My longest was 11 days, for a single frame, but it was a long time ago. I remember there being some cludges as AS mentions, but I also have a feeling there was a cludge using mutliple camera locations so that you would end with several files.

Fran, as a user of both (although Bryce being more in the form of history rather than current), I can say Blender rigging and animation tools are excellent. Pretty much on a par with the base rigging of something like 3ds Max (although the 3ds Max biped is something fantastic to play with - basically a pre-made human rig).

Blender does take a bit of getting used to - the latest release 2.7 series changes the UI slightly again but it is probably more newb friendly than it used used to be. Take a look at Blender Nation and or Blender NEwb to Pro for good tuts. 

I haven't tried rigify because I find the out of the box rigging system to be pretty strong.

And yes, all the sims (physics / smoke / particles / fluids) are great. As well as cycles I also use Luxrender which is awesome for photo real work (think maxwell render). If you don't mind paying Indigo render is also a good equivalent to Maxwell (better than Lux but costs a fair bit). For animation I tend to drop back to blender internal it's still pretty powerful and faster to render an animation sequence than Cycles (unless you have a god like nVidia graphics card.)

The biggest thing to conquer with Blender is getting used to all the keyboard shortcuts.

Loving the Peas by the way - I can see some good stories being created with them! 

Boo!!

Hello folks,

Not been here for a while and find a thread full of old timers :-). I'm now using mainly blender 3D (after a foray into 3ds Max when working with a fast protoyping team for a little while), but I did put Bryce onto my daughter's PC in an attempt to bring her into the 3d world. Two weeks later she started using Sketch Up at school so Bryce hasn't had that much use!

As Phil mentioned though, most of it doesn't take too much to drop back into, although tiling terrains took me a little while to remember than it probably should have.

All the best to you all.

Graham

it is MAx native format, there are some commercial conversion tools you can grab as well as max.

GMax used to be able to convert don't know whether it still can (or it may be only older versions of .max files - http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax

otherwise grab a trial copy of max, convert while it is live.

Takes a little while getting used to the new i/f but I would hate to go back now!

switch to quad view and it makes me think of the years that I used 3ds MAx, except that it's way more capable then the versions of Max that I owned!!!!

@Rayraz, I didn't specify who needed the moustache :-D

because an image without lens flare is like a kiss without a moustache...

:-D

I like the GIMP lens flare, very good tools, I would also note I have a love of the LUCE photoshop plug in - works very well in GIMP with PMSP.

Edit: Adding the link -  http://amicoperry.altervista.org/luce/index.html

I've heard different stories for some of them,

not playing with a full deck - came from people who fall for card tricksters - the tricksters would remove or mark cards to enable them to win

the last one, I was told came from the traditional sign for a pawn shop, this consists of thre balls suspended by brass limbs - called a monkey. when the weather got cold the fragile limbs suffer freeze-thaw stress and fracture hence freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

 I was also told that when it came to the twice yearly baths the bath water was shared and used in a specific order, men of the household, ladies of the household, children of the household, household pets, then the servants, men, women children. By the time that many had used the bath it was pretty disgusting and people would tease that youcould throw the baby out with the bath water...

2.57a (bug fix) has now been released

Stole this joke, but it made me laugh ;

I got chucked  out of the supermarket for swearing at the brocoli, the doctor says I may have Florets...

adding links -

change log - http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-257/

and downloads page - http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

find blue - prints and tuts at Suurland -

http://www.suurland.com/

(look under assets and the max tutorial it is close enough to show you how to set up blue prints to follow)

other bleuprints at http://www.the-blueprints.com/

AS, I love your modesty "Just luck I guess" no acknowledgement that you've been playing with bryce for years and have a good understanding of what is under the hood :).

Nice images BTW.

Must say I've had sitemails from people asking me to like or comment their work so that they got moved up the charts. and had sitemails in response to constructive critique with upset people, some of them I've commented next time via a sitemail as it was the publicity of the issues that had upset more often then the fact there were issues. Quite comical in a way.

Just to repeat my general view I know my work has huge great holes in it , but I do it for fun, let me know what's wrong and I'll think about (I believe that's normally called Learning :-) :-) )

Personally I'm one of the people that have 'moved on' from the forum, I still come back to lurk or post now and then, for me time for CG has dropped as the kids slowly arrived and have got bigger, I've also switched to Blender and use Bryce very little.

I quite often miss the folks here which is why I come back here, and a few folks are friends on facestalk. I miss the bryce render times so much that I use Indigo render quite a bit, gives me the chance to do some nice 30 hr renders...... :-)