Greetings and welcome!

--Death at Midnight

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it. One thing, along with many others, of which I am thankful for is Bryce 6. I know that sounds a bit childish, but I just downloaded it a day before the $6 price expired and have been having child-like fun playing around with it.

Just a bit of a note to some who wonder were I've been recently: had to drop everything to meet some deadlines at work. I hope to return and be active again here at RD in just a few days. We'll see. Anyway, cheers!!

--Death at Midnight

This sounds like a fun thread. I'm using 19" NEC monitors on all my systems except two. My main computer, though, I'm looking to upgrade from a 19" NEC into something huge like a 41" LCD TV, but I'm not too sure about resolutions. I like 1280x1024 on my desktops, or 1280x800 on my laptop, but I keep reading about strange resolutions on the LCD's. Things like 1399x1024 or so. Weird stuff. So I'm just wondering if anyone has hooked up their machine to a big LCD screen, and if so, how does a computer application look in terms of eye strain, comfort, etc. Of course I'll be Brycing with this, so I'm also curious. But maybe I'm thinking too deeply into this and I have nothing to worry about.

--Death_at_Midnight

Hrm, I've never tried that with a metaball. Must do now! :-)

I definately like the coloring from the B6 render, especially on the model. However, I like Carrara's ground better.

B6!!  I'm getting giddy!!

This is a very informative thread. I haven't gotten B6 yet, but I hope this weekend. It would be nice to see a side by side comparison of the different HDRI tools out there to the same SOW. I mean, I hear a lot how we can simulate HDRI with B5, that HDRShop is handy, and it's possible now in B6, but which tool gives the best result?

I would imagine having the feature in B6 would be the most convenient because it's right there. HDRShop seems to have a lot of power yet there's complexity. Which gives the best result?

--Death_at_Midnight

Welcome back!

Great! So far! I hope it was something as simple as that!!  It's great to be wrong about some things. Hard drives can cost a lot of money that should be spent on more important things, like on Bryce 6. I hope that was the solution. Congrats!

I'm starting a thread asking about Bryce's limits....

--Death_at_Midnight

Interesting about the CMOS battery: one of those went out on me three years ago. Windows started complaining about hard drive failure. A few reboots later the battery was too weak to keep the BIOS settings and soon DOS prompt came up complaining about no boot device. Personally I don't think the problem is the battery, but a computer is a complex machine, so I wouldn't be too amazed if it actually is a battery problem.

It was a new motherboard, but I guess the battery that came with it was not. Probably sat on the shelf somewhere with thousands of other batteries before being used in that motherboard. I'm not that familiar with battery failures. Another thought comes to mind could be RAM... I've had strange things happen with mixed RAM manufacturers, heat of the computer, and internal clock all working together to go crazy at 2:41 AM every night.

I agree, though, it could be a software problem. But we'll need more information... such as what was the last software installed? Any malware? Has anyone else come up wth this problem? Is it just for this one particular project that makes this error, or any project being saved? etc. But without additional information, and from my own trouble with a glitched object, I'm thinking physical.

--Death_at_Midnight

I mentioned about bad sectors b/c some time ago I had a similar problem where one of the objects I was using got glitched somehow and would always generate an error during save, usually crashing Bryce in the process. Through process of elimination I figured what object it was. Further testing showed it was on an area of the hard drive with a bad sector. So the object got glitched.

Since hard drives do have an operational life of a few years, and they do get very hot, and it depends what material and special coatings cover the platters, I'm wondering if that's the problem. But I wouldn't be amazed if it was something like too many libraries opened or some program running that's generating conflict. I'm interested to know what the cause is.

--Death_at_Midnight

I'm curious... how old is the hard drive? I'm thinking if it's not an issue with too many opened libraries, maybe it's something else, something physical. Maybe bad sectors. Hard drives experience a lot of wear and tear.....

--Death_at_Midnight

Heheh, yeah, I figured that when I opened it and had a look. I was a bit enthusiastic when I posted my comment before looking at the mat. I modified it to have smaller bubbles. It's pretty cool/clever. Good stuff this mat! Thanks a bunch!

--Death_at_Midnight

This is uber! I'm curious as to how it was made. I haven't opened or used the mat yet.... just posting this first so maybe my curiosity will be answered with some investigation.

--Death_at_Midnight

How's you're hard drive? Not getting filled up? Maybe the hard drive needs to be defragged.

--Death_at_Midnight