Can anyone run through what I need to do in order to be able to see imported object in their true shape before rendering instead of black box's as it would help with scene setups. I was oalso trying to render a scene ealier & Vue cam up with an out of memory message - yet I have 2 gig ddr plus a P4 800fsb with a 128 ATI Radion Grathics Card - and nothing was running in the background - any ideas why this happen - or how to combat it in furture. I did have it set on ultra settings - would I be better off rendering in final & then ultra? The scene had to Poser figures as objects in it. Cheers

Black box: in the file menu, preferences, change the openGL display settings, increase instant draw slider to the right. BUT, if you're having the OOM error message, I strongly advise you not to do it, because this message comes when openGL cries for mercy! How to prevent it: - save often - always have a look at your available resources, in the file menu. - Only keep max 2 undo operations stored. - flush history often - organize your scene in layers, and hide layers you are not working on, so Vue doesn't have to redraw everything whenever you make the slightest change. Now this will not work everytime, but most of the time, these are good workarounds. Changing render settings won't have any effect on this problem, it's an openGL problem. The 2 Poser figures may be the problem here, because of the hi res texture maps Vue has to store in memory. Always use "collapse identical materials" in the import options. PS: using "ultra" is mad!

Attached Link: http://users.tns.net/~mwalter1/

Thanks very much for both of your advice - tried both & things are much better. John

Every thing that was said is absolutely true. One thing that was not mentioned that I have found useful is this: After working on an image and of course saving often, before I initiate a final render, I save and exit the program. Then after about 20 seconds when windows has finally flushed my memory, I start VUE up again and load the file then I start my final render. This assures me of the maximum amount of resources and I almost never have problems. Hope this helps you. G&C

Thanks for the tip John