Hi everybody, I read some past threads where folks were upset with the initial release of Vue 4 pro: bugs, etc. Would you say you are very happy with the app now? Are there service packs that fixed things to your satisfaction? Would you recommend buying this over, let's say world builder, or Bryce? Also, anyone connecting this to 3s max 5 or 6? Results? How about any Poser interaction? Results? thanks so much for posting your opinions now, Kind regards, Kathy

The bugs aren't fixed and it still crashes intermittently so I've got into the habit of saving after almost every change. BUT when I bought Pro, it was a choice between that and World Builder (I already have Bryce) and IMO there's no contest. I've seen many images created with WB by a well known digital artist and to me they're not a patch on what Vue D'Esprit can do let alone Vue Pro. WB forests to me look more like painted on tubes! So the bottom line is that I'm willing to suffer the bugs till they get it fixed. If you want to create good, realistic landscapes then Vue really does win hands down over WB or Bryce.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I tried the demo version of WB and I found it very user unfriendly. The getting started tutorial was reasonably easy to follow but I found it much more difficult to work with compared to Vue or Bryce

I'm one of the Vue pro users who have no problem. I'm working professionally with it and just love it:-) Guitta

Pretty much all of the problems I had with Vue Pro have been fixed. Now all I need is some time to really get to grips with it.

I have switched to Vue Pro only recently (had it installed for a long time but I waited for the recent upgrade and time to test it). Vue Pro crashes rarely but this is nothing compared to all the little improvements they have put in the interface.... like the material browser, unlimited number of layers, better support of importing object and most of all, openGL preview that finally works :)

Mine also is updated and as soon as my files are transfered it will be my choice to use only Pro

LMHO. I am one the few that is very dissatisfied with Vue Pro. There is a thread here with others comments about Vue pro if you want others opinion and the problems they are having. If you decide to buy Vue Pro, I would be most interested in your results and what you think of it once you have a chance to use it for a while. :) Go to this thread and read before it gets lost or deleted as it is getting old now. http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12368&Form.ShowMessage=1674044 You will notice there are a few that are not satisfied at all with Vue in its current state. I will be the first to admit I would like Vue if It would do as it is advertised and quit crashing and being so slow to use. I am speaking for my experience since a few others don't seem to be having any problems with it. Makes one wonder why a few have problems and a few dond't. Vue 4.2 is mote stable on my maching than Vue Pro but you can not use OpenGl wiht Vue 4.2. That is one the reason I got Vue Pro so could use OpenGL and the other features that are not in Vue 4.2. In the end you will have to decide and I wish you the best and hope you don't have the problems a few have been having. :o)

Like Gebe. No problem with crash, for me is the best of 3d render software...

It works fine for me too. Sometimes there are some misunderstanding with Pro and me, but it generally do what I want. Synchronization works good (for 3DS), and it is very useful (you will get better results with Pro than with plugins) Poser import works good too. Sometime Poser figures looks better in Vue than in Poser (they can breath in fact;)) Maybe you can make your own opinion with the trial version? (to see if your station is able to receive Vue Pro;)) The box looks fine and robust too (I don't know what other thinks about that?)! When you have it in the hand you can feel the power;) The books is interesting, but be careful...friends of yours will try to steal your Vue Pro bookmark, and will persecute you to receive Vue Pro postcards! I think it is nice to have stuff like that in a software! In fact it seems like eon take care of people's feeling with their soft. You can't really compare Bryce and Vue Pro. Bryce is quite old, and not specifically oriented to professional. But it is good in its category (even if I didn't like the interface at all). I'm with gillbrooks to say that WB and WCS aren't userfriendly. But there is people who are able to use them;) Hope it helps.

g-f-x: That's bordering on a personal attack, and I personally think it's out of line. I've found gebe to be exceptionally helpful whenever I've asked for help, and also have seen how helpful she is when others are having problems with Vue Pro (I'm still using Vue 4.2). Having a go at e-on is one thing but having a go at one of the most helpful mods here is to me uncalled for and unecessary.

