*note* stunt biplanes have 2 rungs on the top with a strap so the pilot or someone can stand up there and not fall lol that's for wingwalking I think! lol that would be funny if I could get that in there!! Vectorman: I have written a flocking system in c++ (to find out more about flocking go to: Craig Reynolds Page Basically this will spit out a text file of x,y,z translations and x,y,z rotations. I then load this text file into maya (Via MEL) and traverse through it and set up instances of geometry that pick up the positions and rotations and set keyframes for them it's as "simple" as that! The MEL to do the initial loading up of the file is easy(ish) but getting MEL to set up the shaders etc for the smoke trails that the planes leave has been a pain in the butt! You cant imagine how long it took to get maya to set up a "grayscale ramp" using MEL it's two button clicks using the GUI but scripting it was a whole other story! When I'm finished I mite post the script and the data files (or even write a tute! ) so people can see how it was done. I've got loads to do but it's coming along nicely! Thanks for the feedback keep it coming guys! Alan