Hi again Daf, Here's a couple of tricks for photo-realistic textures: 1. Highlights: While the bump map is important for casting shadows, equally important is how the object reflects light. In the example above the highlight channel enhances the bump channel by 'deciding' what reflects light and what doesn't. Consequently, what sticks out further is now reflecting more light (especially the painted bricks) The gray scale image is required for variability in the light. While you can put the color image in, I used the grayscale image because the colored highlight caused by using a colored texture map didn't seem quite bright enough. 2. Shininess: There are areas that I do want to shine and areas that I don't (the mortar for example, it recedes visually if it's not reflecting light). Putting a color texture map in here just slows down the rendering process. The renderer is only looking for grayscale information. And besides, I want definate edges to the shininess. Additional Texture Maps: Creating some additional t-maps from the source color image is usally a good idea. It gives you excellent control over the variables on the surface. This, of course, is only a starting point. In the same way that I multiplied the two T-maps together in the bump channel, you can mix various T-maps or procedural textures to create completely believable surfaces. An article that I read with the folks that do the textures for Industrial Light and Magic indicated that they prefer to mix T-maps and procedural textures because the procedurals are pattern free and 'disguise' the patterns in the T-maps. Anyhow, hope that this helps. Mark