Hi Michael,

Thanks!

I wasn't intentionally pursuing a classical motif, but it sort of looks that way.. :-)
Maybe images I've seen of ancient Roman or Etruscan snake
bracelets have inspired me along the way...I think I just like curvy
surface modeling challenges. This might sound a little nutty, but sometimes in my
spare time away from work projects (which tend to have straighter lines),
I like to unwind by doing curvy surface modeling. It's a great stress reliever!

I didn't really have a plan when I started out, but the helix tool easily took care of the spiral section.
I lofted the head, which made a single surface, then I turned on the control points
of the surface and scaled/moved them around to give it a little more shape.

Getting back to Bryce, although it's geared more towards spacey surreal scenes and panoramic
landscapes, it's also possible to set up a scene with a neutral background.
I found a tutorial showing how to render small objects with reflection that look pretty good,
but not as good as some of the beautiful Blender renderings I've seen.

Perhaps one of the veteran Blender guys can give us a short tutorial on how take a model from
MoI into Blender or Blender/ Yafray and set up a simple product presentation scene.

Images I've seen from Blender with ambient occlusion and caustics are as good as, or better than
renderings from many of the commercially available renderer's.

Here is the tutorial I mentioned above:
http://stevesartgallery.bryce-alive.net/tutorials/bryce/environment/reflective.html


Update- That tutorial must have written a few years ago. I discovered that Bryce 5.5 does realistic reflections and 6.1 has HDRI, so the method described in the tutorial isn't necessary

Regards,

Jesse