Hi All,

I've been using the ("good") pre-release version of V6i for a while now on my PC and it's time to think about the update/upgrade/final version. The main reason I've waited so long is that I hate to upgrade software that is central to a project while in the middle of said project.... bad things can happen to good projects with average upgrades (sometimes). However, now the project has finished and I'm keen to update and get all the fixes I can get.

Anyways, before I take that leap....

Near the end of the pre-release cycle, e-on changed how V6i calculated its resource management and things went from reasonably working (the "good" pre-release version) to not so reasonably working (the one after the "good" pre-release version). E-on said that they were going to change the resource calculating/allocating/management back to what it was in the "good" pre-release. Did they end up doing that? i.e is the memory/resource management now (fully patched, final release v6i) back to what it was under the "good" pre-release version of v6i.

Also, if for whatever reason - is it simple enough to just un-install the final and go back to the pre-release version?

(Basically, the v6i pre-release runs better and is more stable than v5i fully patched ever was for me, so I'm a bit concerned at the chance of going backwards.)

Separate question - what isn't stored in the vue scene files - is it only textures it references externally while storing all geometry, orientations, material formulae, ... within the scene file? 

Thanks.

There are still resource issues with the latest release, reasons why vary depending on who you listen to.
If you use native Poser pz3's in your workflow then you will likely have problems with memory!
Apparently it's not e-on's fault [sic], it's the fault of the Posr SDK so until the poser peeps sort that out ----------------------------!!!!!

From my own experience, using it with just Vue content it works fine and is still a top bit of kit IMO!

I eagerly await the day that I can use it with native poser imports using the shader tree without it choking!

I've only been importing poser stuff from P4, and thats been in general ok for me, but then I scale down the texture maps and don't have any of that poser shader stuff that comes with P5,6,7 so maybe thats why I haven't had too many issues. However, I do agree that it is the imported content that seems to be the real bugbear whereas it flies along with Vue native stuff.

Was mainly after how it compares memory management-wise to the good  pre-release as that one is quite usable.

Well on your last point, the pre-release was better!
That said I've moved on to the final release and am reasonably happy with it but I do have to purge memory often in order to finish anything with poser content, I have still managed to do some what I think are good renders with it!!

Attached Link: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/support/ShowMessage.php?id=1179961390

Yeah, iloco, I think I saw that post somewhere around here as well.. If the problem is in Vue's handling of image maps and non-tri geometry, it wouldn't surprise me that the problem shows up elsewhere - I've had some fun and games with imported home made models  on the odd occasion.

Bryce used to (and might still) sometimes become incredibly unstable if one of its material parameters went to extreme values (i.e. like having a bump map scale of 100000% or something like that). Sometimes I wonder if the poser shader problems in Vue are due in part to some poser material parameter's import conversion producing really extreme values and thats what's causing some of the problems.

Have done the upgrade form the prerelease to the final. Apart from some strange opengl artifacts that have suddenly appeared (its like looking at the opengl preview through a broken window at times) from time to time which could be due to me not playing enough with the display options, it seems ok... and the GUI even seems a bit faster to respond to things like object selection which is good. My free resources seem about 10-15% lower than they were, but I can live with that so far.

I wish you luck with the update Flax.  With what I do in Vue I have to rely on Vue 5 Inf to get any complex scenes done.    If using simple materials and models and alpha based things I have no problem with last updte for Vue 6 Inf.  Get away from simple I have problems with lowe resources.

I get the strange artifacts in open gl also.   If you put collections on an external HD I beleive you will see its not as fast opening collections as if they in main vue install. :)

Will be curious to hear back from you after you have time to use it for a bit. :)

btw, when we going to see some more your nice models. :)

This openGlproblem we all seem to have is indeed annoying. I had a go at the manual, and from what I've read, it looks like Vue is showing decimated mesh previews instead of full geometry. Changing openGL settings to actually "show decimated mesh preview"  doesn't change anything, whicj leads me to think ther is a glitch there, and we only get decimated mesh previews, whatever our preview options are set to.
What do you think?

I think you are 100% right Bruno. Have you or anyone else reported this to tech.  It is annoying the same as slow showing of collections if used on external HD's   Vue 5 don't do this. :(

No I haven't reported yet, I was thinking about it this afternoon, but I'll do it now.

Thanks. :)

Yeah, I was wondering if it was a mesh preview thing and tried that to no avail. I'm not sure if this is a solution or a happy coincidence, but the problem seemed to go away when I upped to maximum quality the instant draw slider. Can you guys see if that has any effect? 

(I was also playing around a lot with other diplay options at the time, so it could be other things I altered at the same time, but I think it was that one that might have done it).

Yes that did away with pixalation but from what tech has told us its best to use instand draw at about 40% for improving working in vue.
  Its a never ending battle to get things right. :)

Do they recomend that 40% as a stability thing or a responsiveness of the gui thing (as in, I move the camera and what I see changes instantly as opposed to in 10 seconds time)? 

And do they give any indication about the background draw thread? I've read that disabling that is meant to help a bit for some problems.

Disabling the background draw thread can help keep your resources to a decent level when you have a complex scene and/or Poser figures with huge texture maps, and  not enough ram ( both cpu & gpu)

For scenes with lots of Poser imports or objects with large texture files, I found that turning off Auto-update on the camera preview makes a big difference.  While the camera updates, you could watch the resources start to drop.  As soon as I turned that off, resources were stable.  

This was a scene using about 7 DarkAnvil houses and several Poser figures  and props.  With Auto-update the resources would drop below 25% and I would get the warning (but no crash) on opening the scene.  Turning Auto-update off gave me around 76% resources on opening.  Big scene, big headache, but it's done and rendered.

Next time I do a project like this I will use multi-pass and make two scenes - one for the background, one for forground and people.  Read the User Projects article on e-on's site about how the Lirhful Station picture was put together. 

Yeap, my preview has been switched off since about 5 minutes after I started playing with the pre-release lol I didn't notice the resource usage, but noticed it really slowed down the responsivenes of the GUI in selecting things while it updated.

The multiple section way to do big pics - yeah, I'm pretty familiar with that - have been doing that with my bryce scenes since late 2002 due to using a comparitively (to the rest of the world lol) lo-spec PC at the time. It's an awesome way to avoid PC limitations for sure. Have been playing with Vue's render masks recently.

Must say, he gets some nice effects from playing with the depth maps in that Lirhful Station -pretty nice resulting lighting in all. Thanks for that link, Peggy :)