Just got my free copy of d'Esprit2 from Computer Arts. Do I need the patch for 2.1 to import Wavefront objects. I had to contact support because I can't get it to download. I keep getting thrown off the internet when I do. Also, is there a tutorial out there that I can follow step by step on creating a scene. It took months to even get the concept of Bryce and when I look at the help section in Vue, it looks like a foreign language to me.

Attached Link: http://www.multimania.com/arte/beginners.html

I would say that your best source is Guitta's tutorials for beginners (link above). Maybe the help file is a foreign language...did you get the French version? :) The help file will probably make a little more sense if you just dive into the program. It is quite intuitive and the 4 port view follows more traditional standards than Bryce (whose interface I can't stand!). Good luck, -karl

Attached Link: http://www.multimania.com/arte/indexeng.html

Hi Rita, I don't know about the patch problem. Maybe you can get someone from E-on to email it to you? I also don't know if that's what you'll need for importing .obj format, as I never had Vue 2. BUT, If you check out our tutorials section right here at Renderosity, you can find some good tutorials that'll get you started off towards understanding Vue better. The link above is to Guitta's site, and she has some great info and freebies there. But if you look to the right of your screen, under "Features", you'll find "Tutorials". Clicking on that will take you to the place on this site with ALL the tutorials available, and if you click on Vue d'Esprit, you'll find links to even more tutorials. Hope this helps you, and feel free to ask anything you want to and we'll do our best. :) I know that the free copy of Vue doesn't come with a manual, and I also know ythat even WITH a manual, Vue can be confusing at first. Cheers and Welcome, Mike

Yeah, what Karl said... I guess we were posting at the same time.... he's always one step ahead of me. ;)

Attached Link: http://start.at.arte

Hi Rita, if I remeber well, Vue2 does not import OBJ files. I think it was a new feature in Vue 3. Idem for 3Ds. But I'm not sure,as it is longtime ago I used Vue 2. Guitta

Hi, I just started playing with 3d graphics 2 weeks ago and also got my free copy of Vue.... day before yesterday.... so I hope no one minds if I jump in since I just installed the CD....and also since this is the only time I'll ever have an answer for anything G As for needing the upgrade to import .obj files...yes, I think you do need it. I don't recall seeing the option to import those files before I did the 2.1 upgrade but it's there now. Also, you really don't need to download the upgrade from their site, it's already on the same cd. Just look at the contents of the cd in windows explorer. Check in pcsoft/Vue2Upgrade21 Folder and copy everything in there into the folder where you installed Vue 2 and that's it. At least that's what I understood from the directions and it's worked as far as I can tell, but I haven't gotten much of a chance to play with it :( Hope this helps

Hi Kathie, Thank you so much for posting this here-- now we all know! And, hello, and welcome. Feel free to ask any questions you might have. :) Cheers, Mike

Attached Link: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/OnlineReg/Vue2/ComputerArts55.phtml

Also just got Vue2 from the Computer Arts CD. You have to register before you install and they will E-Mail you a registration code which you enter when you install, upgrading it to 2.1. Looks like you have a lively group here mjustmike. Sesh

Thanks Sesh, that's interesting-- all these new pices of information coming in makes it alot easier when people start asking questions. Lively? You bet!

Thanks for the links. I found the upgrade patch on the CD. I unzipped it but when I try to use it, none of the working files eg atmosphere, materials are in it. And when I try to close it, it crashes. VUE2 caused an invalid page fault in modele CW3230MT at O17f:00802c57.With a lot more stuff. Very frustrating.

Hi Rita, I don't know the specifics on the patch, but do you have anything by Norton, particularly Norton Crash Guard running? The best way to install Vue is to have everything but "SysTray" closed with ctrl+alt+del before installing it, and probably the patch. Sometimes uninstalling it and re-installing helps, too. From all I've heard, Vue 2 can be kind of unstable, and it's best not to try to run other programs at the same time. Vue 3.1, however is quite stable. But I guess that doesn't help you any. :( Good luck, and I hope you can get it running well soon.

