Psst. $30 an hour equals over $62,000 per year. Which if you explore the current pay rate for graphics designers is above average. That is at 200 X 15. But you charge $30 so the end user is paying a $120K plus salary. Now the only graphics designers paid that kind of money don't bother with this type of stuff. So as you describe it you are creating an object. Charging for you time and effort. Then after arriving at that figure marking up the product 100%. I have to ask what loan shark is nailing you for 50%. Who or what ever that is, give them the slip. I never heard of any type of legitimate distribution arragement the has you doing the work but gets 50% of the gross. Get an agent, you only have to pay them 10% Credit card processing gets another 10% Shipping, well it's a download so there is no shipping. Heck add another 5% miscellanious costs and you end up with 25% insted of 50. Now you can drop the end price 25% and still retain the same income. But maybe from this new price you will sell more units and actually make more money.

Awww, this is absolutely Priceless, Great Job! Holding sides, I am half expecting to see someone flattened underneath. The look on the face is priceless.

http://www.turbosquid.com/HTMLClient/Download/Index.cfm?FuseAction=AddAsset&AssetID=125467 Max 3ds titanic model you have to register to download.

I am making this point that Tgen is still free. Bryce will carry a decent size price tag. You could purchase a Digital camara, a 27 inch color TV, DVD player,and other nifty toys for the price of the software. Right now it seems the SW is only giving you features that encourage you to spend more money, SMP, Netwrok rendering. To take advantage of that well how mwny multi processor MAC's are there? How many Mac's support Network rendering on a IP network? I used this comparison to open debate on whether this release that they have used hollywood tactics to launch will be really wrth the entrance price or really more ho and hum. Radiosity and caustics? Well no official source has made mention of it as a matter of fact the lighting tool panel shows nothing for radiosity settings nore caustics. The material editor is even a bigger secret. But seeing that they pertty much kept the rest of the panels the same I do not expect grand changes there either. So it is a wait and see. But with a ship date of july It certainly is strange that the details of this SW are not completely available by now. Corel is certainly not doing it's self a favor.

intuitive user-interface - Extremely easy to use layout, along with realistic default settings, allows the creation of good-looking scenes within seconds of starting the program. random fractal terrain - Controllable parameters allow extremely varied terrain shapes. Can also be used to 'fill in' realistic terrain on a user-defined landscape. high detail foreground texturing - The rendering engine allows extreme close-ups of landscape details with automatic level of detail adjustment. terrain sculpting tools - Can be used to 'paint' the shape of the landscape, to position mountains and valleys or make changes to random landscapes. Random terrain generation can be used 'fill in' realistic terrain over deliberately positioned mountains and valleys. terrain modification tools - Functions for allowing overall modification of terrain shape, such as glaciation. combination of terrains - Two terrains can be combined together to produce a new terrain, using a number of different methods such as 'highest', 'lowest', height addition and subtraction, to extend the usefulness of the terrain generation system. terrain import/export - Terragen can import and export raw heightfield information in 8-bit greyscale (and soon 16-bit). Possible uses include the construction of terrains from externally created pictures. Terragen can also save terrains as Lightwave LWO files, and files compatible with the 'Import Binary' feature in VistaPro. hierarchical surface colour map - The surface of the landscape is divided into different components, such as grass and rock. Any component (surface) may be divided further, as far as is desired. There is huge potential for very complex, detailed landscape surfaces with this system. water - Lakes and seas can be rendered, complete with ripples/waves and soft reflections. cloud layer - A 2-dimensional cloud generator and rendering system which realistically shades the clouds to give an impression that they are actually 3-dimensional. Also, an experimental 3-dimensional cloud renderer which can in most cases provide even more realistic results. multi-haze atmospheric model - This allows for highly realistic skies and haze, while allowing room for experimentation and artistic licence. volumetric lighting - Shadows from the terrain and clouds can be cast into the atmospheric haze to give 'sunbeams' and improve the overall lighting of the atmosphere. realistic sunlight penetration system - Calculates the dimming and reddening of the sunlight through the atmosphere. Improves foggy scenes and gives gorgeous sunsets with ease while still permitting control over its effects. anisotropic lighting of atmosphere - At present, this is achieved by a convincing 'glow' effect applied to clouds and haze. 'soft' shadows - Although only calculated by approximation, this effect looks almost perfect and has no rendering time overhead. Create terrains up to 4097 X 4097 pixel resolution. Plugin compatible for use with Lightwave. IT IS FREE. Bryce 5's terrain gen program will have to be a phenominal improvement to match these features. Bryce 4's terrain generator can only creat a terrain that is only 500 X 500 or so pixel resolution. Ans well as for the Lightwave plugin functionality, I suppose you feel that the bryce product is an equal modeler and animation package to Newteks LW 6.5 Nd no it does not take milliseconds or every Bryce modeler out there would be kicking out images like ones the default Terragen creates. And I certainly do not see many of those on the Gallary. Have you actually looked at the terragen gallery. The output of that application and the photorealistic capability is uncanny. Anyway as I said before. It is this type of improvement that I expected out of Bryce. Not the tweaks and small additions. The biggest thing so far seems to be the tree generator. No radiosity and Caustics. At least they could have added that.

