When I got home this evening, I created a tree, rendered, it, then rendered a mask. I opened the mask in Paint Shop Pro, and smoothed out the bump. Next, I opened the tree render, duplicated the layer and applied the mask to the tree. Then I selected the original layer, applied the mask, inverted it, did a bit of smudge where the bump still showed, made sure both layers were visible, and voila, a straightened trunk. Just did this quickly, so there's probably a quicker way to do this, but it didn't do too badly. -darlisa