heyas; that wont work, varian, if i zoom in, then the lens/eye is back in the cone. i THINK. i didnt actually try it, though. anyway, ran into some other problems trying to finish this quickie, two-second vue scene! i put the cone light on, i got the streamers, i backed the camera up.... then i turn the sun off, and there's no bloomin' sky. if i put an infinite light back in the scene, the lighting becomes all screwy. if i crank up the ambient, same thing. so i'm back to being stuck with trying to use the sun and make the streamers more prominent. i already turned the ambient very dark, and even OFF. no go. the shadows, as i mentioned, can't go darker than 100%. i dunno how to make the humidity higher. fog isnt right. haze isnt right. i should just render the dumb thing and punch up the contrast in photoshop! and i emailed e-on about this, and some other bugs i found.