hello all, i have been having a problem with vue crashing, actually it is restarting my system, whenever i try to reset/edit a material. it's weird because i am able to do everything else, move things around, add things, etc.... so far i have swapped out video cards, tried new ram, new power supply, even re-installed windows. this has been going on for a week and i am about to thow the pc out the window. i have a p4 2.53, 512 mb pc 2100, ati radeon 9700 pro and an abit it7 max2 v2 mobo running windows xp pro. all updates and drivers are the most recent. thanks in advance for the help!!! eb

eb, this sounds very similar to what I have been experiencing. my problems started when trying to edit materials and continued onto adjusting light size, changing bump gain, etc. see my thread 'constant lock up' for my machine particulars. I am also about ready to toss it all in and ask for a refund. mokba

mokba, well i played around with the device manager, disabling things that i did not need. turns out when i turn off the usb 2.0 controller vue works fine. try to disable things in the device manager that you don't need, start vue, then enable them one at a time until it crashes again. this is what i did to figure it out, of course other programs are crashing, but at least i have an idea where the problem may be. check it out, what is the worst that could happen? good luck!

Hey Eric, Sorry to hear you having some problems. Well, it is quiet sad that Vue is such a beautiful program; yet with so many problems. It doesn't interact well with Video Cards. Even it doesn't handle the CPU cycles properly. I recently started using Poser 5, with that software I can use few other programs (IE, outlook exp, messenger, Media player), all at the same time. But, when I open Vue, I even have to go in the taskbar to make sure no program running in the backgroud. So, in your case my suggestion would be do few steps and hope for the best. :-) First make sure except Vue no other program running, foreground & background. (So that Vue get all CPU cycles and memory) Activate your firewall or at least make sure, if you are on broadband. Then make sure your Open GL is disabled. (I find Vue works faster without it.) Then on your picture, distribute your objects in diff layers (well I'm sure you do, just going through the steps anyway) and hide the layers before you open the material editor. (This is very effective when your Pollygon counts gets really high). Hope it helps. If not I hope you'll let us know. :-) Kazi aka nish

thanks kazi, this time vue can't be blamed. as it turns out it is a hardware issue involving the memory. major bummer! thank god for mushkin's excellent warranty, new mem is on the way. i should be vuein in no time......hopefully any way! thanks again for the assist, much apreciated!! eric

eb, the further I get into this the more it seems to be an ATI/open gl problem. I ended up trying a massive amount of different combinations in the open gl categories. After turning everything off, loading scenes that had crashed and then turning open gl back on things seem to be working. Wish I knew for sure what had taken place. I am still putting vue through the paces trying to make it crash again but it looks like my issues might be with ATI. Thanks for the USB 2.0 lead, I will try it if I run into another wall. mokba

Memory eh! I'm glad that you figured out the problem. Last year, I got my memory sticks free with the perchase of P4 processor. Can't expect warrenty on free stuffs, can I? :-) Hope to see you soon in the gallery. Best Regards.

mokba, what drivers are you using for your card? is it the 3.8 that they just came out with? the opengl combos that you were trying, was that in the display panel or in vue? oh and the usb 2.0 thing was a failure, it started to crash after that as well. a crash analysis from microsoft pointed to the memory, i my case at least. i will tinker with the opengl settings and see what comes up. thanks for the tip, i hope it does the trick eric

nish, never hurts to try, right? most memory manufacturers have life time warranties, who knows, you got nothing to lose! thanks i hope to get back in the game soon, i have a bunch of new ideas i want to try! have a great day!!! eric

By the way, Eric, does ATI Redon 9700 supports Open GL? I just looked into ATI's website and I didn't see anything saying it does. Just curious.

eb, I downloaded the 3.8 drivers yesterday so they have to be the latest. I also checked in at microsoft to make sure I had the latest xp drivers. I have been playing with the open gl in vue only at this time. When I have exhausted that I will get into display panel options with the card itself. mokba

nish well, i assume it does (but we all know what happens when you assume). in the control panel it has settings for opengl, i guess it does. all i know is, i switched from nvidia geforce 4 and it made a huge difference. i can run games with all the settings maxed @ 1280x1024, full aa and af, and they run great! are you thinking about an upgrade? if so wait, they have two coming out, the 9600 pro and the 9800 pro that is going to include a free copy of halflife 2 (if you're into gaming that is, if not just send the game to me....lol). i will try to find more specifics as to what the modle will be if you would like!

