I switched to Carrara a couple years back for my renderer.  Use an old version of Rhino to model with.   Combo works well for me... http://nevanna.blogspot.com/

@Rayraz Actually, I'm a Java developer...I do lots of back end stuff. Databases, J2EE, that sort of thing. ;) I'm the one that gets yelled at when the site goes down... :)

Just want to defend the poor people in back... I happen to be one of those "people behind the scenes," only for a different company. ;) First note--patches and updates happen all the time. Many of them don't require actually stopping traffic to a website. At one place I worked, I ran three to four a week, all invisible to the users. Secondly...well, no one plans to have a server down for all of twelve hours. If it was down that long, something nasty must have happened. :) And it's not as unusual as you might think that some people can connect while others can't. There's no planning or prioritization. It may just have been bad luck that you landed on the server that didn't work. Oh, and no, seeing a partial PHP page doesn't necessarily mean you ran across some secret upgrade. It just means that part of the system which serves the page isn't working properly. ;)

Cleaning up the existing code is definately the best way to go... It's nice to see a company that actually realizes this. :)

Yahoo makes a decent popup blocker...the SP2 version of IE for Windows XP has a popup blocker. You can also install Ad-Aware and Spybot. Actually, I'm glad the beta version is out. I'm forced to use IE for work (a number of work-related sites just break), and at least now I can have my tabs. Makes it so much more efficient to work with. :)

Chocolate chip?? :)

Hehe...what could I get in return for rewriting it?? :) Are you wanting a version that would translate into a height map? Nevanna

I like the mountains...maybe darkening them would push them into the background more. Right now my eye keeps getting drawn to the top right. :) Interesting style to it. Nevanna

I've also noticed a restriction on the size of image when rendering.

No offense, but if you're like me, manuals aren't practical. The first time through, I don't have a context. Even later passes, I often don't know the terms or know how to look up what I want. It generally works better if I fumble around and ask questions when I get lost... My $.02.

At least I'm not the only one with CorelDraw 8... ~ Nevanna ~

Fran... You want to have a different icon show up for the file type .mat, right? In Windows Explorer, go to any folder with a .mat file in it. Right click on the file, then select properties. Near the top is an option that says "Opens with". You'll see the icon you don't like next to it. Click on the Change button. From there, select Bryce since you want to associate it with all the .mat files. If you don't see Bryce listed, you can browse for it. After picking Bryce, click Okay. Then, Apply, and Okay once again. Clear as mud? ~ Nevanna ~

Yuck...Indiana... lol Not much to do there. (I just ran away to Arizona. Much prettier.) Nevanna

Most "traditional" contests have an entry fee. Doesn't seem that odd to me. ;) Nevanna

Thank you, much appreciated. :)