I agree with you on the soft shadows. Quite disappointing. I'm building some product shots and the soft shadows cast from spline shapes are not very good. GI lighting takes too long to render. It would be very nice, though, to turn off glows on a part basis when in GI, I also have not found that yet. One thing I found about GI, If I have a background of a bright sunny day - the sky is blue. The blue sky dominates the colouring of the rendering, when really I want a bright white light for the sun and a blue colour to the shadows. I guess I could use lights and hybrid render instead of GI, but those soft shadows .... With regards to your ATAT, there is a page in the manual that talks about that problem (some where in the p500's towards the back of the manual) and is a common problem for all GI rendering software from what I have seen. Andrew