Try the most obvious(or it was to me at least): add more fog or whatever, to give the water a higher "density."

You can also read about it at corel.com. Apparently MS bought 24 million shares of Corel stock, in hopes that Corel would also help them get .NET into the running. I know that Corel had some financial troubles, but MS buying some of their stock hasn't gotten me at all interested in the dumb .NET thing.

The only way you can do that is to split the image manually. For example, have one computer render the left side and another render the right side. It works better for animations, which you would do by like having one comp do the first three secs and the other do the last three.

Yes, yes; similar to the "challenge arena." I just noticed some other people suggested something similar in the "joint ventures" thread too. Great idea.

When I first noticed the problems with "over-positive" ratings, I figured it was probably because people wanted to comment on images, but not take the time to bother with an honest rating. Therefore, they just give a 10 and then do what they really want: just leave a comment. I think that may be the biggest help to good ratings.

I have to agree here too. Some people's "art" is thrown together, with nothing but perversion in mind. It's not even sensual, it's sick. Please deal with this, amen! There is too much beautiful art posted here to let the gross stuff ruin it for us.

How about "block" in the art galleries? There are some people here who (to be honest) cronically post disgusting material to the galleries, and I'd prefer never to see it at all. Now, with that harsh criticism, I'll go crawl back under my rock (for now).

Indeed there is much good info from back then, even. New users might still want to access stuff from back then.

RAM and video card have to do with modelling speed mostly. If you don't have to sit and wait every time you adjust something, then probably RAM and video card is OK. And if not, you can try some of the stuff mentioned in the manual to decrease modelling "delay" speed. If slow rendering is the problem though, go for a fast processor. I recommend getting as fast an AMD as you can afford. AMDs are usually quite fast, optimized for 3D operations, and quite cost-worthy. If you've got money to burn though, I guess you could go for an SGI.

If you're looking for an interface that won't "lose" you... avoid blender. I've prefered Bryce because of it's intuitive interface, but like CNET said, Blender has a "steep learning curve." I haven't seen any programs out there that have such a friendly interface as Bryce.

Thanks for the comments, everybody. I haven't purchased Carrara yet, and wanted to make sure I can do the things I need to do before I buy it. I'd looked up Tree Druid, but ended up on Dynamic-Realities website rather than Zenstar's. They said it was available only for Lightwave, yet I'd heard people here talking about using it as a plugin with Carrara, so I needed clarification. The waves I was talking about were "photorealistic," and the type you'd see in a violent storm. I really need that for a project I'm starting, so I wanted to see if there were plugins to make it easier. I've considered Maya, 3D Studio Max, Electric Image, Carrara, Truespace, and others, but Carrara looks like it has the power I need, and it's the least expensive of all of those anyhow (EI's over $2000). On top of that, Maya, 3DSM, and EI would all require a brand-new and more powerful PC (not to mention expen$ive) than I've got. I'll have to continue to do lots more research too. I saw that one of the other programs (I think it was EI) had a built in "Mr. Nitro," where you just drag an icon onto an object and it does a full explosion, complete with gas and burn volumetric effects and throwing split-up parts everywhere. Is that what Carrara's "explosion" preset is like? Can someone answer another question: are Bryce and Poser-animated-files easily imported into Carrara, or is that a pain in the ---- to do?