I wonder when Corel is going to fix this - the tree bulge was supposed to be fixed by 5.0.1. Probably the fastest way to fix it in post would be with the good old rubber stamp in Photoshop. Make a selection where you want the trunk to be straight and use the cloning tool to dab in the parts of the background where you don't want the tree bulge.

Alleycat - the old Bryce trees used crappy trans-maps but the new ones do not. There are no transparencies in the materials used for them. It is true that all trees increase render time, and it is also very true that poly trees cause more rays to be traced due to all the odd angle polygons that reflect light in every direction. Some of the bryce 'preset' trees have refraction set but this is not necessary since they have no transparency. The only time trans-maps are used on the new b5 trees is when you go for a user leaf - all the other leaf shapes already have the right shape and can use simple DTE materials with no transparency.

Network render is great if you have more than one machine. All the new premium rendering effects and metaballs are another reason for bryce5. Being able to make your own preset folders and categorize your mats and obps is a really good reason for Bryce5. Bryce5 trees also use metaballs - all those other forest CDs etc use polygons and slow down your renders and your speed navigating thru the scene. Also as Aldaron said, you get much more variety with the bryce trees. Since they are native to Bryce you can use many more of them than polygon trees and they render faster. Bryce5 also works under the new operating systems like OSX and Windows XP. I like all those features of Bryce5 except for some of the interface changes ; ) Scott

I'm glad you like them Laurie.

Lots of forest images should come out of these for sure!

I was hoping other people didn't want to have to muck with the tree lab to get great trees too ; )

The pack is near completion, but here is another image to whet your appetite.

Giant Sequoias with Douglas Firs in the background. I am still improving the look of the Sequoias as we speak.

Home users doesn't mean only 1 machine. Next time you upgrade to a faster machine keep your old one and start building your render farm. Even 'slow' machines due relatively well when they are splitting up the task of a render. I even use this old 333mhz iMac I am on now as part of my render farm for both EIU and Bryce. You'd be amazed at how fast animations and large images can crank out even with 'old' 'slow' machines. Food for thought. Also PCs and Macs depreiciate so fast you are better off keeping them than selling them at a loss.

I wish they could too - I am hoping they will let us curve the trunks in the next version of Bryce. The trees do get a little gnarlier if you make the trunks and branches a little thicker. I'll be posting an image soon with some trees I've made. Stay tuned.

Attached Link: http://www.scotttucker3d.com/intro_galframes.html

I've been using Bryce since version 1.0 and I am constantly amazed at the way the mags and some pros put down Bryce. They say: It doesn't render fast enough... It isn't a good modeler... It can't do vegetation (have they ever USED Bryce 5)? Bryce has always traded speed for beauty and is not meant for a production workflow. Bryce does have some of the most gorgeous renders on the planet. Bryce was never meant to be a modeler, but people bring their modeling skills TO Bryce and do amazing images with it with primitives, terrain models and imports. With patience b5 makes some awesome trees and plantlife. Bryce has the most loyal following of any 3d app out there and probably has the biggest amount of users. Who cares what they say - if you use it and enjoy it then you GET Bryce and that is all that matters. I use some of the midrange and the high-end apps, but I always come back to Bryce - Bryce has soul - it just feels right. The other apps can't say that.

I have never come close to making an image like this in any of the other apps - I think that speaks to the soul of Bryce. It just feels right when you're in there : )

Like so many things in Bryce the trees are not exportable to other apps, but as Delrino said (if you stay in Bryce) you can get some really nice ones with some effort. Bryce uses metaballs to create the trees, which is also why they can look so realistic - even close up. Bryce5 trees render much faster than polygonal trees because they are using metaballs, and this also allows you to build small forests of them with very little speed penalty. Treedruid standalone or the Cararra plug-in creates pretty nice trees that you could export into Cinema4 - that might be an alternative you could look at.

