metallicjet,

You are probably right that the whole scene could be repositioned, but for now I wanted to see how the tanks looked! I will probably take your advice when everything's fixed.

As it is, I already noticed something horribly wrong (this after a 600 frame render)! One of the directional lights was facing the wrong way, and this led to some "interesting" shadows (not to mention one reason everything's so dark). I shuffled the lights around, and the offending shadow is now gone.

But worse yet, there was a "moving shadow" on the tank itself which was following the rotation of the treads. I realized this was becase my treads were part of a UV wrap (which isn't supposed to move a whole lot!). I had to go back to my UV map, delete the tread color, and create a "tread shader" (easy enough) and apply it to every individual tread. By all accounts, this should solve a problem which has been plaguing my tank animations since day one! Anyone currently modelling/rendering any sort of tracked vehicle may wish to take note!

I will post yet again tomorrow, but I do appreciate your comments! Maybe I will pose the tanks mid-field as per your suggestion...

Carry on...!