I really appreciate all of the suggestions - and Mr. Evans, I WILL be checking out the writer's forum, as you suggested. Now for my next question - Does anyone have any hints or tips on creating photorealistic textures? I'm fairly decent with mixing and matching actual photos for textures, and blending them, etc. However, what I'm truly interested in is getting as close as possibly to a render looking REAL. I noticed with a couple of my renders, the scene looks incredibly fake, like the "old school" CG graphics. How can this be fixed? May I inquire of any hints / tips / links to tutorials from anyone? Thanks again!

Pretty good animation. Smooth, too, with a nice atmosphere. I have only one problem, though - it's kind of boring. There's no action. I'm watching a flying ship move around. That's it. Can these ships fire lasers? Rockets? How about some explosions? Good work!