Hey Brent, I've had the dots before on both animations and stills but it's 'fixable'. If I remember, Antoine Clappier, from the egroups list mentioned a workaround for this know bug. You just add a little more haze and fog to the scene. (really minor amounts so it doesn't interfere with the forground) Also, a light amount of 'depth of field' also eliminates the issue. I've had no problems since then. Should you have to do that....well, no. But at least it's still workable. I've also had dropped polys when the camera got real close (physically) to a low fidelity spline object. Was yours a spline or a vertex? Renders with a zoom-in haven't had that problem. I also keep the spline resolution up above 500 just cuz now. Mark