Sometimes, it's the simple things that we overlook, so I have to ask: Did you put a keyframe at the very first frame in the scrub thingy?

Like some others, I was also torn between a few different images here. But, after thinking about them, comparing them more carefully, and deciding its best to just jump in and vote rather than dally; I cast my vote for the image that conveys a feeling of great space, which in and of itself is no small feat. It captures motion, demonstrates a testosterone-driven struggle (which seems to me what a duel is ultimately about), and the signature is applied in about the coolest way Ive seen a long while. My only criticism is that I wish there were more graffiti on the walls that somehow doesnt confuse the signature, if thats even possible... Anyway, I cast my vote for: Rochr

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I think I did the same thing. Of course, I didn't model the body as nicely as you did. I made it all with metaballs. I grouped each leg segment's balls so they don't interact with other metaballs (so when the tips of the legs touch they don't squish -- like when touching the web in the above pic), and duplicated the ones near the joints so the joints stay smooth. Download the freebie I made, it's a tiny file (64 kb) and see if we did the legs the same way. It sure looks like the same technique though!

In the attributes window o fthe object that tracks the path, go to the "Linking" tab (I think it's linking, it's the center one.) There are options for which axis tracks the path. I believe that Z positive is the default. Set yours to Z negative (or whichever it needs to be so it isn't rotated or flipped), and that ought to solve the problem.

Select the light, click on the E button. Lower the Intensity of the light. If you use a lot of lights, lower the intensity down to 1 even. If it's still too bright, make the color of the light greyer instead of white. Hope that helps! Oh, and for a flash light effect, you might have better luck with a spotlight instead of a radial light.

You may want to consider looking for photography tutes. They tend to tell you how to light an object. That will help you with positioning. As for the rest of the light lab, that's a whole book right there. It's very subjective. How do you want your lights to be? I can offer a few tips though. If you are using spotlights, you can set them to track the object that you are lighting. (Buy clicking the "tracking" icon and dragging it to the object you want to light up) That will keep the light pointed at the object even if you move the object or the light. Also, I don't know if you can set the ambient shadow color in B4 (I don't think you can) but a good tip is that light casts shadows that are the complimentary color of the light. For example, yellow light casts purple shadows, and red light casts green shadows. If you don't believe me, break out a colored light bulb and see for yourself! Good Luck!

Resolution depends entirely on the type of output device. If your output is to be done on press, then you need resolution equal or greater to half the line screen (lpi). Most commercial printing is done at 133 lpi, some at 150 lpi. For that type of output, youi'll need 266ppi and 300 ppi respectively. (although, I've used as little as 200 ppi @ 133 lpi with acceptable results.) An inkjet only requires resolution of 150 ppi. If your render is small enough, you may be able to render normally, so that you can continue instead of rendering to disk.

I've seen a tutorial online about this, but I don't remember where. The tute covered hos to take a poser figure, and render the legs in wireframe and fade into regular textures at the thighs or so. It was done with a wire frame texture and transparency maps. I think you'll need to actually use a wire frame texture, and I think that a simple grid set to map parabolically should do the trick.

I don't know about the rules, but if you upload an image 1000 px wide, a lot of people are going to be side scrolling to see it all, and that's annoying.

I take the dive, personally. Processor speed is primarily relevant to render times, and your file size is limited by the RAM -- sort of. File size and polygon count are independent of one another. That is, you may have a 200 meg file with a relatively low polygon count (due to textures and such) and you may have a 1 MB file with a huge polygon count (metaballs and trees will do that). RAM will help deal with the files with large sizes / high polygon counts. I'm a Mac guy, and here is the rule of thumb I use (this is adapted from Photoshop, it's not completely accurate). You need in the neighborhood of 60 MB free RAM just for Bryce. That is, if your OS takes 70 MB RAM, you need 130 total to run Bryce and the OS. If you add shapes to Bryce, it will now require more memory. If physical RAM is unavailable, virtual memory will kick in, and it will start to use your hard drive in place of RAM, and you'll notice things slow way down. Though I don't know how much RAM an individual polygon or a primitve uses, what you do if Photoshop is this: 60 MB+ for the app alone + twice the file size in additional RAM (for a 200 meg file, you'll need an additional 400 MB RAM). So, we have 70 MB for the OS, 60 for the app, and for a 200 MB file, another 400 MB RAM bringing minimum RAM requirements to 530 megs. Again, I don't know how polygon count influences things, but I know that eats RAM, so this equation may need modification -- afterall, it was designed for Photoshop, and not a 3D app. But it should get you closer to a logical equation.

Thanks for the tips! I'll play around with it and see what happens. Oh, and not showing the magnifying glass or the boy was really a blessing in disguise. Bryce won't focus light through a lens like I have there, so it wasn't feasible to do that. But, I like the way it forced me to crop the image. I really enjoy the subtlety -- there is enough information for you to get it, but not so much that's it's in your face.

I think that shadow is being cast by the top of the theatre that is visible, but I may be wrong. I agree with Incarnadine that your booleans may not completely overlap which leaves these artifacts. Your terrains also appear to not be set to "solid" which may be causing you problems. Just a thought: rather than booleaning with the cube and a bunch of terrains, why not just make the amphitheatre with one terrain?

humorix, I debated doing just that. The reason I didn't put it in is because techinically, the dirt isn't burning, so there is no smoke. I don't think hiding behind realism is necessarily a good excuse though, because if this were realism, there would be fewer segments in the ant's legs (which are posable, btw). I did tinker around with a wisp of smoke, like on your draco, but I couldn't pull it off without photoshopping the texture, and it felt like cheating to me. Perhaps there is a better way, but I don't know how to do it, and I had a dozen other ideas too. I ended up just saying "done." I didn't want to end up over working it. Actually, I didn't want to upload it yet, but I knew that if I hadn't, I would have re-worked it. For reference, anyone know how to pull off a small wisp of smoke in Bryce alone?

Right on, Eric. Nice work! It's really amazing to think of what else the tree lab might do.