I just viewed that little flash interactive movie of the features that are within Vue 5 Infinite. I have to say that the renders of different landscapes are just mind blowing. And it seems like the learning curve for this software is a bit easier to grasp then say 3D Studio Max. Mind you, I have no problem with 3DS Max. And the price for this piece of software is pretty cheap. I figured it would be around the $2200 range but I wasn't even close. The one thing that is really getting to me is the animation. Upon watching the flash movie, to animate, say a car, all you gotta do is plot a path and select a motion type and the software will create realistic motions. Thats cool. I would like to ask those who purchased this software, what you guys think about this software? Is it really easy to create landscapes and do animations? Would it be a good investment? How is the workflow? Interms of rendering, how long does it take to render an animation? Of course some of you will say just download the demo. I wish I could but I'm still stuck in the stone age of dial up because I live out in the country. Thats why I'm posting here to get some opinions from all of you. Beginners and experienced are welcome to answer these questions. Thank you in advance.

If you can pick up a copy of 3D World, I thought there was a demo version included. Might be an easy way to try out the program. I love it, but it does have some demands on your computer specs, so if you have an older computer with not a lot of memory or an old video card, it may not work as fast/nice. As far as ease of use - I find it is one of the easiest programs to learn. The manual is detailed with lots of tutorials. There are several training DVDs also available for purchase. Peggy

I can't help about animating, I don't do animations (yet?) I think the learning curve is pretty quick, either with the manual ( well made, but lacking in some topics), tutorial dvds, this forum, and the one they have at cornucopia3d.com Creating landscapes is not so easy if you're after realism, but you'll get there fast. Global illumination in Vue looks fantastic imho, and the radiosity renderer is very good too. Render times can be excrutiating if Radiosity is enabled. Many options to speed up your workflow, decent openGL. Now the bad things: still a few annoying bugs after 10 months it's been out ( poser dynamic hair import, memory leaks to name the most annoying), and the atmospheres sometimes look more painted than real. Oh, and bad volumetric clouds. But the best software for rendering outdoor scenery, if you ask me. Some prefer the new Carrara 5 Pro though.

Where can I find a copy of 3D World? I looked at the stores today and I couldn't find any. I also watched their preview video and everything looks phenomenal. I getting really close to buying this software. The price is right so I may just go for it.

It's a few months old now, this issue of 3D World.

well if youre a 3dsmax owner youll enjoy v5I since max is one of the apps vue "prefers". Theres also a new max plugin called vue xStream comming out that will let you work with vue5Infinite inside of max using both apps perfectly merged together. As for v5I bruno sumarized it pretty nicely, except that vue is almost 1.5 years old by now (v5e anyway but esprit is built upon the core of v5I unless im misinformed) so you can probably expect v6 sometimes this year (could be wrong tho :P) anyway patches is being released with a regular intervall and new stuff is still being added to the application so vue5 is still getting better by the minute. Oh do i have to say that i realy enjoy working with vue :)

Amazing amount of creative power! You will need a mordern system with 2GB ram (Vue 5i comes with 5 "RenderCows" to make your own render farm, if you have some older machines around). I just do static scenes and the largest number of technical complaints come from the animaters - still you saw the promo reels and those were done by a user, not by an e-on employee or big pro animation firm. Of course we are all in awe of his work. I love the Vue 5i rendering and lighting and the amazing amount of control - especially when you get into the Function Editor (visually driven interactive graphics scripting with writing any code!). And the new Procedural Terrain tutorial ($20 at Cornucopia 3D store) shows how to build really awesome rocks and terrains. But don't expect to model much in Vue and it is not as stable as some apps, at least for some people. I don't have many problems, but i'm a PC consultant and know how to keep my machine in shape.