Cool! I am gonna be lost in that tips archive for awhile - I was hoping you guys had something like that ; ) I have all the volumetric settings correct, but I will try blowing the intensity way out and adding some dust too. The reason I didn't add dust was I thought the fog and haze particles were taking care of that already. I'm not worried about Steve - I know he is working on it. As far as being patient, we Mac people are just happy to finally have Vue to play with. In our apps (until recently in Bryce5) we always had to build plants from scratch or fake them with alpha planes, etc. I like Vue's ability to grow plants - that's for sure. Even the terrain editor lets you do cooler things. The fluvial setting not only cut streams into the mountainside, they also really pile up the deposits at the base of mountains and create realistic looking alluvial fans. That is a nice touch being able to set the hardness and softness of the rock. Also I am enjoying playing with the underlying functions in the materials - I think there may be more horsepower in this than what I can do in the Bryce Deep Texture Editor. Overall at version 4, Vue really has a lot of depth to it, and I am excited about plumbing those depths. I have a feeling I will get the volumetrics working now with the tips you guys gave. I'll post a test image soon if I can get it working right. thanks for all your help.

Thanks Varian. Lots more to do on this image - but the skies are sure nice in Vue : ) I already sent some stuff directly to Steve, but I'll hit him on Monday with these new things. The purple thing is a Mac only deal, but for sure the tiff crash I will tell him about and the thread here. I also did some testing and the sun doesn't seem to create volumetric shadows like it does on the PC. If you put a tall cube (rectangular) in front of a low volumetric sun does it kick out nice shadows above and below the object on the PC? On the Mac it only makes shadows on the ground and not the atmosphere. Now I know what the PC people felt like when Bryce first ported to the PC. Vue is so cool - this is gonna be great when we have platform parity and it runs nice on both systems. It's always a little rough at first when you first get a port on your platform - this is really version 1.0 for the Mac so I can be patient. I can see you guys have a great community here and that is what really makes an app thrive.

Yeah - it does have a back folder but I decided to clean re-install just to test what went wrong. I was right - 4.05 did hose up the sky - see my volumetric sun is back. I also found another bug in the CD version - see the purple weird artifacts showing up on the right side of the render? Those weren't showing up in Vue - they only show up *after* I save the image to pict and when I try to save to tiff the program crashes.

More Vue4 wonkiness - I sure hope Steve is listening.

Thanks for your response and screen shots MikeJ, but yes it is a definite bug. I tried your same settings and got a very dark gray sky with no sun visible at all. In Vue4 the fog especially is needed for volumetrics because it is this simulation of moisture in the air that allows the light beams and glow to be seen. With a volumetric sky you don't even need lens flares because the sun glows behind all that 'moisture.' Before the update I could render volumetric skies and suns with absolutely no lens flare, just like the image you posted. The glow setting in volumetrics is what really makes the sun sing. The atmosphere controls make sense to me and I had a nicely tweaked sky before things went wonky. I am waiting to see if Steve can re-create the bug, but until then I will re-install from the CD. It may be a Mac only bug. The volumetrics are what made me want Vue in the first place - Bryce cannot do volumetric skies - only materials. You're welcome, I'm glad you're getting to explore what is under the hood - Vue4 is truly a very deep program - and I beta tested Bryce for many years , I should know ; ) I was right in the middle of trying to get sunbeams to come out of the sun (without having to fake it) when I lost everything. I'll save a backup of all my custom presets and re-install I guess. I'll post one of those test images too, if I can re-render them when I go back to the previous version. thanks for answering so quickly : )

Clint - a decent Mac - read really nice one - is the powermac G4/350 - you can get it for $1,599 at the apple store. This is the entry level 'pro' model. But if all you need to do is basic office stuff, an iMac would more than suffice and they start at $999.00 both can be found at: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore This should get you started. If it's for 3d apps I'd go for a g4-350 or g4-400. -Tuck

Glad I could help. -Tuck

Anthony - As far as getting your paper and other settings to save - the best way to do this is to create all the settings just the way you like them and save the scene into a file called: default.br4 and make sure it is in the same folder that bryce is in. Every time it launches it will find the file called default.br4 and will open with those settings you saved. This is great for you favorite camera angle and any other things you can think of. It does have one caveat - be sure you do a save as of your current scene or you will overwrite the default.br4. Hope this helps. -Tuck : )