I'm totally confused with the render setting for Bryce 5, there are a lot of variables that can have a big effect on render times.How many rays per pixel will give good results without lilling the render times?And what about the Optimization options?I'm rendering a pure liquid wave scen right now and it's only 5000 pixels wide and it's been going for 15 hours, with no sign of being done anytime soon. Does antone out there have the answers? What settings will give the best middle groud renders? Any info will be appreciated. kaom

The scene I'm rendering is 500 not 5000 pixels wide, whoops, I goofed.:#)

Here is the render, I goofed and rendered it with superfine anti aliasing, it took over 16 hours to finish, and it's not that big(540 x 405) pixels. Doing nowmal AA makes a big difference. This is the firsy render I've done in Bryce 5. kaom

I've got many questions about all the settings in here. Like under quality mode, how many rays per pixel? And under optics at the end, what should the maxumum ray depth be set to for high quality renders without making the render time too long. I also have no idea what to se t depth of field settings to. Lens radius? Focal length? Does anyone have some basic guidelines for setting depth of field? I have many questions and need many answers. Your help will listened to closely. Thanks, kaom

In Bryce 4, the maximum ray depth is 6 (one ray can be bounced by 6 reflections max - taken from 'Real World Bryce' by Susan Kitchens. That's all I can help you with.

I don't have any answers except to say that playing with larger ray numbers will be the most effective way to increase render times- maybe even into years! This wouldn't be so bad if the converse was also true. That is, we would set these values to negative numbers and the render would be so fast that the image would be completed before we even thought of it! (grin)

Play with the Premium setting set at the lowest Rays Per Pixel and then move it up usual around 16 it looks great and doesn't slow down that bad. Not to mention this is how you can use the rest of the premium settings without slowing the computer down for just a test render.