Can anyone review the settings that 'should' be used when creating a series of small islands.  I will have some characters walking around these islands, so it's my understanding I should start with a medium sized scene.  I also recall reading/hearing  that with Carrara 7 you could then switch to a large scene without problems (not sure if that's actually the case).

Back to the islands / terrain, though, since I'll be using the terrain shaders and applying certain shaders based on altitude, I guess it would be a best practice to set the size of your terrains from the beginning.

There are a number of settings that interact with each other and trial and error doesn't seem like the best way to learn them.  Inside of the terrain editor, you can assign world size, a terrain size, scale between hills to continents, as well as choosing a render and display size. 

In my particular case, I'd like to have 9 islands ranging from 100-500 feet across and roughly the same height all grouped together within a mile radius.  I'd appreciate some pointers on the order in which I should set things up and where to make the changes (I tried adjusting terrain size in both the terrain editor and in the assemble room under Motion tab where you can directly set the x, y, and z values).

Thanks