the best thing you can do is try free software like Maya personal learning edition or lightwave dicovery. There are also programs that are given away for free if you keep a lookout. Realsoft 3d v4 was recently given away on a magazine cover. Try as many as you can before buying because you may take to working with one program better than another, it's better to find this out before you part with cash. You can start in 3d with NO CASH. There are lots of freebees out there . I started with copies of Vue 2, terragen and Amapi 4. All free. If you really want to spend though look for software that has good overall strengths. Lightwave in my opinion is the best value as it is a complete system with all the bells and whistles for a relatively small outlay. Cinema 4d is truly outstanding and with bodypaint becomes hard to beat. Both of these have outstanding renderers and are relatively easy to learn. good luck and don't rush into buying.

I have an MSI Nvidia GeForce4 Ti4200 and it works fine. I have seen a difference I think with the latest driver from Nvidia. No problems at all now.

Good luck jasonmit you are in for a lot of fun.

Well you know I know that I sound a bit sharp and I appologise for being mister grumpy but I have seen so many threads degenerate into such pointless catfights. Not just on renderosity by the way.It makes me mad to see such pointless behaviour born of obsession.For me this one looked like it had the potential.

I am sorry Rochr but I am not going to be drawn into a Bryce Versus Cinema or Bryce Versus anything else debate.I am not going to give links for examples or otherwise "show my hand" Whatever app or apps we love it is always best to go and make something with it. If you like Bryce above all else then that is fine by me.have fun Brother...info was sought, I fitted the bill that was asked for so I replied.I hope this puts an end to this thread in this forum. Respect to all TonyJ

Okay hope I have been of some help. Going to Siggraph? (radiates envy). Just a hobby for myself too.

The point Peggy Walters has made about not buying a high end program because Bryce can do it for 79 dollars is an interesting one.What I am finding is that using one of these large programs is ultimately changing the way I work.I have found it to be a broader toolset that will lend itself to the expression of a broader range of ideas.I tended to work on projects that would work well within Bryce.I have more tools so more is open to me. For example I am thinking of biulding and animating a dinosaur, I know I have the soft IK system that will allow me to make its tail sway realistically,I could never have dreamed of doing this in Bryce.

Oh well I shifted from Bryce to cinema with no problem.The Cinema package, if you buy it is difficult to lift from the floor. Its this heavy because it is full of manuals.The tutorials are small but clear and good.The manuals are a model of clarity.The render module is worth the extra money.I do not think you can import DOF data. If you buy this you will probably end up rendering with Cinema's render engine anyway.'must have's''Well there are many free pluggins for Cinema and many that cost a small amount,They range from small modelling tools to entire tree creation systems or volumetric atmoshpere engines. Best is sometimes biggest. I would go for Bodypaint as an absolute essential.It is also cheep at the moment. Imagine a 3d photoshop inside bryce, paint on you're models in 3d in real time.I found the learning curve to be not steep,cinema is very well structured, but it is long. By this I mean there are lots and lots of things to take in. all understandable and well illustrated in the manuals(there are five manuals and a tutorial book in the XL bundle) but so much more to take in it takes a proportionately longer time to learn....the HDRI is jaw dropping. So is the soft IK and the SLA shader system...lots and lots of goodies

I have both Bryce 5 and Cinema XL8 plus Bodypaint. Sorry in advance for saying this on this forum..I really do not want to start any fights but Cinema XL is superior to Bryce in almost every feature they share. They are hard to compare because Bryce is just a fractal landscape program where Cinema is a high end Modelling,rendering and animation suite. Bryce is probably the best program for generating fractal landscapes for export. Cinema generates landscapes but nowhere near as good. Yes,Cinema can export metaballs as a mesh. When I bought Cinema I bought it to build models for import into Bryce but within a month I only use Bryce to build terrains for export into Cinema. I went from a Bryce nut to being in truth pretty underwhelmed by its features as an artists tool in a very short space of time. This happened to me because once I tried one of these high end programs and invested the time to dig into its huge feature set I realised what I was missing with Bryce. Still like Bryce by the way so don't hate me.I just realised that it was very good at a pretty small range of things.

It seems to me that many are waiting for an upgrade to Bryce that may not ever appear.Now I own Both Vue 4 and Bryce 5 but do not use either so much now. Bryce was my first 3d ap though and I loved using it. Bryce is powerful in unique ways, Its fractal terrain engine for instance is hard to beat.It seems to me ther are a lot of disappointed Brycer's out there and I feel for them...but maybe times have moved on? I had a look at pandromeda yesterday and saw Mojoworld. It seems to me, especially given the people that are developing mojoworld that it could be the natural progression from Bryce anyway, What do people think about this? I for one feel pretty excited about the direction Dr Musgrave and colleagues are pushing this technology...maybe the Bryce/Vue debate is not so important, what about true fractal world creation? Are many people migrating to Mojo? I am certainly thinking about it...

Look Muddy, have you thought about MojoWorld,the brains behind it is the guy who wrote Bryce's fractal engine(as far as I know). It could be the next step if you see what I mean.

Yes I have found that Vue is much faster to work with than Bryce and a great chunk of the time saved is on test rendering. The interface is another reason for speed with Vue, it really is well designed.It is true about Bryce and the depth and power of its terrain editor compared to Vue.It is such a shame that the future of Bryce is unclear at this time. I really feel for the artists for whom Bryce is their main ap. Vue is worth the money though just for the speed.

personally I have never understood software rivalry, they are just tools aren't they? I own both and also find they have different strengths. I followed a thread on a forum recently that was started by the rumour that Eon where thinking of buying Bryce, People seemed to be getting quite emotional about this.all I could find whithin myself was indifference.after all software becomes dated doesn't it? Who can tell what we will be using in ten years time.

there is a pluggin for lightwave called Oggo_Taki that looks better than this for atmospheres...and its free

Yes I have had it but fixed it by unchecking "Enable background draw thread" in the options panel