Nevermore the same could be said for the ones who say they have crash's and slowdown with Vue and a few are just about saying we can't be having these problems if they are not having them. I agree that gebe is very helpful with helping people who ask for help when it comes to not knowing how to do things in Vue. I don't beleieve you could have a better Moderator for the Vue forum. She has helped me on a few occasions and I do appreciate her help. She is full of wisdom and knowleadge when we need help with Vue. That said I think all this needs to be put in perspective and both sides be able to voice their concerns. The ones who don't have problems I admire and am glad they are getting their moneys worth from e-on. The ones who are having crash's and slowdowns I feel for them because I know what they are going through. I am one of them. This will never go away untill e-on solves the problem for the few who are having the problem. The ones who don't have the problem............ Well They don't have a problem do they.....:o) They are the ones who I think don't need to be knocking the ones who do.

I to have no problem with vue pro. I have a 60gig hard drive full of modeling, creation, music video editing, anti virus, anti trogan houres, all sorts of plugins ect, and some games, and i do not have a problem with any of them on my current machine, athlon 1600+ using win xp home 1g ram. To say vue pro will only work on a machine with just it loaded is in my experience just plain wrong. I understand how frustrating it can be while trying to work on a project (just try using animation master) but can we at least try and cut out the personal attacks. hope you all get your machines, progs to work correctly as some of use have soon. just my two cents. videodv.

Ummmm, g-f-x? =MY= VuePro does not crash, and this is with VuePro, Poser5, Bryce5, PSP8, Shade7 demo, Pbooost, DW's UTC, MSVC++6, a borrowed legitimate) copy of Premiere, Truespace 5, Winzip, Winace, WinRAR, WinImange, Magix Audio and Midi studio, Opera 7, Eudora 5, Agent 2, Winamp 3, Veritas RecordNow, Sonic MyDVD, the VB and VCC 5-6-7 runtimes, Quicktime 6 pro,enough codecs to choke a virtual horse, Norton Utilities and Internet Security (the latter of which is slightly broken; beware of Norton AntiSpam. It broke it, and I'm not in the mood the strip what I have down to the metal again), and I'm still only about halfway to what my old install consisted of. And my only contact with E-on is through their Oregon sales office when I've gotten the products. I hope I haven't ragged on anyone who has been having trouble; but this involves computer platforms. And dealing with issues there can be a lot like dealing with medical issues. The problem might be exactly what it looks like...or it might be a phantom pain from a real problem elsewhere. I've had to almost physically fight with some know it alls who were sure X was the issue. Only it turned out to be something else; one of the most common issues currently is the construction order of drivers on a clean install. If you don't get the install order correct, you will have trouble later...and most of the time, it has little to do with what the driver actually does. You haven't been one of the problem children, iloco; any tech support would prefer a reasonable caller like you. But there are those who seem to find it more satisfying to creeb about their problem(s) than actually do anything about it. Too many newbie users seem to have fallen for the fallacy that computers are 'appliances' and should be able to work like a toaster, when the reality is that they are incredibly complex multi-purpose tools. Kathy; I'm one of the happy ones. I did have a couple of issues with VuePro when it came out; the folder of 3rd App plugins was missing (got left off accidentally), and the RenderCow was non functional (an old build was put on the CD). That has been fixed, and things are running very smoothly. I don't have Max, so no idea. Poser interactions have been very smooth, with a couple of caveats. Vue (any flavor) depends on exact pathnames to find things like textures and transmaps, where Poser (any flavor) does a recursive search in the texture tree if it doesn't find what was specified. Vue can't take advantage of that, so you have to make sure the paths are correct. With the beta of Mover 5, Poser 5's dynamic cloth and hair are easily useable outside the Poser environment for the first time(and it works =very well=). I have a 5 node rendergarden, and this works fairly well; the only issue I've run across is that when VuePro (or Vue4, for that matter) is acting as the network manager, it is relatively sensitive to packet collision. Having all 5 Cows trying to take textures pretty much leads to a crash of Vue. The workaround is simply starting on RenderCow, waiting until it is actually rendering a frame, then starting the next Cow in the series. Bryce is next to dead, unless (a)Corel gets a clue, or (b) Someone prys Bryce out of their clutches before rigor mortis sets in. On the other hand, the current release is sub $100, so if you find it cheap, no reason not to go for it. But be warned that getting Poser content into Bryce is an Adventure...and not for the timid. The one time I played with a World Builder demo I quickly uninstalled it. 'User Unfriendly' is a good description.

