Here's what I'm going to do. SHADOWS Soft Shadows: I've decided to write up a technical study on shadows starting with Raydream (may the 3D gods smile upon me and help me to remember that code!). I'm going to do raytraced and soft shadows in Radream first. Then we're moving on to shadow possibilities in Carrara which would include regular soft shadows, shadows cast by environmental lighting, and shadows which are produced by GI. I will address pros and cons of all this stuff. CONSTITUTION CLASS STARSHIP MODEL Unfortunately I'm not ready to release this model to the public yet. There are several reasons for this. 1.) I built this model in RD and it has personal sentimental value. 2.) It is chockablock full of flaws and they really need to be fixed. 3.) It's clumsy and difficult to use for somebody who's unfamiliear with it. 4.) The more I work with it, the more RD shortcomings I have to redo all the time and the whole stinking thing needs a major overhaul. 5.) I have made a new years resolution to build a whole new model in Amapi this year to learn Amapi. I've done it twice now in C and the details are all in my head so a third time should be a whole lot better! 6.) You can go out on the net and find one that's just as good (better). This always depresses me and I have even more reluctance to release this model with such good competition out there. GI RENDERING The windows to contribute to the light in the scene but the interfere so dang much with the structure around them that it totally hoses up the starship model. I'm a Paint Shop Pro user and I'm sure I can do the compositing of the multipass rendering in that package but I don't know how. I'm going to have to research this some before I set up the passes for the render. There are eight lights inside the big construction hanger, two lights in the starship shuttle hanger, and one sunlight. The result of the render I've posted has been made by lots of tweaking of these lights and by turning down the shadow intensity for some of them. There is some ambient light in the image as well. -Kix

-Kix