bloodsong, I know the feeling WELL about working all day on something in Vue and not being happy with it. Big difference is, you know what you're doing and I don't! Vue does seem to have some annoying little habits and limitations, but hell if I can as of yet figure out how to work around them without asking someone else. Far as your picture goes,though, the other day I was working on one and had a similar problem as far as trying to make the background objects "fade" a bit more, and i just ended up putting a huge cube between the foreground and background so it filled the whole scene, and then I txtured it with a smoke sort of material... I think I mixed it with a glass material as well, and after a few hours of messing around with the transparencies and the size and thickness of the cube, I almost got what I was after. I'm sure you've already though of that, but you DID say, "nothing too complicated"! Fortunately, I'm not capable of giving complicated advice! LOL As far as the skin texture goes, I haven't even yet reached the point of even trying to alter it or anything, so I would have nothing to say about that. Otherwise, I really like the overall composition--has a nice balance to it. Cheers, Mike