This is understandable.... god knows I was frustrated at Curious Labs about the Poser 5 mess... HOWEVER, frustration is not an excuse to get carried away into personal attacks. g-f-x has repeatedly hold unfounded accusations again Guitta and we will cannot let that happen without consequence. I suggest everyone take a deep breath, be patient and take their issues with e-on. We are trying to help as much as possible, but all we can do is provide advices. Ultimately, e-on software are the only ones who can create a patch for Vue.

I'm not knocking the folk that have problems, and it's not that I objected to - making a veiled personal attack against someone is out of line, and to make such comment about gebe is to me unacceptable. Vue Pro has issues - big ones, I'm not going to try and deny that. I just object to comments such as those made here about gebe, or anyone for that matter. More so when it's directed at someone who as far as I've seen - and I've been reading the other Vue Pro stability threads - has gone out of her way to try and resolve the problem.

Here's a few frames out of the first test render I did with P5M5VuePro. The figure is the AnAn R2 modification of P5's Judy, texture is Steffy ZZ's Gaia with the Irezumi tattoo applied, hair is HMann's ponytail, loincloth is Nerd's.

Looks like the ol mouse is getting to be in need or retirement. Touchy button-itis.... : The rest of the scene is pure VuePro, and some of the animated action (namely the soft body dynamics of certain soft bodies... :P) are due to Ockham's 'Jiggles' python script...which is useable for far more than making Poser breasts bounce. His latest version can access -all- the morph channels, and the position axes as well. Now if I can just get these things small enough to be postable in motion....

What a weird discussion. In your case i simply would look at results - and the demo version. If others can do good stuff, you probably can do it as well. And you will get a feeling of it with the demo version for sure. Regarding the strange discussion here. A support technician told me once that 95% of the bugs sit in front of the monitor. In the first moment i was really annoyed. But the more i think about, the more i think he was right. more or less. I don't say that there are no problems. But, i am very careful and do a lot of tests before i cry "bug". So often i found that in the end it was my own missunderstanding, my own fault. I am very proud when i really can report a bug, a very rare thing. BTW, i am a beta tester for Pro and knows it for a long time now! Poser interaction? Look into the gallery. Nearly no image there without Poser elements. No other package makes it so easy. You simply import the original Poser file into Vue. No import/export problems because of strange formats that do or don't support specific things. Max. I think that is something you must ask in the 3DSMax forum. Because that is an issue for them. Here we use Vue as the final rendering software, not the supplier for others. Therefore nobody really knows much about it. As you have seen so far. Finally. I don't say that there are no problems. Not at all. BUT, i know no software that is bug free, Bryce after soooo many years of development still crashes from time to time here. AND, the package with the most bugs you all hold in your hand every day and strangely enough don't complain (or run away from) at all - Windows. I wish you all the best for your decision! Walther

if you make a cube it works great but when you are working on the final details of a complex project the bugs increase greatly. Save often or you'll be sadly dissapointed. Then there are the artifacts produced by the bad renderer in animations that make you go crazy. Animations are limited in this program to say the least. Enough said Vue5 will be better and will be a sidesidegrade to justify the high cost of the same program with the same materials and objects. ;-)

I started out with Vue 4.2 a few months back.

Then, I upgraded to Vue Pro a couple of months ago. I'm glad that I did.

Big difference. Vue Pro beats out Vue 4.2 in many ways. Far superior material editing, OpenGL actually works......Pro is better and faster all the way around.

Vue Pro has crashed (maybe) 2 times since I installed the software. For a 2-month run, a mere two crashes ain't bad at all.

I highly recommend this software.

P.S. --

I did not see any "attack posts" -- I suppose that the poster has deleted it.

However: gebe is one of the most helpful mods around, anywhere.

