hey people... I''m just starting a new project.. its a fmv sequence for a western game.. and I want a horse in there.. the animation will be no problem.. the amount of horse research material out there is amazing... its just when it comes to modeling the thing I''m not sure how to approach it... anyone else modelled a horse before? cheers

Usually, the box modeling technique with mesh smoothing works fine for most symmetrical creatures. I use 3d Studio Max R3 and that works fine for me. For the tail and mane(not sure how much detail you are wanting), you could use some extruded faces with a bitmap and alpha channel. Put a couple of segments in there and you have reasonably good looking hair with a high rendering speed. It might be easier to loft the saddle though. The reins could be either a flexible, boned, mesh or a bunch of cylinders stacked end-to-end on a path that moves to deform them.

yeah... alpha maps for the hair sounds good...