I was going to vote a few hours ago but held off thinking more entries might still be accepted.

Yes, I too think there should still be some time. I think bobbyStar should still be allowed to enter, as well as any others so long as they are in no later than midnight.

I agree though that it is important to get the voting done as soon as possible, so as to avoid delaying the challenge start date for next month. I for one found it hard to keep to the deadline this month as I did not learn of the contest until a bit late, well into the month of May. Hopefully we can get a winner selected and a new theme within a few days to provide more time.

Thanks for the early votes btw!!!!!!!

Your error was caused by the memory leak causing havoc with the undo buffer. You can cause a crash easily by using the copy, paste, or replicate/duplicate commands on imported meshes, or high poly native meshes such as trees. I have seen this myself. anytime you are making replications/duplications of imported models or high poly trees save the file often and restart Bryce. Make sure you rename the file each time as you do not want to copy over a good save with a corrupted one. Restart Bryce because that is the only way to clear the clutter from the undo buffer. Do not save as you close the file, save first then close. Because you need to check the integrity of the save and make sure it did not go corrupt and balloon to 1.98gb, another variation of the same memory problem issue. Remember that Bryce 6 compresses files in a way that bryce 5.5 did not, so you need to know the difference between the file size on disc and the size in the page file history. Also, try to never use the undo command. it too gums up the memory and can lead to crashes. Also, I have found that Bryce is sensitive to any and all system instability at the time of a save. I have found that the mere act of minimizing Bryce to work in other priograms then restoring Bryce causes the undo buffer to go crazy. So try not to work in other apps while working on scenes with alot of replications or duplications, and especially when saving files in Bryce. the truly deadly combination is perforiming lots of replication commands and undo commands while jumping between Bryce and photoshop editing textures ot 3dsMax editing meshes. Hope this makes sense. The memory leak sucks.

Interesting. I wasn't going to respond, but I do want to share an idea or two with you. I tend to write alot so please forgive me.

Careful, don't get to feeling too superior just yet. There is a lesson here. It is likely disappointing and even confusing to you that a person of a lesser intellect could be made to govern a born thinker like yourself, and paid much more for his work than you. Fact: Intellect itself is not a measure of character. Smart people are not always nice or even moral, Have you ever heard of a mad scientist? Intellect is not the most important thing when deciding who to make into a leader.

This is an opportunity for you to observe the real truth of humanity and life. Life is not fair, and for a good reason. Though he may have a lower intellect, he is still loyal to the company's needs and he gets the job done. Monkeys are smarter than dogs for example, but everyone knows that dogs make much better pets than monkeys because dogs do what we tell them to do. How many blind people do you know of who own seeing eye monkeys for example? None I am certain. The roll of "boss" once you become a boss you realize it is less about doing what YOU want and is more about getting things done that HIS bosses want completed. If he does not get the job done they will eventually let him go.

I think that we need to remember that intelligence is just one factor needed for survival. Along with quick reflexes and a strong immune system, high or even normal intellect only helps with particular limited tasks. Because humans are social animals, we tend to form alliances with those who we feel most comfortable with, not those who are the most intelligent. in fact, intelligence is often taken as a threat to those of lesser intelligence, so be careful sharing the true scope of your thinking capacities with those around you who would compete with you. More on that in a second. Your boss likely has been around the company for a long time and has friends, probably has still been smart enough to kiss the right butts along the way. With his stressful job being the boss and all, maybe he was just too distracted with noise issues and stress over getting fired at any moment to fully concentrate and focus on the seemingly pointless exercise you presented him. Stress destroys cognitive processes.

I once had a professor explain to me that my intellect was the least of my worries. He cautioned that my concern in making sure others appreciated my intellect was indeed my problem. I told him it really pissed me off when others assumed I was dumb because of my looks or position or whatever. He gave me some good advice I will pass on, "Sometimes you have to be smart enough to play dumb." "Not everyone needs to know how smart you really are." " Even intelligence can be used against you."

