I've been to the Iguana site and Iv'e seen the incredible landscape work done there but no matter how many times I try to use the tutorial my results always end up null.:( Terrain is basically simple, make a bump map and then apply a shader. However, when I try to get some nice water effects somehow my intended colors and vibrant perturbances get washed away looking something akin to the Ptomic. Wind is altogether impossible to control. I'll usually start with the cirrus setting and then try to manage the cloud fog and haze settings. The last time I only chose a cirrus preset not trying to move any potentailly dangerous knobs around and when I used my renderpreview and current settings everthing in the scene went black. Everythin! I also heard that if yo place a water shader in the bump chanel you can make the water glow but I'm still in the trenches. Ahhhhhh! SPACEY

S[acey - Make sure of 2 things. 1) Your rendering camera is a conical camera type. 2) Your rendering camera is above Z=0. I usually palce my camera at Z=32. If you use any other camera besides conical it wont work. If your camera is below Z-0 it will render a black image since your camera is under the ground. Let me know if this helps. Clint

I forgot about the conical thing, but that's a default scene setting. Now I seem to be getting some results however the veiw is often two tone depending on the camera angle. Just blue for thbe sky and grey for the ground. Sheesh this is like learning to walk for the first time! What's worse is that I can't get any response from my water plane settings. Just grey muck with light grey splochy acid puddles! I need to know why the sky goes away when I reposition the camera and why even though it's above ground the water doesn't ripple. Thanks again

Spacey, I have a few questions: 1) What platfrom? PC or MAC. 2) What resolution is your video card set to? (ie : 800x600 256 color) Let me know buddy. Well get ya making those skies and water ASAP. :) Clint

Hello Clint, I thank you for your assistance thus far and I was unable to find out the video resolution, at any rate my computer was having some serious problems with Ray Dream. I am now working with the G4 for on something called a Fast Ragepro videocard. If you can still assist me with the water thing I would be grateful. I was discussing another technique for creating streams using the metaball deformer shapes covering the width of a gutter shaped terrain in overlapping repetitions w/ a homemade water texture and perhaps some physical behavior. Later,

Spacey, Use an Infinite Plane for the water. If you are using the 4 Elements Wind (for the Sky) make sure your Infinite Plane is placed above z=0. I place them around z=2 or 3. You will need to create and apply a water shader to the Infinite Plane. Water Shader Formula: Color = (Blue or Agua Color) Highlight = Value of 40 Shininess = " " 70 Reflection = " " 50 Refraction = " " 6 to 12 Transparency = " " 25 or higher The Bump Channel is where you get the ripple or wave type effect. You can use a Wood Function in the Bump -or- The four elements Shader Function of Water:Ripples or Water:Waves. You will have to play around with the above values to get the water to look like you want. That should get you started. The gutter animation sounds cool. Good luck with that. I hope this helps you along. If not let me know. Regards, Clint