To Vue 4 and Vue 4 Pro users:

While I DO like Vue 4+Mover4, I have been extremely disappointed with a number of things about Vue since I purchased it last year, and have never really been able to use it for what I wanted. I feel that it has NEVER lived up to it's promise, and feel cheated. Therfore I am wary to purchase Vue Pro, on the promise of fixing many of these items, especially with no demo, and a limited sidegrade offer.

So, if someone would indulge me, I'm going to list all of the deficiencies I have found in Vue and want to know if Vue Pro addresses these. Thanks!

well u would prolly be better off if u would post what it is u dont like with vue4 and mover4 :)

OK I'll bite, What are the deficiencies?

LIST (Part 1 of 2):

-> RENDERING POSER IMPORT SLOWDOWN: Noticed that even though an imported animated Poser figure is not appearing in the scene, it slows down the render considerably. (Maybe it's calculating the rays and stuff for the figure even though it is not visible to the camera??) Once Poser character object (yes, this was a p4 file) was removed, render sped up by 300 - 500%!

-> RENDERED ANIMATION FLICKER: What is with the darn flicker??? Again, no other software has this issue with it's rendered animations.

-> Rendercow/HyperVue is far from perfect. Inverts (flips) images when rendering to an AVI. Rendering to image sequence SEEMS to eliminate the problem. Have heard of others having problem with imported Poser transparency settings go ON/OFF even with rendered image sequences.

-> Rendering image sequences is useless as Vue uses .tmp files instead of just writing the TIF or TGA file. If Vue crashes during render or you lose power, you're screwed as the TMP files are useless. Can't even fathom WHY they would do this. Doubt PRO addresses this, but you never know.

-> Vue does not play nicely with others. Any other app I can easily have, for example, media player playing MP3's or WAV's in the background, but not with Vue. Loading/saving completely stops playback with only little spurts of music here and there. Even just scrolling the timeline causes it to pause and hickup. NO OTHER app does this, even intensive apps like After Effects and even POSER for PETE'S SAKE!

....

well u would prolly be better off if u would post what it is u dont like with vue4 and mover4 :) Sheesh, you guys are fast ... you have to give me time to post my lists! ;) Working on part 2 now!

LIST (Part 2 of 2):

(These first few fall, at least partially, under the well documented OpenGL (or lack thereof) issue and I believe is addressed in Pro, but would like to confirm):

-> Seems to have REALLY bad support for OpenGL ... does not like NVidia (the industry standard) video cards. Performance is actually hindered by using OpenGL. Shouldn't have to pay for PRO to get this fixed, but would gladly accept it as a side-benefit if I do get Pro for other reasons.

-> Interface is great, but screen updates are glacially SLOW. BRYCE is instantaneous in almost all situations, and if not, allows for tweaking of display (number of vertices displayed) depending on whether things are moving or static.

-> Animation is WAY over-simplified. There is no graph editor for animation, allowing you to adjust how keyframes are interpolated for example. Also, key frame management is horrible, has this improved at all?

-> Animation automatically "Eases-in/out" regardless of what setting you have it on. There is apparently no way to just have a straight linear animation, where steps are all equivalent.

-> Boolean objects anyone???? Not with Vue apparently ... or did I just totally miss this in the manual?

-> Any way to turn auto-keying off?? This is really annoying. Should be a toggle as to whether you want it to automatically add a keyframe when you change something or not!!

-> THE BIGGIE: There are severe problems smoothly dragging the timeline after importing an animated Poser scene Even a simple one. For me, I click and drag the timeline, the cursor ... one-onethousand, two-onethousand, three-onethou ...UPDATES, finally. Anyone else?

Also, for me opening the timeline not only slows ITSELF down, but the rest of interface as well. Would love to hear from people that do AND do not have the problem. If you haven't tried it yet and don't know what I mean, just try importing an ANIMATED poser scene and then to smoothly drag the timeline.

