Thanks to everyone. Yes, they are working on a 'Professional' version of the software which should allow for the importation of 'standard' file types, and I ave tried and tried to get a beta of it (and I am a forum Mod there and know one of their programmers in a round about way) and have been not been able to :( Their approach in their format in kind of unique as it allows you to import standard formats such as jpg, png, and gif, and it interprets it as a heightmap. I have done quite a few things just using Corel Draw and contours (not my idea BTW, but it works great), this method works but you have very limited control.

I have used Blender to do some very basic height map rendering but I find it's interface to be counter intuitive, the menus are NEVER the same, some kind of modal nonsense that make it impossible to (unless you have a lot of experiance) to get back to someplace you just were. That is one thing I have like about the small amount of time I have used MoI, I could actually draw some basic things in just a few minutes. I may have to venture back to Blender to render the height maps though.....if I can figure out how to render stuff created in MoI.

Thanks again,