I uninstalled Vue2 and the patch and reinslled everything again. I think I have to copy all the files from vue2 into vue2.1 Gosh, I thank all for trying to help. It gives me the courage to go on. All I did was to create an island in the middle of water but can't get a tree to show in the foreground. All this in Vue2 which works quite well. Very unlike Bryce.

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

Rita, your response leads me to believe that you were trying to run the patch as a separate installation. You are supposed to unzip the contents into your Vue2 folder. It overwrites the files that need updating, but there are plenty of files from the Vue2 installation that stay the same. -karl

Rita I am so happy to hear that everything's fine now. I was feeling bad cause it seemed like you had problems after I opened my mouth :) Really glad it worked out though G Can't wait to see your first render! Hi Mike! thanks so much for the welcome :) Hopefully I won't ask so many questions that you'll get sick of me :)

"All I did was to create an island in the middle of water but can't get a tree to show in the foreground." Rita, did you by chance create a water plane so far above the ground plane that the tree is below the water level? Vue plants will "grow" on the ground plane, after all. Well, actually this is just a guess, and I never add water to a scene until I have all the other elements in place, so I really can't say for sure that a tree or plant won't "grow" on water--- just an idea.... ............ Kathie, You won't make neither me, nor anyone else "sick of" you, just by asking questions--- that's what we're here for-- to let you know when we're sick of you-- I mean, to answer questions! ;)

LOL

Mannn!!!....isn't this just GREAT! I am seeing a lot of new names here :)..Rita, Sesh, Katie and Iron Bear....woahhh!...welcome people...this place is so much warmer! :)

For all its worth, I installed Vue2 without a registration # on my older computer and tried updating it to 2.1 and couldn't. My guess is that one of the modules in the upgrade checks for a valid registration # (see my previous post). Sesh

When I unzipped the patch,it was in the Vue2 folder. I had to copy and paste all the folders in Vue2 into the Vue2.1 folder. Still having some problems but no crashes. I did make a scene of an island in the water with land near by and a palm tree on the island. The scene can only be saved with a vue extension so pray tell how does on get it to appear as a jpg or bmp. I can't believe the only way is to do a screen capture.

Rita, you have to render it, and then choose from the file menu, either Export Image, OR, on the RENDER screen at the top is a small screen-looking thing. See picture above. Clicking on that will open the options to save the image. Name it, choose save. Another screen wil pop up, listing your save options. I always choose 16 million colors. Note that it WILL NOT save as anything other than a .bmp unless you manually attach a .jpg extension and choose .jpg from the drop menu in the save dialog. What? You thought we all were doing screen captures, LOL! ;) Note that the other controls are for saving alpha channels and what not. Cheers, Mike

After rendering no other windows popped up but I did go to pictures and could save it as bmp in my paint program. since I am very familiar with jpgs, I changed it to that and here is my 1st rendering. Whoop-de-do

Woah!!!...a place I wanna be there :) Bill

Cool, Rita, and that's a lovely picture-- I agree with Bill-- I wanna be there too! I'm not so sure I understand what you mean by, "save it as bmp in my paint program.", but whatever works for you is good. :)

Rita, did you choose "final" for this pic, or "preview"? It looks as though it's not been anti-aliased.

I haven't got the faintest..... I know it was on a single screen. You're dealing with a 68 yr old senior citizen that's not as hep as you guys. I have another question if I may. I imported some objects that were in color. I've looked for the color editor but in the help part it's hard to make out where it is. I found a little box on the right, and highlighted the section as in bryce to color. When I chose the color in the box, it didn't take effect. I'm sorry for all the questions but this to me is not an easy program without a manual. Attached is the latest. Simple but needs an answer about color. Thanks for your help guys.

