It's about time we got this straight. No matter what video card you have or what 3D software you use. THe card will not effect render times in any way. THe graphics card has nothing to do with the process that creates your final image or animation file. It only effects the speed of your interface while using the modeling or animation program. Also it will determine animation playback quality and frame rate.

Great stuff, I hope someone makes up a great skin texture for the ogre.

the jet approaching the hole reminds me of Stephen Kings, The Langoliers. I hope they are sleeping on that jet. I would have added a little Gaussian blur to the characters in the forground to give the scene a little more depth, but nice job. Heck you can still do I suppose.

Your not doing anything wrong, Bryce likes to keep the last used texture as a defaut for any new objects. Just click on the materials buttin for the new object and apply the texure that goes with it. Even if you were to create a new object within Bryce it would end up with the texture of the woman to start with.

Second, To create a project on the scale you are proposing, to store the animation as single JPG frames is, for want of a better word, insane. First it makes compiling and editing a monumental task. second you will spend enormous amounts of time just keeping a catalog of all the image sequences. Also have you considered how you will apply sound and sound effects, or dialog? Editing is a laborious process even with short scene takes. I would suggest that you render out full frame non compressed AVI scene takes. The storage requirements will be huge still. Keep your takes between 10 and 30 seconds and edit them in that fashion. Maya fusion and adobe premier / after effects work best in this mode. Once you have the full length assembled and the sound track laid down. You can use a number of DVD codecs to create the DVD stream. Quicktime Pro allows you to convert an AVI or Move to a DVD stream and it costs only 29 dollars. It is much easier to work with 10 to 30 second AVI clips than fiest having to assemble a couple hundred frames at a clip.

Just to give you a hint, Bryce will render no faster on a P4 than on your current machine. The speed is a limitation of the render engine code not the system it runs on. So if you wish to go with a faster machine, it should be for reasons other than faster render times in Bryce.

Have you considered applying a bit of a reflection map to the armour? A image rendered of the fire and the foliage in the background would probable woork well.

A little color in the frames and arms perhaps?

Please clairfy your question a bit, The way you make water look like it is lower than the surrounding land is to, create a hole or a depression in your terrain. You position the terrain to be used as the ocean floor higher than the ground plane. And your water is a seperate flat object. siting on to of the ocean floor terrain. You do not use the ground plane as your water. Many delete this and never use it at all. As least I think this is what you wanted to know.

I suppose I should have said my spiky cave was an entry? Oh well, que sera, sera, My vote is for DUCKIE WUCKIE!

So true, every once in a while we need to stand back and appreciate that even the simplest images with the most innocent items can evoke emotion. There is nothing wrong to take your work seriously. But then along comes something like this and it sort of puts it all in prospective. This image works, why? I thought about it for a while. You have this large drab gray square room. Yet it has a clean nice texture. Now ad a small pool of clear water with a nice reflection also a cool neutral color. Finally a bit dwarfed by the room there is this bright yellow google eyed duck, so simple in contrast to the surrounding. And wham instant affinity for Duckie Wukie. In this instance, scale and angle, more elements may have been distracting. Heck as some one told me a long time ago. It is easy to tell a story with elaborate techniques and many different elements. But to be able to do the same with just one or two, thats talent. Whether this be a happy accident like mine or not. And not to belittle any other work. This is my favorite and takes my vote.

Cool, I figured you were shooting for the real thing. Hence the suggestion. But while you already have 90% of the work done you could have a nifty Underwater prop for people.