You want an honest ansser I will give you mine. I have used Vue since Version 4 and now have Vue Inf. My next upgrade when Vue Inf has ran its course will be carrara 5 pro. Why......people who are using it are not having the issues with poser that Vue is having and they are also not having the memory issues that have plaged Vue for a long time now. It also has features that Vue Inf should have had with its release. I am sure Vue 6 will be trying to catchup with some of those features. Vue does have an easy user Interface but I guess its all up to the user to decide if they can work with another. I hate to give it up but I have more reasons that will not discuss because its a lost cause and no use giving anyone a reason to start an argument. I have had enough when no one wants to listen and I am not by myself as a few forums and threads do show. I know a lot more users who have already moved to carrara and more who are going to move in that direction. Unless some drastic change were to take place I will be using carrara when Vue 6 comes out. Its your money and your decison so good thing you have taken time to ask. :)

If you decide to sell Vue 5 Infinite, how much would you sell it for?

I didnt say I would sell Vue Inf. It will be my last version I will buy unless big changes are made which I dont see happening. When I had Vue Pro which I still do I was one happy camper with it after the memory leaks and bugs were most all got out. I am hoping same with Vue Inf before the upgrades for people to Vue 6. Still lots work I think to make Vue Inf the equal to Vue Pro as far as stability. Any way you asked for opinions and I gave mine and will keep Vue Inf to have along with carrara 5 pro when I busy it. :)

Pros: (1) easy to use (2) can quickly create landscapes (3) ecosystems (4) as mentioned earlier, GI and radiosity look great (5) plays well with higher end apps, Maya in my case (6) pleasant customer service experience once you find the right page Cons: (1) Production, final or broadcast quality renders are slow, although I haven't yet tried using Rendercows yet (2) renders look "noisy" to me despite tweaking; maybe I missed the anti-noise setting (3) function editor may seem daunting if you're not familiar with procedural padadigm Indifference: (1) haven't used Carrara but in my experience every program that hosts a Poser native file will have a slow / clunky response Having graduated from Bryce since Vue 4, I am thoroughly satisfied with V5I as my landscape generator and I think you might too.

I'm currently teaching myself how to use 3D Studio Max 8. Its very cool software. I'm trying to rig characters. Poser characters are a little difficult to rig. Well difficult for me anyways. I'm also going to purchase some rigging DVDs. About 5 hrs ago, I purchased Mimic Pro for Poser 6 from the Daz3d site. Haven't tried it yet because I ordered the download version and I'm gonna do that later after I get some sleep. I think that I will get Vue 5 Infinite, because to me, generating landscape and doing the animation is a little bit easier to do than in 3D Studio Max. Mind you, I haven't thrown in the towel with Max and I never will, especially after taking a loan out for it lol. But I believe, by studying more on both softwares, I'll be able to create things that I can be proud of. I've got a few animation short films that I would like to do and I would like to see them happen so I can post them here and on the CGTalk forums also. This is a pretty expensive hobby, but its worth it. I'm also checking out Carrara too. :)

My advise: Do yourself a favour,buy Carrara5Pro instead.

Try Carrara before buying Vue Infinite. Vue is a great piece of software, but in my opinion Carrara surpasses it regarding stability, render speed and features. It even supports displacement mapping and sub-surface scattering.

I simply would try out the demos. And then decide what i like more. With the upcoming xStream maybe Infinite is a good choice, then Infinite will be completely embedded in your 3D Studio Max. Which is a big plus probably. However, try the demos and see yourself.

Vue is a nice piece of software that lets you create stuff that no other software does. It's also got a lot of otpions to connect to Max and other 3D apps. As such, it would be a very nice complement to your toolkit. As I see it, Carrara does a lot of things, but isn't brilliant at anything. Personnaly, I foud it rather disapointing. It's actually quite limiting, and my guess is that this is the reason why some folks find it more "stable". I'd go with Vue, if I was you.

I've got to agree with wabe on this one - grab yourself the demos and spend some time playing to see how you like them. Always best to do that before plunking down the hard earned $$.

