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Vue F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2024 Dec 13 6:58 am)
Subject: The truth about Renderosity, Vue and censorship
Very well stated Agiel, "1) Renderosity's staff (including coordinators and moderators) is NOT paid by vendors to defend their products." This is so true. However just to add a little to your statement. With out the vendor there would be no forum and attacks on said vendor IMHO need prompt attention by any moderator, and frankly you are doing a very good job at tending this forum to keep any flame wars dampened. Much like an excellent smoke alarm if you will :O). The work involved to do this is much more than most people are aware of and to do it for free is really asking a lot by Renderosity. In this forums case Renderosity is getting much, much more than they are paying for that is for sure. Keep up the excellent job. Thanks, `shoop
Just about point 3: - The ONLY software I know having so many bugs leading to constant crashes is Vue Pro. This is - not only for me - a simple FACT. And I'm sad about it because I was so happy with Vue "standard" and happy with the features "Pro" should have. (Yes, I've installed "something else"...) - Then, no, there is no "possibility of asking for a refund", at least "here", in France (imagine I have now a working serial! :-( ) - Sure Poser 5 stopped crashing, as Curious Labs changed their protection system after release 2 (if I remember well). It's written on their home page. Maybe one day e-on will understand it's better to have the people who bought their app be happy than no one at all. (I know of ONE person for whom it DOES NOT crash! ONE.) - You can test the Vue Pro demo as much as you want, it does NOT use the same protection (e-on answer to my question about it, don't remember the guy's name, sorry). So, eventually, it won't crash. As the demos works eventually fine, you'll buy the "retail" version. And this one crashes. See? (Latest upgrade 4.53 270045 included)(yes, it's a beta, so what?) Regards (Sorry for my english, and no offence meant; those are just FACTs...) T J
Correction about poser 5. Even after Sp4, it still crashes... regularly if I want to. Just try to change too many lights schemes and render again - that is enough to make it hang and crash. It got better after the copy protection system was removed, but it is still a beast to start up and still unreliable to run.
- agiel - www.linfa.net
agiel, I think you've gotten off to a fine start as moderator of the Vue forum. You had big shoes to fill (that's an expression, doesn't mean Guitta wears big shoes, lol!), she had been here a long time and is a real expert at Vue. I agree that there isn't any reason why questions, discussions, disagreements about Vue or Vue Pro can't be discussed in a mature, civilized way. And if someone has a problem with the way the forum and/or gallery are being run, they are perfectly free to post questions in the forum, or IM you, or IM one of the admins. The Rendero TOS spells things out pretty plainly, imvho, but I know from my experiences with moderators and admins here that they are willing to take the time to discuss issues. I do have to agree with some that I'm a little disappointed with Vue Pro; there seem to be so many stability issues for people. I went from a very stable install to a very touchy install with the last couple of patches, but I am willing to forward my issues to Eon and hope for the best. In the meantime I do what agiel does...try to move a bit more slowly inside the app, save more often. Coming here and talking about the issues is fine, and a way to discover if others are having the same problems (like the thread recently where a problem was actually diagnosed by folks here and forwarded to Eon), but being shrill and screaming at the moderator isn't very constructive. My 2 Euro cents worth!!
And here's my 10 Cents worth (inflation you know). First, I think most folks forget that "Freedom of Speech" does not apply on a privately owned forum. As pointed out in previous posts, when we join here, we agree to the TOS. Censorship would mean that you could not say anything bad about Vue, Vue Pro, E-on or any of the E-on products. What is being said is, if you are going to discuss issues, that you do it in a polite, civilized manner. That, IMHO, is not Censorship. It's common courtesy.
TOS= terms of service; the agreement to follow the rules page you click through to register on a forum. IMHO= shorthand acronym for 'In my humble opinion' .. which is getting to be obsolescent in use, as seen as rather windy (the antithesis of humble), so IMO, and JMO (just my opinion) are becoming more common. Strong assertions are often followed by a smile :) or wink ;) to mitigate any 'edge' that others might perceive.
I totally agree with TheJoker who wrote "The ONLY software I know having so many bugs leading to constant crashes is Vue Pro. This is - not only for me - a simple FACT." Well said TheJoker! Btw, the comparison with Poser is rather funny, since Poser 5 is on the #2 spot on the list of software with most severe bugs. That's also a FACT.
The Alpha Planes is part of the functionality of the software and very cool option IMO. As far as artwork quality and opinion I think that was covered in another post that has been locked for good reason. Opinions are pretty subjective. If you have a constructive suggestion to improve an image just post it in the comments box under the picture. As far as Vue pro goes I have not had much problem with it myself and use it where needed in my work. It may not be the program for most hobbyists perhaps and I think that may be why they call it pro. But again this is just a subjective opinion on my part. :O)
Who are you, artico, to criticize Wabe's work in that way? Oh, btw, I checked your name: Wabe Wabe. How interesting... TheJoker, there's something I don't understand in your note. You're implying that eon has added some code to the retail version so that it crashes - whereas the demo doesn't crash?! Why would someone shoot himself in the foot that way? Or is your copy not a legit one, and you are suffering from eon's antipiracy protection? If so, how dare you criticize? I haven't been here long, but I find Agiel is doing a terrific job moderating this forum. I'd bee far less tolerant myself!
