Mahray, I am boycotting Bryce upgrades until version 9. One night on acid I time-warped, and Bryce 9 is gonna kick so much ass, that they actually re-named it Bryce 4D, since it will be the first time they've made any real changes since Bryce 3! And I have no way of testing it, but I doubt they fixed the .obj issues. It's not actually an OBJ issue, per se, but an issue with how Bryce names objects on import. If you have too many objects of the same name, it doesn't know how to deal with them. So it just re-groups them without Brycean-grouping them, and sets the false groups to 20.48 separately. I have no problem importing small models with only a few dozen parts or so directly... Also, the problem occurs on .dxf and .3ds files as well. Same issue, it's Bryce's internal re-naming at fault. If they fixed it in 5.5, cool, but now that I've done the massive, multi-hour process a few times (fortress and this house) I've got it down to numerically perfect accuracy... Almost! Fran, these images are the same sizes I always post. One of your recent resolution changes must have stuck! About mist : no, Fran, I make my own nowadays. Even the venerable VanLippe materials are clown shoes compared to home-made recipes; most of my mats are multi-channeled. I used them years ago, when learning the DTE, but have found other ways to deal with mist and fog, such as light-based fogs and clouds. This image calls for no fog, though, so it's not an issue really... Aye, the water is pretty much a placeholder. I won't be using any planes or slabs for this scene, when it's done. They just never look natural enough for me, anymore. All of my textures are my own, in almost all of my recent images. That said, the texture for my Millenium Dragon portrait is stock, though... But all the textures you see in this image are blends of procedurals and image-based textures, some from my own camera, some from Mayang's, but all of them multi-channeled. What I mean is that a simple image texture will always look like crap, so you couple it with some procedurals to help randomize things and add complexity, and of course to kill the graininess... There are six terrains here. All of them have one three-channel texture, slope-based, except the distant beach has a bit more yellow in one band, and the behind-the-house terrain has some greens in place of the grey, rocky bands. Oh yeah, the garden terrain has a totally different texture, one I simply call "The One Dirt". I'm about to make some texture packs for sale here and online abroad, but wouldn't mind sharing them freely with anyone interested before I finalize the sets (Earth, Air, Wind, Fire, and Spirit). Of course, Fran, I'll email you the main texture here so you can tear it apart from the inside, if you'd like. Honestly, I can't justify selling anything to my fellow Forum-ers, since it's you guys who taught me how to do them in the first place! But I have no problem feeding off the teeming masses of garbage Brycerenderers that will never read this thread. Think of this thread itself as a coupon, or just laugh aloud at me in my pitiful arrogance! A quick update render : 2:35:36 rendertime, 9xAA, using BryceSun and not the light dome. I don't like the tree or grass clump just to the right of the house much, and the distant beach still needs some more work. I hope to launch into some water-work tonight, after a bit more grass, and the sky needs to be reworked once I meet with my Lady Love, to get her input on the color scheme... Any ideas or dislikes would be very welcome, I need to be challenged! What would you like to see in this scene, to make it feel more natural and homelike? What kinds of animals belong here? And thanks for all the input thus far, everyone!