If you have computers at work, Bryce 5 will let you network render stuff, so you can have several things crunching at the same time. I assume you've already eliminated screen savers, background apps, internet stuff, etc while you're rendering, checked system resources and maxed out the free resources. Are you using soft shadows on everything or some monstrously unnecessary antialiasing level? Maybe bumping up your swap files settings would help some, if your system is making frequent saves then over time the disk access speed will become limiting to your process...can't think of much else. Anyone else care to offer opinions? I do love the Triton speedster...can I get mine in red?

Yeah, but we'll be able to create and render by thinking at a computer mounted on a single flat sheet of glass held in the air by magnetic fields...from your office at home with megagigabit speed connections to work...ahhhh... Hopefully the strengths of Bryce (a fun interface, powerful features if you want them but that aren't shoved in your face) and Poser (the ultimate people-tool) will continue, with improvements for things like smoke and fire, vegetation and other hard-to-model natural phenomena, and better and better animation. Probably behind-the-scenes stuff like better raytracing, caustics, refraction and internal reflections, lighting. And who knows - maybe they'll actually let us model things in Bryce AND EXPORT THEM!! mumble grumble. Good thread, red! May the Force be with you.

erm...may I very humbly make a minor suggestion? This shot is awesome - I can't believe you want to tweak it but based on your other work I'm sure you'll find something even cooler to do with it. There is one ship that flies past, from left to right, with 2 vapor trails behind it. Is there a way to make those trails follow the flight path of the ship, rather than remaining ruler-straight even as the ship turns? Kinda like watching a plane in the real world as it makes a turn - the vapor trails that have already been created describe the path the plane took through the sky. I don't want you to take this as negative feedback or anything! This is spectacular work! Am eagerly awaiting the final product... May the Force be with you.

Got mine yesterday in eastern NC (where we were underwater thanks to Hurricane Floyd 3 years ago - remember the hogs in the river shot on the news?). It's really cool. You know you're a local here when you mow the lawn and find two or three cars . . . the Presbyterians are the ones handling snakes out here too.

You can just bury the tree deeper in the ground - maybe so the upper half of the bump is visible so it looks like the swelling above the roots.

Dude. You must be trying to give the Brazil renderer a run for its money! You should call it the Smithzilla renderer or something... Drooling for details of the light setup. May the Force be with you.

Hmmm...mesa tinkin' yous hittin' de nail on de head? Desa bombad mirror! Couldn't resist. I think it looks good, other than the angle of the reflection (if the mirror is oriented right at the camera, we should see the camera). If you can turn the mirror plane about 30 degrees counterclockwise (viewed from above) then it will look perfect. Perhaps add the beveled edge effect all the way around, too? Lower the horizon in the mirror to match your horizon in "real life"? Nice work! (Where did you find Jar-Jar?) May the Force be with you.

Check out the Bryce Forums FAQ (click the link just below the moderator's names) for more info on exporting. Bryce doesn't have the best track record for exporting objects...

Like I said - I don't claim to be an expert! Nice work there, kieraw, Aldaron and Vile. I dub thee Knights of the Bisected Planet, with all due rank and privelege thereto associated... And you gotta show us the finished product (esp if it has anything to do with Star Wars...drool...)

Hi Vile. I'll give this a try, although I'm not worthy of the "expert" title. Let's work on the example in the upper left corner from your link. Create your planetary sphere and assign textures, etc. Next create a cube with one corner poking into the planet center. This will be the Boolean subtraction, or negative object, when they are joined. Perform the Boolean operation. Now create a new sphere for the planet core and assign textures, etc. Position this sphere in the exact center of your first sphere. You will still be able to see the cube after the Boolean operation, but when you render, it should resemble the diagram you want. Let me know if this doesn't work, and I'll create the scene for you and email you. Good luck! P.S. If you want to have other layers, create all of those spheres with textures and nest them inside each other, then group the whole shebang with the cube and subtract out the cube. Then add the last sphere for the core. May the Force be with you.

Could you take one out, scan it, and map it to a simple box structure? (Just for a quickie fix, not a detailed mod)

Kathy - if you don't need to show the car accelerating, just make the wheels sort of blurry and spinning - if you watch a car on a highway you can't really tell that the wheels spin at EXACTLY the same speed as the road going past. If you want to start animating at a standstill and then accelerate, that might be trickier. Can you measure around the wheel, then stretch that distance out flat so that a marked point on the wheel hits the road at that interval each time? Then regardless of the speed of the car the wheels will move exactly how they should...i hope this made sense....long day....