I finally got my hand on the demo. Creating landscapes is easier than I thought it would be. I'm used to 3DS Max so getting used to Vue will take a little bit. I like the way you can control the shakyness of the camera movement. The way I tried to do a shaky handheld shot in 3DS Max was to add a noise modifier to the camera where as in Vue all you gotta do is adjust the vibration intesity in the Animation wizard roll out. I guess I take it that if I am doing a vehicle animation, I have animate the wheels seperately? Render times does take a little bit especially when I use the global radiosity instead of the regular atmospheric template. Although the regular atmosphere templates, to me, make the environment look somewhat realistic. I guess my goal is to create animations that are somewhat realistic, not like anything from Final Fantasy The Spirits Within which by the way is an awesome CG movie. I may buy this software pretty soon. It reminds of the good old Bryce 5 days. But this is way better.

With Carrara, you get stability. With Vue, you get better output. I have yet to be impressed with a single Cararra render. They ALL look blah next to Vue. And remember, your art can only get as good as the weakest link.

Yes, you would need to animate the wheels seperately. And while Vue has animation capacity it doesn't really come close to what you said you already have, which brings me to: You've got 3DS Max 8, so you don't need the modelling tools of Carrara. Vue makes a great compliment to Max (as well as Maya, Lightwave, C4D, and XSI) because you can do the more intimate scenes (up close shots of facial expressions, single room scenes, complicated animations, mocap, etc.) with those, and when you want something roaring over a complete environment you can throw your objects into Vue. That's what Vue is fantastic about - you can do the "small room" rendering, but you really get the highlights of the software (when you already have a real pro app like Max for the interiors and animation) when doing complete environments. Vue is also fantastic at just creating still shots to use as mattes and backgrounds for your animations to interact with. As far as color, contrast, environmental FX - you'll be changing and tweaking that in your compositing software. While I may be wrong about this, many of the problems I hear about seem to be coming from trying to make the ENTIRE render and "final look" come out of Vue alone (or, frankly, ANY app), when you need to tweak an image or animation from ANY software (including the $7k versions of Maya and XSI) in a compositing tool after you've finished the render. Put too many calculations on ANY app and it'll go haywire. Vue is a great choice - yes, picture Bryce on steroids and you've got it. While you can dig deeper in Vue, it has "about" that feel and learning curve. My only problem has so far been when I put together something complicated (by my standards - my scene files can get over 100megs - maybe some others here get bigger, I dunno), when I start upping the quality settings it starts spitting out numbers of over 100hrs rendering times to be expected. I find myself breaking it up and rendering things seperate and just assembling them in Photoshop - since Vue puts together the alpha mattes for you if you save as a PSD, it's a snap, and I can even place better environment tweaks (mist, light beams, debris in the air, smoke, etc.) between layers without having to do any complex masking. Hope that helps- -Lew ;-)

"With Carrara, you get stability. With Vue, you get better output"

I have both. Carrara5 Pro is both more stable, and it's not even rational to compare modeling -- Carrara beats hands down in that area. Carrara's renderer is superior. Rendering with GI settings and raytraced soft shadows is 5 to 10 times faster with C5Pro. Go to my gallery and you can see examples of both.

I can distribute instances with Carrara completely independent of materials, and can convert groups if instances to "real" instances.

If Vue wasn't constantly breaking (want to hear the latest?) it would be a fairly good application. As it is, it is overpriced shareware.

BTW, with a really big file render, I can pause C5Pro in the very easy to use batch render. Push the restart button and all render nodes start up where I paused. Except, memory is flushed so I can render huge files without "breaking them up."

100 megs? Small. My Vue5I scenes often reach 300 megs+, excluding texture maps. Vue has its rendering issues. Soft raytraced shadows tends to be grainy, unless you tweak the antialiasing settings and the amount of subrays, but then the render times go through the roof. Even on a fairly powerful machine (Athlon64 4400x2 with 4 GB RAM) render times for a large still can be measured in days, sometimes. Vue is not a modeling app and does not pretend to be. You can do some booleans, that's all. Then again, you have 3DS Max, so you already have a high end modeling app. The renderfarming ability is limited. When a scene is too complex to render to screen, renderfarming is disabled. Vue5I does not come in 64bit (yet???), so it's limited to 2 GB address space. And I often run into that limit. Vue5I is easy to use, and the manual is pretty good. All in all, I'd say it's worth the money. I enjoy Vue5I.