Yup it is still there just do a search in Bryce free stuff for accurate starfield. or starfield. The one you want is done by Wolf

There is one thing you can do. You can use a material called real starfield or something like that. It used to be available here as a free down load. It maps a starfield to a huge sphere in which all of you objects sit. This is independent of the sky settings and will not effect lighting or color. It also creates a much nicer sky than the built in starfield preset. I have created my own as well and I think I can mail it to you if you wish.

Ahh. Well you see the starfield is a sky preset. It has it's own sky color, light color etc. Since the scene is effect by the sun and atmospheric values. The colors of the objects and landscape change. It though there was a option to turn off affected by sky somewhere. Since I do not use Bryce very much any more maybe some one else can elaborate. But what is happening is not your fault, it is just the way Bryce does things. Another thing I hope the improve in B5.

Let me state that this is not a comparison of the two packages. This is a comparison of one function that is the CORE functionality of the two packages. In my eyes so far Terragen wins the environmet creation functionality hands down between the two. The Cloud, environment, and water generation is far superior. It is this aspect that I compare. I was expecting similar improvements for Bryce 5. SOme real changes in the way it handles fractal generation and the quality built in. You can get bryce to generate as good a terrain and sky as terragen. But the work required to get there is high. But when you have the chance to start off with a fractal and sky generated terrain such as the one provided by terragen much work is saved. Terragen is not a modeler there is much more functionality in Bryce. But I like so many other people were waiting for such improvements in Bryce 5, It still may be a great new release but so far I do not see much there that can not already be done in B4. We will just have to wait and see.

The bryce render is default from bryce 4. Not 5 but so far I have not seen anything to indicate that the quality of the terrain generator has changed any.

Ok still not impressed. Any mention of the renderer. How many antialiasing stages? Does it support motion blurring and what mode? Object import and export or is it still only terrains? Radiosity and caustics, what about those?Interesting that no mention was made of the deep texture editor as it was one of the biggest pains to use and quite anemic. I must admit I do not see anything there that is a huge departure from the existing SW. Some nifty improvements but not the major overhaul a major release I expected. Network rendering, without reworking the render engine it is of no real benefit as most people are not going to run out and buy a render farm. With the speed of their render enging the need SMP. But not many are going to run out to buy a Dual CPU set up. Meatball modeling is just about one of the most useless techniques for modeling objects available. They needed to include a spline modeler or subdivision. Still lets wait until someone coughs up the full specs. I just took a good look at terragen. Now while it has it;s drawbacks and on it's own limited. With the LW plugins available for $90 even the default terrains it generates blows Bryce away. Besides so far it is still free.

One of these days I preview and check for typo's before posting.