You don't have a choice in the matter. NT defaults to 2 options on a CLEAN boot (ie, reformatting the drive during setup). When you install over an existing operating system, it includes the existing operation system on the boot menu automatically. If not, there's an entry in the knowledge base on adding the MS-DOS boot and the Win98SE boot to the menu. It's not hard. Just make sure that you READ the screens before pressing any key. I remember the first couple times I installed it, I wasn't paying attention and it exploded in my face (one time almost literally, but that was the power surge that blew the power supply and almost all of the internal components) and I had to reinstall. Not too bad, since they were clean installs, but that could be disastrous at worst, time consuming at best when upgrading over a previous OS. One word of advice, BE CAREFUL!!! HTH, John

Just for grins, how much does the HP DesignJet 2500 usually run, price wise? Are we talking 3, 4 or 5 figures? John

Windows NT Workstation 4.0 usually runs around $270 - $300 dollars. I've been getting it lately for less than that, but I've also been buying off of the GSA Schedule for the Federal Government (the Army actually, but who's keeping score? :) The average Joe off the street can't get it at the price that I have. The best thing to do in this case is to just suffer. The main advantage that WinNT offers is stability. And that's OS stability. If the apps like to crash (like RDS, for example) it's not going to help. It WILL help in that it wouldn't bring down the whole computer at the same time, but ... :P If you don't have the $300 to spare, I'd just stay with Win98. It's not THAT big an advantage. HTH, John

At lot smaller, probably ... :) Try rendering the image using a somewhat higher resolution, say 150 or 300 dpi. It all depends on what the printer will handle. For a 8.5x11 image, this would come out to 2550 by 3300 pixels for a 300 dpi image. That way, all of the detail is there when it prints. As for the output quality ... that all depends on the capability of the printer itself. Some folks will swear by the Epson 1200 and 1270 printers. I've seen output of these and they're awesome. Not a lick of color distortion, banding or any of that. Of course, you could always render to a .TIF and send it off to a printer to print ... :) HTH, John

Ah. That's a perfectly reasonable explanation. I can understand that. I'd load NT or Win2kPro at home, except the wife would be completely lost. As for loading NT on the second HD, it'll pick up Win98 with no problems. It will still require putting stuff on the boot drive (your C: drive) and that's how it picks up Win98. All in all, it's not that difficult. Just don't let it format the drives ... :) You may also want to think about NOT converting the drives to NTFS. If you do, they won't be accessible when you boot into Win98. Oh, one other question, is the drive current a FAT32 drive? NT 4 has (or had) a bit of a problem reading FAT32. I can't remember off the top of my head whether this was fixed in the later service packs or not. Too many sick kids in the house and not enough sleep will do WEIRD things to your memory. You ever get out of bed to go to the bathroom and get halfway there and forget what you got up to do? That's how my week's been ALL week.... :P John

It's relatively easy to do. Just install NT and it automagically detects and sets up for Win98. It's not THAT rough ... Is there any particular reason why you would leave it running both? If you have questions/comments or just general attitudes in regards to this, please feel free to email me at jstawarz2@netzero.net

A couple of notes about render to disk. You are forced into the same aspect ratio's that you have setup for the document as a whole. Also, you render straight to a Photoshop 3 PSD file. That's a little helpful, I think. Don't know what Adobe change (in the file structure) between version 3 and version 5 (or 5.5 for that matter ... :) HTH, John

It's just resampling. From what I understand, it's not only possible, but readily doable in Photoshop/photoeditor of choice. The only drawback is that doing this, the computer will have to interpolate the missing pixels and it MAY not get them the same way that you would if you rendered at that greater size. Remember, if you have to, you can render to disk with the appropriate dimensions to get the 600 DPI @ A2 size (what, slightly larger than 8.5"w x 11"h? Maybe 8.5 x 11.5/12? At 600 dpi that would be ... 5100 (width) by 6900(height, if 11.5", 7200, if 12"). It's a bummer trying to convert European paper dimensions to dpi ... :P Bryce WILL render at those sizes, but only if you render to disk. Now, mind you, this file will be HUGE! As for the difference between a .TIF and a .PSD and file sizes, it's all in how the data for the image is stored. From what I understand, the .PSD is actually a decent format to store images in long term. Supports layers, tranparency, yadda yadda yadda. It's conceivable that the .PSD for a particular image could be 1/3 the .TIF as the .TIF format (usually, it does support it) not use compression. FWIW, YMMV. HTH, John

As for the patch, it fixes a couple of nuisance bugs and gives additional volumetric support. If you don't want to use the new volumetrics, then no, it's not really necessary. Nice to have, but not necessary.

Don't get me wrong, I love Bryce. In fact, I use it so much my wife has threatened to name our next some Bryce 'cause of it ... :P The renderer is wonderful. And slow. Does great work. As for Poser, I've seen some wonderful stuff that was rendered ONLY with poser, and I've seen some garbage rendered by Poser (mostly my own stuff ... :) Anywho. Think we've killed this thread yet?

Various different machines are available to make rendering easier. With Bryce, it's still going to be a slow, tedious process regardless of what kind of speedy, snappy, bleeding edge machine you have. Let's face it, if Maya is the cheetah of 3D Renderers, Bryce falls somewhere around the house cat range. At least, it's better than Poser's (3 legged house cat trapped under a rocker type ... :)

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm still kinda shell shocked at the prices myself. Oh, well, they'll drop by Christmas, when I'll have the money to do that much upgrading ... :) John Ps - no problem about the mispelling. At least you got the last part right. That's more than most people get. Now, try and pronounce it (and yes, that's all of the name there ... :)

As of right now, Bryce (3D or 4) will not take advantage of a graphics accelerator. More Video RAM will speed up the refresh, but the biggest help across the board is system RAM followed by CPU speed. As for the cost estimate, I've seen that system (okay, it was an Athlon 750MHZ, but hey, what's 250 MHz between friends? ) with 256 MB of ram, a Matrox GeForce 400 w/ 32MB RAM, 2 30 Gb 10k RPM Hd's, a 17" Sony monitor (.26 dp), etc. etc. for $2800. The guy added another monitor for another $180. Okay, so he didn't splurge on the monitors. The biggest cost (at the time) was the RAM. RAM prices have dropped some since then. The next big cost was the processor. Still is. The 1GHz processor is still running in the $600 - $700 price range per processor in lots of 1k. Retail is still near $800. I expect that to drop in August when they announce the 1.33 GHz PIV. Now, what does all of this nifty (drool-worthy) hardware have to do with Bryce? I WANT IT SO THAT I CAN RENDER FASTER!!!! :) Now, me and my AMD K6-2 (266) are going back to watch Bryce render a 20 MB scene in 1 hr ... :P Too much transparency. Transparency bad ... opaque, nonreflective simple color good ... :) Once it's finished, I'll post it here somewhere ... :) John

All this does is specify WHERE a new object (imported, preset or primitive) is placed. If you have Create objects at world center, then ALL objects that created are placed at the origin (0,0,0). If you have Create object within view, the objects are placed at the center of the area that you are looking at in the work area. John

I've only used it once. On long renders, it will save you about 10% - 20% time wise because it doesn't have to spend cycles updating the display. HTH, John