I REALLY hope most/all of this is corrected in PRO, especially this last one. I purchased Vue mainly to host Poser scenes and so far it has been unbearable to do any real work.

Looking forward to any/all comments.

Thanks,
Tim

I'd like to see the answers to these also. Particularly the OpenGL and image sequence problems. Frank

Well, I cant help with the animation side of things, but I would like to comment on some of the others. 1st up, OpenGL... Ouch! I have to agree with you here, the openGL support for Vue is absolutely 'disasterous' I recently bought myself a Radeon 6800 PRO card. A card capable of enourmous things with OpenGL, but even this crawls on Vue with only a few objects. The Vue 4 PRO Open GL I have heard from people using it is MUCH better although still seems a little flaky! Next Booleans... Yes you did miss it in the manual. Vue is actually fairly good at booleans (put it this way, personally I think it does a better job at Boolean than 3dStudio does, although I grant you 3dstudio's boolean has always been a debating point!) Its not brilliant at multiobject boolean, and can cause strange effects in textures, but on the whole its pretty good. Next Glacially slow updates... Use layers and turn them on + off. I believe its what most people do, as there doesn't appear to be much choice. But once again, PRO does seem to have improved this a lot! Finally, the playing of music while using Vue... Oh yes you can! and without stutters too. This is actually windows being gargantuanly awful at using resources (name something it isn't gargantuanly bad at LOL) but you can change it if your using WinXP like so: (im not sure how to do this in Win98 as I never came across it, but I'm sure its possible - maybe even exactly the same) CTRL ALT DELETE to bring up task manager. Right click on your player in the list and set the Priority to 'Realtime' this will bring up a warning message which is safe to ignore and click yes to, as your only affecting your mp3 player and not a system resource that would crash the machine if you tried this (thats what the message is about)... Hope some of this helps, or adds fuel :) Kutter.

Timoteo1, are you using a Mac or PC? I don't have any experience with importing Poser animated figures, but I can speak to some of the rest of this. Some of your "Vue deficiences" seem likely to be attributable to your operating system, rather than to Vue, and some have to do with the CODEC's (compression algorithm) Vue uses, and then the choice of Codecs you are using in the playback program. For example, if you render a picture in Vue 4 with the basic Microsoft AVI CODEC chosen (and something other than Win2000 or WinXP), the animation does "flicker." This is due to the compression scheme limitation in the basic Microsoft AVI. Generally, Vue Pro offers quite a wide choice of Codec's compared to Vue 4. The proprietary Microsoft MPG4 if quite well supported in all three flavors, and makes an extremely clear AVI that is teeny. However, while it works well played back in Microsoft's Media Players, it is proprietary, and cannot be edited in older copies of Adobe Premiere, for example. But this is Microsoft's problem. Not E-On Software's problem. Similarly, Rendercow, at least in my copy of Vue 4 and Vue Pro works well, and does not result in inverted pics, as you seem to experience. Vue Pro does a very good job of rendering to individual .tga frames. All of these in a 500 frame animation that I tried came out perfectly, and they did produce an excellent animation when I put them together in Adobe Premiere. My copies of Vue have always allowed me to play CD's in the background, at least in the various NT and Win2000 operating systems that I've used. But note that both these OS's are true multi-tasking OS's. Win 98, Win 95, ME and XP Home are not true multi-tasking systems. They are easily overloaded by many apps, not just Vue. I wouldn't attribute a multi-tasking problem to VUE. Vue's Rendering Engine is extemely powerful and efficient, and does want all of your CPU if it can get it. However, it is also pretty "stable" - it will initiate a thread-sharing process if you create another app process, but will take several moments to begin to set up a thread sharing system if you create another app process. But, my copies of MAX and Truespace are also like this. So, I think most modern 3D modelling programs have this is common, and Vue is better than some at having protective thread sharing schemes. Adobe's After Effects and Poser are not in this class of 3d modelling programs.