Also, one test does not prove anything on its own. Yes there are 13 triangles and if you are accustomed to taking these sorts of I.Q. deterimining tests you will be much much better at solving these puzzles than those people who do not regularly take these sorts of tests, regardless of your actual intellect quotient. They have proven with studies that the more often people take I.Q. type quizes or tests the better they get at taking them in the future even though their mean intellect has likely not grown much!

Smart people know that politics is all that really matters. Use your keen intellect to become friendly with this boss of yours and maybe through socialization you yourself will get promoted to the status of boss where your own thinking capacities can be fully observed and chipped away at by those who are now beneath you. Make him like you and view you as a loyal friend, not fear you as a smart alec upstart, and he will invite you in to the upper mangement fold where you probably belong. You already have the intellect and they surely know it, what they are looking for from you is that you have the leadership skills, a separate entity from intellect and no less important of a requirement for leadership. Only once you feel compassion for him and stop judging him can you ever be promoted yourself.

Just my opinion.

It is a waste of time for me yes, and for many others and we should not feel bad about it. I certainly encourage people to model in whichever app they feel comfortable in, that is my point. No limits. Why should someone be docked or looked upon oddly if a scene was not fully modeled in Bryce?

That sounds incredible, Jeff, no doubt! I am particularly amazed at the Bryce models created by a person who goes by PIXI, I do not know if he is around here but he is or was at Bryce5.com. Anyhow, his bryce models of all sorts of things are just incredible: Links to some stuff he did:
http://www.bryce5.com/details.php?image_id=1872&mode=search
http://www.bryce5.com/details.php?image_id=1872&mode=search
http://www.bryce5.com/details.php?image_id=1873&mode=search

A link to his full gallery:
http://www.bryce.pl/

I do not doubt that the finished product was fantastic with your model Jeff. My only question is on the time invested. How long did it take you to model this project? How large was the memory file footprint? How many more detailed houses of that sort have you modeled in Bryce since then? To me there are some drawbacks to creating such complex models in Bryce, but what for me is a drawback for others may be a draw in, who knows? I really wish we could work more modeling tools into Bryce but perhaps others do not.

So sorry to hear about the hard drive crash and the loss of your work. The heartbreak of losing such a detailed Bryce model must have been hard to cope with.

And in fact I will add that in some ways I am guilty of being a purist myself, in that I do not believe in substantial post work. nearly any image I ever produce is without any post. I feel it is my task to wrest as much detail out of bryce without relying on post. Yet, becasue of it I close myself off from many wonderful postworking possibilities, I am foolish not to consider post as an option. I must learn to get over that limitation I have placed upon myself. That's just a personal example of what I am saying. I do not see myself as better than anyone. It takes a fool to know a fool.

Well, so it is then, Bryster. It seems I managed to upset someone so I should be more careful surely. My thoughts are that It is a shame that a forum member actually felt the need to initiate a thread to explain that not all of his models were made in Bryce. Why should that even matter? I think the reason we care is because we all know that it is not easy to model certain things in Bryce so we are impressed with detailed Bryce models. No doubt. Still, if one is limiting themselves deliberately in any way that is surely foolish just in and of itself. The purists will always run into difficulty as extremists when moderates get involved. There is no harm in learning other modeling software to supplement your Bryce modeling skills.

I do not see why anyone should ever feel the need to apologize for modeling outside of Bryce. The fact that I might create a model in Maya and still bother to import that model into Bryce because I like the look of the final render says alot about Bryce as a renderer. That's all I'm saying. I for one will never apologize for modeling an element in Hex, Truespace, Maya, Carrara, Blender, or any ot the other 8000 programs I own. The final render should be what really matters most to the community at large.

If I offended I do apologize.

