Indeed, Fran. Most 3D modelers allow you to actually change the shapes involved. Meaning that if you have a 6-faced cube and tore a hole through it with a 16-faced cyclinder, your resulting object would actually contain this geometry. Bryce does boolean modeling by way of filtering, telling the raytracer that an object is either visible, not, or visible and casting textures. So booleans don't work the same (or as well, I might add!) in most other programs because what's happening is weird tesselation effects and inaccuracies. The advantage in other programs though is that you can seriously reduce unnecessary geometry at rendertime, and this is also part of the reason why Bryce's rendering engine is so slow.

You can take the sun out of the equation by simply disabling it in the Skylab and turning Atmosphere off.

Looking good! The lighting is excellent, I think even Unreal 3 can't touch this..

Also, JBA, are you using the largest (4,096x) source-map size possible in the terrain editor? Just checking!

Do you mean that Shadows are checked "off" in the Skylab? I believe the Skylab's shadow-tab (not the one for clouds) is a global shadow tab. What you need to do is turn the SUN off in the Skylab, but leave shadows checked on... It's a very dark image. I think it needs to be much brighter on the paper-areas (ends of hands, candlestick) and darker towards the edges, as you get further from the candle. You can achieve this with "squared falloff" in the candle-lights themselves. Note that you will have to turn their brightness value way up, and probably use multiple lights, like a ring of 6 or 8 radial lights around the candle-flame object. Make sure the candle-flame object has shadows turned off, too! Good luck, keep posting render of this scene, it's pretty cool!

Still, as a I mentioned, almost every other program has a true parallel light.. It would be very easy to code for such a thing. Falloff coding is much more sophisticated... Hope that Daz takes this small bug into account on the next run of Bryce!

I love render-talk! Maxwell has some impressive results, but alas, it's still years behind mental ray, V-ray, and Brazil. You can do anything Maxwell can do with mental ray, for example, and it's much, much faster. And you can do a million things with MR that you simply cannot do with Maxwell, period. For the price, a new version of Max (which ships with mental ray AND V-ray) would be a far, far better bargain, and of course at the top-end would be Maya and XSI. Foleypro, I have to disagree with you... Bryce has the slowest ray-tracing engine on the market, period. Mostly it's because it IS a pure ray-tracer, with no scanline functionality. Terragen is also pretty slow, but nothing beats Bryce for sampling redundancy... Don't get me wrong, I love Bryce just fine! But after years of using other software, I've realized just how slow it's engine really is. Scenes that take minutes in Bryce take seconds in mental ray, literally. Not that I think Max is such a great program, but still... This is the main thing holding Bryce from the professional mainstream : you simply cannot animate heavy scenes in Bryce. But I'm not naysaying for no reason! I'm looking forward to version 6 as much as the next person, I assure you! And hopefully DAZ makes us something special... I'm dreading the possible need for Vue Infinite.

The parallel light thing always got me down, too. I have to disagree with you Pidjy, from #6, in that even though Bryce IS only a ray-tracer, ray-tracing wasn't and hasn't been made to simulate natural light at all... Rays are "data-rays", and not "light-rays", and behave nothing like photons. Check out Maxwell or mental ray for more information on that topic. Perhaps someone should suggest to DAZ something about fixing the parallel lights for version 6? I don't think I saw it on their "to do" list last time I looked...? Parallel lighting algorithms are really, really straightforward and should have been incorporated in version 1! But that's all just techy-ness. I'm trying to think of a use for the parallel light now, and simply can't... For a tube light, you'd still have to use multiple radial lights (the more lights, the cleaner it would be) since a parallel light only emits light in 1 or 2 directions, and a tube light emits light in ALL directions EXCEPT those 1 or 2 (the endcaps). A tube light would be the opposite of a parallel light... Zakalwe, in #13 and #14 your effects were caused by negative lights emitting POSITIVE shadows. Imagine a negative flashlight (negative photons exist?!?), where the spot you shined it on would be dark, and whatever shadows that cast would be lighter! That's what's happening in that image in #13... You can test it with one neggy light and a sphere, it's pretty weird but very cool! FLASHDARKS?!?!

As far as I can tell, the only difference between an amateur 3D graphics designer and a professional is that, when offered money for graphics, the amateur says, "No, I'd do that for you anyway, silly!" and the "professional" says, "I'll need at least twice that much money."!!!

Well, I meant "silly" in the nicest possible way, I assure you!

Hah! You people are silly, and never have I seen an online community so devoted to each other, humor, and the learning process... Don't let anyone's opinion sway you, and I can't imagine "amateur" being an insult after having seen a few of your galleries!

If you're gonna upgrade, go all the way. Carrara is excellent, but if someone wants to upgrade for professional level animation, even Carrara has it's limits. Using Poser still? A 3DStudio or Maya person would scoff; Poser simply doesn't have the power that the Big Dogs sport easily. Boning in Poser? A nightmare! But people do it every day, and successfully... This thread is about moving forward from Bryce. I love Bryce and recommend it to anyone entering the 3D world! But if you're going to shoot high, skip all the intermediate stuff and make a real investment. XSI, Maya, and 3DStudio all boast tools that make Carrara look like a child's toy, and make Poser feel like an awkward, dull saw to a lumberjack. And although Carrara is powerful and quite easy to use, it's limits are still vast and, well, limiting... My point is this : if you're doing 3D graphics for a hobby, for fun, or to make wonderful artwork then it doesn't matter which package you use, as long as you learn it thoroughly and mix the program's uses with good art theory. But if you want to make money, and start a career in the industry, don't stop at Bryce, Carrara, or Vue. There simply is no job market in these areas. Nobody is looking for Carrara users or Poser artists; these programs teach themselves and require one only to play with them, not the intensive study and dedication that Mental Ray (for example) demands. Thus, the pay difference. Anyone can learn Poser in a weekend. Making a character in 3DStudio, rigging it, and animating it, can take months to perfect, and with more versatile and powerful results. Ever seen the a movie? You can bet your life they didn't use Poser or Carrara. To sum it up, although I'm impressed with Carrara's progress, a few pretty renders still wouldn't phase the guys at Highend3D, or anyone else in the industry. Carrara is still playing catch-up to features that Mental Ray had years ago. Keep your eyes on the prize, and if your prize is self-expression, stick with Bryce! If your prize is a career enslaved to 3D graphics, hard work, and your name on the credits, take a good look at 3DStudio or Maya.

Initially Carrara was "Ray Dream", and then "Ray Dream Studio", and then after version 5.whatever Metacreations kinda broke down and sold everything. Which is how Corel ended up with Bryce, and Poser went to Curious Labs... Carrara is loosely based on Ray Dream, although I doubt they share any code at all nowadays! Looking good, Mr. Draculaz. Keep at it!