When you render to disk, are there any benefits or disadvantages? I assume it's faster, because there's no graphical rendering being done on-screen, but does it have better image quality? I'm doing it for the first time right now, and i wasn't sure whether it had any outstanding reasons to or not to use it.

Less taxing on system resources allowing for larger images. Good for printable resolutions. Image Quality is whatever you set in prefs. I only had to use it a couple times when my system kept choking on a maxed out image. (high res tex,lots of lights & reflection) stuff like that.

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Ockham's razor- It's that simple

I think the main thing is that you get a better quality image because of being able to use a higher dpi setting.

Yea, the higher dpi is one advantage. I normally render to screen, which allows you to stop the render, save, then continue the render later. Last time I rendered to disk, it stopped at 72% with a Bryce error. So no more of that LOL...

Let me add a couple of disadvantages! When you render to disk, you cut yourself off of the possibilities of ploprendering and spray-rendering. I have 2 versions of an image that I have merged.. they were rendered to disk, and now I desperately wish that I had the possibilities to plop render just a part of that render.... :( Oh, well.. if you're confident that the render will be your FINAL result; then a disk render is OK.. If you want to have the chance to be able to change/add stuff then render normally.

Britt, you could always rename/copy the image you rendered to disk to whatever the name of the Bryce file is. Then, load your scene and you can plop-render whatever part you need.

Aye, you could still easily plop render it, Britt. Just make sure your scene setup is still the same, "Open Image" the said, previously-un-ploppable image, and spray/box away...! Never really used Render to disk much, gonna try it tonight just for fun.

The first time I rendered to disc I didn't realise that it overwrote the Bryce file if it had the same, and guess what, I lost the Br5 file. Just maddening it was. 8) Catlin

"same? = name"...............not enough caffine. 8)

Aye, there is one MAJOR benefit to rendering to disk. It auto-saves the render when it's done! This is handy for me on Bryce 4 at work, I tried it last night, and although my comptuer was off when I got to work, it had at least finished and saved the render! Of course, Bryce's batch process would do that too, but it's kinda silly, all that dragging and dropping... (glares)