Corel Bryce 5.0 Upgrade

I am currently rendering a sixteen-second animation using Bryce 5 on a WindowsME PC. The animation is 320-by-240 pixels resolution per frame, and has a frame rate of thirty frames per second. The PC has a Pentium III, 256 megabytes of RAM, a 40 gigabyte hard drive, and on-board 24-bit graphics acceleration. Nevertheless, because the animation includes six to eight transparent metaballs with a marble texture and the refractive properties of water, Bryce tells me that the animation will take at least fifteen DAYS to finish. To make a long story short, Bryce 5 will punish you in slow rendering time for the same intricacy of creativity the software claims to reward.

At first, I wondered whether or not Bryce's rendering engine was software-intensive (i.e. all of the complex floating-point calculations involving exponents, roots, logarithms, trigonometry, and so on are all carried out by the software) or hardware-intensive (i.e. the same complex calculations are passed to and from the CPU's Floating-Point Unit, which is MILLIONS of times faster than the software-intensive method). All Pentium CPU's have an FPU, and since Bryce 5 requires that the PC in question have a Pentium, one would think that Bryce's rendering engine would be hardware-intensive, taking advantage of the FPU's speed and power. Nevertheless, other users have told me that the Bryce 5 rendering engine is only software-intensive, hence the incredibly long rendering times on simple animations that were cursed with having too many complex props and actors in the scene. Other users have advised me to make use of Network Rendering, where several computers sharing a network link carry out the same rendering project together. But it totally defeats the purpose of purchasing an inexpensive yet powerful 3D world-rendering tool when you have to spend tons of extra money on other computers simply to render a scene or animation at a decent rate.

Ultimately, because my work is deadline-driven, I have found that Bryce's dismal rendering times have become absolutely unacceptable. I am already doing research on another 3D-rendering software package that has a considerably faster rendering engine, one that makes use of the FPU. Bryce 5 is excellent for rendering phenomenal 3D worlds and animations, but only if you have a day's, a week's, or even a month's patience, because that's exactly how long it may take.

Yes, there's good stuff here, too. :) The new tree lab is a significant improvement but again, you'll just add to the rendering nightmare if you use it. I like the new light controls, too, and the terrain editor is better. The disappointment in Bryce comes from seeing the potential for glory, the means by which you can play God and create your own worlds in convincing detail, but not quite being able to get there and having to skimp on the details in an eternal battle to keep down the rendering times. Much of what you'll want to do with it can be achieved if you only do web graphics and keep to relatively low resolutions: go no higher than 800x600 pixels for wallpaper or whatever and a fairly complex creation will take hours to render, but if you want to do a 300dpi file for a 5"x7" print...2100x1500 pixels...you need to keep the composition very simple, no plants, minimal glass, metal and reflective stuff...and you'll probably need to leave your 'puter on overnight, anyway. :( Turn off your wallpaper, turn off your screensaver, close everything else you can (basically, burn all the furniture in your house to keep warm!), whisper prayers and incantations, do whatever you have to do to give every spare ounce of processor power to Bryce while it's rendering. *sigh* Maybe you'll avoid a crash, at least.

Final note: I know this is for the home user, not for pros, but that doesn't mean it can't get a lot better than it is and I'm thinking good thoughts for the next few releases--but saving my $$ for now. I've been a CorelDRAW! and Photo-Paint user for years and I have every confidence Corel will do great things with Bryce, but they're not there yet.