Been trying to render an animation using Poser and Vue. Using Mover 4, I import the PZ3 animation into Vue. I do some test renders of individual frames and everything is good. I have three computers with Render Cow installed on each. I then do the animation render utilizing the power of all three machines. The results are good except for one important thing....transparencies are not rendered. If I render the animation on just one computer, everything is rendered correctly, so I know that the problem is in the Render Cow. Does anyone else have this problem? Am I doing something wrong? I am going to send an e-mail to Vue but am hoping for a speedier response here. Thanks.

I had this problem in my beginnings with RenderCow. Especially for poser hair. I got 1 image with hair and 1 without, this resulted in a very funny flashing when I played the anim then. E-on never found out why this happend, but what I can tell you is the following: I have 2 computers AMD 1G Pentium-II 300 When I rendered with renderCow on these two machines, I got funny hair flashes. I have tried then with my machine AMD and a laptop Pentium III- 850, it worked fine. As this P III was not mine, I could not use it all the time. Do the following: Render with renderCow and choose an image by image render in 100% JPG format. When finished, assemble your images in another program like Quicktime. The advantage is clear. If you need to interrupt your render, you can start it again at image "X" (where it stopped). And you should not have this transparency problem, I hope. I do not have it anymore. Hope this can be of any help. Please write again if this problem persists and also indicate the OS RAM etc of your computers. So I can transmit it to e-on. Thanks, Guitta

? what is rendercow? Sharen

Sharen, RenderCow is a sort of Plugin for Mover 4, that allows you to do a network render. Your animation, insteed of rendering on one computer only, can render in realtime on 2, 3 5 10... computers if you have so many machines:-) Guitta

Guitta, thanks for your quick reply. I have a desktop running XP Pro, 3 Gig Pent 4, 1.5 GB Ram. Another desktop running WinME, 1.4 Gig Pent 4, 640 MB Ram. And a laptop running XP Pro, 1.6 Gig Pent 4, 512 MB Ram. You say to render with RenderCow and choose an image by image render in 100% JPG format. Where is this category located in Vue? I can't seem to find it. I really appreciate your help. Thanks, Lou PS: To Sharen, RenderCow is a network renderer made by Vue. Its purpose is to speed up rendering time by utilizing the power of multiple computers.

In the next window click BROWSE and change the extension to JPG

Then the compression window will open (here at 70%), bring it to 100%. You always can compress later:-)

Hope this helps.

Guitta

This was just a sample. Of course you will not render in PREVIEW mode and maybe not in the image size as in the image above:-( This are just srennshots to show you how to get the JPG render. Guitta

Yhis way you always can do a partial render:-) in selecting fron frame x to frame y.

My keyboard is good, my fingers are bad, bad bad. This way... from frame..

boy, I sure do need to learn more, I never knew you could do this, of course I don't see why I would have the need to do, but that makes me wonder how many people do it this way. I use one computer to do my renders...is that the old fashioned way? Sharen

If you have Mover 4 Sharen, and if you do animations, do network renders. But this would not work for still images.

Guitta, You've been great and I thank you very much. Sometimes, it seems that I spend more time trying to overcome computer or program glitches, than actually accomplishing anything. Again, you've been most helpful and I really appreciate it. Thanks, Lou

Guitta, Unfortunately, I have to write and let you know that using the prescribed method that you suggested did not change anything. Transparencies are still not rendered in the JPG format. I will await a response from e-on software, but something tells me that I paid for something that does not do as advertised.

Guitta, I have gotten the exact same bug on the Mac version - the transparency flashes. I will try and re-render it with the new version of Vue but I'm pretty sure the bug is still there. I animated my jellyfish and they flash too. Scott

I would suggest rendering to a .tif file as TIFF files retain transparancy. This may help. If it doesn't work then you really know there is a potential bug that needs fixing.

I have never experienced this problem with my renders by saving as an image sequence to .tif, but I have not been using poser figures with complex hair textures. However, I do use alot of transparancies in my architecture models.

kirwyn, could you post here a still picture of the transparency that doesn't render? Is it hair?

Then I'm lost:-(. I have no time right now to try this hair with rendercow. You need to wait for an answer from e-on. Have you posted your question on their site? Have you checked to be informed by e-mail when you get a response? If not, they may have answered to you directly on their site. Have a look. Let us know when you gen an answer and how it works. Thanks (and sorry:-) I cannot help more). Guitta

Hey, thank you for all your help. I really did appreciate your effort on this. Yes, I did post my question to e-on, and to be informed by e-mail of a response. Sure hope there is a fix. Will let you know of their answer, and thanks again.

I don't think e-on can have carried all the fixes in 4.12 over to the RenderCow engine. I can now, finally, render the rain tutorial OK as a single frame, but the rain doesn't appear if I animate the scene and use my render farm. The fact that somebody gets a "flashing" effect is interesting - sounds as if some machines on the network are redering correctly, others not. Machine specific issue? Or maybe different versions of RenderCow on different machines?

This is interesting, as the same thing happened in Bryce 5 for me with network rendering (aka Bryce Lightning). As it turned out, apparently Bryce Lightning did not like the Indeo 5.11 codec. Rendering out to any other codec, or image sequence worked fine.

Unfortunately, it does now sound like this is the case here. I have not tried rendering a whole lot from imported Poser files (exploring Vue first), but will try it myself and let you know.