This is a very interesting discussion for me. I was unaware how advanced Carrara had become. I am reluctant to switch horses after investing heavily in Vue5i in money and time. However, I'm frustrated by several features in Vue5i that seriously limit my productivity: 1) The memory leak issue - I wouldn't accept a car that had a leak in the gas tank, would you? 2) The inability of Vue to distinguish between materials and material zones, which requires awkward, time-consuming workarounds. 3) The limited support for Poser imports. I'm tired of having to adjust the specularity of every Poser material because Vue can't be bothered to translate the Poser specularity settings into the Vue equivalents. As I work mostly with Poser figures, this is a big issue for me. (Just don't ask me to render in Poser!) Describing Vue as "overpriced shareware" is close to the mark - it's bugginess gives it a definite shareware feel, and doesn't match up to the price e-on charge for it.

"3) The limited support for Poser imports. I'm tired of having to adjust the specularity of every Poser material because Vue can't be bothered to translate the Poser specularity settings into the Vue equivalents. As I work mostly with Poser figures, this is a big issue for me. (Just don't ask me to render in Poser!)" Now this i am thinking about for a long time. You maybe have an answer to it? Or maybe someone has. How can the import filter "decide" what is a wanted setting and what is not? I would love to propose an idea for a solution to e-on. How great if we here could come up with an idea for it!

LCBoliou - we didn't compare modelling - he's GOT 3DS Max 8 - that trumps C5Pro without a sweat. It also comes with Mental Ray so - ditto. You can stop and save an image partially through the render, and close Vue altogether. Open Vue back up again, open your scene file, go to Picture>Resume Render and it starts back up where you left it. I don't HAVE to "break it up" - I'm just impatient, and don't wanna wait over 100hrs (or more) for a render, and I use that computer for my business during the day. And by breaking it up, the individual pieces render faster than the whole scene in one shot. It also give me more flexibility in post. wildstormfilms - everybody has a favorite app, and has had problems with certain apps. Wabe is right - download the demos of as many as you feel you have time to try out and make a decision after that. But given that you ALREADY HAVE 3DS Max8, I'm gonna guess all you'll really ONLY need something like Vue for outdoor scenes to create faster, and better landscape modelling - which you can import back into Max for rendering. Good luck- -Lew ;-)

@wabe: I'd love to discover some consistency between the specular settings that Vue comes up with and the specular settings in Poser. Then I'd write a P6 wacro that adjusts the speculars in Poser so that they import correctly into Vue. This should not require changes in Vue, other than the mentioned consistency. And I'd love to see Vue respect Poser's reflection map usage. Shouldn't be too much of a pain.

I hope someone comes up with a py script that would instantly convert Poser speculars in Vue. I think the problem here comes from Poser using black for highlights, thus using insane percentage of highlight brightness which makes any figure look like an inflatable doll in Vue! 5 But my guess is it's the same in other apps, or is it not? Takes too much time converting this in Vue, but I can deal with it. Poser dynamic hair import, this I really can't deal with. Hopefully, e-on will come up with something soon.

bruno021: that py script is not possible in Vue. Not now, at least. The materials cannot be changed using Python. One of the things I fervently hope for is that e-on will add decent (preferably full!) material support to VuePython.

Well, this shows how much I know about python! But would a colour change be considered a material change?

As far as i know Poser is the one and only application that does those strange material settings. As stated above, black for highlight color is a really wild idea. And when i understood it right is done to get a good look in their own render engine. Without care for export issues. THEY must change not the others that are consistant (as much as it is possible in this industry) with the others. Yes, i think a Python solution would be excellent. And in my bones there is a little bit of hope that it will happen one day.

