Here's how I converted the strip into a ring system. I imported the strip into Corel Draw, a vector drawing program. You can see the strip selected. I then placed the centre of rotation in the correct position, where the red arrow is pointing. This is at the centre of 'Saturn'. I can't remember the proportions, but just find out the inner and outer ring diameters from any boy scout's diary. I then duplicated and rotated 0.5 of a degree. In corel, if you have moved an object as you duplicate, using the numeric pad plus, any subsequent duplications do the same movement, in this case a rotation. After about 20 duplications, I selected the group, and rotated and duplicated this, so I didn't have to click the mouse 720 times. You can see a sample above the original strip. I then saved it as a bitmap, loaded it into photopaint, and added very slight gaussian blur. After working with the rings, I did a bit of cheating. The very dark band you can see just gave a solid ring in Vue, and didn't look right, so I selectively masked this in photopaint, and lightened it. So its not really spot on Saturn values in my picture. Hope this helps, I'm sure there are other ways, but this was the easiest. I daresay you could directly map the strip onto a thin torus and fiddle with x and y in some way, but I'm too tired to think now. I might have a go tommorrow. It should be possible to fiddle something purely in vue once you've got the strip. When I made the strip I reduced the numbers to greyscale, giving 256 levels. The NASA data went to about 10 decimal places. Have fun. ps here's a set of instruction I posted for someone on how to make the procedural rings, I think they were using Vue 2; First, the rings are a cylinder, squashed flat, to make a disc with a slight thickness. This is then cut with another cylinder using CSG boolean difference. nOw you have your basic ring disc. For the material, I'll give you all of the settings I can, and you can try to reproduce it in 2.1. Remember that with materials like this, lighting is very important. The lighting in yur scene could make it look very different. of course you can alter the settings I will give you to tune your picture. First, go int your material editor and click on 'new' to get a new material. Select 'object space' and 'cast shadows'. COLOUR PRODUCTION set 'procedural colours'. Create a colour colour map containing band of colour to your needs. You do this by right clicking on the colour map and selecting 'edit'. My colour map has 11 bands. Right click on the function preview and select 'edit function'. For your first function, select type 'onion'. Combination mode set to 'blend'. Leave the scale at 1 1 1, and click 'fractal layer'. Edit the fractal layer, setting complexity to 4, and scale and amplitude both to 0.5. Combination mode 'add'. Leave the fractal layer editor. You should now be back in the material colour function editor. Click 'add' and add another onion layer. This layer is as for the first layer except that the scale is set to 0.1 0.1 0.1, and the fractal layer complexity is set to 2. Click ok and leave the colour function editor. BUMP PRODUCTION Right click on the colour function preview, (the little square picture in the colour tab). Select 'copy function'. Go to the bump tab. Right click on the bump production preview picture, and select 'paste function'. HIGHLIGHTS Set to zero. TRANSPARENCY Set global transparency to 100 percent. Select 'variable transparency'. Set 'fading out' to zero. Set 'blurred trans' to zero. Set 'refractive index' to 1. Set 'flare' to zero. Copy the colour funtion to the transparency function as you did fur bumps. Right click on the transparency production preview picture and select edit. Create these extra layers using 'add': leopard scale 0.01 0.01 0.01. Fractal layer complexity 2, mode add, scale .5 amplitude .5. turbulence comp 2, noise (smooth), mode add, scale 2, amp .25, harmonics .5. rotation x 91, y 54, z 200. Onion scale .8 .8 .8. fractal layer comp 2, add, scale .5, amp .5. leopard scale .05 .05 .05. Click ok and leave the function editor. Right click on the transparency function graph in the transparency tab. Edit the graph to make it look like the picture with this post (above). REFLECTIONS In my picture the reflections are set to zero, but if you want reflections, select 'variable reflectivity' and copy the transparency function to the reflection function preview picture. EFFECTS these are setting for my picture, they may be different in yours. Set lighting, diffuse and ambient both to 500 percent. You have to type this in, the slider only goes to 100 percent. I have 'colour reflected light' set. Transition to shadow is 72. FINAL Make large mug of tea and relax.