Hello. I am a new Bryce user, and generally new to the whole 3D community, but it has not taken me long to figure out how to use Bryce and make detailed scenes.

I have a slight problem, though. My computer takes several hours to render images that aren't very complex, and I shudder to think how long it would take to render an image that is very detailed. I know that is a common problem with Bryce, and to dodge that problem there is Network Rendering. But I have no access to a network at all, and I don't want to quit using Bryce because the rendering is too slow.

So I have a few questions. 1. Can network rendering work over the internet? I know a few people that would help render my images, except that we are only connected by internet. 2. Is there any place that you can send files to be rendered and they will do it for you and send you the image/animation when they are done? It seems to me that there should be considering that probably many people have the rendering problem, but I have not seen any.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Not sure of the answer to yor questions, but here's an option you might want to consider. ( many of us do this ) We render are images while were at work or sleeping or not using the computer. There's an option that lets you save a partially rendered scene so you can open it and resume the render right where it left off. Go to Edit/Preferences and enable the Image with Scene Open/Save option. Then when you save the file a bmp is saved with it. When you open the scene back up, simple hit the resume render button ( little button just right of the render button ) Hope this helps.

I don't know about rendering over the internet. I have heard of a renderfarm wich says it can render 100 times faster than your home computer. I saw an advertisement of the company saying that it rendered with several products. one of wich was bryce. I think the company was called 'renderfactory', but I am not completely sure. Anyway, hireing a renderfarm to render your images is going to be expensive I think. I just let my own computer render. I am used to renders of several days now and my record is 11:19:43:57 on one image and 28 days and 23 hours on an animation. I think you should check google to find the renderfarm if it's still there.

Yes, it does work over the internet, as I have done it before. You will need to install the latest version of lightning on all your friend's computers and then just get their IP adresses and plug them in. Tip: If your friends are running through a home router network it will only render on the host machine (at least when i tried it anyway)

Thank you all. The image I was working on I toned down a little bit, so it will work in a relatively fast amount of time. I will try to look for renderfarms, if there are still any, and I hope they charge something reasonable. As for working over the internet, I can get my friends to get Lightning and use their computers to help. That seems to be the best option right now. I am still new, so I haven't made very detailed scenes yet, but I am getting there. Right now I am still on the basics, doing all these different tutorials I find. Never before have I been able to say that making art was so fun.

If you are considering spending money on a render farm, it would be more economic just to upgrade your machine. It sounds like or computer is fairly aged, as you remarked that even simple scenes take long times to render. With the current pc happenings a new processor goes for a fairly good price.

I put my old 750 athelon out to pastor when I built this 1.4g and then I decided to bring it back to life for a network render. It does help. This Christmas I might go with Moore's law and upgrade again.

Also, if you're just making a quickie render for yourself and not a final version, open the Render Options and disable AntiAliasing, but be sure to re-enable it for your final render. That always helps with times. Also, large numbers of light sources, transparencies, or volumetric objects can be render killers. Try to use as few as possible until your final render.

If you're going to buy/build a new machine, load it up with as much RAM as you can afford - at least 512Mb. Another way to cut render times is to get a mobo with a built in RAID controller and set up your HD's in a RAID 0 configuration. This will lower your disk read/write time (a huge factor when rendering large images). Abit KT7a is a good choice (I have 3 I use for render machines)