I have a question for the Vue5 Infinite users.I recently purchased Vue5-Inf so I'm rather new having used 3D Max for years.Recently, Vue has been rendering pics much too light.The fast preview shows the image, the Camera panel shows the same lighting level as the small fast preview does.I do a test render with full rendering options in the camera viewpanel before I render to a new screen.I use GI and Vol-lights for mood quite a bit, so I tend to let the renders run overnight.Just recently, the renders of the final image in the new windows are about 3x lighter than the previews.I've rolled back my GeForce drivers,and I still get the same result. This just started happening and I was wondering if anyone has had similar results and found a work-around. I've disabled the vol-lights and the GI or Radiosity and the final render is still much lighter than I expected.Old saved scenes are doing the same where they didn't before.I'm not using custom render settings,but have the Vol quality set to 4 and I normally set the radiosity or GI to at least .5 for quality and the AA to Ultra. 3D Max is not having probs,and Vue just starting doing this.Any help would be most appreciated.I do commercial CG work and time is critical.

Thanks in advance!

/Maybe you should post both the render and a screengrab of the preview to get a better idea. Bear in mind that the preview is exactly thid: a preview, and should not be considered final. It is very small and always darker than your final render will be. Do you alo mean tht it didn't happen before? Could it be that you use a post render effect? Double click your main camera and it will bring the post render options. Check if there is something there you may have ticked by accident.

The preview is not very helpful for volumetric lights - it's way off as far as light and quality.  You would be better off doing a test render of just an area at the settings you are going to use. 

I have a tutorial on render setting.  It includes how do a render area. 

http://users.tns.net/~mwalter1/Vue_Render_Settings.pdf

Peggy

Thank you for the fast reply! No,the small previews,while always a bit darker,were always close enough to the final image.These problems just appeared (even in saved scenes that were fine before) ,and the final render was really washed out compared to the previews.I went out and bought a new GeForce card today and all is back to normal.I experienced a rare BSOD with WinXP last night,and when I posted the error report to MicroSoft,it told me a hardware problem that never appeared in my Device Manager.I'm thinking that the old card was going out.

I will most definitely check out your tutorial! Many thanks!

Glad all's back to normal!