Yes, it's lovely.  The sunset is of Salhouse Broad on the River Bure, we went there one day and stayed a few hours and I loved it so much that when asked if I wanted to go back there and maybe stay overnight? I said "yes" in an instant, didn't have to think about it at all.

It's a wide tranquill place with two entrances from the Bure making a small long thin island - there are no buildings except for a little wooden ranger's hut but there is a long, long hose to take on fresh drinking water, and 20 mins walk away is the village post office, a small shop and 2 pubs, one of which is dog friendly, but we didn't bother with the pub.

Swans, ducks, and coots come to the boats and the swans actually knock on the side of the boats for food, we also saw a pair of grebes ignoring the boats, and we've seen herons and cormorants, hawks and the occasional huge fish, bats swirl about you at night, and the water itself is interesting.

On a sunny day it is bright and sparkles like flashes of white fire, it can be calm and still like a mirror, and I once saw a tiny squall of rain, only about the size of our boat, distrupting the water's surface like a painter using a stippling brush. It drifted across the water towards me before it petered out just short of the boat.  When it stopped so suddenly like that I found myself glancing up at the sky as if to say - "hey, I was watching that!"

It was the moments when I was alone on the boat, while Ian walked off to the little shop and (I thought) the pub, and just as evening fell when I sat out at the prow taking photos of the sunset, these were the moments of greatest peace: the Missisippi steam boats had gone, the small boats were all tied up, no more movement on the water, and it was so quiet and still, moments like these are balm to the soul.

You don't realise you need it until it comes to you.

There were Graculus birds drying their wings:

and a Graculus bird (Cormorant) just sitting there:

Loved it all.

Lovely stuff AS.

Good idea using displacement on the converted mesh, Bobby.

MalenySteve, does the material survive okay on the converted mesh on those doodled herbivorous dinosaurus balls of yours?

PoserUserFromRussia,

Love the shadows you're using, Dima Petrov, where did you get those from?  is that an extra filter for Adobe After Effects? or does it come with it?

Can it be used with AE CS4?  I don't have AE 5.5

@ ecroskey,

What video editing software do you have?

Sorry for your loss, Clay.  Love the image, especially the waterfall cascading over those rocks, very nicely done.

Quote - Here is the scenefile for you all, created in Bryce 7.1 Pro.

Do whatever you want with it, enjoy!

www.kirkdunne.com/files/metaball_2014_08_e.zip

AS

Brilliant! Something to play with, thanks AS.

Love the blue-green hues you've got in this.

I love that model, did you make it?

Looks like my post got deleted again.  Basically I said:

Lovely image Rosie, and a Happy Easter to you too.

Well if I win the lottery, sure. Lol.

(But otherwise I just couldn't afford it.)

I'm still studying videos of how to rig at the moment.  I've found some for Carrara but it's taking forever to learn how to use Carrara, so I may not go that route.  (plus there are some other limitations in Carrara.)

I've also found some rigging tutorials for Blender - and Blender has certainly changed since I first tried (and failed) to learn it, some things are a little bit easier in it now.

But I think I need a crib sheet on how to first set up the scene: views, camera, lighting, materials, render settings - before you even start.

However there's something called 'Rigify' for Blender, which seems (from the videos) to make rigging in Blender much, much easier.  And as I like the new Cycles render engine, plus there's some intriging sounding possibilities in 'Physics' for Blender now, I may go that route for the actual animation.

I'd still like to be able to animate in Bryce, but I don't know if rigs are useable in Bryce, wherever they are made. I know that some are - because I've used a 'posable chain' in Bryce - dunno who made it, it was a long time ago now.

I've thought about DazStudio, but again there are limitations in there...

Where are you going to retire to on my contribution?  Bahamas?

Make sure you post a pic when you get your lycra suit, I'd pay good money to see you in lycra! Rofl.

(with the top hat, of course)

Lovely Rosie, that's beautiful.

I've already bought stuff on my Kindle PaperWhite, so does that mean my Kindle Fire is already set up?

Um, no, it seems it doesn't.  You have to set it up again.

But I married a clever man - he sorted my Kindle Fire out and downloaded it for me. Yippeee!

What does the 'F' stand for, Chris?  Or is that a deep dark secret? Lol.

Oh I was going to get it anyway - once I've figured out how to do that with my new Kindle Fire.

My husband's been away up in Cumbria seeing his mum.

But Ian is home tonight and once he's over the journey I'll ask him how to do it. I think you have to set up your bank account or card or something, dunno.  I've only ever downloaded free books before.

I'll have a look at the inside once I've finished trying to UVmap a freebie crab I found.

Good luck with the 2nd one - I'll look forward to that too.

That's nice.  I did notice the cover looked rather good.

Can you say what sort of story it is?  I don't mean the plot like you have on Amazon.  I mean is it straight Sci-fi?  is it Science fantasy?  does it have humour?  That kind of thing.

Congratulations.

Er... is that you: Jonathan Icknield?  Or Helos Henning?