I began using Bryce 5 recently - and had what I thought was a decent animation idea. I set up all the parameters and began the animation rendering process. The animation was calculated (by myself) to render for about 6 hours - too many glass transparent textures and light sources possibly. I run this software on a virtually new PC with windows XP. Somehow, when I return to examine the progress - the program (or something else) has seized up and could not finish the rendering job. I killed the screen saver, in advance of this job - but still without success. Any one out there have any helpful hints? Be merciful - for I am but a beginner in this realm. For your consideration - I thank you.

Have you downloaded the Bryce 5 patch from Corel's website? I think that fixes the problems of animation rendering freezing on the PC.

If you render as a PICT sequence (or .bmp for you windows people) you can compile the frames later in a video app or QuickTime Pro even. That way, if something should interrupt your render (power outage, stray cat, system freeze, global thermo nuclear war) you can pick up rendering at the frame you left off on. It's more of a pain to do it that way because of the extra ssteps, but it will allow you to stop rendering at any point and finish later without losing what you've already finished.

Make sure all power saving routines are disabled as well as the screen saver. In other words if you have your hard drives sets to go to low power then it will lock up Bryce. Turn all power saving settings to never.

Alderon has a point there. If your HD shuts down after a half hour and your cpu goes to a lower access mode, that will kill it. Disable the power saver both in your BIOS and in windoze control panel. Better yet, make a profile in windoze called "render" and turn up the screws, then select that one. Also, consider other TSR's (systray programs, etc) and ditch them. Things like Norton auto update going off etc tend to blow the deal.

Oh, if you're new to B5, make sure you go to www.corel.com and get the patches.

Thanks to all for your assistance! Every thought and tip that was suggested was helpful in the learning process. The idea to render individual frames was what I have found to be the most time economical solution. I am most greatful for all of your time and effort in helping me with this matter. THANKS AGAIN!