That would be nice wouldn't it. They were a real mess in the first few closeup renders. They look fine now though, thanks for your help once again :-D!

Thanks for that! I've played around with the settings in your first point and it's improved greatly. Almost done, deadline on friday - eek!!

It's already set to bilinear, what else might cause it? Thanks for the tip though.

Thanks guys! Gary and catherine, I tried rotating the terrain while I was painting, the brush still only points one direction. It seems like brush rotation would be a really helpful feature, maybe they'll add it in a future version. The shadows are harsh, for my final renders I'll bump the quality up alot. I think I'll export a greyscale terrain map and then place a load of footprints all over the place using the map as a guide and then use the brush to "stamp" all of the footprints into the terrain in one go. I might even make two brushes, one for older more subtle prints in the dry clay and newer and crisper prints in the mud. If I play around with the hills enough they will look good eventually, just can't seem to find a good material to represent bare grey limestone.

The final challenge will be to get this guy into the scene, I suppose if I load my vue scene into maya (I'm using xtream) I can just do it from there?

Ok here's what I have so far. I've worked quite a bit on the playa terrain and the water, and the prints are kindof workin but I need to tweak the brush. Is there any way to alter the direction of the brush because at the mo the prints can only go straight! I still need to work alot on the distant hills, I'm not happy with them at all. But it's coming along, I'd like to see what you think of it. Thanks guys.

Ok I have bought the pack, I've sent you a message with my email details. Thanks again.

Will.

Oh wow that's right on the money! I think I will be purchasing that!! Did you make that just to answer my question?

Yes thats a great help thanks alot :-). The tank track tut should help me with the footprints, and I've more or less got the kind of scree slope I need, at least from a distance. Now I just need to figure out a way to blend the cracked clay into the mud of the lake, I guess if the mud was at a lower altitude I could just use a mixed material and tweak the influence of altitude until it looked right, would that work?

Will.

Ahah, thanks! I've follwed a few of their tuts but hadn't noticed some really good ones. Thanks for pointing them out :). I'm still eager to hear anyone's suggestions though, the mor solutions the better :D!