Thank you all for your help! I'm back on track again. I see that Shadow Catcher is indeed listed in the index--I must have been too frustrated and cross-eyed from staring at my computer to see it last night. Perhaps the reverse shadow effect will come in handy in its own right sometime.

Eovia tech support confirmed that the problem was due to a bug in Studio 1.1 that has been fixed in Studio 2.1 so I guess upgrading is the way to go.

Thank you, you've given me a workable strategy. Can you recommend a program for putting the movie together? Adobe Premiere? Something cheaper???? Has anyone out there successfully completed the Small World Tutorial and rendered it into an AVI or QuickTime movie in either Studio 1 or Studio 2? I'll gladly upgrade if I've got some assurance that it'll really solve this problem.

I've tried on two of my computers and on my brother's computer with about every variation I could think of in terms of image size, final file type, compression, color depth, etc.. It renders fine with just the sphere, vehicle, street lights, and distance lights. The spot lights are the problem. The tutorial suggests adding light cones, wind, and turbulence. The spot lights and light cones render well in the assembly room but even one spot light alone freezes the program when the rendering progresses to the point where it shows. The capacities of the different computers affect the rendering speed but all freeze at the same point in the process. Ctrl-Alt-Delete still works but nothing much else and waiting doesn't produce any changes--it's not just suddenly going super-slow. Maybe Studio 2 is the answer but I've spent a lot of money upgrading already and seen very little benefit most of the time. I'd like to get control of the basics.

Thanks for your reply. That was the first thing I did and we are working on it but I hoped that maybe somebody else had encountered this problem and knew how to deal with it. If it's a bug, it's hard to believe that I'm the only one who has encountered it, but I've had no other trouble with my setup. I did replace the graphics card yesterday but called their tech support today and spent a good deal of time today reviewing the installation, and changed some settings but that did not affect this rendering problem at all.