Here I am in northern Illinois, and the ducks are still around. Seems screwy when the ducks stay, and the snow goes south for the winter. It's disappointing, not much point in going outside here if it's all cold and no snow (not to mention no chance of practicing "rally" driving on the unplowed streets.) Oh well, at least somebody's got snow and enjoying it.

If you put lightning and some kinda ship going in/coming out... Well, you could have one of those sci-fi gateway generator thingies... :) It looks cool, regardless of what you make it though.

The terrain method is a good quick way to do things. And would be considered the hardcore Brycer's way... But it results in a high density mesh. However if you like using a nice clean relatively low poly mesh... Both of the handy-dandy freeware modeling programs that I like (Anim8or, Wings 3D) produce mesh text in multiple fonts. Dunno if that helps any. If you need to know more about them, I suppose you could ask at the modeling or Wings3D forums here at Renderosity. L8R!

Don't forget about the falloff settings. They influence the nature of your light source immensely. Try the different ones and see how they work.

POW!?? Heheheh... Good little program. So how big is your .dat file? Putting ":*" or "Casino *" in the list couldn't hurt either. Editing the list with the use of the wildcard * in mind seems to make it more efficient. Thank goodness 'osity hasn't sold out to the popup barons.

Errr... Why not use the processing power provided by some of the more common graphics cards? It would make some of the lighting effects go that much faster. It seems that some games look really good, and they're moving around with animated textures. No reason why every aspect of the image has to be generated by the CPU. There should be a way to batch aspects of image rendering to the graphics card and then process the composite result using the CPU.
I've heard a rumor that Bryce 6 exists. Supposedly it's somewhere at a place called Groom Lake. Of course if you find it, you might not be seen again. And you thought regular Bryce was addictive.

LOL! It sounds like the pot was made by the same method that potters use. Substituting tori for where the rings of clay would be layered at the potters wheel. Heheheh...
It doesn't need to be that involved. Just think of the simple geometry and work from there.

Well, you could always chip in for another computer. Nothing too fancy, since Bryce likes the main CPU. It could be your stand-alone Brycing/graphics only 'puter. Then just get one of those fancy switches so you can use the same monitor, printer, and keyboard. Checking up on Bryce would then just be a matter of hitting ctrl twice. :)

Or you could do like me and swap images via disk. I render on my ol' beater of a Presario laptop and use whatever other computer is accessable for going online. Then when I want to post my pics it's just a matter of grabbing the floppy (which is being phased out in favor of my SmartMedia cards these days.)

If it's a globe, doesn't the refraction setting come into play? Not sure how good my input is, since I haven't really played with this type of stuff.

I think I was fustrated by something like this before. I know that trying to change the origin of a grouped object can sometimes yeild screwy results. It's one of those Bryce bugs (at least that I know of with version 4.)
Provided that what you're trying to multireplicate is a single object, then it could be something as simple as clicking the little lock closed before you hit the check mark. For some reason, I've found Bryce is also funny if you assume that it likes your settings without locking it. Dunno why that is, but that's from my experience.

Tip number one when using Bryce: Learn patience. Decent renders take time. I know, I don't exactly like waiting myself. When Bryce is done, it should tell you with a nice little popup message (if the preferences are set for it.) Stopping it before then is like opening an oven on something that's only half baked. Also note that some settings in the skylab's atmospheric controls can effect rendering time by a HUGE factor.

Use some lights (in addition to the default sun.) Yes it will take longer, but it's worth it if the scenes seem too dim. They do involve tweaking to get good results, even the experts will tell you that. If realism is the desired result, lighting is usually what makes or breaks a scene. Sometimes when outdoors, I've found that lights help to fill in what is otherwise too dark. (This is sorta like using reflector screens in real photography.)

After that, you'll need to check your render settings. If your settings are off, then sometimes Bryce acts funny. Also make sure that the anti-aliasing is on. It gets rid of the blockyness.

Also I recommend getting a 2D program for use with Bryce if you don't have one already. Bryce isn't so great at exporting JPEGs, so using another program to turn Bryce bitmaps to 'pegs will yeild better results. Also it comes in handy to postwork images in order to doctor the results that are usually too technically challenging to achieve otherwise.

Dunno how much that helps... But that's my $0.02

D'oh! Thought I was all good to go. Turns out I need com32dlg.ocx... Any idea where I can get this... Any other weird files that I might need before this will work?

Thanks for the info madmax. (big thumbs up) :)

Hey it's officer Ted Russel from "Time Patrol". Now where's that sissy robot Larry 3000? Weird materials, but looks cool.

You could cheat and use a freeware modeling program (like Wings3D or Anim8or.) And then use the classic version of UVmapper which is free. Then it's just a matter of pasting the images into the outlines made by UVmapper and then putting it on the object made in one of the modeling programs. Dunno if that helps any.