mokba, well i tried to play with the opengle settings in vue and no luck, i was able to get further into the material editor then i have in the past couple of days. well at least i am making some progress. with the 3.8 drivers, does your screen flicker at all? mine would flash and flicker when starting windows. so for now i think i installed the drivers off of the cd, not sure though, i have been making so many changes over the last couple of days i cannot remember. eric

LOL ... consider it's done, I'll send you the games. But you have to wait till next yr. :-) I'll make a new box next yr. I'm waiting to see how does Intel's HT technology turns out. The games are yours, if you can wait that long & don't get them before I do. :-) Mokba, did you consider checking your O/S setting and situations? Reading your post seems like you have done every possible and impossible things for Hardware & Vue settings. Why not check the O/S? Well, if you haven't done that already...

eric, I am getting flashes on both my monitors when I start up windows. One of them flashes (the old one,running a plug and play driver) when I go to display settings and open the advanced button. It also took a few whacks to get my refresh rates set back to comfortable levels after updating the driver. nish, I am on to the os setting now. I didn't want to muddy my own waters until I had tried to solve it internally with the software. I am kind of in the same boat as eric now as I have made so many changes that I don't remember them all. I know I'm suppose to take detailed notes but I let my need to fix this get the best of me. mokba

nish, wait for the new p4 extreme, it is going to have a new l3 cache with i think a meg. going to be geared towards gamers, but i am sure it will do wonders with 3d. as for the games, i'm gonna hold you to that...lol! i want to start a new box myself after the holidays, try to hook up a render farm for when i break down and by 3ds max 6 when it is released (thank you student discount!!!), but that is me pipe dreaming. mokba, i will have to try the drivers again, when i did install them i had the monitor hooked up through a kvm switch between two pc's. i nixed the switch, so i will have to try them again. maybe that could help as i keep getting driver errors, hopefully that will fix it. well i am off to try another stick of mem. wish me luck! eric

well that did it, snaked a stick of ram from the p's computer and all seems to be well. mokba, just for shits and giggles try testing your memory. microsoft has a good one available here. http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp the test should keep running until you stop it. with the bad ram it would freeze up half way throuhg the second test. with the new ram it just kept on testing and vue is running fine for now (touch wood). it never hurts to try and if all is well then that is one piece you can take out of the equation. well, happy hunting to ya! if i can offer any assistance, advice, tips or what ever just let me know! eric

Yeah, you said it, go Student Discount! :-) So, you are going for 3DS Max. I'm still struggling to figure out which one it would be. As I hard so many good thing about Cinema 4D and price comparision is striking!

yeah i was just thinking about that myself as a matter of fact. i have played around with 3ds before from a demo version, and a friend of mine has maya that i use some times. in fact that is how i made some of my models. maya would be my first choise, but even with the discount it is close to a grand, and frankly i don't have that type of money laying around. so i should say that it is a toss up between max and c4d. decisions, decisions, i guess the cash flow will make the choice for me. i'll have to go knock over some 7/11's for program money! lol!!! the version of c4d they have here in the market place, is that a boxed verison, or a download? the price on that is not bad at all.

LOL...7/11 sounds like a plan! I'm sure they are boxed, cuz these softwares are so big that it can't be set for download. And that will kill the website's bandwidth. Unless you are an architect major or animation major in school, I would suggest you keep maya off the picture for now. Well of course you don't have to if 7/11 goes very well. :-) C4D is a also a great modelling software. On the other hand for modelling you can actually check out Wings3D. A good modelling soft & free download!

well it is funny, my choices for school are either digital media or architecture. whiche ever program i get accepted into. i am optimistic about the 7/11's though so i might get all of them...hehe! if you want to check out some of the programs, i know most of them have personal learning editions, like, softimage xsi, maya (the water mark is hideous), and houdini (but that would not run on my system for some reason). worth the download just to check them out, see if you can learn it ok or not. i tried wings 3d, i could not figure it out to well. oh now that i think about it, digit magazine is giving away a version of carrera studio 1.1. the magazine is expencive but they do hook you up with some great software, i have already gotten world builder 2.3 pro, and a couple others. these are full versions with no limitations, not to mention all the demos and other stuff they have. here is the link to their site. http://www.digitmag.co.uk/freesoftware/ check it out you will not be disappointed. you can order the mag online or find it at a barnes and noble.

Looks like I have go for 7/11 just for subscribing this magazine. ...lol Thanks for the advice. Best regards.

lol, tell me about it, that is why i hassel the book store people every couple of weeks, like a junkie for his fix. i know it's sad! have a good one!!! eric