I spoke to soon i think ...
I am considering shelving this indefinitely, have attempted this little scene
of the shuttle landing 5 times in the last 24 hours, only rendering 10 frames at a time
to see if the problems are sorted, nope ... i have been persistent at it though....
but chewing away at these two scenes for nearly 2 years, i think enough is enough.
the problem i have is very common here's an example
http://www.maxforums.org/threads/3ds...blem/0001.aspx
edit: gave it one last shot today ..
after discovering the evilness of vray/max recently, I have canned this project.
the faults in vray have been fixed in newer versions, however newer versions
of that are not compatible with my version of max (9) newer versions of max will
not run on any of my pc's. So there's a pretty hefty upgrade bill $$$$. A shame considering I
am still paying this off, and this second clip had a little cliff hanger at the end grrrrr.
A big thank you to people who offered tips and pointers etc and at the same time sorry for
not getting it done.