Okay, since I decided to follow the "path of least resistance", instead of changing the lighting, I just changed the planet in the background. But when I rerendered, the planet looks kind of pixally. Any suggestions on how might be able to fix that in Vue? Or is that something I'm stuck with and need to fix in post production?

I don't understand how you've got the planet behind the stars, that shouldn't happen. I think that is causing the pixellation though.

Though I could be wrong...

Attached Link: http://www.ladyfyre-graphics.com/seamless_tex.html

I think I'd use a real rock texture for the rock instead of the material you got there. But where to download it? Fortunatly I made some seamless ones here awile back. Ya you have to get rid of the stars in front of the planet. Looks like you added it later. You must remove the stars first.

jwhitham - I loaded a sphere and applied the texture and then moved it back in the scene. I'm thinking it has to do with the atmosphere/fog. MightyPete - Thanks for the tip and link. I'll give it a try. I actually didn't add the stars later, I just haven't photoshopped them out yet.

If you use a Vue planet, as on the attached image (Jupiter), there's no need for any postwork!

John

I can do that as well. I was shooting for something more generic vs. a planet we all know. :-) But that may be the way I have to go.

Ya that was one of the things I said on the what do you want in Vue 5 thread. I want to be able to edit the planets cause the planets where I live are different from these earth system planets. Who knows if it passed the vote though. But it is sorta silly. Build anything you want anywhere you want it but um sorry there is only nine planets that we know of at this time. I photoshop it. Oh there is a work around too but photoshop is easier. Put one of those earth system planets behind your home world then the stars will not shine threw. Can't say I've tried that though. Where do you want to go to day. My planet !

Well, I guess maybe I'm not as au fait with the appearance of our near celestial neighbours as some:) I think you'll find both Mercury and Venus as generic as some fairly generic things though, and not a lot of work.

I'll play around with it and repost as soon as I can. Thanks for the help. MightyPete - I noticed a lot of folks ask you technical questions a lot. I have a PC, XP Home; do you set your own Swap File or do you let windows handle it?

Where do you want to stop today? No winders is incapable of doing anything properly, I set my own. Like why would I do that anyway? Cause I always have a swap file, It's always being created. It's always being used. I don't want to wait for winders to make it bigger and I don't want to wait for winders to make it smaller again 50000000 times a day. Just think it's the way we work on machines. We open something up then sit there for a bit winders goes oh free space and makes it smaller just in time for us to do a cut and paste. You know your trying to do the paste then winders realizes the swap is to small and resizes it instead of doing the paste. Pass. Winders is incapable of doing the swap file. I set mine to 1 gig min with no max. Doing it this way prevents at least the first gig of it from getting fragmented although XP uses a different system it's the same effect. Slow and slower... Remember the biggest it can grow is 4 gigs max minus the memory you have on the mother board. So always less than 4 gig on a 32 bit machine. It's the absolute maximum and now days people got 120 gig hard drives and bigger so why would you not create a swap file of a least a gig?

Oh BTW the trash can on a 120 gig drive would be 12 gigs with the trash can empty. Now that's a waste of space if your like me and don't use it much. You can put some of that totally wasted space to good use buy reducing the size it resurves then making your swap file to some reasonable number.

Okay, I have 1 gig of RAM on the motherboard and my video card is the Radeon 9700 Pro with I think 32 mb on it, if that helps at all. Winders - I like that! :-) I call Microsoft - Microsuck. Do I have to set the swap file on my C drive or can I set it on another drive? Also, by chance do you understand the process it goes through to use memory? Does it use all of the RAM before going to the swap file? Does it ever use all of the RAM, or is there a setting you have to change to tell it to do that?

It uses ram first then the swap. I would say always uses a swap of some size and that's what bugs me, like why not just reserver the space after all they don't resize the stupid garbage can everytime you use it do they? They do it that way so you don't realize it's such a huge piece of bloat ware that it is. it appears smaller than it actually is on the drive. Make people think it's??? Good question we know it's bloat and whatever already so why hide it at the expence of the useablitiy right? The swap is what keeps you from having to buy 4 gigs of memory and most OS use some kind of swap file. I'd set it to 1 gig min, no max. If you load a big image 1 gig will vanish. If you do anything 1 gig will vanish. Using the swap is good so lets give it some room cause when needed it will appear anyway. Why wait for it. Makes the computer run faster and better.

I kid you not. While hacking my winders one day I incountered the following error: WARNING: YOU have just set your computer for MAXIMUM PREFORMANCE!!!! Are you SURE you want to do this? Huh? It's a no brainer. Ya your right I want the old default my dog can find a fire hydrant faster slow as snails default setting so I can me more productive. Setting a min swap file is a good thing. It's more important now than ever. Hard drives are huge. Swapfile resizing is left over from the days of 1 gig hard drives. Swap file resizing is one of the stupidest things winders does. They reserve the trash can but not the memory swap file. Ya and you guys want to rule the world and we are suppose to trust you. Ya right... Makes perfect sence to me too.

Yes, why in the world would we want maximum performance out of our PC's and OS? Maybe Gates has performance issues. ;-)