Yes thundering1, I would like to use Vue 5 Infinite to create landscapes. Its alot quicker that way. I'm enjoying this program, even though I can only do a 5 sec animation and can't even try and integrate with 3ds max :(

Just thought of this question but I don't know how to edit my last post. How do you make cityscapes like the ones in the DEmo video?

Attached Link: Link

If it's the demo vid I'm thinking of, it looks very much like he made several terrains and applied ecosystems made up of Moebius' Dystopia building blocks. You can go into the marketplace (I think he may even have some in the Free Stuff section?) and do a search of the word "dystopia". He then animated a camera flying over the whole thing. Hope that helps- -Lew ;-)

The cityscapes are indeed Moebius 87's Dystopia blocks (and are well worth the investment, no matter what version you use). Phoul loaded them into Poser, imported them into Infinite, then saved each one as a .vob file, to make it easier on Infinite's memory (saving as a vob destroys the link with Poser, which saves a lot a Poser has some issues with releasing memory). Then it is just a matter of creating the ecosystem terrain, and adjusting the settings so that the blocks are close, and at right angles to each other (or that you were very careful when importing, so that they have all the same alignment). Another tidbit is that all the lights have separate material enteries, so you could create a single cycle strobe effect on the lighting masts before you save the vob, and the animated material should be preserved, giving you night ready buildings.

Well, after all the praising for C5, we can see that it has its problems too, and the most annoying seems to be ... memory leaks! Rings a bell...

"You can stop and save an image partially through the render, and close Vue altogether. Open Vue back up again, open your scene file, go to Picture>Resume Render and it starts back up where you left it."

I'm quite aware of this VUE feature, however upon restarting Vue the memory load, within about 45 seconds, goes right back to the edge of the memory abyss! You can also quit C5Pro, shutdown the PC, and do the same. My point was that Vue loads back the entire render POINT, thereby not relieving memory restrictions when rendering a very large file.

You are comparing C5Pro to V5I it is appropriate to mention C5Pros very good (but certainly not comparable to 3DS Max 8 or 3DS Max 8 price!) modeling tools. I think it is nice that I can do some very good modeling in the same application that does excellent outside scenes. C5Pro has most of V5Is features, and does a better job in terrain modeling. If you havent delved into C5Pro to any real depthhow do you know?

Actually, the biggest problem I'm having with Carrara is not "memory leaks," but memory allocation errors, which is not the same thing. I reported this to Eovia's "Bug Line." It will be interesting to see what is done about it. I'll give them some slack for a while as the application is considerably more stable than V5I was/is.

Message edited on: 01/12/2006 20:43

Get Vue 5 Infinite if you want to make the kind of images seen in the Vue gallery here. Get Carrara Pro 5 if you want to make the kind of images seen in the Carrara gallery here. I have both programs.

About Poser specularity - Poser uses black highlights as a way of turning highlights off - this imports sensibly into Vue; a black highlight colour means no specularity in both applications. Poser defines specularity otherwise by a specularity setting (0.0 - 1.0) and a highlight size. These are equivalent to the two parameters Vue uses, they are just in different units - a highlight size of 0.001 in Poser should translate to something like 90% shininess in Vue. Vue simply doesn't read this. It ignores the highlight size, whatever you set it to in Poser, and just sets shininess to 20%, which often looks awful. There is nothing you can do about this. It would take an e-on programmer probably only a few minutes to convert the highlight size into an appropriate shininess setting. It just hasn't been done. Similarly with reflection maps - if Vue can understand Poser's transparency maps it can understand Poser's reflection maps. There are no technical difficulties - the Poser material info is all there in ASCII. The fact that Vue translates some parts of a Poser material and ignores the rest is just laziness.

