I have had some years experience with VUE4 and use it a lot with Poser 5 and other programs and I like it a lot. OK I got this side grade stuff and bought it as a program that would let me make exotic plants ,,maybe something like an orchid with fangs and fern leaves and a spherical stem. I didn't read the fine print and find that this is not possible in the plant editor. The plant editor only works on plants distributed by e-on. And not many are availabe. Yes I know that object plants from other programs can be used but they are static and can't be used with the new feature wind. So what do we reallly have - a very expensive upgrade for VUE4! I think the marketing was like one of our political campains lots of half truths. I will continue to use it once most of the bugs are fixed and it is very bugy as it fixes some of the problems in Vue4 that an upgrade would have addressed and I would have been willing to pay for that,, but not maybe $300 plus shipping. I won't be so quick to take the bait next time.

I agree with you there, I to am dissapointed but, I have a lot of faith in E-on and I really do think they are working hard to get us the program working the way they and we wanted it too. So, like me disappointment reins, but lets be patient I think we will be pleasantly surprised, cause lets face it, we use it and if they want to sell more, for that price it better do exactly as we expected. Sharen

Oh geesh guys, thanks for the info. I don't do animations, and I don't have a high end program to plug Vue Pro into. I thought the wind thing sounded nice, but now I learn its limited to the few plants that come from Vue. The very limitation of the Vue plants has led me to buy almost every Grasslands/Cacti etc plant from RDNA. :D I was looking for a plant editor & creator. That was really my main desire. I need more greenery. Now I see that Vue Pro doesn't really do that. I wonder if XFrog is the way to go then? Anyone know? Must ponder. What else does Vue Pro really offer??? Open GL is not worth $300.

If you need plants, by all means, Xfrog IS the way to go. However, there are some tradoffs here. The main Xfrog program will basically open up the plant world to you, but you must recognize that you're talking about creating your own plants. Meaning that you have to learn and master the program, and probably collect photos of leaves and plant parts if you are trying to make realistic plants such as grow in your area. On the other hand, to have new plants, you don't necessarily need to buy the program and go through all this. It may be that you could simply purchasing a disk of existing plants from Xfrog. For example, I purchased the Japanese Trees CD, and used one of the free trial copies of Xfrog to convert all of them to use for Vue. Now, I'm pretty much set for a long time. Or, you can purchase individual plants from people such as ThomasJuulsKrahn or others who are learning Xfrog, and starting to make realistic plants of the species that grow in their area. There are some Xfrog plants that people have made and have posted for free. (I made an accurate Colorado Blue Spruce for myself 4 months ago with Xfrog's trial copy as a test, and its just now dawned on me that I should make it available to everyone. Others are doing the same.) Oh yes, Xfrog offers a free 30 day trial copy of the full program, and you can download the Manuals. I'd recommend doing this as you can experiment with the program - experience its learning curve, and see if its really for you. And finally, its not well publicized, but if you are a student or an educator, you can obtain either the plants or the program for about half price or less at one of the academic discounters on the web. Think I'll go post my Blue Spruce now for anyone that might need it.

Vue Pro is definetly not for everyone. A major feature for me is the ability to freely import and export almost all objects. But I'm a modeller working across a wide array of programs. Vue Pro is a program for a semi-pro person like myself who is trying to become a better modeller.

The export of models is a good feature, tried it last night, not real happy with the end result, but I only tried it on a few things. Sharen

Since I am not yet modeling, I've decided not to get Vue Pro. Particularly now that I am hearing about the limitations of the plants and wind. That's kind of sad to hear. I've bought a vew of the extra vegitation from the e-on site, and will eventually get the others. I was also looking at all the xfrog offerings here in the Renderosity store and have been toying around with the idea of grabbing a copy and checking it out. Maybe I'll just do the demo and the manuals to see how difficult it is. I have not done much in the way of modeling, so I'm wary.

Thanks everyone, I was totaly unaware of xfrog and I will look into it. Also I am aware that e-on has made a lot of free fixes to Vue4 and I expect that will be the case with Pro. But maybe they need to look at how they market the product. Since I use Vue as an end product I don't have much need for model exporting.

The biggie for me was camera synchronisation with Lightwave. Vue will render plants & landscapes about a million times faster than LW but the problem was always one of rubbish camera control in Vue. That feature alone made it worth the upgrade for me. Still, if you don't do animations...

Another place to look for plants is 3DPlants.com. Lots of models. These won't work with the "wind" feature but work quite well otherwise. -Lin

interesting,,,I downloaded the evaluation version of Xfrog and saved the sample plants as .obj and .3ds and in all cases they came across witout the texture maps in Pro (red) but with the texture maps in Vue4. More bugs I suspect.

Attached Link: Xfrog to Vue tutorial

Attached Link: http://www.orio.cc/tutorials/xfrogvue4/xfrog2vue4.htm