OK so I'm driving down the road taking my girlfriend out for a nice breakfast the other day. It's early morning and the sun is very bright and there's not a cloud in the sky. There are a lot of other cars out and the sunlight is glaring off of the other cars windows, chrome, etc. So I say to her, "Boy, look at those specular highlights!" A very strange look ensued. Well I thought it was funny! ;-)

I think we all have/had that. I always thought "i would have moved this tree a little more to the other side" etc. Or, here i would have placed a horse! This will go away again!

That's particularly important to look around us in order to try to reproduce it in a future picture. Even the most common things become exceptionnal ; we should say everything is beautiful. Sometimes it is very very strange that we think from a real scene : "it looks not real"! Yes it's funny ;=) Yves

Every photographer knows that the real world often gets in the way of a good shot. With packages like Vue, we now have the power to remove lamposts, shift trees and eradicate people in the background. All with no come back. :-) It's not just the 3D stuff that takes over the mind : I saw my wife's new shampoo bottle and read the contents us.fl.oz.net as a website address.

So, when you typed it in as a URL, did it result in a valid website? ;)

I have a few suggestions to that question : - when you stop and think of how this wall/brick/stone/metal texture would decompose in term of bump,hightlights, etc... - when your spouse complains that you are spending too much time with Victoria and not with her :) - when you look at a landscape photograph and wonder if it is 3D or real

Hmm... I don't know how many times I've taken myself in thinking how easy it would be to model that house or building using booleans.. just a couple cubes here and there and it should be close :) Or look at a house and say : I think I would have chosen a slightly darker texture for the wall. I guess you can't help it... :) Thomas

You know you've taken this hoppy to far, when you find yourself wondering what program God used. ;D

Ladies and Gentlemen - allow me to present to you the most pathetic person here - ME! :-) My PC is in my living room, facing my TV and while the Telly is on, I'm either working in Poser or Vue. I don't go out on Friday nights because I'm too busy with my art. I'm contantly seeing things in 3D as in - what a lovely texture that would make! - can I duplicate that eye color? - Oh! what a great idea for an image! (sigh) Do you thing there's an AA for us?

VA meeting : - My name is agiel - Hi agiel !!!! - I have been out of Vue for 3 weeks but yesterday, I couldn't help it, and I created an atmosphere :( (shocked silence...)

My husband said the other day that he will have a walk around the stone pit and the forest. I gave him my camera and asked him to take some photos of a special wall on the road (made from old irregular stones) and asked him to take the photos a way so that I could also create a nice bumpmap of it. LOL. My husband doesn't touch computers. He looked at me like if I was an entity from Mars. :-)Guitta

kuroyume0161, no, strangely enough it wasn't a valid site but now I have soft, silky, full-bodied hair: beacause I'm worth it. :-) Let's all admit it: we're hooked on creativity. And, personally, I hope there's no cure. Render on, people!

My favourite thought when watching a sunset: "Nice volumetrics." So sad.

My first impressions of Vue where "Wow, this is better than real life, now we can create anything". That opinion hasn't changed much, but just moved closer to the truth. You don't have to wait for the right time of day to get that perfect sunset. You don't have to leave the city to see the country. You can now start to produce images from your memory and imagination without weeks of painting, sweat and disappointment. 3D graphics tools are brilliant and its great to be a part of their growth and blossoming, and they are only getting better.

I go with sacada. I remember when Vue 2 came out, I wrote on my webpage "create your own imaginary landcapes, more true then nature". Then came Vue 3 and Vue 4 and now Vue Professional. And we are almost creating imaginary landscapes, but not only!! Even without Poser figures, we can create splendid scenaries from scratch. Just see all the very beginner images. In a few mouse clicks, even a novice is able to bring out emotions, feelings, lights, shadows... If you're not an artist already, you will become an artist with Vue:-) Guitta

I have an opposite reaction. Whenever I take a walk out in the country, I can't stop saying to myself, how much this all is beautiful and extraordinary, and how far and distant is my art (any art) from it. But again, I never thought that art and nature could compare. They are two different things with two different objects and goals. By the way, I never enjoyed the country and nature as much as since I've got into 3D, more than 4 years ago. 3D falls short of nature at both ends, in the tiny details, and in the very big. In the middle there is a nice room for 3d too. As long as one does not pretend it's like the real thing or it can replace the real thing. It will never have the unceasingly stunning variety of the real thing. Now I hope I didn't hit too hard on 3D... I still love it, LOL :-) Only, my love for nature and for what God created is so much bigger that it can't compare. So... let's not compare it and enjoy 3D for what it is ;-) - Orio

Guitta - you're in France yes? There's some rather lovely archetecture over there. Do you have links to any good sites with cathedrals/castles? Orio - I have been part way around the world and back again. I have a great love for nature and the outdoors. There is little to compare to a desert sunset. However, what we create is also created by god and can be compared in some ways. Most folks in this thread are noticing in nature what they see through artists eyes. You will find with the passing of time and the improvements of technology, the things that are created in 3D will never be in nature.

