I have had this error happen when Bryce can't find an .mtl file to go with the .obj (not always). If you get the UVMapper program (from uvmapper.com) & run the .obj thru that so that it has texture coordinates written into the .obj file, it usually won't happen. There may be other situations in which this happens, but I haven't run into them (yet).

It's a tradeoff sometimes. Sometimes it's not, but it's often a matter of time vs. results. If you are doing a picture that takes 24+ hours to render (like my "Sanctuary") image, and you are an ordinary home user with 1 computer, that means you just can't do anything else for that whole time. That can be a major bummer. I am always interested first and foremost in getting an image out of my brain and into a viewable form. Once I've done all the work, which may take days or weeks of labor, I want a good final product. Sometimes that just means I have to wait (and wait, and wait, and wait) for the rendering to be done. If I could get faster rendering, I could be on to the next one(s) of the gazillions of projects seething in this quagmire I call my mind. I always have at least 5 or 6 images "cooking" at any given time, and when I have to wait for a long render (which I will certainly do when necessary) the other projects tend to start knocking up against my mental walls, wanting "out."

Joke, if Bryce renders too slow for you, and you just can't stand it, then pony up the $15,000 and get a copy of Maya. As someone who will NEVER ever be able afford something like MAYA (unless they stop unfairly withholding my winning lotto ticket), I'm damned happy with Bryce!

I'm using B4 and have found that there is a MAJOR difference in the final quality when using antialiasing. I don't normally use it during the "draft" stage when working but sure use it for that final render. I've compared final output of my stuff both with & without antialiasing, and without it, all the details that I put so much time into just don't come out right. I guess it depends on what kind of pic you are doing.

I always thought that when a program had a "file lock" no other program could open the file, but would get a windoze error message about the file being in use. Maybe it does just keep a low-rez quickie in memory for the preview (????). It does seem like it takes a bit of time to render, maybe that's because it's loading the full file (???). Sure hope somebody who knows stumbles across this thread and can fill us in.

I'm not sure Poser actually keeps the full image in RAM. Last nite I had a Poser file open, went into Photopaint to alter the jpg for the skin texture, and went back into Poser & immediately re-rendered, just to see what would happen. The changes showed in the render though they hadn't in the pre-render "textured" view. It would seem to me that if Poser already had the image in memory, the changes to the file on the hard drive would not have shown in the render. Can any Poser "experts" throw a little light on this? I'm curious about just how Poser actually handles those texture items too.

They are right. There is no way to convert obp's. In any case Bryce's rendering options are so much more advanced than Poser's that trying to export from Bryce into Poser is going at the whole thing backwards. Export your Poser figures into Bryce.

Attached Link: http://johnontherun.ezdir.net/

I can agree with points on both sides of this argument. On one hand, when I do a Bryce pic, I try to use postwork as little as possible and find a very stimulating part of the challenge of any project to be attempting to achieve my whole "scene" effect just with Bryce, though I will use postwork if necessary, but as little as possible. On the other hand, if I could only use Bryce and not use anything imported, the only things I'd be making would be landscapes, which, while nice, don't go all that far. Even my cave pic, which won that month's Bryce challenge, used a number of imported elements for the few architectural items visible in the cave, and the torches illuminating the wall. Without those imported elements (which I could not have done in Bryce without so much additional effort as to make the project un-feasible in the time I had for it), I could not have done the scene at all. The other pics I have posted in my gallery here make extensive use of imported models (since items of such complexity are way beyond my skills in Bryce), but I use Bryce for far more than just "rendering". I consider the imported models to be just elements, it's the overall scene that is my aim, and most of that depends on the interrelationships of object placements, lighting and all the rest of what Bryce is so good for. Even when I do a scene that's really based on a single figure, like my Goddess Saraswati picture, I really see that figure as a part of the total rather than seeing the rest of the picture as merely an accessory to the rendered figure. Maybe others might look at my work and see it differently. It's a tough question. I'm not sure of how to best achieve balance in a situation like this. It's good to see it being discussed, though. This should at least get us all to think more about what we are doing, and the how's and why's of it.

Yeah JK, I can go with your dragon/wyvern/wurm classifications. It works for me. Anyone else can use whatever they want to.

Anton's Dragon V2 is available now at bbay. I just bought it and it's very good - and cheaper than the DAZ one. Like the DAZ dragon, it has FOUR legs plus 2 wings. Dragons being mythical, they don't have to slavishly conform to standard earth-biology. I believe the 2-wing/2-leg version 1 of Anton's dragon is still available somewhere on the net as a freebie, which you can probably find if you search. The $20 for dragon V2 was well worth it, in my book.

JK - Yes, thanks. I've been in touch with Anthony recently because my copy of Poser won't open the browse dialog if it can't find a material in a cr2 or other file, it just crashes - everything freezes and the Task Manager shows Poser as "not responding". So far, after several weeks of effort, CL has been totally unable to figure out why this is happening. I've had to go thru all the 100's of items I've downloaded and manually edit all the cr2's, pp2's, etc. to show the exact location of all materials in order for Poser to work on my machine. (What a paininnabutt!) I'll get in touch with him about his document. I have Compose and UVmapper - have only used Compose once to extract an extra pair of arms for a picture I did of an Indian Goddess, will have to look into the material renaming side of it - wasn't aware of that. Thanks for the suggestions.

The export to .obj, .3ds, etc. works ONLY with terrains and lattices, NOT with anything else. (sigh)

I think to get it to shine at variable levels for greys you need to turn on the "alpha-scaling" option in the pull down menu (the one where you select things like "cylindrical" or "object front" mapping) for the image you are using to control the specularity.

Miden - agree about huge pics, those people need to learn about jpg compression. Still, there are lots of freeware thumbnail makers out there. Just search any of the freeware/shareware sites like Tucows or Nonags software. They're small, easy to use, and free. If you have Bryce installed at work so you can render there, you should be able to install a free thumbnail maker. I may miss good pics by not clicking where there's no thumbnail, but since my time available to surf pics is limited, I just can't waste time clicking on a bunch of "no thumb" posts only to find that they weren't anything I'd want to see. Been there, done that, did NOT buy the T-shirt (won't go there again). With a thumbnail you at least have a clue as to what the pic is about. In the final analysis, the decision is yours, but if you don't use thumbnails, don't be disappointed if your hit count is awfully low, just learn to expect it.