Don't get me wrong, I love Vue, but it crashes every time I use it, and often (OFTEN) more than once....I'm just wondering if others suffer from this as much as I do....

not every time.

more often than i would like.  i did find something that causes it every single time - but figured a work-around, so its not as big of an issue (unless i forget).

watch your free resources - when you purge and move the mouse, the numbers should remain fairly steady.  if they drop rapidly - save, exit, reboot computer.  i learned this the hard way LOL.  rebooting vue kind of works, but it seems to be more stable after a good computer boot.

oddly enough - i had fewer problems with the PLE (less than two months ago) than with Pro Studio and crashing.  It was a LOT more stable.  Go figure.

your mantra is....

SAVE PURGE SAVE PURGE

=D

(now isnt THAT an oxymoron?)

good luck.

Thought I'd check to see who'd responded because, guess what, Vue just crashed on me again....seems to do it often while moving trees about, and especially after I've just saved....

Hey melikia, I've always been a little afraid of purging the memory....what does that mean exactly?

oh dear... no wonder you crash =D

Your computer's memory can only hold so much.  After a while, all that stuff gets cluttered - kind of like having a million thoughts at once and the phone rings.  there go the million thoughts - and CRASH - there goes vue.

It frees up resources.  I.E. Brain power. 

someone else can probably tell you WHY this is a good thing better than i... i just know its GOOD. 

Push the button.

It wont hurt.

but i won't say "trust me" =D

I think melikia summed it up perfectly!

Purging just releases back to you free memory which Vue had been using.

I only have 1GB so I have to purge often. Large texture maps after a Poser import are the main culprits. I keep purging after every main change to my scene. Thankfully I don't get many crashes, touch wood.
Yeah, got to save often as well, just in case.

I just had crashes using two terrains with different ecosystems. They would render once or twice in preview than freeze Vue. had to reboot. I have four gigs of RAM.

drifterlee - I wish I had 4GB to play around with. That must have been some scene overload to cause that freeze.
Mind you, I guess people's PC setups vary so much that the same scene on someone else's system wouldn't cause a problem.

I also have 4G RAM and using XP. I know it is redundant,but i was running Vista no to long ago.The only time i get a crash is when i am repeatedly playing with materials that are more than 6-7 layers deep. and it crashes hard. Basically just shuts off Vue like that. But on the subject. EVERYONE gets Vue to crash at some point.It is just one of those happy little quirks that makes Vue, Vue:D

Since posting this Vue crashed on me four more times.  Each time I was moving a tree.....a tree!  And not a complex one either.  Just a simple summer maple.

I do save a lot, and I'll purge my memory a little more often.  I just wanted to know how often this happened to others.....

I would check your OpenGL settings. And maybe switch that off completely. OpenGL issues are the absolute maijor reason for crashes, especially for crashes as you describe them. So go to the preferences of Vue and see what happens when you switch it off completely.

you might want to check your video settings.  too much of a load on the card and it'll crash.

vue is SUPER DUPER PICKY.

i built this computer around vue as best as possible (i still need a better graphics card, but this one is functional for now)

reduce the load.  turn off EVERYTHING you don't need.

also, Drifterlee - if you dont have 64 bit OS system, you're pretty much wasting 2 of those gigs.  windows isnt sure exactly how to utilize it all at once.  This is how it was explained to me, anyway - if i AM wrong, someone please speak up so i can correct my own knowledge =D

Maybe your background draw thread slider is set too high, check under the file menu, options, display, you have 4 sliders one for instant draw, one for background draw, and again a set of 2 sliders for plants. Move the plant background draw towards the left alittle, then load a maple tree and move it around. If it still crashes, move the slider again towards the left, and check if it crashes still. This will set the limitation for plant background draw thread for your machine.
Background draw, btw, is the process of refreshing your viewports, scene and material previews while you are doing something else inside the program, and can be very resource intensive if set too high for your video board's openGL possibilities.

I have some occasional crashes, but not too often (say, 2 or 3 times per week). One thing that I found was source for crashes was the nano-preview (I think this is the Bryce name, can't remember the Vue name for that, but you know what I mean). I always have that set to not auto-update. Since I started doing this sistematically, the number of crashes decreased tremendously.

Another thing that causes lots of crashes are renders of boolean operations. After I get a boolean operation just the way I want it, I save the object separately (in case I want to change it later) and bake it.

If you are limited on RAM, purging your memory very frequently is essential too. Keep an eye on the amount of free resources in the bottom right corner. Forget the number of polygons that can also be displayed in this field, the free resources is a much more valuable information. If that goes under 10%, you are in big trouble and a crash is very likely to occur.

By the way, speaking of RAM, when I upgraded from XP32 3GB to Vista64 8GB I felt a notorious reduction in the number of crashes. Before, my average of free resources was around 20% for some complex scenes and now, no matter what I throw at Vue, I never go down 75% free resources, average being around 85% free.

can i have your system, Rutra?

mine STILL has issues with resources - but i have found (from watching, listening, and testing the PLE) that Pro Studio and below are just NOT as efficient with memory as Infinite.  My crashes increased when i installed the modules.

My resources START at 80% - with the PLE, i start at 90% to 95%

within a good half hour (thats adding terrains, some plants, and possibly an imported object or two) - my resources will NOT climb above 60%.

after an hour, it wont go above 50%.

after that, i have to save & reset vue again.  After about 6 hours of this, a computer reboot is in store.

