Bryce 5

The new tree lab is a very pleasing feature although it can bring your machine to its knees if you are too ambitious with some of the settings! The light lab is neater and more powerful than the previous methods of handling independent light sources and gives you the option to produce soft shadows (with the appropriate rendering settings) plus other effects for those of you with fast processors and lots of memory. Meta-balls are interesting. These are spheres which, when placed in close proximity, are smoothly merged in the rendering process to generate organic looking curves. This is handy for plant stems, liquids etc... Unfortunately you can't use meta-balls in boolean constructions which would have made them even more useful (something for next time Corel?).

I'd endorse the comments of the previous reviewer and heartily recommend the Real World Bryce 4 book which hasn't been badly dated by the new release (apart from needing some new material for the new features) and is extremely useful.

In conclusion Bryce is still one of my favourite pieces of software and this version is a worthy development which existing and new users will enjoy.

Originally intended to be "just" a landscaping program, Bryce has stayed true to that vision and now includes a Tree Lab. No more importing tree models from other sources, a significant saving in file size, and the trees can be as realistic or not as you please.

For those concerned with heightened realism, the new Light Lab and render options offer soft shadows, blurred transmissions and reflections, depth of field and an alarming range of render quality. But be warned: Bryce is as processor hungry as ever. The more RAM and CPU cycles you can throw at it, the happier it is. Rendering might be slow, but it's true raytracing - no shortcuts here!

But Bryce isn't just about landscapes and natural scenes: it's a powerful tool for surreal and abstract art too. I've been known to ask facetiously "what's a landscape?", so rarely do I make them, yet Bryce is my favourite image making software.

Corel have taken advantage of the fact that more people are liable to have more than one computer at home and have introduced network rendering: Bryce will parcel out sections of your image or animation to the other machines on your LAN, thus reducing render time. It even works over internet (though Corel strongly advise against this because of security issues).

Using Bryce is as complex as you want it to be: a beginner can install it and be showing off their first mirrored sphere over water in minutes, while a more experienced user can create images of terrifying complexity. Its much-criticised (it doesn't look like a Windows program) interface encourages you to play, and it's through playing that you learn to get Bryce to do what you want it to do.

Final note: much of Real World Bryce 4 by Susan Kitchens and Victor Gavenda also applies to Bryce 5. If you're going to buy Bryce 5, you might as well buy the best book about Bryce too. As Steve Lareau says on the cover: "Wheee!!!!!"