Wade thank you .. its is an excellent tutorial .. but not the one I was looking for. :) The site I was thinking of had an image of a science fiction harvesting machine scooping watermelons and the tutorials were: some kind of leaves from lattices, lattice treestump with altitude sensitive materials for different textures on sides and top, and importantly one called "rusty decay" which walks through each step of making a material from using noise to make components and upwards. thanks you very much for your time and the tutorial! if I can't find the one I was looking for I think this one will also help my student a great deal :) Lyrra