===== From rich@brickbots.com: I like your entry for both the title and the idea. All great inventions start with some sort of empty space waiting to be filled, and you set out to show us this. I do hope you enter again. Sorry I do not know more about the specifics of the Bryce renderer or Rhino modeler. You seem to have a good grasp of modeling, so my comments are more about the lighting of your scene. Getting a lifelike render is so much a function of lighting. You have several lights, which is a good start, but try to make them more subtle, and the control the exposure across the image more. Not all lights need shadows, and sometimes (if you can) use non-black shadows to keep them lighter and less obvious. If you can setup area lights, or soft shadows, they help a lot as well. All of your shadows have a hard line on the terminator which is uncommon with household lighting. If paint has a historgram function, use it to help control the exposure on your renders. The histogram shows the number of pixels which have a specific brightness. Generally, the best images have some pixels of almost every brightness and a general bell shape distribution. Your image has a huge number of pixels at the bright end of the spectrum. The form and volume of objects are defined by the gradients that fall across them, the lights and shadows. Try looking at your image in B&W, focusing just on the luminence to see how your objects are defined by light without thier colors. Can you tell them apart easily? Is there good contrast? It's a bit difficult to tell from the size of your image (go larger next time, much larger :-) but another very simple and useful trick is to be sure there are no sharp corners on your objects. If you have a cube with 4 sides, in the computer there will be an exact 90 degree angle between the sides and a very sharp terminator. Nothing in the real world is this perfect. Bevel the edge so there are some faces to catch a highlight on the corner. Take a look at real object and you will see this prominently as the light plays off of them. This is usually easy to do whem making objects and adds a lot of realism. Since you have a good start on modeling, I highly recommend the book 'Digital Lighting and Rendering' ISBN: 1562059548 to help give you a jump start on the finer points of well... Lighting and Rendering :-) ===== From tenmoons@aol.com: I like the idea of a work in progress. I think the lighting could be adjusted to show some of the small details, even at a small size. Just experiment and see what works. ===== From rgow@lanset.com: Good job on modelling the objects, and getting the lights where you wanted. Bryce is not an easy program to do lighting with. ===== From terraform@upnaway.com: A good scene and you alreay know whereyou went wrong with the size compression etc. good artistic arrangement . ===== From marlo.steed@uleth.ca: The light circle is too harsh - not realistic. That pop can does needs more hilights. ===== From file: decent modleing but I don't get the concept other than the object is not present. keep trying.