It's easier to use something like UVMapper to remove the normals anyway shrug. Yes it is, much easier, much cleaner. As for render times. I would claim that I have noticed a differnce in speed. That is most likely not a result of the object being cleaner but rather a lessened memory usage as a result of having a smaller object loaded. Rendering is cpu and ram intensive so more ram means logically, more speed. On complex scenes with volumetrics, radiosity, reflections, transparencies etc or any combination of those, the difference in render time is negligible if there is any at all. Spanki, I'm not arguing your point that hand editing vn out of an object file creates a corrupted file, just that software today appears to be much more forgiving than it used to be. There was a time when normals were essential in order to load an object into a render application IIRC but that day has passed. Software houses are more familiar with the fact that users will do some pretty weird things and have, in my opinion, made the software more robust as a result. Anyway, I don't disagree with you, and using UVMapper or similar application to remove normals is the better way because it takes the related info out as well. But it's not, how can I put it without you screaming at your monitor? LOL It's not absolutely essential anymore. It's just better practice and cleaner, resulting in more logical object files. :)