velarde, about the G4... my girlfriend has one, but i'm reluctant to load C onto it because i might never be able to work on my 266 Mhz G3 again. actually, i'm going to use her computer when i render my animation that i'm working on. i'm hoping that it is far faster. i'll let you know. about your rendering speed... i've noticed in my work that procedural textures that get too complicated slow down my render time even more than a hi-res texture map. i tend to use procedurals mainly for things like terrain - because they don't repeat, or gnarled trees - since the procedural textures are 3-D and go through strange objects instead of stretching. you might want to play with making procedurals into t-maps by rendering them on a flat surface and using the rendering as a t-map. all suggestions of course. i hope they help. by the way, that book is really good. better to get it now before you get too involved in animating. you will probably learn tons. -scott