I know this is the Modeling forum. But there's no rendering forum so I picked this one. I have tried every thing from Maya to 3dwings. And everything in between. And the best rendering engine I've seen is in Lightwave. It beats MAYA's default rendering engine in my opinion. But even Lightwave's rendering engine isn't realistic enough. If I create a simple ball prop. I should be able to render it so it looks like a real Ball without any textures applied to it. All the programs we have now make cartoony type images. Yet the movies like star wars are able to render fantastically realistic images. What gives? Who is hiding the secret to creating a truly realistic rendering engine? I know It exists. I've seen the results in lower budget work such as "Walking with Dinosaurs". I have tons of good modeling and animating programs. What I really need a is a top notch. Realistic rendering engine to render them in. So they don't look like cartoons. ScottA