-Tim

Have you heard back from E-on about the problem yet? I'm hoping to buy Mover next week (impatiently waiting for the funds being transferred!) and was a little concerned about this aparent incomopatability problem. As far as I can see there isn't a demo of mover available on E-on's site to see if I will get the same problem. My system is: AMD XP1600 512mb pc133 SDRAM 60GB IBM 7200 HDD + 8GB Seagate? (old) HDD Windows 2000 Poser Pro Pack SR3 A big chunk of virtual memory ;) Angela

Angela, I have written to e-on twice, and I have to write again. I tell them that there is a problem rendering transparencies using the network render program (Render Cow). They respond by asking me to try this or that, which of course, I have already done. I work days like most people, and you have to wait till the following day to get an answer. I'm getting very frustrated. If and when I get a satisfactory response or some acknowledgement that a patch is forthcoming, I will post a response in this forum. If all you wish to do is import a Poser pz3 file into Vue using Mover 4, whether it be still or animation, it will render correctly on one computer, but not on a network. Maybe I'll get a satisfactory response tomorrow? Kirwyn

Thanks for updating me Kirwyn, that does sound fustrating, I guess I'll hold off buying until it gets soeted out as I have a small network of mixed PCs and was hoping to experiment with some poser animations :( I wonder if Belini (s?) who does all those wonderful animations has any ideas on the subject? Perhaps it is due to computers across a network using different brands of CPUs or even if they are of very different speeds, my network consists of 1xAMD 1600, 2xAMD450, 1xAMD400 and 1xPentium 200mmx, so that could be a problem for me. Axiously waiting to see what E-On have to say.... Angela

Different speed processors should not make a difference, as each computer renders it's own frame and then sends it back to the host computer when its finished.

I know that that doesn't really solve the issue, but I hope you're able to narrow it down.

Angela, As far as the problems I was experiencing go, they weren't of e-ons making, but they have been very helpful in sorting them out. I've never found them anything but helpful and courteous. Poser poses a different question though... I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Vue and Mover 4 on their own merits, whether Poser's worth the current asking price... Sorry if that's not too helpful, try reading the Poser forum.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=848285

Any updates on this ... it is very frustrating. I have similar problems with RenderCow, and expect it to work as it is the main reason I bought Mover. -Tim

What's your set up, Tim? I had that trouble until I did the 4.12 patch. It also seemed to help, having an odd number of Cows working (currently, my set up is an XP-1700 master, an XP-1800 and Athlon 700. 2 Shuttle mainboards and a Chaintech mobo. PC-133 and PC-2100 DDR. All running Win2k Pro). After watching things a little, I don't think that the Rendercows are at fault; Vue is functioning as the network manager, and is responsible for sending the appropriate textures to the various Cows before rendering begins. I suspect that it's a matter of Vue not having a clearly defined path to the transmaps (remember that it is using the Poser directory setup, and Vue doesn't have a recursive tree search function if the pathname isn't quite kosher. Koshini...? [couldn't resist... :P ]). There is a =lot= of syntax errors in filenames in Poser. Even DAZ has been guilty of the droppedadded capital letter boo-boo. Not being quite as familiar with the under the hood of Vue, I wonder if the HyperVue manager isn't operating at too fine an input timing tolerance? The only thing lower on the path tree than transmaps are bumpmaps, which Vue also has a fit with. Of course there is also the chance that any firewall or AV software is responsible. I have to turn Norton completely off before I can see the extra boxes....

Wait just a sec-- Take a look at the transmap filename. Is it something like XXXXX.jpg, or XXXXXXXX.trans.jpg? If the filename is too long and truncates, it can drop the extention. The 8-3 rule still applies in a lot of cases; long filenames are a feature bolted onto Windows, not a fundamental change in DOS structure. And NT or 9X, there is still some flavor of DOS at the core of it. I was running Correct Reference and getting a crash and burn at certain files, and they were all something.something.extension.

Actually, I'm NOT even doing a transmapped Poser figure. I'm just rendering an animation that was created exclusively in Vue.

What it is doing is flipping the image every so many frames, so it flips rapidly back and forth. Bizzarre.

My setup for that render was:

#1) P4-1.7ghz, WIN2K-PRO
#2) PIII-700mhz, WINK2K-PRO
#3) PII-400MHZ, WIN98

Exporting to Huffy codec. (I know there are issues with the Indeo 5.11 -- see my previous post a few months ago.)

Maybe it's the Win98 machine throwing things off? Or maybe even the codec again? I'll try some tests:

1. Image sequence rather than AVI.
2. I'm going to note down which frames each computer works on, and then compare that to the frames that are not presented correctly.
3. Different AVI codec.

Thanks for the suggestions for future Poser renders though! :)

-Tim

Like the images were assembled out of sequence, or the moving components had somehow become possessed? I ran into the issue of a Poser figure animated with a bvh file that would take it into its head to suddenly rotate around on its root node at certain points. What it turned out to be was an error in trigonometry. They were dance bvh's and whenever the figure would spin, at the transition point on the Y axis where you went from -180 degrees to +0 degrees, the values would get crazy. Oh for example, you would be at -172Yrot, the next value -should have been -179Yrot, but what you would actually have is +1Yrot, and your X and Z values would have gone from single digits to the opposite end of the degree spectrum. Poser interpolated the translations correctly, and mathematically they were accurate, but Vue had a fit with it. The only fix was manually changing the values in each one of the offending frames. As for codecs, I've had the best luck with the DivX 4.12 codec myself. And while it -shouldn't- be an issue as to what OS's are present, it may be that 98 isn't dealing with the networking very well; 9x and NT based boxes can act...strangely, together. You might want to add disabling the 98 box and running a test, and see if that has any effect.