If you're interested in some serious surface treatments that apply to most 3D situations and software head over to www.dvgarage.com and check out the "Attention to Detail" area of the site. If you can afford it, pick up the Surface Toolkit CD or DVD for $199 (I was fortunate to have gotten this in a recent promotional deal they had for Electric Image.) It has 166 hi-res photoshop "grime" files to use in your shaders along with some Quicktime tutorials about how to use them in conjunction with some great lighting theory. I've learned more about shading, lighting and imitating reality in an hour from these tutorials than from the piles of books I have in my shelves. Highly recommended. Michael