Bagginsbill, you have given us some super good information here that will help us tremendously. Big thank you for your detailed responses.

But I can assure you that turning the GC down to 1.0 is significantly different than turning GC off. I have now done renders now with GC off, GC at 1.0 and GC at the default 2.4 or thereabouts. And the 1.0 is much richer than the default setting and it is not as rich/bright as turning GC off. And the preview screen looks way better with the CG turned down.

Yes, I even rebbooted it.

I agree this was a real sucker's promotion and I got taken. Got the modern apartment which is about as useless as a T on a B to me - being a fantasy action queen. I was hoping I might snag a gift certificate. Oh well, once bitten.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I got the textures attached - decided to attach it to another ground prop and with a bit of fooling around with the U and V scales I got a decent but not stellar image. Will probably look ok once it is covered with grass and other flowers.

Thanks Bagginsbill, that worked better

Thanks everyone. I used Baginsbills tutorial and it works just great!

Thanks IsaoShi. I read Bagginsbills instructions and will give it a whorl. If it is by BB I am sure it will work with a bit of fiddling!

Holler - thanks for the suggestion... I also cannot believe it is memory.
Don (Idonno) suggested the same thing, a texture path problem. But I just loaded Tomora using the Content Paradise download. She has worked fine in ohter pictures. I would think if it was a texture memory path it would always be buggered up.
Funny thing ... I had a Jepz stem prop in the picture, and when I turned it off (still there but just invisible for rendering) the problem went away. And when I think about it, ohter pictures that have included these props have also had rendering problems... so I wonder if somehow the Jepz steam prop is not buggering up the file texture path.

It seems that the "extras cd" ... is just that extra expense that you must fork out for.
I wonder why VUE cannot just be up front about what they are doing.... probably in small print somewhere but sheesh.
Thanks as always for your quick and informative response.

Damn, I can't believe that with this "upgrade" that we are gonna be stuck with slower uploads. And I mean reeeaaal slooooow uploads. Why the heck did they do that?
Ok, now just to prove I'm a total ditz, what's the abbreviation MP in "check in the MP for those" mean?
So setting everything to the relative path should speed things up? Or just make it more stable?

And I just got the new Vista updates a few days ago and now when I think about it that's when I started having the gray screen crashes. And I always have  my outlook running in the background whenever I'm working. I also have the business contact manager running... so maybe you are on to somethings here. Would never have thought of that, but I never dig deep into my programs to check things like that.

Thanks for your detailed response Don. I hope I can get myself back up to whatever speed is now possible with the new "upgrade"

I know there are lots of Goth makeups out there. I've spent a huge amount of time looking thruogh them.
What  I need is something bold and expressive like Silence (that's why I posted her pic) but I don't want all the spider webs and big tears and other clutter that seem to come with most of the characters.
Real makeup but big, bold and dramatic.
Thanks for your patience. .. I'm not trying to freeload effort here, I was just hoping someone would have an AHA idea.

Well good luck to you girl, I hope you achieve what you are setting out to do. And while I have known you only briefly your help was truely amazing. I was hoping to learn much more from you and I will miss that opportunity but for you girl all the best!!

Wow, DarkCrystal you rock girl!! There were several good hits. Barbarian in DAZ andi is pretty much what I was looking for and as well as Barbarian in the Xurge Products! Their Mage outfit is perfect for another character that I am working on.

Don't know how I missed the DAZ ones, wrong search words or just too much to wade through.  Thanks so much. Not to be too gready but if there are more leads to these kinds of suits I would appreciate knowing about them. They will be put to good use.

And Acadia as alway you have good leads, hopefully I won't have to do the runaround.

Again, thanks to both of you.

This is going to take quite a bit to digest at my level but I can tell this is really great stuff. thanks for taking the time, I really appreciate it.