Ok, I've upgraded to Bryce 5. I've also noticed that things have greatly slowed down. Though I'm delighted with the addition of soft shadows. It seems that they've not taken any great action to improve the render engine. Simple renders with soft shadows are taking hours now even at low render settings. And they've not sped up anything concerning volumetric renders. rendering a volumetric scene still scares me in that it takes forever to render. I have to render things over 1500 x 1500 pixels often, and I just go out for the day and come back in hopes that it will be done. But enough about that. I still think Bryce is an incredible product and highly endorse it to anyone. Now onto the NEW tree designer. Has anyone had any luck in ...oh I don't know.. say creating a xmas tree? No matter what settings I choose I can't seem to get things looking right. I get the leaf system fine but when I try to get the trunk and branches looking like a spruce or any conifer, I have no luck. And yes I know about the presets. But those don't seem to work at all. Is there a site that has some sample tree settings? Any help would be greatly apprecieated. Thanks. James