Wow, that macaw is beautiful, really! And this certainly is a fine picture to "house" him in. :) I know what you mean about the vegetation and the non-anti-aliasing; I too think that sometimes it can look better without. As for the materials, try selecting the "Mix materials" setting in the material editor, and then checking the box which says to the effect of "materials are dependent on local altitude and slope", and then clicking on the tab which specifies "influence of environment", which appears after checking off the altitude dependence box. I'm sorry if that sounds confusing, but I'm working from memory alone right now, since I actually have a Vue pic rendering at the moment. yeah, I know, that's one of those, "thou shalt not multi-task" sort of things, but why not, eh? ;) What I mean though is, just play around with the materials some---soon you will see just how versatile Vue is. Of course also, ask anything you want! And I almost forgot: this picture is lovely! :) -Mike