perfecto, what size is the end product going to be, and which render are we going to use. and its only going to be a still? i think i decided against modeling all the details in - and rather add them with a displacement. gotta finish the model some more first before i can get to texturing though. we should probably use mental ray - unless there is something really cool about the maya renderer that makes it somehow superior. not much progress to show - most is test renders on how to get my displacement map to show up properly in the renders. duckie