I'll look into that anything goos plug-in. And yeah, I also want to do some renders from different angles. I want to make a little-kid version of the robots and have him on the other side of the doorway peeking in, with the point-of-view behind and a just a little above his shoulder (sort of seeing from his point of view). I tried getting the lamp colors to project a bit onto the surroundings but I kept getting weird and unpleasant artifacts and decided to put that aside for a bit. H&B

Thanks. Yeah I like the beer bottles lying around. I need to make a beer label to stick on there. How would you go about adding some grime? I suppose one way would be in the textures themselves. Anything else? How about a dirty sock draped over the radiator? :o) Oh and maybe one robot-guy passed out on the floor surrounded by beer bottles....with a cracked and leaking brain tank...! Yeah....

Thanks Mark. I knew there was a way (and that I was crazy). Cheers, H&B

I'l give that a try Mark, thanks. But one quick question. Would the texture map work better if the shape was a real half-sphere (as opposed to this truncated cone with round sides, you can't see the flat bottom from the angle of the above render)? Cheers, H&B

PS: don't look too closely at the lighting. I just slapped in a few spot lights for this quick render. I used the same texture map in the glow channel by the way. Cheers

Thanks guys, You know Todd71's idea does sound good to me. It might be just the thing. I also tend to do things the long way. :o) Cheers all, H&B

Thanks for the information guys. So let's see if I got this straight. vectorstyle is a plugin that will allow me to render my animation in a format that I can then put into a flash document (in which I'll be able to add text). Once the animation is rendered and put into flash, am I limited to having it run from start to finish inside the flash movie, or can I, using flah, include the necessary controls so that the user can rewind, pause etc.? I had a look at the description and examples on the Eovia site. The illustrations are all a little cartoony in style. Is that typically the end result when using vector style? This job isnt for publication on the web, so it doesnt need to be particularly light. Thanks again, H&B

Thanks for the images GWeb. Its very helpful. Ill try some depth of field experiments in the next few days. Cheers, H&B

Thanks for the input folks. Kelley, ill give it a try with the hazing out of the most distant tower. The vehicle with the twin screws (actually those screw like shapes are part of those dirigieable balloon things, not screws as in propellers). They are an airship design I modeled last year, just thought it would make for a nice vehicel for my bionicle model.. I like the contrast between the high-tech robot character and the low-tech vehicle. Originally those vehicles had a big engine block between the two balloon sections. I removed the engine for this scene because it looked weird when the airship was next to the tower structure. Patrick, Right at the moment Im rendering a version with soft shadows enabled and experimenting with the global illumination. Ill try your other suggestions as well, bumping the terrain a bit (it does look flat), and "warming up" the sun. Cheers, H&B

Thanks guys, I hadnt thought about the haze. Ill give that a try. Cheers

Thanks for all the info. I appreciate it. At the moment Im rendering (on my desktop system, Im writing this on my old powerbook) a night-time scene. I added two other landing plateforms and a couple of lamp posts on the ground between the plateforms. On this attempt the only lights used are the ones actually in the scene, all the little lights on the plateforms etc. But afterwards i will play around with some lights using your suggestions. Cheers, H&B

Thanks Gweb, I agree with you comments. There is a lot of tweaking to be done. Right now I'm working on fixing up my terrain. I 'm also experimenting with using a night-time set-up to make better use of those light-posts I placed on that docking platform structure. Any technical hints you can give me concerning the renderer (or anything else actually) will be appreciated. Cheers, H&B