Sure, continue to model in Bryce always! I never said not to model anything at all, just do not restrict yourself to only Bryce, that is all I am saying. If you really enjoy modeling, then you will enjoy the cad programs where you can provide uv mapping and other necessary aspects of a professional or even standard model. I just do not want the purists to limit themselves out of some sort of misplaced fear of modeling outside Bryce. What takes hours in Bryce is often only minutes in other apps. And I must tell you this issue of wasted time drives me nuts. I wonder why Daz has not offered Hexagon as an optional Bryce 6 plug-in with an "H" button just like the "Studio" button. The ability to collapse booleans is a crucial first step, now if we could just take those converted booleans quickly and easily into a cad modeler and edit the individual faces, add uv mapping, painting,, then export them instantly back into Bryce we might get more mainstream artists interested in purchasing Bryce for it's modeling capacities. There is no need to re-invent the wheel. Bryce or should I say Daz or any other owner will never take the time to develop such modeling tools natively, the most likely outcome is that a cad plug-in be made. Till then, I stil would not limit myself to only Bryce modeling. As a challenge surely, but not as a pcractical approach to complex modeling. IMO

People can build real sized homes made of playing cards for the challenge aspect, but who would ever want to live in such a home? Such a home is impractical and most likely will not make you a better architect because real homes are not built of playing cards. The challenge can sometimes be a waste of time if it does not teach you how to grow in a practical manner. There is always some amount of growth with any challenge, the question is how much?

Also, I sort of hate the way the boolean export is handled in Bryce. The resulting models are huge in MB even at the lowest mesh resolutions. Inefficient is the word. Very few meshes really need to be triangulated, but Bryce triangulates everything wasting valuable memory resources.

Well, I do not want to start any trouble around here, but there should be no such thing as a "Bryce purist" these days and anyone who claims to be is just plain foolish. Bryce is not a modeling software...period. Why on Earth would a person model anything complicated in Bryce? Booleans are not nearly as precise as true cad modeling. Anyone who has used and become intermediate in a cad modeler knows that.

I am a big fan of taking Bryce into places it was not really designed to to go. I fake ecosystems and spectral prisms, all of that and I am proud to "solve the mystery" with a workaround when I can. But I think that complex modeling in Bryce is a complete waste of time for the most part and artist could use that energy concentrating on light and materials and other aspects of a render. Do not get me wrong, I have seen some models from Bryce that really impressed me. But because I know Bryce I know that it was more difficult than it would have been in say...truespace.

Again, I am new around here. I do not want to make myself unpopular, but I want to get people thinking realistically. As long as the final render is done in Bryce then it is a Bryce image, as the Bryce render engine is the most important thing. Where a model was created should not matter one bit.

I was a foolish purist at one point, trying to model complete humans in Bryce useing metaballs...I was doing my very best. The simple truth, Bryce cannot model organics like humans and it cannot rig them and the like. Rigging is just one blatant example of the time one can waste being a purist in Bryce. I now know that I could never compete with V4 by creating humans with bryce metaballs and booleans...it aint gonna happen. The purists really should expand and learn to model in more than just in Bryce, just my opinion.

Well good. However, there is a big difference between the compressed br6 file size on disc and the actual memory footprint when the file is open and running. Bryce 6.1 compresses saved files in a way previous versions did not. The only way to know how much memory is actually being used is to look at the task manager. I usually keep it quickly accessible. You would be surprised likely at just how quickly a few detailed trees can push you to the limit.

There are also crashes caused by using the cut/paste and replicate duplicate commands. This is because Bryce 6.1 has a problem in the memory buffer, which can cause major crashes due to a memory leak.

Best wishes.

Oh and lastly, what kind of system do you run where a simple radio caused the crash? This does not sound like a normal situation. If you are using a computer with multiple processors or even threads, this should not be a problem. The best way to set priority is within Bryce itself, not within the task manager. If you alter the setting in the task manager itself to high you can expect major problems when running other apps. Set priority high in Bryce and leave it normal in the task manager for maximum system stability. I am running a xeon system with 8 cores so I have tested a million different priority settings for the fastest most stable arrangement.

There is a 2gb file size limit to all Bryce files, be they image files or preset libraries or whatever. If you are having crashes it is because you are stressing out you rmemory. It doesnot matter how much ram your system actually has, you could have 16gb it makes no difference with Bryce. If you are ever approaching the 2gb limit you will have out of memory and crashes.

I can give you alot of details on the subject, any further questions just ask.