Best viewed full size This is a re-working of an image I posted five months ago (July 19)...first of an ongoing series of experiments with the Image Based Lighting feature of Bryce 6. Re-doing a selected handful of my earlier renders will let me see what can and can't (or shouldn't) be done with IBL - especially in relation to the kinds of scenes I like to create. IBL is *VERY* processor intensive and drastically increases render times. This render took 34 and 1/2 hours - the original took less than 1/4 that much time (though I don't recall exactly how long). I was forced to delete a number of elements in order to achieve an endurable render time - especially those that contained: atmospherics (volumetric clouds used as mist layer over water, and background haze); and embedded lights (church in background). Translucent and refractive materials (glass and gems, water and other liquids, etc.) heavily impact renders as well, so I converted the scene to nighttime in order to reduce the problem of the water's reflection and refraction. I'm learning a lot from these experiments, and despite the need to drastically alter my work habits in order to use IBL I'm excited by the potential I see. This render is in many ways 'dumbed down' from the original image...yet the increase in color richness, depth and detail is substantial - even at lower quality render settings! I intend to do a few more of these comparison renders, and if anyone's interested I'll post them along with my observations and any particular lessons learned....