Well strictly I did make it; the cathedral itself is not one of ysvry's free models. It is made from ysvry's architectural components, Bryce primitives, and terrains. The body of the building is mainly made from primitives, the rose windows are terrains, and the flying buttresses, the ornamental pillars, the towers and the door surrounds are all ysvry's models.

Unix Systems Administrator working for an international Computer Services company (EDS). Unix is good fun, pity it doesn't help me when Windows goes wrong, and that Bryce doesn't run on Unix or Linux.. 8-( In answer to the other survey I live in Basingstoke, England, which is about an hour's drive south of London. Not a great town, but surrounded by lots of beautiful english countryside.

I have a reasonably good dxf anchor (323k zipped) but I would need to mail it to you, or if you have a Yahoo id I can file share it.

Hi, if all the clones of your object are going to be seen from the same angle (that is, if they are going to present the same face to the camera as they stretch off into the distance, you could try rendering an images of just one on a white background, save it as jpg, then use that jpg to apply the image to a 2-D face object. Put a couple of copies of your 3-d object closest to the camera, then make the rest of your row out of the 2-D faces (multi-replicate them so that they stretch back into the distance). This will be much faster to do, and will keep the size of your file down.

Patricia, if your only problem is a corrupt user.obp you don't need to re-install Bryce. If the Bryce 4 user.obp came with any presets (I went from Bryce 3 to Bryce 5, so I don't know) just copy user.obp from the CD. If it didn't contain anything then simply delete or rename your user.obp (rename it to oldbad.obp, for instance). Bryce will run quite happily without it. To create a new user.obp, start Bryce, go to the Create menu, select Installed, and select one of the object lists under that (Imported Objects, for example). Select any two objects (select one, hold down shift, and click on the other). Then click on Export, and when the Browse window comes up go to (Bryce home folder)>Objects>User. Save your export as user.obp, and, hey presto, a new user.obp file! You can then start using it as per normal, and when you've added some more objects you can delete the first two objects you used to create it. As for copying your other preset libraries, good idea, even if you are not going to re-install Bryce. If you are going to re-install, copy all your preset files to a set of folders outside the Bryce installation folder, re-install, and copy them back in, as you say, overwriting the "vanilla" installation versions. Good luck!

The best approach is not to leave anything in user.obp that you want to keep permanently - set up some folders for your objects (I organise mine into categories, e.g. architecture, plants, furniture, etc.) and export the objects into these as soon as you have created them. That way your objects are stored singly, and if one does get corrupt, it's only one, not the whole lot. When you want to use one of them just import it into user.obp, put it into your scene, and clear it out of user.obp before you shut down Bryce (after you've saved your scene!) The difference between the Poser libraries and user.obp is that the Poser objects are all separate files that Poser loads in as required, but user.obp is a single file containing all your user-created models. Every time Bryce starts up it loads them all in, and if you add, remove or update one it writes the whole file out again. If it corrupts the file in the process, which it seems to be good at doing, there's no way you can get into this file (unless you're a Bryce programmer)and unscramble it to rescue your objects. Some people don't seem to have this problem, some do, I've no idea why. I have had so much trouble with it that I avoid using .obp now as much as possible. If I can save objects in an alternative format, such as .3ds, I do, and store their textures or .mat files with them. This also uses less space than using .obps

The licence blurb (Bryce 5) suggests that all you have to do to effectively transfer the licence is: 1) have the previous owner agree to give up his/her rights to the program and destroy any copies they still have 2) have the new owner read the licence and agree to abide by its terms. I suspect Corel wouldn't be too interested, but you could mail them and ask for confirmation that that is all that's needed. If you want support this may be more of a problem, as the free support is limited anyway (I think you get about half a dozen calls maximum), and you may find that have to pay for this service.

For close-up trees, get leaf photos, as Erlik says above. For trees you are going to put in the middle-distance or distance, try using some photos of tree foliage to make picture textures, using parametric or random settings. This works especially well for trees which are meant to be large, as it breaks down the leaf outline and gives the impression of smaller leaves, and more of them. you also get a variation in leaf colour, which helps with the realism. For the trees themselves, you do need to experiment with the settings. You can also get some interesting shapes by skewing them with the Resize controls. For mature trees, try combining two or more slightly different trees together - you get more branches, and you can add branches where Bryce won't put them, such as low on the trunk, or to make an asymmetrical crown. Bryce trees can actually look quite good, and I think it's a lot of fun experimenting with them. It does take time to learn what works and what doesn't, though.

Hyperborea, many, many thanks - I've just looked at the site, and there are all his zodiac pictures on there and much more! I'm thrilled; this will keep me happy for days... Also now I know his correct name I can search around for some bio. Thanks again Judy

If the Bryce Ice interacts with any Bryce Fire in its surroundings, does it melt?

I have had similar problems with crashes when trying to delete large objects (usually treelab trees)from the create menu. Generally happens when I try to delete more then one object in a session. One cure is to delete one object, shut Bryce down, restart it, delete the next object, shut Bryce down, restart it, etc. etc. Tiresome but prevents crashes. Bryce seems to be doing a lot of work during deletes, so I would guess it is shunting stuff around in the memory, and possibly doesn't keep track correctly of where it is putting things, hence the crashes, which leave the .TMP files lying around.

Bryce has its own 'look' just as Vue, Max, Maya and Lightwave do. Some like it, some don't. It is an art package after all, not a camera substitute, and while I concede that Max renders (at least in the latest release) are realistic, I personally find them a bit boring. Anyone trying for a photorealistic render in Bryce is going to come up with a hundred complaints, but I can think of a hundred complaints about Max that I would't apply to Bryce. Most of those who buy and use Bryce presumably like, or even love, it for what it is, not just use it because they can't afford one of the high-end tools. I wouldn't call Bryce's output cartoonish - although cartoons are a pretty sophisticated art-form, and demand a lot of talent from the artist - I would call it distinctive and impressionistic. Bryce also gives a lot of scope for individuality in artwork; not only can you tell a Bryce render but you can immediately identify the work of any artist you're familiar with. The same isn't true of the high-end packages, which tend to impose themselves more on the art (or perhaps it's because all their users are trying so hard to disguise their art as photographs?) If you want to get the most realistic results from Bryce I would advise using it for outdoor scenes, which it's best at, use custom skies, use soft shadows, use haze, don't choose your textures until you've decided on the lighting, and use plenty of your own textures rather than presets.

Thanks for the advice, that has confirmed my suspicions. As the effect I want involves having very small, very high specularity bits of blossom mixed in with ordinary leaves (i.e. 2 trees superimposed) I think masking would be a bit difficult. I'll probably just put it in as post work.