What I would do is render each layer or plane as a separate image. Also do an mask render for each plane. Then you can either composit the images as separate layers in Photoshop (and blur each plane as needed) or you could reimport the images onto planes in Bryce. Use the mask render to make the duplicated sky and background transparent). Then set up your camera to see all the planes (maybe do some foreground lighting). Then render. Also, do a distance render to then do some final blurring in photoshop. This sounds interesting. I might give it a try too. =-)

Yes. You won't be able to double click them to get them to open. However, if you open Bryce 4 first and then open them they will work. .br4 is the main bryce file. .obp are object presets and must be imported into the library .mat is a material file and must be imported into the material library .bsk is a sky and must be imported into the sky library.

The manual is wrong. It was a planned feature but the product was released before the "add a category" feature was added. =-( Sarah

The terrain editor and lattice editor can be used to extrude things other than just landscapes. Although I have other modelers (not Max) I do most of modeling in Bryce now. I love the sky lab and the materials editor/DTE.

Another way to do it is to boolean together a cone and a cylindar.

Glad I could help. =-) Sarah

Yes Spaz It happens to me. In fact it happened two weeks ago when I was working on the Pineapple Room project. Your self portrait rings true. Save often and frenquently. BTW, if you give your file a number: face1 and then save as, Bryce will bring it up to the next number, ie face2. =-) It makes saving multiple copies very easy. Sarah

Green for the diffusion and specularity. Wood texture for the bump and reflection. Sarah

It seems that the main culprit in computers going bad is fragmentation. I have not used Partition Magic so I can't give you any directly related advice.

I think it's the clip tool. Actually (now reading the manual), it's called the Clipping Bracket! Sarah

There are a couple ways to go about making visible light. The first is to use a shape to stand in for the beam of light. So if you want a spot light, use a cone. A laser beam, use a cylindar that is stretched for the lenght of the beam. Want a spherical effct, use a sphere. In the volume preset library of the materials library there are some nifty materials that work well for simulating light when applied to shapes. Then to add a little extra realism, place light sources along your shape and assign the same color or material to them. There is also the surface visible and volume visible light options (in the attributes, I think) but the effect is not as nice as the first option, IMHO. Sarah

When ever doing reconfigurations, defrags, etc on your machine, it is always a good idea to make back ups of files you have created. Make sure you also know all your registration #s in case you do have to reinstall software. There's always a slim chance that something horrible could go wrong.

Command Shift 3 or command shift 4 does the screen shot thingy on the Mac. There isn't a print screen button on a Mac keyboard.

I went to Adobe (because I was curious) and they suggest removing the "detect cursor" plug in from the Adobe plug ins folder. Try that.

Memory allocation, to the best of my knowledge, is automatic on the PC (unlike the Mac). My best suggestion would be to go to http://www.adobe.com and see if you're problem is a known bug. The next place to go would be to Logitec and see if they have a known incompatibility with Photoshop. After that, try running Norton to check your computer for problems.