"If you havent delved into C5Pro to any real depthhow do you know?" #1 - People are just getting their BOXED versions of C5Pro so that's kind of a cheap shot - and I haven't played with the beta version since I have XSI and C4D - don't have any need, really. And I never will, yet I USE VUE FOR COMPOSITING MY SCENES. THAT is what he wants to know about. #2 - Carrara DOES have nice modelling capabilities as I've toyed with in PREVIOUS VERSIONS. So, yes, I know what it's capable of. #3 - which has nothing to do with the statement above - I don't seem to be having problems with memory leaks - I'm sorry you have and it's been a nightmare for you - not been a problem for me so far, so stop making it the number one complaint for ALL Vue users. While we were making comparisons, we ALL seemed to take it without saying that he wasn't going to be using Vue to do ANY modelling - and he NEVER ASKED about Carrara in the first place - that was something YOU brought up to steer him clear of the app he asked about in the first place. We ALL understand you like it better than Vue - yes, there are MANY things you like better about Carrara, and that's not what he wanted to know. He wants to know if Vue will integrate into his production pipeline with MAX - which it will, and you can import camera data as well. YES, so would C5Pro - YES, so would EIAS (yes, very limited modelling but animation and compositig is top-notch) - but he ASKED about Vue so it would be nice to stay on target. SHONNER - Great post! Bingo! Pleasantly unbiased!

What is the virtue of being "unbiased?" Uncritical thinking is unbiased. Uncritical thinking leads to shoddy human existence on all fronts of the human condition (this response is NOT to Shonner's post but Thundering1's interpretation).

The software industry is not religion -- it is PRODUCT, a THING, a TOOL. Corporations own the rights to these products.

As I write this, a VUE 5 INFINITE scene is rendering on one PC, and a Carrara5 Pro scene is rendering on 2 Dual core PCs.

"The software industry is not religion -- it is PRODUCT, a THING, a TOOL. Corporations own the rights to these products." LCBoliou- Yeah, it is and they do. And we CANNOT take it personally if something doesn't work as well as we'd hoped, or our particular use of it wasn't as good as we'd hoped. The virtue of being "unbiased" is that you can look at things objectively, comparitively, without mental hampering - and to "trash" something is biased. Unbiased does not equal uncritical - got no idea where you put those 2 together... POINT OUT problems without extended personal commentary - that's the professional way of doing things. When someone is contemplating dropping $500-$600, they don't need amateur-night bickering. They need to realistically know what it is they're contemplating to purchase. "As I write this, a VUE 5 INFINITE scene is rendering on one PC, and a Carrara5 Pro scene is rendering on 2 Dual core PCs." ...That's nice... On my other computer (an Athlon 3800+ / 64bit x2 - just one machine, sorry to say) a Vue scene is rendering, and when I finish this I'm going to finish a product shot's background objects in Strata... We don't necessarily care that you use both, or care that I have multiple apps myself... It's that we talk about the software's capabilities and limitations in a civilized manner - and trashing is not valued information - ie. the likes of "...it's not even rational to compare modeling" and "If Vue wasn't constantly breaking (want to hear the latest?)...". BTW - how does a software "break"...? Never had that happen myself. I've crashed my computer a few times, but the software itself... Never "broke"...

Well, I went ahead and Purchased Vue 5 Esprit yesterday. I got the download version. I didn't get Vue 5 Infinite because right now I don't have the funds for it and I was dying to render animations that are longer than 5 seconds. I take it that I need the Mover 5 module in order to import Poser scenes into Vue 5?

Vue 5 d'Esprit can import Poser stills out of the box. If you want to import Poser animations, including dynamic cloth and dynamic hair, you also need Mover 5. As far as I know, if you want to import a Poser still at another frame than the first frame, you'll also need Mover 5. What Vue 5 d'Esprit does not have is ecosystems. There are no plugin modules that will add ecosystem capability to Vue 5 d'Esprit. The additional plant and lighting modules bring Vue 5 d'Esprit plants and lighting to the level of Vue 5 Infinite. Ecosystems, plus the incorporated Mover 5, were the reason I purchased Infinite. Vue 5 d'Esprit plus all extra plugins would be only a little bit less expensive than Infinite, and I'd still have no ecosystems - a feature that I've grown to love.