If  i DO NOT import objects, my resources will stay above 50% - barely.

also - mine will crash if resources drop below 20 to 25% and i ask it to do JUST ONE MORE THING, PLEASE!

I dont even open the PLE now - its too depressing to return to Pro.  if I dont have infinite by the time Peggy's classes start back up again, I'll have to open it - but oh please dear Universe - dont make me!

ok - someone with pro studio - can you test this bug for me?  its kinda simple...

import an object with preferably more than 3 material zones.
open one part  - go to bumps, edit function, insert a projected texture map.  doesnt matter which one - just remember it, you'll use it later.  hook it up like you would normally to the bump function.

go to next zone.  bump - repeat above with the SAME texture map you used before.

EVERY single time i go to do this - if i dont save & restart vue in the middle, i get a hard crash.  Vue just poof vanishes.

My workaround - stop adding (bump) projected texture maps.  i now connect my bumps directly to the color map (if it has one) or fake it with other functions.

Anyone else with pro have this happen?

Since i discovered this was the cause of 75% of my crashing - i stopped and now i crash - like Rutra - maybe 2 or 3 days a week. (i was drooling on your Ram there!)

how do you operate without your mini preview window?

with the white screens my video card just LOVES to give me - its sometimes my ONLY clue as to what im working on.  although, i suppose if i turned it off - i might not have white screens.

even with crashing - even with the headaches....

I LOVE VUE =D

melikia, you have xp64 4GB, I have vista64 8GB, you have Pro Studio, I have Infinite. All these differences can explain the differences in stability and resource usage. Furthermore, I tweaked my Vista for performance. I couldn't care less about all that fancy Aero stuff from Vista so I disabled every graphical aspect from the OS that could affect performance, even remotely. I even have my Vista disconnected from Internet (I write this in my old XP), to make it easier with firewall, anti-virus, spyware and all protection stuff from Vista. The computer is stripped down to pure performance. If I have to exchange stuff with my XP (e.g, downloaded content, upload images), I use a USB disk and physically connect to one or the other computer. I know, it's very primitive, but it works. :-)

How do I operate without mini-preview? When I'm working on a scene, I adjust the quality boost of the atmospheric settings' Light tab to -4, which makes preview renders blazing fast, and I do a lot of preview renders. A lot, constantly. I also use area renders a lot. I switch several times from shaded mode to wireframe mode, depending on the objects I'm using and the kind of positioning I'm doing.

I have Vue 6 Inf and found that checking my resources and purging helps. When I get close to 30% resources I will purge and that seems to do the trick.

wow, rutra...

waits for her brain to finish digesting that

lol - i do NOT envy you vista - i still hate it with a passion that goes beyond... (insert whatever here)

ive seen folks get it to work fine for them, but every time i have to mess with it, i end up with bald spots - from ripping my hair out.

when i have room (i mean PHYSICAL SPACE - that cute little trailer for sale at cornucopia is only slightly smaller than my space) - i have a laptop ready for me to use for everything NON-graphical.  THIS one will be yanked offline forever and always amen.  Non-graphic programs will be removes. (including my gamesgrinz)  that'll help, i know.  i cant wait LOL.  i have an external hard drive that holds all my storage files and anything i have to transfer from here to hubby's laptop & vice-versa.  THIS monster has two HDs and room for i think 4 more.  at some point, i can also shove another 4GB memory in - which i intend to do =D

As someone said... the economy kinda sucks right now.  Every bit of fundage we can, we're throwing into the piece of property we've been trying to purchase - and move onto.
we keep coming up against brick walls, but as the now-late Prof. Randy Pausch said - brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how BADLY we want something.

i still cant fathom working without the mini-preview window LOL.  i do test renders up the wazoo (never thought of turning atmosphere light quality down) - but after a while, even the tests can take 15+ minutes.

i'll have to try these suggestions - might help =D

and if you don't mind... from time to time i'll drool on your RAM ;)  i'll be sure to wipe it off, i promise ;)

I have Vue6Inf, 768 RAM, 1,6 Ghz processor, xp. My computer is bought in 2002 :=

But odly I at most times Vue runs fairly smooth on me, and when it crash it is moslty becourse I just cant wait for it to do its work - I want to move/change things before it have been thinking/loading the reguested item.

I have very low setting, and of course a lot of savings - course according to the law of everything evil;  "If you dont save, Vue will crash. But if you save Vue works nice"

Work with layers, hide things you dont need to see. Everything in Vue can be moved around between diffrent layers, the camea, the ground, the sun... they dont need to be in the same layer. And when rendering preview, check for "active layer" or "visable layer" or "Selected item".

Imported things from poser; resize the texture mape, there is no need having 4000x4000 - if the item is in the background - middleground; its really enough with 512x512.

The only thing I really really wish was in Vue it is that thing Poser 6 and above have; a slider so you can compare renders.

Anyway, Vue is still nicer to my puter then Poser is - When I'm rendering in Poser, my machine is kind of worthless for anything else then surfing the net. But when doing finilly render in Vue I can play Wow...

I just the last days had a "classical" thing on my Mac. I installed the latest beta update of Yahoo Messenger for Mac on my machine. Suddenly I had some of the most ugly crashes when I had Yahoo Messenger and Vue Infinite open the same time. Never have seen that before - that one by one all open applications died and I had to reboot the machine the hard way.

I went back to the old Messenger and these crashes are gone. Go figure.