This is in a different category-animation rendering. I did an approx. 5 minute animation based music video in Bryce 3D. Total rendering time for the project... 1 year. (Didn't realize what I was getting myself into when I started it, that's for sure!) I used a second computer strictly for rendering, and programmed the animation on my main computer. (The animation was divided up into scenes typically 5-10 seconds long each). Since it took me a total of about 1 year to do all the programming for the video, the rendering worked out OK, since as one scene was rendering on my second computer, I was programming the next scene on my main computer. It was an extremely tedious project though, I must say... -Jake

I've also been doing a lot of animating in Bryce 3D, and I think I may know what you're talking about. It sounds to me like it's probably not the clouds causing the problem in the example you mentioned, but more likely the material used on the city (I'm assuming the "twinkling" only happens on the city-object). I've found that, in the Materials Lab, setting the "Bump Height" value of the offending object's material to a very low value, or even to 0, will usually make a great improvement. It's also possible to make finer adjustments in the Deep Texture Editor with the individual component(s) driving the bump channel. Maybe you could try a test plop-render animation of the city with it's bump height set to 0 to see if that helps. Also, you should always use anti-aliasing when rendering animations, or things can get real messy (I'm assuming you are). -jakeh

I've had good luck (Bryce 3.1 also) by starting with a sphere, then applying the "Fuzzy Blue Sphere" material (third one in the "Complex fx" category). The important thing with this material is that it's set to "fuzzy" in the Materials lab, which softens the edges and helps give the "glow" effect. As stated by someone else, deselect "cast shadows" and "receive shadows" in the Materials lab, and crank up the "Ambience" control, and lower the "Diffusion" control somewhat (or even all the way off). The default "Ambient" blue color is likely too dark for you, so make it a brighter shade of blue. The glow can be softened further by turning up the "transparency" control in the Materials lab. Try turning down the specularity, you may or may not want any of that effect on the glow. As also mentioned previously, the "Ambience Color" under the "Sky&Fog" palette must be set to a bright level. Of course you can manipulate the sphere's shape, or use another shape (or glow color) altogether. Anyway, I've gotten a decent "Star Trek"-like engine glow with this method.... -jakeh

Just a suggestion- When working on a Bryce project, it's a good idea every time you save the file to save it under a new name, ie SceneA, then after doing some more work save as SceneB, then next time SceneC, etc. That way if you ever run into this nasty situation you can go back to your previous saved version and get most of your work back. That saved my butt a few times when my Bryce 3D files became corrupted when doing fine tuning in the AML. Everything seemed OK until I tried to open the file later and I couldn't. -jake