Thanks tradivoro. You're right - getting the taper right is what is taking so long. Also - the stupid true metaballs don't play well with the ones generated on the tree - if the old trunk touches the new one the two textures don't smooth with each other. Leave it to Corel to create some kind of hybrid metaball for the trees - LOL. This forces me to make a kind of metaball tube (condom - LOL) around the original trunk and it is even more work to do this, but it blends seamlessly. Also, I'm keeping the roots, because it is nice to have them slightly exposed for older gnarlier trees and you can always bury them if you want. The trees I sell will only be for Bryce5 users and they will be in .obp format - which forces me to sell them one tree at a time, because the set is too large to be downloaded at Renderosity. Again - if Corel would have made the parameter files exportable (DUH) I could have sold them as a pack as I originally intended. Yeah- I've been noticing that the shorter trunk trees get around the bulge problem - I think it has to do with the length and girth of the trunk. Oh well back to the getting the tapers right - they are getting close now. Nice tree.