Aye, i've made plenty of crystals in Bryce. It's actually pretty painless. As for mimicking your blue monster image, anything can be done if you put your mind to it. Bryce is, foremost, and environmental renderer. But you could push the limits to whatever you wanted to render, we do it all the time! As for lighting, are you using Bryce 4 or Bryce 5? They have very different lighting techniques, as far as soft shadows vs. lightcages....