Hi Sly, First , in the sky and fog pallet, click on the farleft icon's drop menu and select"Atmosphre off" you'll see a deep blue background, so , to get rid of that,drag on that same icon's color ramp and turn it from blue to black, now double clik the sun/moon trackball to bring up the sky lab. from there turn the sun off"disable sunlight" I always turn the ambiaent color to dark grey or black. Now .. that sucker should be so dark , you cant even see your cursor...lol (not really) Btw Save a preset of this in your sky library so you dont have to do it all over again the next time you want these settings. hope this helps. Hawkfyr

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”