Can anyone help me? I try to render scenes much simpler than 90% of the ones I see online and the render time is impossible. I can't even get a nanoview in acceptable time limits with an object that has maybe a few dials and switches, etc. what am I doing wrong????? Is it how I group objects? I am using Bryce 5 on a Blue&White 450MHz G3. My email: ReedJM@rcn.com

What kind of render settings are you using...although that shouldn't affect the nanoview....how much total RAM and how much is assigned to Bryce? Is anything else running? ?? TomD

Nothing else running. I have over 100M partitioned for Bryce (I have a total of 512M RAM). I never anti-alias above the 2nd setting (fine). I am rendering a small 500 x 600 at 72dpi just to see the image and that takes way too long.

Wow. That makes no sense to me then....lets wait for a true MacHead to chime in - I've been too long away from the Mac world to do a credible job anymore. Sorry. :-( TomD

Are you using any volumetric effects? That really adds to render time, and can cause slow updates on the nanoview as it has to render the effect.

Change all the materials to just the "simple and fast" grey settings and see if it goes really fast, if it does, then its probably materials you are using. If it doesn't then I really don't know what is wrong, more then the machine choking on something.. I am not really good with MAC but if you have something like a "task manager" then check it and shut down everything you can to free up resorces. Hope that helps you out..good luck

Define impossible... i like proper lighting and use a decent amount of refective surfaces... renders of 8 - 10 hours i consider normal. With glass and volumetrics as well, times grow expoentially. But it's usually worth it. Best...

I never use volumetric effects because I don't have the patience for even the preview. I will try to change all materials to "Simple and fast" and see if it is a material. Good idea. I have 2 dials with glass faceplates, 2 LEDs (glass). Is there a way to simplify groups. Turning them into meshes, etc.?

the number of lights, reflection, refraction, transparency, and volumetrics are the main contenders to slowing Bryce renders. Bryce 5 sux at transparency and reflection times...especially if you intend to see something beyond the transparent areas. there are a zillion ways to reduce render times in Bryce..but almost all will reduce the quality of your picture. lights...if you have a lot of lights, this will really increase the time. You can reduce the number of lights and place a single low intensity light with "shadow casting" turned off and "infinite" turned on to get some brightness to the scene without a zillion lights. If you are using volumetric lights, worlds, or materials...you will always see a slower render..no matter what program, if its raytracing..it will be slower. materials with bump in the distance are unnecessary..even tho you can not see it, bryce is still mathematically adding bump ...you can remove/reduce this on distance objects. reflection, refraction...you pretty much are stuck with slow renders, no matter what you do if you have this. There are various premium options within the render settings that can decrease the number of times a ray bounces around before bryce assigns a color to a pixel...In some cases, this will help. grouping, tho not significant..doe indeed decrease render time... bryce "feels" for objects if it has to feel for a blade of grass, before it renders it..the calculations slow it..if however its a group of these blades of grass..then it knows there are objects in this area..and will reduce the number of calculations necessary to find the objects. This is one of the primary functions of "spacial optimization"... and of course it you are using 'soft lighting', just grin and bear it :) luck BT

If you dont nead all the bells and whistles of 5 then why not use 4 if you have it. Its a lot quicker and still gives out superb renders.

well for the first thing I see is that you only have 100 megs of ram partitioned for bryce..1 good object will take up that much when you have terrain and extras..I also agree with the lighting and textures but that all is a mute point if you have volumetric settings set on in the clouds/sky editor check to see if you do and if you dont do this then...save your object into the user presets for objects...2.then export your obj to a folder(where you know the obp file will be put and you can get later...3.export the object into folder..4.re-import the model back into Bryce and re render....now hope that helps when I had 1 of my military bases I was building for Alamo did the same thing so I did what I told you to do and it worked everything was fine went from 2.5 hrs down to 18 minutes with scene...HOPE THIS HELPS

Not to change the subject, but I noticed a couple of annoying bugs in Bryce 5. 1) If you solo an object, any lights carry over into the solo mode - while that may be helpful for sky lights, it is not for nearby artificial lights. 2) I have a scene in a cube (a room), yet changing sky settings in the skylab changes lighting in the cube. What's going on here?