"then slimsand at 1 or 2 slider setting and 600 scale" you completely lost me there :-( what is slimsand? anyway, i have a bump map, and once it was actually enabled (as tjohn pointed out) and i turned own the diffusion and ambience, things looked a lot better. the diffusion looked best at 79 and the ambience at 6. i also moved the diffusion marble over into the A channel and that helped a lot, although i have no idea what's actually happening there when you do that. (just got my real world bryce book about a week ago. i really need to sit down and read it cover to cover before trying any more art. i waste a lot of time stumbling around in the dark)