One that was forgotten...If Microsoft owned Photoshop, no one would be able to use it on a Mac without a Windows emulator running it.

You can mask the background from the parts you would like to be sharp then blur it without affecting the foreground. You can use the mask to build a gradient alpha channel and blur usign the alpha. Bryce will do this for you if you render as a distance mask. then use that mask either for an alpha channel or as an easy way to isolate the background from the image for masking. I know this isn't explained very well, sorry. I would just play around with one or several different masks and blurs for each one.

I like your pictures Sir pyke. Nice work on them. Yes, everything in my image was done completely in Photoshop. The shading and hilites in the eyes were all airbrushed in. The shadow across the face is simply a drop shadow from the mesh thing. If you look at the difference in shadows between the thumbnail image and the main picture you will see a difference. The lack of shadow in the thumb resulted from less of the mesh to create a drop shadow across the face. The hilites on the platter and mesh and the corona around them were done in the layer styles dialog. The lightning was all hand painted. So, basically there isn't any lighting, just the use of styles and some airbrushing. Thanks for your kind comments. I have a new airbrushed project I hope to post pics on soon.

Ahhh, thanks to both of you, ctrl click was the secret weapon I was looking for. I remember reading about it but had not used it as of yet.

Bryce 5 came with a manual for me. Whats this about a reference card though? I didn't get a card of any sort.

MAybe someone can take a pic of your teacher :-) That would be fun to pass around your class.

I usually start with eye candy, then mask the area I want the smoke to be when it is done. I use the smear brush lightly, and a lot of airbrushing to tweak it till it is exactly like i want. I start painting by drawing squiggly little lines flowing in the direction I want the smoke to waft about, then build on that by airbrushing smoke colors, then smear it up a bit. All the smoke in the above pic is done that way.

I agree Lyrra, it is very difficult to position things in Bryce. I prefer to do all my basic positioning in Amapi before importing to Bryce.

Since they are freeware, can you post them in a different location? The bandwidth of that sight has been exceeded, and the host won't allow downloads.