Can't reproduce on duo-G4 Mac. Smoothing and changing a 32-point polyhedron happens pretty much instantaneously.

And if you're talking about natural water, I had to start looking at the Fresnel complications; the Fresnel angle controls where a body of water transitions from being clear & transparent under your feet, to reflective & solid-appearing toward the horizon. My guesstimates have been running about 10-13%, but the other variables under the transparency and reflection channels affect this, too (as well as the refraction index channel).

Message edited on: 02/16/2006 12:22

As for the Mac answer to part 7, put the leaf file inside the Carrara 5 application package. Right-click the Carrara 5 program icon, choose open package contents, then find your way to the plants folder inside the data folder, thus: Carrara 5.app/Contents/MacOS/Data/Plants/

I've had much better and faster renders with Carrara than with Poser; but I can't really imagine trying to use Carrara to render with one processor, actually. With 2 Mac G4s, Carrara seems able to do a lot more in a less time. My own Mac experience, anyway.

That makes sense. There are times, though, when I'd like to be able to set the bump at half-an-inch maximum, rather than guessing at what half-an-inch looks like in relation to a particular map's histogram...