Here's a quick explanation of how it works. The box labeled (Lens Radius) is the "extent" or radius of your focus. A value of 0.00 being "Deep Focus", ie: everything is sharp, just like normal Bryce render. The higher you set this number, the less focus radius you will have. I find that a value of 0.01 to 0.04 gives the best effect, a value near or over 1.00 will give the most dramatic or "shallow focus". The box labled (Focal Length) is the distance from the lens plane to the epicenter of the effect. If you select the object (by clicking on it) that you want at the center of the focus, then click the button that is labeled (Set To Current Selection), the number in the Focal Length box will change to reflect the new distance. Note: You MUST check the dot labeled (Depth of Field) or there will be no effect. Also, the higher the "Rays per pixel" number, the better the effect will look. That's a quick explanation that should get you going. I plan of doing a tutorial on this effect soon. Years ago when I was an Assistant Cameraman, part of my job was calculating Depth of Field for different aperature and distance settings so I could focus the camera for the operator during a shot.

Before I import a 3ds model I run it through Maconverter, this usually makes the textures import cleaner. You can import them without converting too. Bryce has a pretty wide range of files that it can import and export.

Sounds like not enough RAM to me as well. The file size is 45MB and you only have 128MB of RAM in your machine. Bryce is probably running out of memory before it can load all of the textures and lattices. RAM is very cheap these days (and you need a lot for Bryce). I just added 512MB of RAM to my G4 for around $79 bucks, that brings my total RAM up to 896MB. I usually allocate up to 600MB of RAM just to Bryce5. Just to give you an idea of how much RAM I use, my "Birth of Venus" image (in the Bryce gallery) is a 235.6MB Bryce file. In fact my average Bryce file size is around 75 to 100MBs. Without at least 600MB allocated to Bryce I would not have been able to finish these pieces.

I think you're missing the big picture here. Use "File/Merge" (right under Open), to add the objects to an existing scene. Or open the Bryce 4 file in Bryce5, select the object and save it as a preset model in the "Create" menu. This way you can add the object to any scene, any time. You can do this with imported mesh objects, or any native Bryce objects.

If they are stone quays just use a stone or concrete texture. If they are wood you can always modify a wood plank texture to scale.

If you can find a copy of Infini-D4.5 anywhere, it has a great little modeler that exports DXF and 3DMF mesh. The probelm is no one makes it anymore, in fact Ray Dream and Infini-D were combined to make Carrera. If you look on Ebay or some of the used software exchanges you might find it cheap.

720x486 is the standard size for transfer to video. 640x480 can work too but it is not as good as 720x486. The requirements are much higher for Film transfer.

Movies and TV without a doubt offer the best rates.

Just put all or any of the objects you want to import into a Bryce4 file and save it. Open that Bryce4 file in Bryce5 and all your objects are now in Bryce5.

Wow!, very nice lighting and scale. The dolphins are a nice touch. Great work.

Hey that looks really great! The motion is good too, very realistic. Lighting looks good too.

On a Mac; "Option"+"G" "Option"+"R" "Option"+"2"

Yes that was out loud, but a good point. Traditional "offset lithography", ie; big professional quality printing presses, is not really for "one-off" or short run as you say. It requires careful color separation and registration of the separate images for multiple pass printing. It is by far the best quality, and also the most expensive process. If you only want a small quantity of large prints, there are lots of places that specialize in printing with large format inkjet printers and photo process printing on transparency for back lit posters (Duratran). These are also expensive processes and you might spend several hundred dollars to get one good poster. That's why I mentioned buildaposter.com because they are very reasonably priced and you can get an estimate right on the web site.

The higher the terrain mesh resolution you use, the smaller the seam appears. If you are making hard edged objects with straight lines you can sometimes "boolean" away the seam by grouping it with a negative cube. Clay is right though, the seam is always there to some extent.

Attached Link: http://www.flamingpear.com