Hi dlm, Just wnated to thank you for taking the time to assist me. Unfortuanetly you're suggestion still didn't solve my problem. No matter--wanted to say I appreciate your concern. Thanks again.

Got it! Thank you for your patience, thank you for your knowledge, thank you for your generosity. I do appreciate it. Really.

Well. well we have two workarounds. Thank you guys(/gals?) so much. Your answers are always so intelligent.

Hello Hawkfyr, Yes, I am having a bit of a problem. I drove 3 textures thru the ambient/diffuse channel seperately and in combination. I tried varying mapping methods, i.e., parmaetric, world space etc, but it seem all three textutures were mapped globaly throghout the object rather then in seperate zones so that it appeared the three materials were overlayed over the entire object. I used a simple sphere for my experiment. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks so much.

Thank you very much. I will give it a try.

Hawkfyr, Well thank you so much. I have used multiple materials to drive other channels but did not realize it works as you said. Who'd a thunk it? Again, thank you.

hawkfyr * I know that you can assign more than one material to the ENTIRE object, but I didn't know you could assign seperate materials to SEPERATE portions of the SAME object that are not composed of multiple meshes. Please educate me.

Bryce does not have dual-processor capability. The only thing - only thing, I repeat- that will make your rendering go faster in Bryceis CPU power. Memory and HDD capabilty have no effect on how fast somthing renders.

I think you guys have got it right: material does make the object as much as form does, and Bryce's material editor is the most versatile I've seen--Max included. Yes, Bryce does need some basic modeling capabities, at the very least at the vertex level where you could approxomiate some shapes. Lastly I have no personal experience with Vue, only the images created with it that are posted, I too am impressed, but I have the say that Bryce has most of the pieces to be one of the finest 3D products out there, it just needs some tweaking, rearranging and a few extra bricks in the wall. My personal wish would be for some elemtary modelling capabilities, the abiltiy to apply more than one material to different parts of an object, and last but not least, something that approximates radiosity rendering.

I am a MAX user, but given your choices, I would say LIghtwave. It has a professional reputation and I am sure it is well deserved. However, if your budget is tight, then by all means go with TS. What you learn about 3D in general and modeling in particular can be transferred to other packages that you might decide on in the future.

Thank you both, Bloodsong and Kevin, for indulging my ignorance. Your ideas worked. I really appreciate it. Did I say I really appreciated it. Time to post my next dumb question ;)

As I reflect on it, I think you are absoulutely right. I'm sure Kurta has new drivers but it erks me that I not long ago paid them 35 bucks for updated drives, and now having migrated to win 98, they will want another payment if the drivers have been updated. I think I will live without it till I migrate to win 2000 and then I will either buy a new wacom or hold my nose and swallow hard as I give Kurta another 35 of my scarce dollars. Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Jim.

Charlie, I read the texture map solution in the manual, but it says that I should map it to a particular body part via the surface material dialog. When I look for the individual parts in the dialog..there are none-just the body as one big conglomerate. Am I missing something? Misunderstanding something?

Thank you all for your considered opinions. I ordered the book from amazon:)

Plese put me on your contact list, and notify me when the plugin is available. I am sure it will be a HUGE success... and thank you.