[[ but some of us are going to miss it terribly (and no doubt loudly) if we can't get into the guts of the files and hack them ourselves]] Actually, if they change the file formats so they are no longer editable by users, I won't be able to use Poser at all, since for some reason on my machine if Poser can't find a texture EXACTLY (and I do mean EXACTLY, the full path and all leters that are capitals, etc.) as written in the .cr2 or whatever file, Poser crashes. It just locks up and that's it, the task manager lists it as 'not responding' and it has to be deactivated and restarted. The ONLY way I can use anything downloaded is to manually edit the .cr2, .pp2 or whatever and change the location of every texture, bump map, transmap, to exactly where it is on my system. This has been a major paininnabutt! I traded emails with Curious Labs for a month on this, and they finally gave up and could not help me.

[[ but some of us are going to miss it terribly (and no doubt loudly) if we can't get into the guts of the files and hack them ourselves]] Actually, if they change the file formats so they are no longer editable by users, I won't be able to use Poser at all, since for some reason on my machine if Poser can't find a texture EXACTLY (and I do mean EXACTLY, the full path and all leters that are capitals, etc.) as written in the .cr2 or whatever file, Poser crashes. It just locks up and that's it, the task manager lists it as 'not responding' and it has to be deactivated and restarted. The ONLY way I can use anything downloaded is to manually edit the .cr2, .pp2 or whatever and change the location of every texture, bump map, transmap, to exactly where it is on my system. This has been a major paininnabutt! I traded emails with Curious Labs for a month on this, and they finally gave up and could not help me.

I always keep it OFF, as I found that pics would look OK on my PC if I had it on, but would always be MUCH darker when uploaded here or at 3dc and viewed from work, or from friends computers. Some things I did were too dark to make out details because of that. Since I turned it off, things work much better.

I have notice an odd phenomenon. e.g.: I'm working on a pretty large Bryce file (50-60Mb), make some changes and then save it. I then start the render and it tells me something atrocious like 5-1/2 hours or much more, and if I let it just go, it takes that damned long to render. On the other hand, if I stop the render after the first pass when it shows the 5hr estiomated time, change to a different view, such as top, then back to my main view, and/or click on some object (sometimes I have to do both) and make a TINY change, such as moving it 0.01 z+, I can then click on the render button and after the first pass it gives me an estimated render time of something like 35-45min, and that's roughly how long it actually takes. I've duplicated this with a lots of files, and it's weird, but it seems to work every time for me. (B4 on a win98, PII-400mhz w/ 256M ram system, BTW - on which about 85Mb is the largest file size I can work with unless I want to wait a couple Minutes after clicking just for something to f***ing highlight so I can edit it).

You do SUPERB work! This is definitely a must-have. Profoundest thanks.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=170469&Start=1&Artist=Allen9&ByArtist=Yes

Look in the Bryce Free Stuff. Folks like Frank Allen are constantly posting great terrain materials. There's LOTS of them. One of the important things in getting mountains to look like real rock formations is using the Erosion button properly. First, when you create a terrain, or import a greyscale, leave it at the default 128x128 grid and hit the erosion button a couple of times. ALSO, hit the "slope noise" button a couple of times. Next, increase the grid size to 256 and repeat, then do it again with grid at 512, and then resize the grid one last time to the maximum of 1024 (Yeah it's big, but if you want good looking terrain details, you have to have enough points on the grid for it to work with) and hit the erosion button and the slope noise button once more. Note: the "size" of the erosion features change depending on the size of the grid you are using. Hitting 'erode' at 128 grid size puts in features that are much larger, in relation to the whole terrain, while doing it at 1024 puts in finer detail erosion. Experiment with this. Believe me, the combination of the erosion button and the slope noise, done at the different sizes, can really improve a mountain. I'm putting together a tutorial on this, with illustrations, and will be posting it sometime in the near future. Check the link to my latest pic. The mountains were created using this technique.

Attached Link: http://www.confusius.net/

Here ya' be. I still use the Ultramorph dork myself along with a zillion more dorkmorphs from Traveler. Though I've acquired Mike & Mike 2, I still haven't used them for a whole lot. Soon, tho...

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=36348&Start=19&Artist=Allen9&ByArtist=Yes

You need to select your marble or whatever material, then in the Material Editor, bring up the values for "reflection" and "Specularity". Those are the two that control how shiny surfaces look. Check out my "Temple of the Moon - Sanctuary" picture (link). The whole place is various types of polished marble (27 hour render, BTW, because reflection - like transparency, eats up the time and makes for long renders).

Just addin' another vote. Go for it!

Somewhere in the free stuff there are texture templates for dork, posette, mike & vic that have color-coded areas to show you exactly where parts line up. I downloaded them a long time ago. If you overlay the appropriate one on a texture you're working on, as a non-editable layer (in Photoshop or whatever), you can line things up pretty easily. Just remember to delete that layer after you have things lined up, & before you do the final save on the file.

When I had gamma on, the pics looked lighter on my own machine, but were much darker if I posted them and then looked at them with a different computer, like from at work. I'm not sure exactly how that all works, but since I now keep gamma turned off, I've had no more complaints about my pics being too dark from people who view them. I need to learn more about this myself.

Why can't the default state be reset to an empty checkbox and have people put a check in it to activate it (only when they actually want it)?

Good idea Sipapu. 'Member Photo Album' would sure be waaay less ambiguous. Mods/admins: Whattaya think?

Yep, the quality is good. It's amazing how many pics are posted in the Bryce gallery where it says something like "modeled in 3dmax, rendered in Bryce."

Did you have gamma correction left on when you rendered? I found that when I rendered pics with gamma on, they would tend to be way too dark when posted online. Once I learned to shut off the gamma correction, my pics were much more viewable by others. It's a good pic, but it's so dark it's really a strain to make out the details.