I talked them into getting me a 24" wide-screen at work, so I thought I'd do an image for my wallpaper before the thing arrives. The original render is 1920X1200, but it's is so busy it doesn't compress well, so here's a reduced version. This is an image where it would be nice if I could splurge for Vue Infinite, but no, it was all done in Bryce (with a little bit of Daz Studio for the two figure imports). All those objects bog down Bryce between every change - and the updates aren't multi-threaded, so I have seven of eight cores sitting idle while I, um... sit idle. The Bryce file is only about 75 meg, but the three near spike trees are all done in metaballs, as are the fifty-odd worms, the dead balloon and the spore stems coming out of the big sponge rock. Thousands of metaballs. I had to cheat and make the distant trees billboards or my computer would have exploded (or I wouldn't be done putting this together before Christmas). The basic scene started out as continuation of First Landing. I'd like to do more alien landscapes, but I think a may need to pony up some cash for Vue - maybe after Christmas. Thanks for looking and thanks for your comments. --- "Atlantis is full of life, but other than the river, there isn't a hint of green. There is complexity here, but other than the spike trees, very little is recognizable. On this world floaters and squirmers seem to rule. Gas bags and worms are Atlantis's animals. The sponge rocks and spike trees are its plants. But I'm not certain those terms - animal and plant - even apply here. It is an alien world; billions of years of unique development. We're four and a third light-years and forty travel years from Earth. I'm not sure how well we'll adapt. But we'll have to, if we're ever going to leave our spinning home and settle on its namesake world. "We've traveled little more than a klick up river from the base camp. The air is thick with airborne spores from the sponge rocks. Willard says they're benign - they don't affect our lungs at all. But I wonder how much of that is guesswork and hope, and how much is empirical data. We've only been here a few weeks. Every day, every trip into the field, is a spasm - a rapture - of discovery." --Dr. Fatima Hernandez Sforza, Primus River Expedition; personal journal: 4 August, 2105