I have a legal version of vue pro and it has always crashed very often. I actually think the story about the antipiracy crashing thing is made up, making a virtue out of necessity. The illegal vue copier will think it's because he's pirated the software and will throw away that version and maybe buy a legal copy and then he'll be a little disappointed. Okay, that's just my suspicious mind. However despite all it's problems I still love vue and am willing to keep installing the upgrades in the hope that one day it will all be normal and work well. I also hope that when I can afford a more powerful computer it might solve some of the problems. I do feel a little bit peeved that I had to pay so much for vue pro (upgrade or not) as I feel like I've been beta testing for them on their knowledge base since I first bought vue. Also I feel a little disappointed about the dynamic hair and clothes that they said they would work on when I first bought vue - they worked on it - into a new software that has to be purchased. As I only do stills, mover isn't all that appealing to me. All the same I love the ease of use of vue, the poser support and the look of the results. Love esther
I aim to update it about once a month. Oh, and it's free!
actually I believe the Anti Priacy isn't made up.. there are may statements of it in E-on's own forums and if it wasn't there don't you think they would state such?....Is it the cause of all the instablity? hmm only E-on really knows, my guess is that it does have some systems bugging out more than it should. I used the demo for a month or so of Vue D and never had a problem until I actually purchased it, since then it has been little more than a headache full of hours of my time debugging. i do have it running now at about 90% stable i think. Vue is the #1 most buggy program I have ever seen I must say!! It's still very cool and I can't wait for it to become a stable piece of software as to the forum.. well I'm not sure what set this all off but i have found pretty much everyone here to be very polite for the most part.. if you are going to start swearing and being impolite here , well you should be booted. No ifs ands or buts!! If you don't like it, go else where! may times i have sworn at my computer and the software within it.. but when asking people for help, well i find i get much better responce when asking in a nice polite manner!!
Hexagon, Carrara, Sculptris, and recently Sketchup.
1 To roadtoad : thanks for the translations! :-)
2 To wabe : for me, those FACTS are HERE, on my computer.(As I wrote: this is for ME: a FACT)
3 For the anti-piracy:
Vue Pro does not use A SINGLE registry key. You can check this easily by scanning the registry or launching a registry monitor. You can also even more simply COPY your Vue Pro directory "elsewhere", it will still crash. This means - as for Poser 5 - that the whole "control" is inside one of it's dlls (which are in fact given with *.eon extensions, but are "simple" *.dlls ).
Why this (in my humble opinion)? Because so this "self-contained" sofware is less easily crackable. But as a house without foundations, it becomes VERY unstable.( As a conter-example: look at what Maya and Max put in the registry; they NEVER crash)(at least "here").
Now you take this unstable thing - let's say it is "Vue4Pro.eon" for example (this is the one that makes a problem to my Win2k). As you can see when you launch Vue, it checks your reg. keys (VuePro.reg, hidden in the WINNT dir on Win2K). That is: Vue Pro's key, and Mover if installed. Then it checks the Poser dat file when you import a Poser file. And checks your additinal Plants if you have some. And it checks the protection of some Vue objects you'd import.
The Vue and Mover keys are linked. The Vue key must be checked, the Mover key must be checked, and clearly some "link" between both also (easy to test). This may lead to complex calculations. The famous "home made anti piracy" fun.
Add the other files mentionned, and you can imagine all the "hidden" calculations going on "behind" what we do when we think we just create a plant!! And... I think - but may be totally wrong -: our "Vue4Pro.eon"/exe/dll, by the manner the protection is written INSIDE itself, processes again and again those calculations when we work. CPU distorsion. CRASH.
Now...If this is not the way it works in reality, that is, if the anti-piracy is not the cause of the crashes, than it is just poor, QUICK C++ programming. After all, Vue Pro came out quite quickly after the e-on's sondage (english?) about what the users would like to see in a more featured version...
It would be fun to see someone reverse engineer this app, patching the key checks etc. just for the JOY of being able to run this app more than 5 mn.(Which is what happend to Poser 5 after from SR2 on.)
Regards
Forgive my english mistakes and/or my eventually false ideas.
