Thanks for the tip Polax! I've successfully created about 2000 trees and a terrain which Vue 4 reckoned to be about 250million polys (2.5Ghz P4, 1Gb RAM)! It's just a test at this stage, and looks pretty rubbish because I haven't varied the positions of the trees etc, just proof of concept. Looks like Vue is the way to go (considering the SpeedTree addon to my copy of MAX is of similar price as Vue 4 Pro now it's reduced). Probably best to get Pro and upgrade if I need to. Cheers for the tips - when the project is underway I'll post some images on the forum.