Originally posted by Lequis MX:
Bryce is entirely satisfactory for my current needs, and I'd only think about buying an
expensive pro one if I could use it or if I had like a DP 800mhz G3. Plus, I've made
stuff in Bryce that is comparable to pro-stuff. EV landing graphics count, right? 
Then what were you complaining about?
Ok. I got most of the stuff to work that I wanted to... and have compiled a list of
things that are bugs or such...
Bugs/Inconveniences:
1. For changing the color of things, i.e. fog and haze, the color palette doesn't
disappear after it is used.
Huh. It does for me. You click and hold, drag over your color, and let up, and it goes away. Of course, I usually option-click on the color sample to bring up the other, IMO better color pickers.
2. The render mode is basically locked-down, that is, you can't easily stop it.
Yes, it's sticky, but I can stop it without too much trouble. Try clicking on something, such as one of the sections (create, edit, sky & fog) at the top.
3. Render is very slow and lags.
Eh.
4. The sky lab is very limited cloud-wise; you still cannot make cirrus clouds, or
distant and realistic stratus or cumulus.
Yep, but you never could. Annoying, though.
5. Animating still does not support complicated material movement.
I wouldn't know about that by experience, but you can do texture movement, morphing, blending, etc.
6. Object modeling still doesn't support anything complicated.
True, but there are booleans. Booleans can do a lot of stuff people wouldn't think they could. ((url="http://"http://www.2xtreme.net/btaenzer/brycemodelling.jpg")sample(/url), wings - (url="http://"http://www.2xtreme.net/btaenzer/defcannon.jpg")sample(/url), panels)
7. There is no manual. No damn manual for us Academic users.
No printed manual. Did you look on the CD? It's there in .pdf format.
Primary major Advantages to 3 and or 4:
3. Skies do NOT revert to the previous sky upon any changes/circumstances
However, if you select an "old" sky preset, then enable sun soft shadows, that setting won't be saved. When you reopen it, sun soft shadows will be disabled.
5. The Spray-Render is very useful. Very, very, very useful.
Really? I've found it utterly useless. How do you use it? For location rendering, I just do an area render - drag a box out in the render-view-mode (whatever that's called) and hit the render control that appears next to that area...so what do you use it for?
6. Extra AA modes. 'Premium', which is basically like comparing 64-bit graphics to 128
bit, you can't quite tell a difference in most circumstances.
Most of the new rendering abilities require "premium" mode, such as depth of field, "true ambience" (a sort of poorly implemented radiosity), soft reflections/transmissions (diffuse metal and frosted glass), to name what I remember. Unfortunately, those appear grainy unless the rays-per-pixel is put to the max (256 - changing the rays-per-pixel is another ability of premium AA), and when it is, it's dead-slow.
I still have a lot of questions about this. And then there are questions unanswered, of
course. How does one make realistic clouds?
You can use volumetric textures and position them by hand, but that renders a bit slowly.
How does one make neat camera/render view effects?
Such as...? Using Photoshop comes to mind as a solution.
How does one make complicated non-boolean objects?
You don't, or you import objects. Booleans are remarkably useful and not actually that hard to use.
And finally, what ARE metaballs?
They're liquid-like blobs that are spherical droplets that will flow together (as with surface tension) when near. They can be used to make lots of different things, but that's the best way to describe them.
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