Hi Ttops, Thanks for the tip, I'm doing that in Win2k. Fernando

Hi AgentSmith, I understand that the 24 bit format you mentioned above is the usual 3 channel x 8 bits RGB format adopted in many files like those with BMP extension. That format may be used by some programs to extract 16 bit height information (red + green channels). Bryce doesn't do that - it converts the map to 8 bit, resulting in only 256 height increments. If the terrain has a high relation height to base and the camera cames close, the effect is annoying. If you want to see the staircase effect, try this: copy a terrain from the Terrain Canvas, or from the picture editor, and paste it on a new PhotoShop file, RGB or Grayscale mode. You'll see that the grayscale channel has identical 8 bit info as all the RGB channels. When you render imported RGB map files in Bryce through copy/paste, or both types though Picture Editor Load, you get steps resulting from the internal conversion from 8 to 16 bits (256 to 65536) filling the info blanks. Compare a zoomed-in native map render with the same map exported/imported from PShop (without any Bryce smoothing). The staircase effect is much more visible when you render an imported black-to-white PShop gradient map. Although PhotoShop works with 16 bit grayscale mode, all the important painting tools and filters are disabled, so there is no point in using that mode. There are other formats like the PGM - Portable Grayscale Map - that use up to 16 bit gray info in one single channel. PGM is the only format available in Bryce for import/export it's 16 bit native resolution (there is one RayShade format that I don't know about). So far, the only program I found that edits and imports/exports PGM to Bryce is Leveller, with the big advantage of rendering the map in a 3D window. I hope this helps - it took me a long time to understand the effect. Fernando

Attached Link: http://www.3dcommune.com/3d/galview.mv?Bryce+f3XGoJtuU+0972247089

Thanks again for the info. It looks like Vue4 will be a bargain for $199! There is a complete silence about the new Bryce5 and unless Corel puts a lot of weight on it they will loose market share to e-on. I feel that I came to a dead end after some years with Bryce so I'll go to Vue4 as soon it is released. If you want to see some of my pics, look under Nandus in Bryce, Poser and other galleries in 3DCommune. Congratulations to all of you for the beautiful pics in Vue's gallery. Nandus

Thanks Laurie. BTW, your gallery is really amazing. As a lover of ancient Greek art I appreciated your beautiful compositions with Greek vases. Nandus

A very nice pic! I'm a Brycer with serious intentions to go for Vue4, but have a couple of questions about Vue: I notice that most Vue3 pics like the one here looks grainy. Is that an artifact due to a lower AA setting or to a high noise frequency in the textures? Is there a way in Vue to smooth that noise? Nandus

Deathbringer, Your comments are quite valid, but I still have to see good quality add pics for landscape programs. It may be that the author of those pics is not very comfortable with tree design. As BlueBerry has it's own tree editor, we may hope that there is a lot of room for improvement. What I really want to see is all those wonderful details rendering in real time at 800x600 24 fps... Nandus

Thanks Tempest, something went wrong when I pasted the link :-) Nandus

I joined yesterday. No galleries or freestuff right now, the site is under fast construction, but already has many nice new features - see "account options". It has a very friendly atmosphere and a most important feature right now: not a single flamming message there! Nandus

To be free again one must join a commune eh, eh :-}

Mine is: nandus@imagelink.com.br

Everybody is moving to Renderotica, until the new site is ready. Renderotica is owned by Jack and has nothing to do with Edgenet. You may go to R'otica Adult forum for the latest news and don't forget to join Stormrage mailing list there, for future contacts. Nandus

Stay tunned to were all this begun: http://www.renderotica.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12361&Form.ShowMessage=78168 Since Renderotica is Jack's property, he's free to post there.

Keoto, I like the idea since I have a lot of pics there but, for that to work, the name has to change and the adult content completely isolated. Remember all the complaints that forced Jack to segregate the adult gallery to the new site? In a moment like this it would be a bad move for Jack, a lot of people has prejudice against R'otica and would prefer to stay here. Renderotica, as it is, may work only as an emergency bypass, until a complete rework is done.

Edgenet locked Jack and Ed's access to Renderosity.