She deserves our support.

I work professionally with VuePro in a big computer game project. Poser animated characters are imported and rendered in VuePro. And all landscapes and interior are built up with VuePro. It is a great program!

I started out 4 years ago using Poser/Bryce for my models and images. Bryce was fine. But not being able to export .obj format, the very,very long render hours and the hassle with the size of imported Poser figures almost drove me crazy.

When Pro first was released I had problems which resulted in a couple of reeinstallations every day. But with the patches it now runs smoothly. I recommend VuePro absolutely!

The support people at E-on have been wonderful. And also this forum.

Quote: "I hope I haven't ragged on anyone who has been having trouble; but this involves computer platforms. " I just got confirmation from e-on tech support they were able to duplicate a bug that was crashing my computer and VuePro. This confirms to me there are a few whom do have real problems with VuePro and its not their install or hardware that is to blame. :o)

Coolness! Hope it turns out to be an easy fix!

The part that got to me was I had just downloaded the new upgrade and thought O boy maybe now things will work good for me. First time I started a scene and got a crash I really got bent out of shape. You can imagae what I was thinking when no one else ever has problems but me and a few more. This time I was lucky and e-on was able to reproduce the crash after I posted the problem to their tech support. e-on told me earlier that anytime VuePro leaves a VuePro.eon error message there is a problem within VuePro. Here is what is so wild about all of these problems with my Vue crash's and slowdowns. I went back and tryed to reproduce the crash a few hours later and Vue Pro worked as it was suppose to work. Now tell me how e-on was able to reproduce my crash and I could not a third time around. This tells me it is something that has to be put in the right order before these random slowdowns and crash's will happen. That is hard to reproduce and give to tech support or anyone that is trying to help us solve our problems. :) I hope this bug fix will be in next upgrade. It will be one more out the way. Everytime one is squashed it makes for a much better Vue application.

That's great news Iloco! Maybe now they can get the one or two bugs that are causing the problems for the rest of us that are having trouble. Thanks for keeping on their case about it. They may not have reproduced the error exactly in that spot, but was able to see what was happening after a certain length of time and realize where the problems lie. This is usually the procedure for debugging.

VuePro does have a lot of great features, but it's mileage varies a lot depending on the computer and software configuration one has apparently. As others have said, the best thing might be to check out the demo, and see if it runs fine on your particular configuration.

ShadowWind

I have been using Vue Pro for about 2 months now... but it does "crash" frequently... The app continues to function but all the view windows close, but the layer list and previous image remain... Click on the layer list and it reverts to "new state"...Did this once while I was tring to save my work... Very annoying, however I uninstalled Bryce (never quite liked the image output and hated how I had to get Poser figures in) and will continue to use Vue Pro because I prefer the output, interface, vegatation, and poser integration. mes

thanks so much for all your help! Best, Kathy

I've tested Vue Pro on different configurations of my computers. It crashes, crashes, and crashes. Maya and Max don't. This is bad C++ programming, and "they" try to make us think it's our machine and/or their protection system (funny!) All the renderings you see from Phoul (the Vue "demonstrator") are made ON MAC. Isn't that sad? TJ

Is "Mac" an obscene word? I am not sure about Phoul - i think he is on Windows (he is a beta tester as i am). But if you are a professional and you ned a software that runs on a Mac, you simply buy a Mac. AND, i probably will never understand people that have Maya AND Max and need Vue as well. They invested around $10,000 in software and then use a $500 software package? And complain about the high price? What does this tell me? I better not say that. What i always am surprised of is, that all the complainers we have right now - demanding honesty and whatever, all don't show their real face. No name, no images nothing. Are you not brave enough to show us who you are? I feel very sorry about. Walther

Right, Phoul is on Windows :-)

MAC is NOT a bad word, that's not what I meant! But you acan build an app that's stable on Mac, and not on Windows. And, well... YES PHoul is on Mac. So he's anim are - as allways - very nice and attractive. Try to redo them on PC... you'll see.(In fact you won't see anything :-(( ) TJ PS: It's seems you don't "see" the different uses of Max, Maya, Vue etc. That's ok for me. Making a little postcard with Vue takes 1 hour, render time included. Now try some nice Shave and a Haircut" in Maya to put some hair on your dog, or try Sputterfish's Brazil in Max to see what an "intense" render is (sorry for my english) Using "this" for a postcard would be stupid, not for a movie. And finally : I PERSONALLY don't own any of them. I work for a company.

