THis beastly 58.1 meg bryce file gave my machine fits! For the coals, I tried a lanscape object with spikes to simulate coals, and a smoother one with texturing, but neither worked, so i hunkered down and created an object preset with a bazillion little rocks. (if anyone wants me to, ill post the obp to free stuff) For the fire, I did a color select in photoshop for the orange, and then applied the eyecandy 3.0 fire filter to it (glowing coals even) Then i added a soft eye candy Glass filter to the bottom of the image to represent heat distortion. How did i do?

I really like it, but the thing that I don't really think that the sky looks realistic. If you want to make some really cool skys, go to http://www.diardsoftware.com/ and check out what they are offering... I have the program and let me tell you... Here is a sample of what it can do... I tried to put a little of everything in there... Hope this helps you! -Emo

...Or, if you have Painter, there are some excellent nozzles you can download at my site and at Gruhn's Painter Tools. http://home.earthlink.net/~inkwolf/nozzles.html http://www.hwb.com/gruhn/paint/tools/tools.html I think the coals need a bit more "glow." Maybe increase the ambiance...and the areas between the coals could use more light/dark contrast. But it's a very cool picture, I like your people and your subject matter and composition!