

When it comes to bryce you never have enough RAM. I think it even says so in the manual. It does sound like a memory or space problem - sorry. Sometimes if you change the camera angle just a little bit ...