Kutter: Thanks. Yeah, I just forgot to edit out the boolean question (arrg), as part of this list was cut and past. Thanks. Layers don't help at all ... it particularly bogs down when importing a Poser object or animation. I have found that maximizing the window (single-window display) and closing the timeline helps tremendously. I use Windows2000 (aka the best OS that ever graced a hard drive), so I wouldn't say it is bad at handling resources, or anything else for that matter. In fact, it handles memory and resource quite elequently when you think about it. It even tames such rogue programming abominations as Poser and the like. Anyway, I'm straying off topic blathering about my like of WIN2K ... the point is, you shouldn't have to do this at all. As I said, Win2k and every other app I own simply does not do this. And I use some heavy duty apps. I can be using my real-time video editing solution and play countless MP3's, other videos, etc and they all get along just fine. (Talk about CPU intensive!) The point is, Vue doesn't know how to share CPU cycles correctly. Thanks again though, at least someone is responding. -Tim

Forester: Sorry, as I stated above, I use WIN2K PRO (and always will until something better comes along) and do not experience this with any other apps. Again, it mostly happens when loading/saving large files AND when using imported animated Poser scenes. Since you're not doing this, I would say this is the reason. Also, as far as the flashing goes ... it is NOT a codec issue. I don't normally use compression ... I either use uncompressed, Huffy (which is lossless w/alpha) or render out to TIF sequences. It DOESN'T matter. You must not be using complex scenes or textures in your animation not to see this ... I have viewed many other posts with people complaining about the flickering. Turning on/off "Flicker Reduction" has ZERO effect, unfortunately. It is really unprofessional. Thanks anyway, -Tim

Part 2 - Vue 4 and prior do have poor Open GL support. Many commentors in this Forum have pointed out that Vue Pro does have pretty good Open GL support this time around. Its not quite perfect, but then I'm using it on an old dual 800 CPU rig, rather than the 1.6 Mhz CPU system its rated for. So, Ive crashed it twice - but just with extremely high polygon count scenes. Other than that, I think the Open GL is pretty darn good. (Finally, thank goodness!) I use Bryce. Its probably an overstatment to say that its screen updates are "instantaneous." Animation controls and variables are significantly better in Vue Pro. Typically, Vue does not offer a significant (complex) animation editing and compositing feature set. Neither does Bryce nor most of the general-purpose scenery/environment editing programs. Even MAX has carved off its animation product into a separate package called "Combustion." Truespace and MAYA have added to their's, but they are not scenery/environment modelling packages. Trade-offs - trade-offs! Kutter spoke to the Booleans issue. Vue has always had some Boolean operations, and they've always worked as the Manual has stated. Vue is not a 3D modelling program, however. Bryce has some Boolean operations as well, and they're probably a tiny little bit superior to Vue's. But if you really want to build models, you need to get a modelling program. Back to animation again. Keyframing controls in Vue Pro and in Mover are just great! I really liked developing and editing several animations I just made in Vue Pro with these. Fine quality and very standard keyframing abilities! So, that's it for my current experiences. Vue Pro offers four types of animation sequences, "Ease-In/Ease Out" now being just one of the offerings.

Thanks for the replies, Timoteo1. This helps to clarify. I am a Win2000 user, am IT professional, and I fully agree with you about this OS. XP Pro has been relegated to my laptop only. One of the reasons that its good that you reply, is that it helps to narrow things down a bit. I honestly don't have the "flicker" problem in Vue 4 that you have, and I've never had it. But I'm not a Poser person at all, so maybe we have some wierdness (poor programming design) here in the Poser/Vue 4 interface. Its goood to know that we are not talking about a Codec issue, as those are a real can of worms. Back to the point though, Vue Pro supports about 18 modern codecs, as well as that old Microsoft AVI dog, and it seems to handle all the .mpg varieties well. I had some problem with Quicktime, however, but my Quicktime stuff is seldom used, and so I may need to get all my Quicktime Pro stuff up to current.

