Manz
Making your own textures in Carrara are greatly helped by the DCG Enhance C plugin (brilliant!)
(Note. 1 There are some free plugins from nVidia that are for Photoshop--worth having.
2. The recent issue of 3D World has the Luxology ImageSynthe Photoshop plugin for free--it may be free elsewhere also?)

Dirk.
Fresnel--a quote from a Guru

My understanding is that Fresnel efffects are written to interact only with transparent and reflective objects. It does add another layer of calculation to the render and can add to render times

ps. I scream blue murder if I have a render taking an hour!
Brian

PS2!!!---nVidea "Gelato" is now FREE!---WOW!