I have been playing with the rain object that comes with Vue4. In this image I ended up with 58 copies of that object, all reduced in size, and overlapping each other. I grouped them all, and the group looks a bit like one of those rocket launchers they are using in Afghanistan, divorced from its ancient lorry.

I also made the material 0.6 all round on the function scale on transparency production, and 0.33 on the material scale. I gave it 15% luminous in the effects. Without the changes in the material scales the raindrops were too thick and not terribly convincing.

I also gave all the rock materials a bit of reflectivity, to make them look wet.

The perspective has gone a bit awry. That rocky hill looked like a middle distance mountain till I put the goats in, when it shrank. I could have made the goats smaller, but I did not want to because the hair detail on their coats was lost, or I could have made the mountain bigger, but it blocked out the threatening sky. So it isn't a mountain any more. It is a bit of a rocky outcrop - well that is my story;-))

These are Lyne's goats from http://www.vistainternetproducts.com Carol UK

Well it turned out very nicely, Carol! Definitely gives off a feeling of a dreary, wet day. :)

Hey Carol, it really looks like rain, good job. Sharen

So where does this rain object live? I presume there's one for snow too. I was looking for that earlier today, but couldn't find it. (I'm using Vue4). Thanks. Kevin

Kevin, the rain object lives in objects>miscellaneous. It looks like a blank square with nothing in it. There isn't a snow one, but I have made one. It is very easy to make a snow one. Open the rain one, and get to its material in display material summary. Double click on it to open the material editor. On the transparency tab, right click on transparency production and choose edit function. Make the x,y and z scales all the same on both layers, so the raindrops become circular. OK that and choose the effects tab, and set the luminosity to 60. That gave me quite reasonable snow, though a bit too evenly round circular flakes. I may experiment with a couple of layers of slightly different x y and z scales when I get a minute. I saved that in miscellaneous as snow. If you use enough cylinders, make them fairly small, and arrange them just in front of the camera, almost touching the lens, it works quite well. The rain instructions say put the cylinder all round the camera but I can never get that to work. The drops/flakes just become over large and blurred. I get on better with a collection of the cylinders in front of the lens, made small. But trial and error is the best way to get something you like.

Great picture Carol.. Rain looks very convincing... :)

Very nice image. Could also be somewhere in Europe :-) Guitta

Thanks for the tips about the snow and rain, Caroluk. I'll give them a try. Kevin