TJ
Message edited on: 05/15/2004 18:39
Message edited on: 05/15/2004 18:42
I don't have Vue Pro, just Vue 4 with Mover 5. It runs pretty stable on my machine. But I do know the frustrations of using crashy programs. RDS 5 on my old computer would crash at least once per session under Win98. At least once every time I sat down to do something! So I eventually broke down and bought Animation:Master 2000, because Hash Inc. swore up and down that A:M was highly stable, and guess what? It crashed all the time too. They both run a lot more stable under XP, but I worked with both these crashy programs for years before I got XP. How Did I live with it? 2 things: I kept reminding myself that I spent a decent amount of money on these products, and that just shelving them and not using them at all was the best way to ensure that I wasted that money (Actually, my mom kept reminding me. Both were Xmas presents), and 2, I always remember a tip from the user manual for the first Leisure Suit Larry game. This piece of sage advice has been with me through every program I've used, and every video game I've played, and it's saved my butt too many times to count, so I'll pass it on to you: Jesus Saves. (He saves as often as he can, because, in his infinite wisdom, he knows that if he doesn't, sooner or later he's going to have to do a heck of a lot of stuff all over again.) So I got into the habit of saving very often. every time I stopped for a smoke, or just stopped to think for a second. It's a good habit to get into, even if your software isn't crash prone. That's it for now, except for this: "It is not possible to get good results without the proper respect for one's tools or one's weapons." -Miyamoto Musashi, from his treatise, 'The Book of Five Rings'
In case anyone wonders about the deleted messages, I just got back from a nice weekend and found personal attacks.... in a thread where I explained how I would deal with this kind of attacks no less. So here it is - the attack from artico and related answers have been deletd to avoid new escalation. I will deal with the rest of the procedure directly with artico.
- agiel - www.linfa.net
TheJoker; You're looking in the wrong place. The anti-piracy scheme is on the installation CD itself. Have you noted the procedure that an update runs? Specifically, in there being a 3rd, finalization pass? The same thing happens when you install Vue...only the finalization files are hidden on the CD. And the full finalization run is masked by the splash screen. After getting Vue and hearing about the scheme, I checked out the 4 different rips to be found in the jungles of Usenet. =ALL= of them had exactly the same instability issues. Namely, within 30 seconds of moving a primitive, or switching a window too quickly, you CTD'ed. And these were installed next to my stable copy of Vue4. If you don't run the install from the CD, you do not get a stable version; the warez kiddies have been screaming about this for a couple of years. And since none of the naughty children have tricked it out, I have to assume that it is simply too much trouble... Multiple file offsets can be that way, for example...
Agiel,
With all due respect, at no time and at no answer to request was a refund ever brought up when VuePro was crashing and burning on my computer. Or I would have took it. I finally had to look into the situation myself, because I didn't want to be out $300. I just love debugging software on my spare time, when it's what I do for a living. Fortunately, I was able to find a duplicatible error that was causing a good amount of crashing on my system and hopefully others. It may be true that 90% of the software has bugs, but that same 90% is usuable by the majority of the people for the majority of the time. VuePro was not and may still not be for some. But no refund was ever offered...
You are right. I checked after someone else mentionned that and found out there is no return policy at e-on software. Vue Pro has issues. I will not deny it. I was only trying to put things in perspective as far as this forum goes. What I meant is that when someone experiences issues with Vue, there are other things to do than come to this forum and start insulting e-on and whoever else gets in their way. There is not much we can do here other than sharing the experience we have in dealing with these bugs. Maybe someone found a new trick. Maybe someone else will observe something that will help with another error.
- agiel - www.linfa.net
To Dale B: my english is too bad to "get all" of what you're explaining... Would you do it again, please? I have the retail CDS (as I bought it !), and it IS crashing. Then when you update what happens? Some of your dlls are updated, right? To correct the manner the *.eon files work. Because of the C++, OR because of the anti-piracy. ... Pardon me but I stay with what I wrote :-) Those crashes are "dilemnas" between Windows and those dlls. Regards T J
I use both Vue4 and Vue4Pro on a 2.4 Pentium machine with 1G RDRAM. OS is XPPro. I find Vue4 to be more stable, but both get rocky with file size. Once I pass the 8.5meg polygon count, I save after every change in Vue4Pro because it crashes frequently at that point. I am running with the most current update applied in both programs. I think that it is still a memory issue.
How can this moderator badly write, "2) Renderosity is NOT censoring forums.", when posts are deleted & locked & users are banned and threatened their forum privileges. A forum that practices these acts is just that: "a censoring forum." It just the way words work. Sorry to break anyone's righteous bubble.
What this moderator meant (oh wait... that was me) is that I will not censor subjects - you can talk about Vue's bugs or e-on support all you want. All you have to do is argument your points. What I will remove from the forum is posts that are abusive and insulting. Freedom of speech doesn't justify acting like animals.
