Wings3D does text in addition to its other modeling abilities. And I believe they have a mac version. Not to mention that it's free.

You can set power management to turn off the monitor. Just remember Bryce may want the HD to keep going, in case it needs the virtual memory. Usually I do something else during a long render and visit the 'puter to see how its doing. Nudge the mouse to "wake it up", and yes the line does progress.

Cool! Uhhhh... (Looks at calendar.) D'oh! Ya almost had me. Heheheheheheh! Gooood one man. :p

I recently did another render, and found out that the crystal (glass) spheres may have more to do with the nature of the light than I previously thought (I couldn't get that weird glow to work.) Seems that specular halo and the refraction properties of the glass material amplify the volumetric properties of light sources. I'm still not certain to how useful this could be. Perhaps further experimentation is required? Hmmm...

Heheheh... You know, I'm crazy enough to do that. Look around, and I'm sure it just might show up.

Volumetric radial lights. Set at about 15 brightness. And somewhere between 15 - 30 softness. 5 lights used. Three as part of the objects and two as fill lighting. The colors come from the lights themselves. Linear falloff, but not much else - since I'm only using Bryce 4. I want to say the material was the cotton ball material. This is the one in the volumetric library, not the clouds one. Oh yeah, the clouds and lights were also contained in Crystal spheres. Which were made of aptly named material in the glass presets library. Then it was a matter of aligning the lights to the spheres in the objects. I'm not sure how much that matters tho.

First you render the image and save it. Next you select the items in the render that you want to show. Change the rendering mode to "mask render". Then render and save that image. (It helps to keep the same name, but add _mask at the end so you'll know what it is.) Then you can use the mask to create an alpha chanel that controls the transparancy. Perhaps somebody can explain beyond that stage a little bit better, but that should get you started.

Uhh... So considering the size of my handgrip, my sword makes a reasonable length of around 2ft? (It's probably some kind of pirate sword.) I'm also guessing that draculaz dragon sword is a zweihander. Well, wings seems like a reasonable side topic in Bryce - it's free and it fills in a gap in modeling capability. So Brycers take what they can get. :) Now back to Draculaz question again... When you made the UV map in wings, did you save it before or after exporting your model from wings. If I recall, I think one has to save the UV in wings before exporting the model for it to work. I'm pretty sure mine worked ok using parametric mode. Also did you do anything to the image size of the map when post working it? (assuming you did) That can cause problems too. Hmmm... Too bad I can't see exactly where the hang up is.

Well it'd be pretty hard for me to show my computer art from when I was 14. (no bryce then) First I'd have to find my ol' Atari 130 XE and all the stuff that went with it. And then I'd have to find the 5" floppies (and hope they're still good.) Then I'd have to figure out how to convert my RemBrandt images to .gif or .jpg... LOL... (sounds close to impossible) I guess you would find some neat 8-bit examples of anti-aliasing and dithering done manually pixel by pixel. Some of the stuff I did back then had cool color cycling stuff too. (Dunno if any of you remember that as being a cool graphics effect. LOL)

Whoah! That is cool. Now if they ever make StarCraft III, they should have you design a DarkMage/Dragoon hybrid unit class. Looks like one badass Protoss dude.

Attached Link: http://www.3dcadbrowser.com/preview.aspx?ModelCode=605

A brief answer to question #1 is: Sometimes we cheat and use 2D graphics programs to make our renders look better. Or you could refer to question two as well, since some models are easier to make outside of Bryce. To answer question #2, which asks "What's compatible?" Well... As far as Bryce obp. files go or .br4/.br5... When it comes to Bryce proprietary files, only Bryce is compatable with Bryce. Also note that Bryce 5 is backward compatable but Bryce 4 is not forward compatable. It's an irritating fact of life sometimes, but don't let that get your hopes down. Why? Because... (as stated previously) Bryce can still export terrains, stones, imported objects, and symetrical lattice objects in formats other programs can use. Bryce can import models created in a decent variety of formats. .3DS, .obj, .dxf and some more are supported by Bryce. Therefore, any program that can save or export in those formats is functionally compatable with Bryce to some degree. These include freeware modeling programs such as Wings3D, Anim8or, Metasequoia, etc. If you find yourself limited by Bryce's way of modeling, this import capability opens up many options. Also note that heightmaps and images planes are your regular .gif/.jpg/.bmp/ etc type files. So any 2D program can come in handy for creating those. So that said, welcome to the club. Experiment. Make images and animations. And most importantly - have fun at it!

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=355795

True about the interface being the core of Bryce. Leave it alone. What Bryce does need: A way to create mesh models. Perhaps a modeling lab of sorts. Being able to combine mesh editing capabilities with its current boolean, terrain, and meta abilities would be quite pleasing, especially if one could export them as .3ds or .obj. This would make it complete right out of the box. Incorporating mathematical functions into multireplicate. So one could perhaps have true fractals into the 3D generation of objects. I suppose one would have to assign the replication number to a variable, and one could build around that. It'd be interesting to see trigometric and other functions implemented. It'd be a powerful tool indeed. A rendering engine that could take advantage of graphics cards would be nice. It would most likely speed up lighting an atmospheric effects for those with the right hardware. Also a way to control transitions between materials would be cool. A few refinements to current controls. Nothing that really changes the original behavior or layout, but makes them more functional. For example the number of familys one can assign objects should be virtually unlimited and having a heirarchy tree would make grouping and parenting much more clear. Also making use of more than the left mouse button would be appreciated by those in the PC side of the house. I could see some benefit to using the right button for some menus and having the scroller wheel zoom, and holding in the scroller button could be used for the trackball. Other than that, I'm willing to bet Brycer's want their program the way it is.