I gotta tell ya, I like the ducks :) Kate

Funny thing about vrtual:we compose all the scene we want even not so realist one.A suggestion:in display material menu ,change the scale of the material for the trees according the distance

heyas; very cool, steve. :) the background hills/mountains look a little odd, because they look as if they're only a few feet away from the reindeer. when you make a scene, try to create a background part (one or more terrains), a midground, and a foreground. if there were a mass of trees between the reindeer and the hills, they would look further away, and the landscape would have more depth.

I've been playing with the demo for a week now and I'm ready to buy. I know how you feel, Steve, this is a fun program. I love the realistic looking vegetation and it's seems so much easier to use than Bryce. I've never been able to turn out anything really decent with Bryce and I've done OK with Vue. I'll be anxiously waiting for the postman :-) Thanks for the bit about terrains, bloodsong, I have a problem with mine all looking like they're at the front too. Claire

heyas; you kinda need to do a forced perspective deal with the terrains. for background mountains, i make a terrain, then make it huge and stretch it sideways across the camera view, and shove it way far away. you have to mess with the distance and vertical size to get it to be looking like a distant mountain. material scale also has a lot to do with it. use a small scale in the distance.

I ordered Vue this morning. I think the manual will probably be a helpful thing to have :-) I can't seem to figure out how to shove the darn terrain as far back as I'd like. It sounds as though the material scale is something I should be using. Counting the days! Claire

Well I hate to say this coz I like constructive critisim but we have these mini hills here in the cheviots though no reindeers so i do need to fix one or the other :o)...but still thanks for the tips coz thats a problem I've had in other pics.........Steve

You could fix the hills by putting a reindeer or other animal on them to show that they are indeed small hills that are close up rather than big hills that are supposed to be far away. Maybe a hiker coming up over the hill or something. I saw them as small and close up which made sense to me as I've been in places like that.

heyas; oh, okay! cuz i've never seen little hills like that. (or else you need big mountains behind the little hills, in the distance? dunno.) you need to zoom out to move stuff very far. the easiest way is to hit the magnifying glass '-' button on the top bar a buncha times. ;)

To zoom out I use manual zoom. Right mouse click and it's one of the options. Then just drag your mouse down. You can zoom out pretty far that way. The advantage of large objects far away as opposed to small ones close up in order to simulate distance is that with the large and far you have a more accurate to reality representation and Vue puts in all it's atmospheric haze and fog like it would have in nature.