I read the previous post about getting rid of flicker noise. i can see that using texture maps is important. What is the best size to use. I have a digital camera that soots 2048 x 1536. Should I use a map that big? cheerio lululee

You are going to get a billion different suggestions for this question! A monitor is limited to how much detail it can display in one physical inch, so there is such a thing as too much resoltuion, which will only slow down your renders. A general rule of thimb to use is that you should make a texture map as big as you will ever see it on screen. In other words, if you have a rock texture and your camera passes right over that rock and it get's shown real close, then you need a bigger texture in order to have a quality look when you are up close. But if that rock is never going to be very close to the camera, say no more than 1 inch big on the screen, then using a large texture on that rock would be a waste of processor time. Keeping proximity to the camera in mind, if your texture looks pixelated, jagged or rough then you probably need a larger texture image. If it looks nice, you have a bit enough texture. A common misconception is to use a "high resolution" texture assuming it will increase the realism or detail of a render. This is not completely true. For example, a 4000x4000 image rendered on a character is really a waste of system resources and processor power unless you are rendering a tight shot of the head, or an extreem close up of the lips (and even then it's usually overkill). Always strive for a balance between speed and quality. There is a whole lot that could be said about this topic, but experimentation will get you the best results. Best of luck.

As a general rule o' thumb, texture maps should be at least as big as the pixel dimensions of the rendered object to which they are attached. For example, if you are doing a house render at 1024x768 image size and the fore-side of the house fills an area 800x700 pixels, your house texture area filling that area should be at least 800x700. For animations, you're going to need to determine the "closest approach" to any given object to determine how large (and therefore detailed) the texture maps ought to be. Bigger is always better, but memory usage and render times will increase with use of larger bitmaps. It's all a matter of compromise. Another approach is to use the largest texture map possible (let's say 4096x4096 for instance) and keep reducing it until there is a marked difference in render quality. Then use the size used just before that one.

Thanks everyone for the great info.

in addition to the right things said above: if you have problems figuring out the proportions of rendered object, try looking at it from the foreground/background perspective. It's a rougher measurment, not precise as the object measurement, but it generally works and it's easy to remember: (this of course goes for landscape pictures only) real foreground/closeups/"macros" = double the largest side of your picture (I call it "better safe than sorry") ;-). This is especially true of objects that are curve and tend to "stretch" a tiled map visually; normal foreground = the size of the largest side of your picture; middle ground = about 75% of the largest side of your picture; background = from 25% to 50% the size of the largest side of your picture; Let's make an example. Say you're going to render one picture at 1024x768. The largest side is of course 1024 which becomes our term of comparison. So: for real foreground/closeups/macro shots, 2048. For normal foreground, you're safe at 1024. For middle ground you shouldn't go below about 800 (768 t.b.p.) background you can go between 256 and 512 depending on the size and visibility of feature. These references has to be taken "cum grano salis", meaning that if you ahve the Empire State Building in the middle ground, it should count as foreground.... or if your main foreground feature is an ant (not a macro closeup, just an ant in proportion with the landscape) then you can use much less than a 2048!