what are these strips?

[Doug]

what are these strips?

[WAS]

They are the weird subdivisions of the circular water plane. It's really troublesome. I always use a sphere now at planet position and scale, which gives you water at elevation 0. Then I just use a [colorless] surface layers displacement offset to set the water level. Be sure to disable cast shadows in the sphere so you get nice water depth.

[Doug]

Thanks WAS

i added another Lake, from the top view i moved it a little left
that seems to take care of it

what are the black spots in the water?

[WAS]

Polygon anomalies from subdivide multiplier being at default 0.25.

Try to find a sweet spot between MPD and subdivide multiplier because multiplier at 1 for everything to look smooth will hit renderer hard. 

[Doug]

Thanks again WAS

you do know for us new guys it takes a hour to look up your answers with a dictionary and the Help Manual

rendering now

[WAS]

No problem. I enjoy attempting to help people with Terragen, and get them heading for greatness.

[Dune]

That's what the forum is about!