hey - thanks a lot for the kind words farbtopf and Phrosting! still trying to get to grips with photoshop, so i'm sure it looks pretty crap in places! :blush:

the lighting is just a hdri image which i downloaded from

https://www.bencloward.com/textures_extra.shtml

you open up the mental ray tab in render settings, click on create under image based lighting and attach the hdri. think i saw happymat do it on one of his tutorials.

this render seemed to come out a little dark after I imported the taxis - not sure why. i'm hoping to get around to doing 'proper' lighting at some point. maybe.