Hello nemesis, I do a combination of things to get the best results. Depending on the lighting, I usually set the Bump settings between 3 and 15. Then, to make the appearance better, is to duplicate the bump channel into the Shininess channel and multiply it with a Value setting. The value setting is used to adjust how aggressive the shininess is without turning the black of the texture map to gray. (which is what would happen if you only reduced the intesity of the bump map) The same thing can be done in the Highlight channel but instead of using a Value slider in the multiplyer, use a color instead. Hope this helps. Mark