hey thanks for the tips!

about the grassy hills and plains, those were actually some of my major concerns. it's mostly a dilemma whether to leave the actual grass to texture mapping or actually model it. thing is though, even if i do decide to model it, that'd probably take years...

so any suggestions on how to make that grass more real? bump maps to seem to make it look anymore convincing, since grass "thickness" comes from the grass blades that populate it.

as for the central figure, i don't know how to describe it's material really. i just saw it used in some of the galleries over at the highend3d forums so i **tried** making my own similar texture via photoshop(on a sidenote, what do you think of the texture?)

i plan for the material to have a matte finish though, since my reference images of that material seem to have no reflectivity.

i'll check my hypershade for whatever weird stuff i may have put in there. that freakin' lens flare's been bugging me all day.

thanks for the suggestions. keep 'em coming everyone!