Attached Link: http://www.ulead.com

Well Im a noobie here with Vue Pro after trialling both Vue 4.2 & the pro models. My sys specs are: WinXPpro SP1 512 DDR 333Mhz Ram 2Ghz Athlon Overclocked to 2.4 125GB Hrddive Nvidia GF3 Ti500 (old) GFX card Norton AV & Firewall 19" Sony Trinitron Monitor & Vue Pro crashes erratically all of the time. To say I have restarted the program at least 12 times due to crashes is an underestimation. Im pretty much in the same boat as some of the other users whereby I have to SAVE after almost editing any objects or making any amendments. Its a shame as the amount of monies I paid out, I could have looked at other 3D software. BUT the prospective potential with Vue Pro is huge & FAR FAR FAR easier than other programs. I hope the issues are resolved in recent/forthcoming patches soon & HI to everyone in the forums:-) ......just a hobbyist. PS: Someone was talking about 2D packages in another thread...have you tried Ulead PhotoImpact?!?! Demo available from www.ulead.com

Ulead PhotoImpact is the best,woz2002. I have been using it for many years now and still prefer it over the other major 2D softwares. Does things in half the time. :-) As for Vue. I have Vue4 and it crashes alot...My Bryce5 doesn't have those problems. My Poser 5 doesn't have those problems. Don't understand, unless it's as they say above that it's a programming problem. Vue is VERY touchy and I don't think I will be doing much with it outside of making landscapes to use in Bryce or Poser.

To woz2002 : I use Adobe Photoshop 7. Many people think it's a heavy (ram) app, but it's not. It's lighter than PhotoImpact or PSP. And you'll find "out there" TONS of GREAT plugins for Photoshop. (Among other: direct links between DeepPaint 3D and Photoshop, and Digimation's Ghost / MAX / Photoshop) It's only my point of view :-) Regards TJ PS: yes, Vue is far easier... But all this instability will lead us to test Carrara Studio with the TransPoser plugin, or the (complex?) World Builder.

You have no obligation to buy or use Vue, TheJoker. Everybody is free to choose the software (s)he likes. Carrara is great and for sure Worldbuilder (I don't have this one) too. But these both are VERY different from Vue. So, we cannot compare them. And Photoshop? It's a 2D program, not to compare either:-)

1 I was answering to "woz2002" about a 2D package, that's why I mentionned Photoshop. 2 Right, I have no obligation to buy Vue Pro. (Read: " I PERSONALLY don't own any of them. I work for a company.") Regards TJ

I love the interface and output for Vue 4 Pro, and it handles 3ds max imports very well. Unfortunately, I have a problem where it sputters to a crawl after a while of use. This didn't get fixed with the latest update and I have to restart the program. :(

Northchild I am still having the same problem and have decide to quit posting about my problems hoping that someday it will be fixed. Only reason I am posting now is to let you know you are not alone with this problem.

Thank you iloco! :) Vue4Pro is a nice landscape program and I'd still recommend it. I'm also happy with e-on for offering educational versions of the software, which is great for us poor college students. I don't use Poser because I feel that it ultimately takes something away from my ability to create the main focus of my render or animation. This isn't due to lower quality or stunted workflow with Poser, because admittedly I can't get the kind of output that most people can produce with Poser. Rather, if I use Poser I lose valuable practice hours. On the other hand, Vue is a lifesaver. While I know that I can model trees and so on, the ability to create compelling terrain and vegetation quickly leaves me free to focus on architectural detail and character modeling/rigging/animation. With this new Pro version I can import "custom" vegetation and sky maps to 3ds max, slap various shaders and materials on the vegetation, and get whatever sort of look I want. Much faster and usually of better quality than if I stuck with pushing the vertices myself. :)