"I use Bryce. Its probably an overstatment to say that its screen updates are "instantaneous." " As close to instantenous as an 3D-app out there that I've used. And when scenes get really complex, and it does bog down, the cool thing is you can adjust how many polygons show (and when!) ... very cool feature. I really wish Vue Pro had this, guess it does not? "Keyframing controls in Vue Pro and in Mover are just great! I really liked developing and editing several animations I just made in Vue Pro with these. Fine quality and very standard keyframing abilities!" Ok, so are you saying they are much improved over Vue 4's then? They would have to be, as I consider Vue's pretty horrible. "Vue Pro offers four types of animation sequences, "Ease-In/Ease Out" now being just one of the offerings. I knowm, Vue offers these as well. However, even on standard Vue takes it upon itself to ramp up and ramp down at the end of an animation, no matter what. Just try it ... Measure the distance travelled per frame at the beginning of a two-keyframe animation, and you will see that movement within the first few frames is less than partway through the animation. -Tim

"But I'm not a Poser person at all, so maybe we have some wierdness (poor programming design) here in the Poser/Vue 4 interface." Again, your input is much appreciated. However, I don't think it is a Poser issue, as I see the flickering on animation renders not involving Poser figures either. I'm almost 100% sure anyway ... I'll have to do a quick test just some terrain going by or something and see. Thanks, Tim

Sorry Timoteo. I didn't mean that the wierdness is in the Poser program. I meant that the wierdness is in the Poser/Vue interface in the Vue program. To make a long story short, it seems that the animation features in Vue Pro really are improved. I did as you suggested and double-checked the animation modes. I can find no detectable "easing in and easing out" functions for the other animation modes. I also took some time to look at the begining and ending frams of my sequence of individual .tga files for that 500 frame animation. They are perfectly individual, as well. The OpenGL properties are significantly improved. But Vue Pro is not a be-all and end-all program. There will be trade-offs between it and other 3d programs, especially when compared to programs which center on 3d modelling tools. I've also looked very hard at the integration with MAX. This kind of integration and file sharing is the main thrust of Vue Pro, as nearly as I can tell. Personally, I like what I see and am glad I cut short on this month's groceries to acquire it. For you, since your main concern is with Poser and Vue, I'm not so sure that there is an advantage in purchasing it. You seem to be really pleased with Bryce, so perhaps for you, you should just stand pat as you are. I like Vue better because to my eye, as a professional forester, Vue is more realistic than Bryce, and I frankly find that Vue's hierarchy list of objects makes my modelling life a lot easier. But Bryce has some very, very interesting environmental effects, and some of its textures are the best around. So, this is all a matter of trade-offs, with no program being "deficient" so much as it is focusing on some features over others. Bryce seems to better suit your needs and appears to have no deficiencies apparently, so you probably should just stick with it.

Forester:

"Sorry Timoteo. I didn't mean that the wierdness is in the Poser program. I meant that the wierdness is in the Poser/Vue interface in the Vue program."

I knew what you meant, you just didn't understand me. I was talking about the Vue-importer, not Poser itself. I totally agree, there is definitely something wrong with it and as I said, it was the main reason I got Vue, and so far E-On has not delivered on what was advertised or promised, thus I'm wary about Vue Pro.

And I'm not "really pleased with Bryce" ... I mean I really like it for what it does, but unfortunately it does not import Poser figures, scenes, or animations. If it had, I wouldn't have even considered Vue. Although, there are a SOME things I like about Vue much better. However, this does not mean Vue does not have some SERIOUS DEFICIENCIES.

I'm not into modeling at all, so that is not an issue either. Frankly, as an animator, there is no time to do modeling too.

The point is ... Vue is VERY CLOSE to being what I need, and had it worked as promised I might not even care too much about some of these other items. Yes, you can import Poser animations ... but once you do the interface slows down to the point where it is unuseable. To me, this is NOT an unreasonable expectation.

