I bought Vue last fall and, sadly, have hardly used it because of what I see as serious shortcomings with the interface. :( (I like just about EVERYTHING ELSE about it, I must admit.) Using OpenGL has been a nightmare (as has been well documented by many others), and to put it mildly, I find the interface GLACIALLY SLOW. But, by far, the worst situation is the following ...

I mainly bought it (and Mover) to host Poser animated characters. Unfortunately, after importing a PZ3, the timeline slider becomes virtually UNUSEABLE. Dragging the timeline smoothly is literally impossible, as the lag is several seconds. I have tried turning Open GL ON/OFF, turning background rendering ON/OFF, using only one window view, etc. NOTHING works. No other 3d app I own acts this way ... even the unaccelerated Poser, with a fully loaded scene is MUCH smoother.

How do you fellow animators work in this environment?? Do you not experience this upon import of a Poser scene? It is really disappointing and I'm now considering C4D or some other prog to host Poser scenes.

Any insight or help (I'd love for it just to be a simple setting) would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks,
Tim

ps> I have 1.7GHZ P4, gig-o-ram, Geforce3 w/64MB, WIN2K. I have the latest release of Vue (4.12). Thanks, Tim

What display mode are you using on the 4 panels that show you the scene? When working with poser scenes I find that turning the settings on these down to one of the less intensive settings speeds up the refresh of the scene display considerably. Turning off fog in them can help too. If you arn't working in one of the panels turning its setting right down to display objects as boxes can be a big help. I also set the little preview render on the right hand side to only update when I click on it rather than every time the scene changes. Hope this helps. Cheers Mark

Mark: Thanks for the ideas. I actually have all of the other panels set to wireframe and never use the fog setting. I could try going even lower, and let you know. I also tried turning off the auto-update on the thumbnail preview, no luck there either. Also, let me ask ... so you are saying you can drag the timeline and watch your scene animate relatively smoothly? The timeline cursor follows your dragging in realtime and you can see your Poser figure move without massive jumps between frames? Or for that matter, can you hit the play button and watch it playback relatively smoothly? Guitta: Thanks for responding, but sorry, you missed the point entirely. The Poser scenes import correctly ... the Vue interface -- particularly the timeline -- becomes horribly slow. So slow that it renders Vue useless. Thanks all. -Tim

Also, I should add that using the interace -- that is, moving the camera around within the scene -- becomes nearly impossible as well. It is MUCH, MUCH slower. YES, even with the poser object hidden ... makes no difference. -Tim

I don't understand, because I only have 1 G on the computer I am working all the time with Mover 4 and imported Pz3. Works fine.

UPDATE: If I close the timeline, I can instantly begin moving, rotating, etc. the camera very smoothly around the scene. Even with the poser object showing. Turn the timeline back on, and POOF ... we're back to jutting around --- slow and choppy. So at least I found a way to make it more responsive during composition. Unfortunately, you need the time line open to advance through the animation, create new key frames etc. Or is there a shortcut for stepping through or playing the animation in the main camera window without the timeline open? -Tim

Guitta: Yeah, I don't understand either ... I knew that it COULDN'T POSSIBLY be this way for others and still be a popular program.

Or is there a shortcut for stepping through or playing the animation in the main camera window without the timeline open? As far as I know, no:-(

:( View 5 maybe? :)

Been chatting with Phoul via email, and he too experiences major slow down after importing Poser scenes. (Which makes his work all the more amazing by the way.) Anyone know if Eon has been made aware of this serious issue, and if there are any plans to fix it in a near-future update?

I am recently interested in animation. I was thinking to buy Mover. (I have Vue used for still image) A serious problem? What do you recommend ? Any alternative ?

I'm not sure that this problem effects everyone. Although, only one person has come forward to say they don't have this problem, and even then it's hard to say what his definition of "smooth" is.

I'm seriously considering dropping Vue and going to Cinema4D as an aletrnative. Much more expensive, but I have heard wonderful things about it, and it looks great. I can just chalk Vue up as a business expense loss or try to sell it.

I'm sure many others will have an opinion in this area though. Best of luck!

C4D is great for sure. So are other softwares. But I think you cannot compare what is not comparable, not in the price range and not in what it is able to do. So C4D is not an alternative to Vue. It is just something VERY different:-). Guitta

Gebe: Can you verify ... you can actually grab the timeline slider and move it smoothly after importing an ANIMATED Poser scene? Thanks, Tim

Yes, I can.

...and I'm only a little amateur animator. But as you can see on Phoul's animations, he can too. Much better and greater, of course:-)

Actually, I've been chatting with Phoul quite a bit and he says he has the same problem. (Which makes his animations all the more amazing, if indeed he has the exact same trouble I do.) Well, here's to hoping Eon fixes it ... soon! -Tim

I never think it is "a problem".

