Have a lot to digest thx to your help here and your tutes.. Think the time for QnA is sadly over. No amount of theory will replace the need to practice what I think has finally seeped in.

I still need to learn my way around the interface it seems (thought I had that down) Alot of my inability to follow your advice stemmed from this.

First off I spent hours looking in my Material and Render settings for Trace Depth...
Then I think Reflective Limits and Refractive Limits werent doing what I expected/what I thought you were saying they would- because I still hadnt found the correct tab (quality) in the correct tab (mental ray) of my render settings. I fiddled with Mental ray options everywhere but there. Got all that worked out and then last night was well on the way to a great image and incredibly pleased with myself, I had a cookie on a spot casting a shadow of a woman with wine glass in hand on a wall I put behind this table... I had a nice purplish directional light. And I needed a bit mor light to really bring out the Glasses on the table (beither with a weird patch in the middle) And then a truck hit a power pole at the end of my street and everything went black.... hadnt saved in hours and I lost it. )in more ways than one)

Just opened Maya and about to try and redo what I did last night, texture files and that cookie are still good, just need to recreate the lighting and refiddle with all those limits and depths and... that should be my last post on this thread for awhile. Not quitting just going to immerse myself in the doing rather than just talking about it.


Thx again.