Anyway, Mike definitely wins the cupie doll for suggesting the solution... It was the camera... Seems that the camera wants to be on top always and if it has the water over it and it's not at the right angle, it gets cranky... Also, thanks for the suggestion regarding the lack of definition in the water, lowered the blurred transparencies... About the only problem I'm having now is that even though I have a big sign that says: SCENE UNDER CONSTRUCTION - KEEP OUT!, these critters you see in the scene keep coming in... I can't tell you how many times I've shooed them away, but they keep coming back... Do you guys have that problem when building nature scenes, that the animals keep shoving in their oar?? It's amazing, everybody wants to get into the act... :) Anyway, thanks to all of you for all your suggestions... I still have to work on atmosphere, so I'll keep try out those suggestion about the sky Varian... :)

Glad to hear it worked out for you! Here's another one for you: If you drag the water into a new layer, and hide that layer, it makes seeing what's going on with your scene faaaar easier. And don't let the animals bug you; they have good intentions. ;)

Can you clarify that a bit more?? In other words, I have my present water layer, I copy that layer into a new one and hide it? How does that help? Any info appreciated on that.. Thanks.. :)

No, in the world browser, you simply drag the water thingie onto the next layer down, or whichever, and simply drop it there, on the layer and Vue automatically inserts it. At that point, your camera is under water, and you cannot see it or anything else that's also under the water in the viewports. If you click on the red "X" next to the layer until you get the closed eye icon, then the water will be "hidden", and you'll see not only your camera, but everything else. I'm hoping that works the same way in Vue 2 as it does in Vue 3. Sorry it took so long for me to get back on this, but I've been away all day. If you'd like me to explain more, just holler!

Yayhey Paul! I'm glad it got straightened out okay. :) What I think Mike is trying to suggest is to make your water plane invisible (by moving it into its own layer). I'm not exactly sure why you'd want to do that, though. Vue will clip objects that are below the ground plane, and water is typically lower than the ground plane, but in this care, your water plane is clearly above the ground plane, so making it invisible from the views wouldn't do much good for anything that I know of. Maybe I'm not understanding what he means. :) As for the critters, well the problem I get is with plants. Big plants, little plants, all kinds of plant. They just seem to wander in no matter what kind of scene I'm building. Vue is so cool. :)

I love those little critters and plants tho, they seem to know just where to play to make the scene nice! Great that you got rid of that line! I still love that seafloor! looks wonderful so far!

A water plane acts as the clipping plane when it is higher than the ground plane. I belive Mike's suggestion is intended to allow things under the water to be visible. But, to make things visible below the clipping plane does not require you to make it invisible, simply go to the file>options menu and deselect the two options that start "clip objects under...". -karl

Ok, thanks Karl; you're right-- I was doing it that way. I can't remember why I started to do it like that, but I thought that was the only way. I guess I oughta read those help files a little more often!

oh yes, for newbies who might not know, mike and i are referring to making things visible in the working viewports. things would be visible in the render regardless.

This is true. Also to add to that, in Render Options, you can select to render it all, including hidden layers, or ONLY selected or active layers, or only selected objects. That would be useful, for example, when you have complex materials applied to the water, but all you want is to do a quick preview render of the objects IN the water-- you would choose not to have the water layer render, and that will speed up your render time; even "preview" mode can be slowed down considerably by complex materials. As for me, I like my previews to be as close to the finished size as I can handle, so doing such things as hiding objects or entire planes, be they ground,water, or cloud planes, makes Vue-ing much quicker and simpler.

Once again Mike, thanks again for the right answer... In the world browser, I noticed that the camera layer was above the water layers, which is what was causing the problem, so I brought it down and now there are no water/camera problems, no matter where I place the camera now... As to this hiding layer business, I still have to play with that to see what it does and how it would help in making the scene easier... Also, I appreciate any answer at any time, so whenever you get to it is fine... :)

Yes Varian, I've seen your work with plants and I can see how all those plants want to get into your next creation.. :) Very nice stuff.. I had that program, I forget the name now, that generates the plants, and did a couple of surrealistic scenes in bryce with it... Very nice flowers and other small plants...

Thanks Diana, now I gotta put a couple of rocks, a lot of plants, small marine animals to make that ocean floor more real....

Thanks Karl, I'll try that stuff too...

I'm glad the problem got cleared up. I thought your camera was already below the water plane; it looks that way in the image. So that's where I was getting confused. :) I remember some while back, someone -- Karl may remember better than me -- someone did some images as if through a diving helmet -- half below water, half above. Anyone remember that? PlantStudio is the program's name. And PlantStudio has just been released in version 2 with a lot of added features! Visit www.kurtz-fernhout.com for all the info. :)

Attached Link: http://www.chez.com/jrlivenais/vdesprit/tut_index/up_under/up_under_eng.htm

yes, that was J-R who made the above/below water images. he even has a nifty tutorial on how to do it. check out the link. -karl

Right Varian, plantstudio... Loved that program... I used it for a while when I was heavily into doing a lot of art work... But then I had to go back to real life and work... So, work cuts into my time for artwork... :)