With my new PC (very powerfull) I can grab and slide very quickly. With a not too big poser file, at 25fps, I can click on play and I see the animation in the main view in real time (I do not use open gl). With my old pc it is slower. In fact, if the Poser file is a big one, so the slide is slower.

I suppose that I am very patient.

Phoul

Ok, you don't have a problem at all then, in my book. I have no doubt that you are patient Phillipe, but mine is INFINITELY worse than this. You basically can NOT use the slider ... it only moves in "spurts" (jumps) and lags by SECONDS, as does the main window. It makes animating in Vue basically impossible. Thanks for the input. -Tim PS> I'm running a 1.7GHZ with a GIG of RAM.

Do the problems depend on computer ?
It is complicated.
I (and many people) had lots of problems with Poser5. Some people did not have problems.
Since then, my main concerns are reliability, and stability.

I am not sure what I should do.
I like the nice landscape, and poser import of Vue. But I really want reliable program.

Phoul, I cant connect to your link.

Thank you.
HimiCo

Attached Link: http://www.belino.net/

Thank you Phoul,

Recently I did visit your web site. Sorry, I did not remember your name.
Great works!
I was so impressed with your works that I wanted to get Vue Mover. I was thinking to use Poser, Mimic, Vue, and Adobe Premiere. Yesterday I bought MimicPro.

Do you think that Vue Mover is reliable, and stable.
I am happy with Vue for still images so far.

HimiCo.

Tim; Is that a P4 1.7gig? And what motherboard and memory type? And OS, for that matter. I just tried on one of the rain test animations I'm working on, and I do get about a 2 second lag between moving my mouse and the timeline slider catching up. But that is also in a scene that has 211 objects, 1 light, and a poly load of 3,907,796 (And that is a combined Pz3 of Transpond's elvenhome and bridge, and 16 of forester's average rain objects. Not counting the 4 Vue terrains and odd number of plants). That's on an Athlon 1700 with a gig of PC2100 DDR running Win2k.

Dale: Yes, 1.7GHZ P4, one gig of ram, WIN2K (SP3), 64MB GeForce3 (not that that helps, since OpenGL is implemented so INCREDIBLY BAD in Vue), dual 100GB HD's, etc. In can just be a person walking, even a low poly figure. Doesn't matter. How is it moving the camera around, or other objects, with a Poser import and the timeline open? -Tim

As to the camera, there is a ever so slight (maybe .25sec) hesitation, then a smooth scroll. And it gets better when the in view polycount goes down, or shrinks enough to not register in the redraw. The Vue objects all move smoothly, there is a little jerkiness in the imported objects, but those have the bulk of the polygons, and once in motion, the movement seems smooth. Here's some ideas: (1) What version of Direct X are you running? I'm using DX-9 due to game requirements, and have found it to be more stable and capable than DX-8 was. This could be a redraw issue, and since Windows is handling that... (2) I seem to recall something about Win2k-SP3 and WinXP-SP2 introducing some 'features' that actually caused user's computers to operate somewhat slower than they did. If you can roll back to an earlier SP, that would at least clear that issue as a cause. (3) If this was a new motherboard, I would say check the BIOS and see if it has Hyperthreading enabled. That can cause a slowdown in and of itself, and if the chip doesn't support it, then it could really eat your system up. Or be ignored, depending on chipset... The timeline bar isn't a precise tool, even at its best. If possible, it would be nice for E-on to add a couple of windows to the end of it; one that increments in FPS, depending on the render settings, and another that increments in timeslices. That would solve the whole issue, not to mention add extra precision to the animation setup.

Dale: Thanks for the suggestions. I'm running DX9. Rolling back is not an option (at least to me). I'm getting a new machine for my video-editing rig and it will have XP, so I'll try it on that one. Motherboard is too old to have hyperthreading. The timeline bar is just fine when I don't have a Poser object imported. Selecting keyframes, etc. is far from good, but it does scroll fine, IMHO, when just Vue objects are there. No other complex software I own acts this way ... even POSER 5 acts better for pete's sake! It's a shame. Well, thanks again. :) -Tim

Sorry its taken so long to answer your questions Tim... I have experienced what you described - under some circumstances its impact can be avoided. I've recently updated from a P2 450 to a P4 2.66 based system. On the old system doing anything (animation or still pictures) with more complex poser models (such as Victoria 3) involved turning the settings right down to box. Less complex figures (Victoria 2 without a high resolution texture) was possible for still work but not animations without applying the suggestions I previously made. With simple Poser figures it was possible to work with it without any significant performance problems. With my new system I havn't had a great deal of time to play with animation yet (which is a shame because it was one of the main driving forces behing upgrading). The few bits of messing around I've done so far suggest that if the poser figures in the scene arn't too complex or there arn't too many of them I can get what I consider to be acceptable performance from the time line. In the end I think a lot of this comes down to how complex the Poser parts of the scene are.

Thanks for the input. In my case, I don't believe it matters. I'll do some tests and post the results here. Thanks, Tim