Thanks Guitta but the sawtooth edge is not from a low antialiasing. I used the User Settings for the rendering and went beyond Ultra and even upped the number of rays in the antialiasing and pushed the quality slider towards the better end. Original image was rendered at 1024 x 756 @ 300dpi. All terrains were at 512 (the waves are a clipped dunes terrain with a water material applied). I tried adding grit, pebbles, stones to the beach...several clicks worth...but still ended up with a fairly flat beach. Do the rock softness settings affect the effects? Thanks for the tip on adding another light opposite the sun, I will try that. Ron