Thank you all for the warm welcome (back)! I'm doing my best to get a feel for Vue's controls.It's a bit different from Max and FinalRender.I'm still in awe at the depth Vue has,especially with the functions nodes.So far, for me, the one frustrating part of Vue is the graininess of the renders when using volumetrics.I tend to like a moody,atmospheric and painterly feel to many of my pics,and I've been busy trying out the custom rendering parts of the render options editor. I still feel like a kid on Christmas morning when I open V6I! LOL  I am working off an old P4 1.8GHz PC here with 256M RAM, and a GeForce 128M vid-card, so I'm limited in what I can do for now. I have a Duo Core with 4G RAM and a decent GeForce back in Seattle that I miss very much.I also forgot to bring PhotoShop with me down to Texas, so I can't do any post work on my renders for now.

estherau: How do you like C4D? I've heard a lot about it,but I've never used it. I've heard good things about modeling with it. I kind of grew up on 3D Max, and I've stuck with that because I tend to be a creature of habit. I haven't dug into daz Studio as of yet. I own an old version of Bryce.,4.1 I think it is, but I seldom use that anymore myself.

Thanks to all who've looked at my gallery and commented. It's a great group of artists here.

It's good to be back!  Happy rendering!

Thank you for the fast reply! No,the small previews,while always a bit darker,were always close enough to the final image.These problems just appeared (even in saved scenes that were fine before) ,and the final render was really washed out compared to the previews.I went out and bought a new GeForce card today and all is back to normal.I experienced a rare BSOD with WinXP last night,and when I posted the error report to MicroSoft,it told me a hardware problem that never appeared in my Device Manager.I'm thinking that the old card was going out.

I will most definitely check out your tutorial! Many thanks!

You might try looking here. http://www.hdrshop.com/   Hope this helps.