Here is an interesting post I found on another forum (which I will not name) Dated January 9th 2006... QUOTE I Was Getting Ready To Post The Following On E-On's Message Board, When I Discovered That I Had Been Banned. I just got of the phone with Richard Choop.... He claims to be the supervisor, for E-On's Customer Service, and relations. If this is true, it's just a matter of time before this company goes belly-up! The man is arrogant, rude, non-appologetic (even though he and this company are ripping people off, with their misleading/fraudalent claims regarding their products)... That's not customer support, or relations... It's a SCAM, FRAUD and AGAINST THE LAW!!!! The software has been returned to the company. It was received and signed for, by someone named, N-STOMP. - Date of receipt: January 7th 2006. I did what I was asked to do. The software was sent to them and the software was deleted as requested, yet according to Richard, I have to be patient and "wait" till the Accounting Office, which is conveniently hidden in Europe, processes the information and issues a refund. - Not A FULL REFUND. A partial refund! - And not "as soon as we receive your package" as I was told. (the poster quoting a rep at Vue) RE: Vue5 and poser hair by sbell (e-on staff) on January 5, 2006, 03:14:28 PM. "Daniel, I'm sorry you feel this way. We will indeed refund you as soon as we receive your package (less restocking fee and the $50 voucher you spent on Cornucopia content during the 2 months that you have been using the product). Of course, after doing this, you are no longer entitled to using the product. You need to completely remove it from your computer and destroy any backup copies that you may hold." (Poster ending quote of Vue rep.) Facts: 1) I fronted my hard earned money and purchased VUE 5 Pro Studio, at full price. 2) I advocated the purchase of E-On's software. RECOMMENDED it to friends and fellow colleagues, etc... 3) The misleading information regarding Poser 6 using Dynamic Hair remains posted on their web site, even thought they are aware that it does NOT work as they claim, and have ADMITTED that it does not work as described. 4) EOn Software "knows" that they are committing FRAUD, and apparently they are SO arrogant that they think they can get away with it. 5) Mr Choo-Choo.... Claims that I am SPAMMING their user message board. LOL!!! - You haven't seen spam! 6) I paid to have access to this site, and the member boards. If "I" and other members who purchase their software are not supposed to speak their minds? - Then why bother with this BS, of a message board at all? (rhetorical) 7) Speaking the truth and letting it be known is not called "SPAMMING"!!! - it's called relaying VITAL information, to those who may be concerned; or experiencing similar problems. That's why this message board exists, no? (again rhetorical) 8) I will be filing a complaint against this company; both with Oregon's BBB and Oregon's State Attorney's Office. 9) My attorney (Mr. XXXX XXXXX) has been sent all of the relevant information. 10) I will never call you again, Mr. Choo-Choo (AS YOU DEMANDED and SHOUTED OVER THE PHONE). ~ As I said right before I hung up on you... "The next phone call will be from my attorney". Sincerely, and for the very last time....... (we wouldn't want to fill this message board with "FACTS"... That would be in E-On's worst interest. PS... You have made an enemy, from an advocate; Mr. Chooo.... Congratulations! ~ See you in bankruptcy court! - I'll be sitting in the front row wearing a t-shirt that reads.. "I TOLD YOU SO"... Ohh, and BTW, since E-On Software has not returned my money, as agreed, yet you have BANNED me from your Web Site, you have forced me to make this information public... By the end of the day, everyone will know just what a piece of trash you, your company and your products, really are.... Have a nice day! ----------------END of all of POSTER's QUOTE---------------- Now on to my comments: I have been kind of busy at Turbo Squid lately, and had no idea it was this bad (still) at 'E-yawn' I did see some posts there (Turbo) asking if there are any other users of Vue or Bryce, and the responses were; "Hey, we use mostly 3D Studio Max, Cinema 4D, Light Wave, and ZBrush the 'professional' programs, and there are not that many Bryce and Vue users (if any) here at Turbo Squid." Kind of a snubbed remark, but accurate. Vue has never been considered by the serious 3D community to be a 'professional' application. And rightly so, considering the lack of professional customer service there. Again, if they were professional, or provided support for professionals, it would be a WHOLE DIFFERENT BALL GAME. So because they regard their customers as 'amateurs' It looks like they provide customer service and product support as such. I personally have a trial version of Vue Professional 4 that I use only for rendering screen shots. I will NEVER go out and buy the full version. Not after being fore-warned. I am saving up for 3D Studio Max. It costs much more, but it does SO MUCH MORE. And they have an excellent support team. In the mean time, I will use Animation Master to do my creations, and learn all I can about ALL the 3D applications out there. There is so much competition available, to limit myself to one 'hobby' application. (my 2 cents)