- agiel - www.linfa.net
What i always find very questionalbe is, when someone talks about censorship here when they mean rules only. I am German and mid aged. I simply ask my parents that have lived under the Nazi regime here. This was censorship - beside a lot of other ugly things too of course. Or ask others that have lived or still live under an terror regime. What they will tell you about censorship and your luxury problems here. How can you talk about censorship on a thing like that? The one who do not like it here can simply go away. My parents lost their jobs and were close to prison because they didn't liked it. These were problems, not te ones you are try to point out. I say it again, luxury problems you have!
One day your ship comes in - but you're at the airport.
I never compared anything to the German horrors & I am a Jew but you probably know better. I will not justify your posts even with an answer for they are absurd. Censorship comes in many forms beautiful & ugly with degrees and colours but always the same soul. I stand by my post alone or together: Renderosity is a censoring forum, if they choose to delete, lock, ban, and threaten its users.
Ok.... lets try to clarify things a little bit better one more time. I can't speak for the whole of Renderosity. If you say Renderosity is censoring its members, you must probably have proof of that. You have to understand that Renderosity is privately owned. It is not a public open forum and is not bound to allow all subjects to be discussed. We are trying hard to keep this as a welcoming place - therefore, discussions that degenerate into bitter fights and insults have to be controled and taken offline. You would expect the same from a bar or a movie theatre (are bars practicing censorship when they prevent people from exercising their right to fight ?). We are also trying to keep discussions around the main topics of the site - this applies for each forum. The main purpose here is to keep it useful. If you are looking for a solution to a problem with Vue, the last thing you want to do is to browse through pages and pages of topics that have nothing to do with Vue. This is why discussions have to be moved to other forums or deleted completely. Now - to speak about this forum in particular. If you want to talk about controversial subjects related to Vue, I will let you talk as long as you provide arguments for the point you are trying to make. If you want to say that Vue wiped out your hard drive, fine, come up with a detailed explanation of what happened and we can talk about it. Coming here and accuse e-on software of wiping out your harddrive on purpose would be considered an attack and will be deleted. I hope you can see the difference between these two examples. As for wabe, his point was to relativise the meaning of 'censorship'. Same word - different meaning for different people. In this context, it may seem extreme to talk about censorhip when it is really about keeping the site useful and friendly. If you want to talk about politics, religion or just fight with other people for fun, there are other places on the net to do that.
- agiel - www.linfa.net
And before anyone screams murder about it, let me say that I lock this discussion to move on to other topics. I will be glad to answer any other question offline... just IM me.
- agiel - www.linfa.net
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After a recent rash of unfounded accusations, I though I had to clarify a few points as the moderator of this forum. 1) Renderosity's staff (including coordinators and moderators) is NOT paid by vendors to defend their products. The reason moderators defend a particular software is that they happen to enjoy that software (or they wouldn't spend their spare time moderating a forum about it) and they are willing to look past software problems and work with them instead of only venting about them. Last time I checked, I had to pay for my own license of Vue and Vue Pro. 2) Renderosity is NOT censoring forums. My first job as a moderator is to make sure the forum remains welcoming and helpful for everyone who may happen to visit it. I am open to pretty much any discussion about Vue as long as it is done in a civilised and argumented way. If you want to discuss Vue's bugs - no problem - explain your bugs in details and maybe, someone will notice and do something about it. I can garantie you that WILL delete insulting or abusive posts and I WILL remove images from the gallery that violate the Terms of Service. This has nothing to do with censorship - it is called 'moderation of a forum'. I can also make mistakes. If you feel I have abused by privileges, feel free to take that offline and let other mods know about it. It would be nice to start by letting me know I have crossed the line so that I can repair things if possible. 3) Vue has bugs Big deal. So does 90% of the software I know of. I don't see why anyone would pay for an upgrade, and then spend every waking moment complaining about it. If it is working that badly on your system, and nothing can be done to fix it, there is always the possibility of asking for a refund and try something else. I had to wait a year and 4 patches before Poser 5 worked fine for me. You won't see me screaming murder on their forum (although I may have complained once or twice to their technical support). Vue Pro still crashes with very complex scenes, lots of materials and when I try to click too fast between menus. So... I save more often, work a little more slowly and make sure I keep track of the latest patch. 4) Vue Pro is too expensive for an upgrade. True - because, repeat after me, it is NOT an upgrade :) It is a different product line. The licensing fees to support importing and exporting scenes to and from other formats justifies the price increase. If it is too expensive, compare with similar software packages and chose what works best for you. Maya and 3DS Max are too expensive for me - I just don't buy them :) Look at it this way... - if you are doing 3D as a hobby, then all you have to do is find a software that is both affordable and enjoyable. Try demos before you buy. And remember that there is no such thing as a bug free, 100% stable and 100% reliable software. - if you are using 3D as a profession, chose what brings you the most value for the least cost. Talk to fellow professionals. Check your hardware configuration before you buy. Look at the quality of support and the frequency of upgrades. You are not just buying software - you are also buying a partnership with the company developing and supporting that software.