Hi Rita, Um, I will be more than happy to try to find an answer for you, but first I have to do a little researching. See, Vue 3.1 introduced the ability to import Poser characters as Wavefront.OBJ. With the combination of the .obj format and the accompanying .mtl file (which would list all applied textures), now Poser characters load with texture intact. But all is not lost, since Vue 2 handles .3DS imports, which I suspect you've done here, and it's possible to map the textures manually. In any event, I'm not sure what Vue 2 offers along the lines of map or color editing, though I hear it's not too far removed from the current version. So, I want to see what I can find out, and I'll put up a couple of screenshots and try to help you to understand how to go about it. Once you get past some of these nuisances, I promise Vue is easy. Even with the manual, I struggled with Vue at first, if that's any consolation. Hang in there! :) Mike

Yes, I am sad to say that 3ds is not one of the things that vue 2 imports... At least when I try to import the only options it's offering is vob, obj, dxf and raw...

That was an wavefron obj. created in Poser originally and imported from Bryce. I tried 3Ds and the only way to import them is to open in Bryce and save then import to vue.

Hi Rita...I read in serveral posting that you can place the "mtl" file in the same folder when you copy the obj file to your Vue obj folder. This would let Vue load the texture information together when you import it into a Vue scene. The other thing you can do is that, after exporting from Poser as an obj file, make sure they are save as individual group and its good...this way, you can use "Picture mapping" instead of procedural to bring in the texture for the object. This is found in the "Material Editor" in the "color" tab diaglog window. To get here, just click with the right mouse button on the sphere (right hand top) in the world browser. Since its a obj and not a 3ds (which is not affected), the image (texture) that you load in have to be flipped. You can either flip it in a paint program first (if and after making changes to thebmp image) or just put a "-" to the "Picture Scale" "Y" value to read "-1.00" instead of "1.00". This is also in the Material Editor "Color" tab. This is all in Vue 3 or 3.1 (just that Vue 3.1 allows you to run in Win2K). I think Vue 2 may be different but I hope the basic is somewhat the same...may be more step needed. X-Vue 2 user...your help is needed :) Varian, Karl?...

I'm completely baffled as to how you managed to save it out of Bryce as a 3DS file. I have Bryce 4 and that simply isn't possible to do, any way that I know how to at least. In any event, since you do in fact have it as a 3DS and it loads into Vue, assuming the object parts have not been merged together, as Bill says, in the material editor, you need to select "mapped picture" (or maybe "mapped values"?), and simply apply the appropriate textures to the appropriate parts. Oh, by the way, as for the anti-aliasing: If you choose, "final", "broadcast" or "ultra" in the Render Options dialogue, it will do this thing called, Anti-Aliasing, which simply means that after it renders the picture, it smooths out the jagged edges... make sit look much better. :)

Hmmm...this one slip me by..true, Brcye can export with obj but not 3ds withone of the 'undocumented' command (sound like MC do not want us all to know)....its "Ctrl" key something as mentioned by Steve Shank a few time at the poser list. Laurie :)...are you around...you a bryce expert too may be you can help? Bill

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=107&Form.ShowMessage=266874&Reply=267593#6

Yeah, it's weird, but I just went to the Bryce forum, which I haven't done in a while, and right there, at the top, in a message posted by tradivoro, is the answer as to how to do it. Check out the link. Weird, eh?

Sorry guys. The obj that I thought was 3ds was actually an object from poser. Mea culpa. Tried the final render and at least got the anti alias now.

What about the texture? Did our suggestion works for you?

Hadn't tried it yet as I cannot remember all the info so had to copy and past so I can follow the print. Remember I'm not as swift as you guys!!!

Take your time Rita. I thought it did not work for you seen you did not mentioned it. Please do let us know how else we can help.

Hi, I've only been using vue 2 for a few weeks myself, but thought I'd chip in and share my findngs:) With the update it can import objs but not mlts, which makes texturing more time consuming but it can be done. The attached image shows how the poer figure apppears in vue, under loads of seperate bits all grouped together, these were exported from poser with weld all seams, but with keep groups options selected. The texture maps need to be flipped verticaly in another progran (like psp/ps) and any transparancies need to be flipped and the colours inverted. Hope this helps Alla

And here's the finished render, with transparancies:)