Best Wishes Bryster for a Speedy Recovery. All of your fellow Bryce addicts are looking forward to your quick return to all of us...

Also Best Wishes to you and yours for the Holiday Season!

Bruce

Just as a sidenote to this issue of textures going to all objects in Bryce, this will also occur if you introduce a new homemade texture into an object without saving it to your materials folder first. It doesn't always happen, but it is hit and miss and from time to time can also cause Bryce 6.1 to crash as well.

I create a lot of my own textures for my Bryce work and I have learned this lesson the hard way on more than one occasion when I forget to save a texture into my materials folder before I try to use it on some object.

Bruce

I would like to add one minor comment to this mix regarding RAM memory and rendering. It will also depend on what kind of operating system you are using. Some OS's use RAM differantly than others. ( No doubt there are a few people who might debate the following - so be it, as the XP and RAM argument/debate has been around for some time)

If you use XP or XP Pro ( Like I do) it will only allow you to use 2 gigs of RAM for applications and all the rest of the RAM is used for background processes, OS, etc. In other words, if you use Bryce with XP Pro and you have 4 gigs of RAM, Bryce will only be able to use the first 2 gigs of this. So if using XP with Bryce, adding a bunch of extra RAM is not going to make any type of big difference.

My system is an AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core processor 5200+0 MHz, XP Pro  SP 3 with 4 gigs of RAM and this works just fine for my Bryce work. As when I disable all background stuff like network, firewall, AV, etc. I have 2048.00 MB RAM available for working in Bryce.  A memory check when I have everything disabled and before I start Bryce shows my RAM at 100%

Although one last late note on this - This OS RAM issue pertains to 32 bit XP and not to 64 bit OS.

Some great links and utilities in this thread. I figured I would pass along a few that I know of in case any interested.

Ivy Generator is a program to make IVY grow over surfaces of an object file and then you export the ivy out to any program that will use an OBJ file ( The original object you grew the ivy on does not go with the plant. ) It does a rather nice job and I have used it to put growing ivy vines on pillars in Bryce. It does run into some issues sometimes during the import with the materials assigned, but in Bryce you can just assign your own materials and textures, so ignore the error messages on materials when importing. This is a free program and the author allows it to be distributed so I put a copy in my online briefcase for downloading. Make sure you read the text file on how to use this as some people have tried to use the program without doing this and although an easy to use program, requires a couple of steps to start the growing process.

Link:   http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/goshtac/lst?.dir=/3D+Free+Programs&.order=&.view=l&.src=bc&.done=http%3a//briefcase.yahoo.com/

Another handy plant program that is now free is Plant Studio for creating your own plants to import into other programs. Make sure you copy the registration info you need to enter from the download web page so you don't keep getting nagged to register. This was a commercial program at one time that the authors now give away.

Link;
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/download_new.html

Bruce

Just to clarify some comments made above in case any new Bryce users stumble in here, the use of a negative is not truly needed to create a boolean mesh for export. Another Positive would work as well. You just need to make sure that all objects before you group them are either set with a positive or a negative atttribute. A neutral attribute on an object in Bryce will not allow you to make a boolean mesh.

In other words, 2 positive objects can be grouped together and then converted to a boolean. If you then want to add to that, you can set your boolean to positive and then add another negative or positive object to it and once grouped it can also be turned into a boolean for export. Just make sure all object attributes are set before grouping as if you create a boolean but have missed setting the attributes on some item in the mix, this item will not show up if you export the final item as a OBJ file, etc.  ( I have learned that the hard way, way too many times and it can really become an issue when making complicated models with several booleans added to each other)

Bruce