Aye, good call sir...! I just aquired a couple of 1-GHz AMDS, gonna link them to my P-3 and see just how effective Bryce Lightning really is! Have you considered liquid-cooled solutions for you machine? They almost kill the noise entirely, especially if you sleep with your machines like we do... (likes it when they get noisy!)

Killer model, my boy would love it too!

Aye, I understand where you're coming from, sir, but perhaps turn the RPP down, to like 9 or something managable? You will find that on small renders like 1280x960 that you will notice almost no difference than at 64. The reason is, there just aren't enough pixels to make a visible difference. And I don't know what machine you're using, I use an old Pentium 3 with 256 MB of PC-100 RAM, and it's not cutting-edge, but perhaps you should consider rendering while you sleep? Do you sleep? Do any of us REALLY sleep? Dream forever...!

Call me offended, call me jaded, but my real guess is that you haven't played with volumetrics yet. One can create any chaos-induced cloud effect in Bryce. If you want real clouds, like for example, ones that you have seen in the sky outside your house, take a photo. If you want true fractal-random cloud schemes, I suggest using the DTE inside of the Bryce 5 Skylab. Also, I've been able to reproduce millions of real-sky effects with a few layers of volume slabs... Another option is to create a skysphere, a-la every other pathetic program, and play with volumetrics there. The snake is black, and it's eye's are drops of blood.

Aye, haloedrain, this isn't a problem with Bryce at all. Bump-mapping is a pretty straightforward principle, although you can use volumetrics in Bryce as well. One thing to keep in mind, though, people... when we hit 256GHz PC's, all of our old Bryce scenes will be called "antique virtual reality". Can't wait! I haven't noticed a direct hit from soft shadows on render time, ever, but for those of you out there still using those Eye-Max, try keeping soft-shadows off in the render options, but instead using the level adjusters in the Light Lab to create the shadowd. I fins this renders slightly faster on my ridiculous machine, and a good deal faster on my still-mak-slaying Pentium at work. If you want to play with toys, get a Magna-Doodle, it retains OS-exx's rendering speed, without all the hassle. (grins)

Aye, it has always behaved as expected for me. One thing is perhaps that you are switching between world / object / camera space a lot? Which is a good tool, but I think perhaps you might want to play with it in a simpler scene to reproduce your errors, and go from there.... Good luck!

Lyrra, you rock, and I love your textures too!

It seems this would be a theory topic, since none of you apparently have Bryce available to try it out on! Goddamn inneficiency, but the flow of ideas is good. Instead, I'll answer your question, Johnpenn. I've myself run into some gnarly volumetric problems in Bryce using booleans. It's because in Bryce, there ARE no booleans. When you group objects together, Bryce doesn't create any real geometry like we all originally hoped. Bryce uses a filter process similar to what you wuld do manually in Photoshop to create objects and whatnot, and THAT is why it doesn't work on volumetric materials. The problem doesn't lie in Bryce's internal programming, rather in the fact that volumetric matrials have VOLUME. So, the Density, Fuzziness, and Edge Softness play a huge part in how your render will work. If you're animating, I suggest trying a regular procedural approach. If you're doing stills, then honestly sir there's no reason why you need to group ANY of these objects. You're playing with FIRE, not matter. Fire is photons, so you should focus on light-sensitive materials as opposed to regular volumetrics. If I seem abrasive, I apologize. But last time I checked, you couldn't grab or hold fire. Unless you're a DRAGON (grins).

A note to Rayraz : Those precise algorithithms are included in Bryce 5, so as opposed to finding some poor schmoe to write a filter for After-Effects, why not just upgrade and give the creators their due? If you want cool features, the only way to get them is to pay for them. Period. Nobody is in this genre for free, although we are all HERE to learn!

Aye, I tried that, and it didn't work for me on Bryce 5. I'll try it on 4 and see if it works, though, thanks! Perhaps it didn't work at home because of Volume Density or something, but I'll try it again!

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....

Aye, it's because Bryce 5 I believe uses filters to create it's effects, as opposed to actual geometry. This is also true with regular Boolean object groups... I noticed it first when I was working on this Mojoworld contest pic at home. If you take a sphere, hollow it with a negative one, set it to NOT transfer the neg material, and cut the sphere in half... well all of that, with a voumetric texture, the volume texture will render on the OUTSIDE of the sphere, but not on the holow inside. It sucks, but I'm creating a workaround. Maybe I should have posted it separately, sorry if it seems unrelated...

I think this is art, not kung-fu or something equally preposterous. We should enhance each other's creativity, it shouldn't be demeaning. The contests are meant to do just this, even ones with prizes like the Mojoworld one. The comments themselves, well I'm personally not too ruthless, but if I see some things that could be nicer I'll defenitely mention it. I excpect nothing less from you guys, I live for the criticism. And if you can't take criticism, hell, just don't post. An open mind is the key, in art and all things. As for criticizing people who don't post a lot, I don't post a lot. Maybe one a week. Because I'm a total perfectionist, and have poor project management to say the least, but I love viewing other's works, especially like ocddoug, their works help me set higher standards for my own. Thanks to them...

Aye, like Bikermouse I'm normally using an oder version of Bryce, but I have Bryce 5 at home. How does one create negative metaballs? I read it somewhere but I don't remember... I know they aren't quite like Biospheres ala Amorphium, but how do I boolean them with other primitives? Didn't know where to post this one...

Aye, doing it all in post is fun but it will never give you the correct optics... One way to do it, and Vile may have written a Tutorial on it, I'm not sure, is to make an actual Lens. Take a two spheres, intersect them with Boolean grouping, and you have a "real" fake lens. Track it to the camera and position it, and set it's material to a glassy one. Now you can control the amount of wash in the image with the Material Lab in Bryce, and it will look much more realistic. Haven't done any lightning, yet, but you could theoretically pull it off with volumetrics. This lens example is a great way to keep it all in Bryce, remember, lense flare is something camera photographers are trying to avoid, the fact that we work TOWARDS it speaks volumes about our idiocy.