Here a few characters I've done, and these wires give you a bit of an idea all the drastic differences you can achieve.

I am actually supposed to build a character this week for one of our departments, so I may post it on this list when I get it done. It is not the most original idea, but it's for our cardiac rehab, so I am making a heart-guy who can be posed to do the various exercises, etc.

I love what  you have here. Nice character. Simple and cool. I'm looking forward to what you put up in the future.

Name: John McCulloch

Age: 44

Area: southeastern New Mexico, USA

How long have you used Bryce?: since Bryce 2 was released for Windows.

What kind of art do you create usually?: A variety of styles from as realistic as I can make it all the way to toony as I can go. Uses: Illustration, fine art, conceptual art, etc. I use it as a renderer only now. I use Rhino and Wings to model.

Would you ever move over to Vue?:  Not likely. I'm working with RenderMan-compliant renderers as well as Bryce, and Bryce suits me just fine.

What is your most favourite Bryce art that you have done and why? I still like this one, "Professor Lug's Laboratory," because it's a complete scene and Bryce did exactly what I needed for the illustration:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=995498

I thought the Transformer robots were pretty amazing as well. Another one you should check out is "A Night with the King," which has these really broad cityscapes of Babylon, with waterfalls, crowds, smoke, flowing river, etc., all of which was rendered in AIR.

WOW. I kept watching some of the scenes on AIR's website, too, and, even knowing what I knew, I was super impressed with what those guys achieved.

Way to go, Joe. You're the man, no doubt about it.

I think your rendering is spectacular. I really enjoyed it. The ship is well done, and I'd bet it is a lot more economical being constructed in Wings than in Rhino, which is the other app I use. I could put an insane amount of detail into a Rhino model with, say, the columns or posts all around the decks, but the polys would get high fast. I think you put just the right amount of detail and chose a good application in which to do it. Really good work.

I'm certainly happy to hear you're recovering nicely. C3 on Trevor, eh? Hmm. I'm more accustomed to C2 being fractured. This is troubling. We'll pray for him, definitely.

You are bang on when you talk about people's good qualities coming out during crises. I have seen this time and time again. If people were as reasonable and able to stack their priorities day-to-day as they are when trauma hits, we'd have a much better world.

We usually just see people dish out junk, until something stark occurs in their world that clarifies just what is or is not important.

Know that we appreciate you. Get better soon.
John

Well, I'll have to confess:

I'm inclined to be more of an encourager that a serious critiquer. I don't mind someone telling me how I can improve, so I'm not here just for strokes, but I always excel when people encourage me, so I have a tendency to tell them what I DO like about their photos, not what I find weak. That way they know they're on the right track.

That said, I have always found it a bit off-ticking that people seem to be in this just to develop groupies. Then they all say superlative things to one another about work that is really pretty bad; that way they all feel better. It's particularly upsetting when I see people put up an image that is really thought-provoking and visually compelling and they have at most one or two comments after being on the gallery for several hours, and, the section that shows "most commented" and "highest rated" or whatever have dross by the same names you always see -- some of which is fantastic, of course, but a lot of which is just cookie-cutter junk.

This has been cussed and discussed a number of times, and I don't see any of it changing as long as there are "most (fill-in-the-blank)" sections. As far as critiquing goes, I think a person should say what they feel and not be mean about it. If you don't wish to say anything negative, you shouldn't feel pushed to. If, on the other hand, you have some constructive criticism, I don't feel you should hold that back or be expected to either.

Just my .02.
John

dan_whiteside -3
ICM -2
Zhann - 1

Tough one. There certainly were more than 3 that deserve praise, and deciding was particularly hard. In the end, I chose for subject matter originality, for lack of a better term; really great glass; and POV:

drawbridgep-3
prae -2
SavantNoir -1

I am still waiting for the arrival of Bryce 6, which I ordered from a reseller, because that's the less-complicated way of doing things in the hospital where I work. Direct is problematic, because of credit card, etc.

Anyway, I haven't gotten a chance to check rendering speeds on B6. I will say, though, that, unless they are massively faster than they were, I'd have to see a quantum leap in render speed from current releases to the pro version to shell out big $$s for Bryce Professional.

I was rendering a couple of glass containers last night on default, with a two-light setup, and it rendered all night only to be 50 percent complete this morning. It was only about 950x950 pixels at, what, 75 dpi or something like that.

I understand all the reasons glass and refraction slows render times down, but, when I could go to AIR and render some rather nice glass in a fraction of the time, it makes me scratch my head and say, "hmm."

I have always liked the Bryce interface and the way you can get some nice renderings with a little less techical knowhow than with Entropy, AIR or BMRT, but those render times in Bryce just kill me.

My piece that I did last year, for example, for the Traugs project had one of those characters in it, Professor Lug,  and it took two whole weeks to render, because I had several glass items and some tubing, etc., on a lab apparatus. I got the exact result I wanted, but it rendered in the background day after day, while I pumped out several major projects.

Just one poster-sized render. Ouch.

My .02.
John

Thanks for the all the hard work you guys do. Life has interfered with art in the past few months, and this has been an indispensable way for me to get to see some of the most lovely and interesting images. It makes my day on Mondays to go here first thing in the a.m. and look through everyone's fine work.

My condolences to you and your family. I know we, as a community here, are a pretty supportive bunch. This is a nice place to be.

I'll pray for you all this week.
John

I'm on Death_at_Midight's side of the fence on this one. I have found it pretty easy to get around in T2. It sure does munch away at the RAM though.

Importing .obj models is cumbersome, to say the least, at this point, but I think the nodes are not all that bad, and importing models is said to be made easier as time goes on. I have found in the last seven years that Matt is usually good to his word. I would expect this program to get better and more user-friendly as time goes by.

I remember spending hours learning T1 when it was first out and having to spend a lot of tim having to relearn later releases with a new approach to texturing terrains. However, T2 gets cooler results than the old Terragen, and I just haven't thought it was difficult at all.

That said, I also think Blender is ridiculous, so I have to agree with Drac there.

Here's a link to a photo my 15-year-old daughter took of me on New Year's Day, and it's been "artsified" a bit. It printed out to a nice 13-by-19-inch photo that I'm going to frame and put up in my office:

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

Not trying to get cheap views of my gallery or anything -- although the 2D music category is pretty dad-gummed quiet --, but my daughter sure would not mind you guys stopping by to look at the image. :)

(Is that sort of like Columbo getting an autograph from a star and saying, "it's not for me; it's for my wife"?)

Seriously, though, you'd make my daughter's day ...

Nothing unusual here, I'm pleased to report.

Tornadoes graces our summer. We're just now dipping consistently into 30s every night. We get windy every day, but winds of 40 to 50 mph with gust up to 60 are not at all unusual, so,  nope. Nothing. Same old same old.

BTW, the tornado damage photo is kewl. That was a humdinger, looks like.

:)