Some people are so full of hate that they will never be happy with a company, even after being allowed to return software for a refund. The hate just keeps on eating and eating away inside them. Rational thought and decency is no longer a part of their character.

The same message was posted here. Short lived, admin removed it. Whie Vue and e-on are not perfect, they're not as bad as displayed in the tantrum quoted by graphicguru. By the way, 3DS Max 6 craps out on the renders I want to do, while Vue can do them fine - most of the time. I have this tendency to drive an application or computer over the edge. Each application has its own strong points and weak points.

Nothings perfect in this world and that includes software and tech support. Just like what svdl said, "Each application has its own strong points and weak points." Same as human beings.

Well, there is some viable concern in the democratic 3D application marketplace and democracy is never particularly pretty get used to it or return to the dark ages!

I just had a very positive experience with Charles Brissart, Eovias development lead. I had sent him an email outlining some memory allocation errors (crashes) Ive been having with Carrara5 Pros new volumetric clouds in complicated scenes (usually, a lot of distributed instances). He sent me an upload URL, and I sent the problem file. Within 6 hours he sent me back an email stating that he had duplicated the problem in the debugger, and that it would be fixed with the next patch release.

Now Eovia isnt perfect, but this kind of response causes me to have an honest respect for such software companies, and I sent him a very kind email back.

BTW, until MS and Apple get full 64 bit OS out, we are going to have memory issues with all 3D applications. Unlike the majority of software in which the hardware is ahead of the demands of the software, we users of 3D applications are pushing the hardware.

Some folks, without a doubt, possibly overreact to some software problems, but then, some folks dont seem to understand that some users depend on software to derive a living from. Marketing claims are an implicit contract, and many companies dont back the claims they make for their software.

Thank evolution that we have PC industry journalists like John Dvorak who arent enamored with moronic brand loyalty, and will speak out for quality and accountability with respect to software companies viva free speech!

Message edited on: 01/14/2006 01:28

In response to the above: I rather like the way Vue renders look when finished. I hold no ill toward Vue. Like anyone else, I will not trust them, and there are very few companies I will trust. I will not be one of those who get stuck with a bill of goods that do them no good (I.E. the cornucopia, and encrypted Vue models, now worthless for other applications) I will stick to creating my own models in a consumer friendly app. And why would someone remove a post like that, unless they have something to hide, or do they have a vested interest in a so-so product, and so-so customer service? & why is it whenever someone had a negative experience, and talks about it in a democratic way, they are accused of 'hate'? That would be like accusing someone who intellectually disagrees and expresses their disagreement with the president of any particular country, of being a 'terrorist'...What is every one so afraid of? Are we going back to political correctness? I find this almost amusing, that is about how much it has affected me. Two things I love, Peace, and the Truth. To have both, sometimes you have to dig a little bit. Thanks

"That would be like accusing someone who intellectually disagrees and expresses their disagreement with the president of any particular country, of being a 'terrorist'".

Intellectually disagreeing with the President and hoping the terrorists crush the US are two different things. One of them involves hate, by the way.

Message edited on: 01/14/2006 03:59