Again, I really like Vue and therefore want it to improve very much. I was hoping someone could shed some light on Vue Pro to see if addressed any of these issues. So far, no one seems to be able to step up to the plate and give me some direct / specific answers. Very disappointing.

-Tim

"I also took some time to look at the begining and ending frams of my sequence of individual .tga files for that 500 frame animation. They are perfectly individual, as well."

Thanks for doing that, but this will not show you what I'm talking about. Yes, the frames will each be slightly different. However, this does NOT prove whether easing in and out is occuring. You don't need to render to see what Vue is doing. You simply need to look at the distance travelled (look at the numbers) of an object in the first few frames compared to other frames later in the animation.

-Tim

Tim: Im using VUE Pro primarily for stills and I see you are focused on animation but I just thought Id share some of my experiences. I have not installed Mover 4 yet as I dont see doing animations till the render cows are happily mooing . . . System: Dual processor Athlon MP 2600 1.5 GB RAM ATI 9000 Series twin head video card 64 MB Windows XP Pro Poser Rendering Slowdown (on animations): I have not seen this with still figures at all Render Cows: Mine install but immediately crash. According to E-on fix is on the way. VUE does not play nicely with others: This comment really puzzled me. Pro seems to have dramatically improved how it multi-tasks at least with my setup. I can render and surf the web and basic stuff with no impact at all. If I try to render and play a game I do get some slowdowns in the game (Rise of Nations). So for whatever reason Im not seeing this at all. Screen Updates: I dont think they are instantaneous but they are reasonably fast on my machine. Id like to optimize my OpenGL setup but Im not sure what settings to use for my card to get the most out of VUE. Ive noticed some minor re-draw issues but Ive very happy with how VUE Pro is working with OpenGL. However, Im not sure if we are really experiencing different things or if Im just not as demanding as far as the response time for screen re-draws . . . Booleans: Vue does have Booleans and you can also convert Booleans into polygons . . . I havent used this yet though . . .

Thorntoa: Thanks for the in-depth report, and the system specs. (I'm starting to suspect an OS issue.) Just curious if owned regular Vue 4 before Pro? It sounds like Vue Pro MAY address at least some of my concerns. Man I wish they had a demo or a return policy. Thanks again, Tim PS> The booleans thing was a slip-up.

Tim: I owned Vue 3 and Vue 4. Vue 4's Open GL just started working for me with the last Beta update. The Vue Pro Open GL view is much more detailed than the Vue 4 version . . . . Vue 3 was stable as a rock for me but I bought it as a mature product. Vue 4 initially had a lot of problems but it stabilized quickly for me and I've been pretty pleased with it. In comparison, Poser 5 has been a real struggle to get working and I still suffer from odd lockups of Poser and in general - odd buggy behavior. I've gradually shifted away from Poser 4 but I still go back to do certain things. I'm expecting Vue Pro to follow the maturation process of Vue 4. The only major thing that took forever to fix was the Open GL problems in 4 (I'm assuming that they are fixed base on my sample size of one!)

Unfortunately, they are NOT fixed in "plain Vanilla" Vue 4. The OpenGL implementation is so bad in Vue, it would be fair to say there is no OpenGL support in Vue. They really botched it pretty badly. Some things MAY be fixed in Vue Pro, switching to XP MAY aid with some things (which is pretty weird), but I suppose some things may never change: i.e., orientation rather than rotation controls (very aggravating), non-standard axis labeling (argg), image sequence rendering as tmp files, no auto-keying toggle, etc. I could probably live with the above IF Poser import did not kill the interface and the timeline ... that is my main concern at this point. I'm still awaiting some tests from those with Vue Pro and Poser to see if this has been fixed in Vue Pro. Fingers-crossed.

how bout this if I type #'s in the world browser they change to something else when I leave the field. The transparency problems with the render cows are reason alone the upgrade to pro should be far cheaper. A sad buyer of vue