Originally posted by ben hobden ah yeah, that is really nice and subtle. By normal, i mean normal map. same as bump mapping really i guess, i think it works a slightly different way, but im no expert at all so i wouldnt take my word for it. You seem really good are you quite new to maya then? whats the project for/about? apart from it being the enterprise. Oh ok, I gotcha. Yeah from what I know normal and bump maps are pretty much the same thing, since bump maps use normals to calculate the direction of the bump. There MAY be subtle differences but I'm not sure exactly what they are. I started learning Maya over the spring of this year. I started with a few classes at the Gnomon School (www.gnomonschool.com), but if it wasn't for my love of star trek, I wouldn't have taken it as far as I have. Right now I'm working on re-creating the launch scene from Star Trek I. It's hard when you want to render out 3 mins of footage and each FRAME takes 40 mins! I'm going to borrow a friends computer I think lol What does your dragon look like? how's it coming?