Elektra, it doesn't need to travel far and distant. I have been just out on my balcony. My little lemon tree, who I though was almost going to die, has just put out, to my surprise, one new, tiny, delicate white flower. It smells incredibly good, and if I skim it with the tip of my fingers, I can feel it just coming to life. :-) No pixels on my computer monitor could yet ever come even close to this. :-) And no way to compare this to any computer thing. Not for me, anyway. Then everyone of us is different and has unique reactions and vision, and is entitled to have them. Yet, I love 3D - just, in a different order of things. :-) - Orio

I find myself studying palm fronds when I'm out walking the dog. I look at the beach and break it down into different terrains. And I love it. It makes me look at my natural surroundings closer and appreciate it more. How can I ever be bored again.

Funny that Grunthor brought out this NICE topic! :-) My across the street neighbor has one of the most beautiful lawn I've ever seen. Last week I noticed that the dry maple leaves fell on the lawn which they didn't clean up yet. The very FIRST thing that came in my mind was, "That's a great texture." ..lol Then I asked for their permission to take a picture of the lawn. A bit surprised they said, "Sure". When I returned from my house with my SLR camera and start taking picture of it from different angle; I swear the poor old lady (my neighbor) came to me and start feeling my temperature! ..lol Then I certainly had the same thought as Grunthor! :-) PS. Agiel, that's the best meeting conversation I've hard in months. :-)

Orio - I agree with you that for each of us it is different. As long as we continue to respect that aspect about each other, I think that speaks volumes about us all. You see it in your lemon tree, I usually see it in one of my cats! :-)

I'm glad that you like it nish. I wish I had a camera to capture the look on her face after I said that. It was probably similar to what Guitta's husband did. Of course later I showed her what I was talking about and now she doesn't think I'm from Mars.

Hmmm.... Well when you are on vacation, and instead of taking pictures of the family and of your vacation, You are using the camera to take pics of things that you can use for map textures etc....well that might be a sign that you have gotten a bit engrossed with rendering.LOL YEP I AM GUILTY.

Looks like we have an epidemic here... through computers... it that what a computer virus is ;)

I have done just that on vacation to Washington DC last year. Here I was, in that winter garden by the Capitol, and all I could do was taking pictures of that tropical tree - bark, leaves, closeup, from above, from below... just in case I have time to give it a shot and make a model of that cool tree :) I still have the pictures to prove it.

I also often take my camera for photos of wall, stones, ground to include in pictures : might be very strange for other people looking to that. So when you see someone taking photos of strange things, you can be sure he(she) is in 3D !

Oh, Yves. I do photos from strange things (sometimes even from me) without necessarily using them in 3D. :-)) But i agree with you - of course!

LMAO - Similar problems here im afraid... A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I were out for a sunny afternoon stroll, I told her I would take her somewhere beautiful! We are very lucky here to have a great deal of awesome scenery and old buildings castles etc... But today was going to be a trip to a secluded beach... Unfortunatley this took us through a wooded area, where I wasted much of our time asking her to wait a while, while I took photo's of the ground and tree bark! Later in Venice, she disowned me and walked off insisting i was completely mad when in the middle of hundreds of tourists taking photo's of Venice and its beauty, I was the one taking pictures of the walls :) I feel your pain folks, but hey we love what we do right?? Kutter. P.S. If anyone wants copies of the pics i took of Venice textures, just send me an instant message :) (I may post them at some point in free stuff, but if i do that I'll crop them etc, and at the moment I don't have the time :( )

My apologizes : he(she) is in 3D or/and that's Walther ;=) By the way you are doing great photos Walther !

It started with me about 3 years ago; I was driving over the ridge to head to work in the morning, and the sun was just coming up through the mist. I actually said out loud to myself, "It's really volumetric this morning." Aaaargh! I have been taking digi pix of stuff like tree bark and fungus. My neighbors think I'm nuts.

i was making a table leg out of wood the other day and i actually wondered for about 10 full seconds why I COULDN'T REMEMBER HOW TO EXTRUDE IT!!! wahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a nice topic to get the system more or less back up for... Seeing the predictions of a particularly gorgeous fall display this year in the Smokey Mountains, and immediately start planning altitude sensitive trips and assigning flash chips for each level. (As a BTW, if you are getting a new mobo for your system, =never= believe them when they claim to support all current processors of your favorite flavor. They lied, and it's bloody difficult to flash your BIOS when the only flash program they offer works only under Windows...which can't be loaded due to thermal shutdown because the chip is misidentified.....grrrr!_) Oh well, at least I can start reinstalling all that software again.... :