Hi all, I'm just curious as to how most of you use Vue. It appears from reading these threads that many(most) of the Vue users and also Posers. So what is your process?...you use Vue primarily for what? I'm currently running into a roadblock with Poser 5 when trying to render a complex scene. (7 figures & lots-o-props)My 1 ghz OSX machine (3 gig free drive space 768 Ram) runs out of memory and slams me to the desktop. Is Vue my $250 dollar answer? Can Vue handle these larger scenes? What is the practical limit for Vue? Is it as simple as creating the scene in Poser 5, saving, and then loading the Poser file into Vue 5 for rendering? Why else will Vue put a smile on my face? Thanks for your answers.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=525045&Start=13&Artist=agiel&ByArtist=Yes

I use Vue for the better control it gives me on materials, lights and atmospheres. It takes some organization to handle complexe scenes, but it is doable. Check this link for a scene I made with a lot of poser figures (lot of postwork too, but the basic scene was rendered in Vue). The practical limit largely depends on the scene itself. You can render scenes with several millions polygons easily, and then you run into a brick wall trying to render a simple scene with a lot of blur, soft shadows and transparencies :) Vue can read .pz3 files directly, with some minor adjustments needed for reflections or bumps. It can also synchronize your scene if you go back to poser and asjust one of the figures.

I thought this was and interesting questions. In generally, I have a high level of control with VuePro (I lust after the upcoming VuePro 5) and have found it easy to manuver in and get work done. For sheer polygon count this is my biggest: 42mil polys, mostly polygonal terrain gound cover, but 3 meshes of v3 and quite a few props in the "Hiking" image. For body count look at sacada's "100 Victoria Statues". At the other end is "Dr. Frankenwoodies' Monster" which has 9 lights, 7 glows, a low polygon count and rendered in ultra setting in about 5 minutes - quick and painless. I use a 3.06 with 1 gig ram, and a 64Mb nvidia card. Do you need Vue? No, not really. But you'll be addicted if you get it I'd wager. good luck

agiel, That was beutiful!

And don't forget about us animators! Poser and Vue make an excellent poor man's set up.

Yes, Agiel, that a REAL artistic masterpiece!

Agreed, Agiel! Poser is great for setting up the figures, but I even save props etc and bring them into Vue. In Vue (I use Vue Pro), it's much easier to set up scenery (trees, terrains, buildings, you name it) than in Poser; you can just grab stuff and move it an resize it without having to monkey around with the trans and scale dials in Poser. I find adjusting and moving lights a lot easier as well. Sometimes I have something particular in mind and do my figures in Poser and scene in Vue with that targeted...sometimes I just start playing around and something grows. Sometimes the pose of a figure will suggest something to me. I think, for me anyway, Vue is just easier to move around in and manipulate the various elements, whether objects, lights, textures. And having the 4 viewports, rather than having to switch cameras is a plus.

Very very nice Agiel. I'm a poser/vue user as well. I much prefer Vue lights etc It's also much easier to move things around. I find poser bogs down with large scenes where Vue does't. On occasion I will make a scene in vue and render just the figures in poser, saving as a tiff file so I can postwork them in. That's mainly because I do covers and if I put it all together I always get someone wanting the woman in a dress not jeans etc... easier that way. But to me the two go together perfectly.

I use Poser to set up my scenes: I use VuePro to render them.

The Vue renders are faster and more stable.

Vue has better lighting control.

Vue handles materials better than P5, and it provides many more options.

In my experience, Vue can successfully render scenes of greater complexity than P5 can -- on the same machine.

It's a breeze to import a P5 scene into Vue.

With the advent of Vue 5 (VuePro 5 coming soon) and HDRI -- you can't go wrong with Vue. Highly recommended.

Agiel, that image REALLY is something. Wow! Thanks everyone for the comments. I shall begin saving my milk money!

Another thing to consider is Vue's bigger rendering screen. Unless you have a dual monitor set-up, Poser's main screen has some severe size limitations and will start to overlap the other controls. Vue has better and smoother camera controls as well. Poser jerks everything around (we love it though!)

One thing to keep in mind: Poser figures tend to have large and texture maps. While Vue can render many more polygons, it tends to choke on too many texture maps, that's where Poser beats Vue. For instance, I can render 7 V3s in Poser with hires texture maps, while Vue stops at 3 V3s (same machine). About the materials, well, I prefer the Poser 5 material room - probably because I've got more experience with it. The Vue lighting system is clearly superior. You are going to LOVE point lights! And volumetric lighting renders much faster. And of course, when it comes to landscapes.... It is possible to do a good landscape in Poser, but that is an incredible lot of hard work. The Poser/Vue import works very well. If you use animations or dynamic cloth and hair, be sure to get the Mover 5 plugin as well!