Erlik: Thanks for the smoothing suggestion. Unfortunately no setting works in that regard. Remember, I'm using true ambience way beyond the level the programmers designed it to be used in Bryce5, so it is perfectly reasonable that this 'problem' might appear. I doubt it would be an issue at all with 'normal' use of t.a.. The starship mesh (by Eric Peterson) in the image above is 3ds format; the smoothing issue is not an obj thing. Seeing polygons on the Enterprise isn't too bad, but you can imagine they're pretty distracting on a Poser figure. madmax_br5: The display is actually fairly straightforward use of ambience / true ambience. It's bright green and it casts a green hue on nearby objects, in this case the ground plane. That does point to what I'm using to light this scene: just off screen are two 'ambient light boxes' giving a soft illumination. catlin_mc: I don't know if there are any tutorials out there on true ambience. I don't think what I'm doing counts as what the programmers intended as true ambience. What I'm doing is the equivalent of using blurry reflections to fake radiosity - taking a technique designed for one thing and taking it to extremes to do something else. I ought to write something up, but I don't get much time to play nowadays. shadowdragonlord: I'm not sure how true ambience negates the need for other material effects including the DTE. Objects can have Bryce materials applied OK, though I certainly wouldn't want to try this with volumetrics or complex transparency. I feel inclined to delve back into investigating this some more - who cares if imported meshes look crap, Bryce can still do stuff! I'll keep you posted.