I have a 64 bit system with 8 gigs of RAM, but Vue will freeze more often than not as I attempt to paint eco systems on my transparent leaf blob objects. I'm making progress and will probably limp across the finish line despite the dysfunction.

 Vue yields great results even though the software barely works at times.

Do you suppose the high prices of the next release will reflect a new stability? Are these guys even capable of creating a stable program?

Who will be the first to pay top dollar for the next beta?

I'm sorry for your problems. I also have a 64 bit system with 8 GB and I also use a lot of the paint feature and I have no stability problems at all. My Vue crashes once every 20 hours of work or so, which I consider acceptable.
I have simplified my system the best I could, by removing Aero and all the fancy Windows graphical stuff. I also removed UAC. I don't have any widgets installed and nothing running in the background that I don't absolutely need. I don't even have a screensaver. It's a machine meant for Vue and it runs Vue like a charm. I've heard of many others who also have no problems... and I've heard of many others who do have problems. In the end, it seems to be a problem of some incompatibility between Vue and the environment (either operating system, drivers, whatever).

Oh, and yes, I am anxious to put my hands on the next beta! :-)

Paloth, this could be due to a scaling factor. maybe you are trying to populate too big an object with very small instances, which would result in very high number of instances. On 32bit systems, you get a warning that population would exceed available memory, but I don't know if you get this message on 64bit systems. This is all I can think of.

Paloth, I read your post again and I'm not sure if I understood correctly. You wrote you are painting on blob objects. Blobs as in "metablobs"? If so, did you bake them? If not, I would advise you to do it.

I normally have my mini-preview window without automatic update. I found that, at least in my case, the system tends to be more stable if the mini-preview is inactive while I'm working with boolean objects or metablobs. This is also true, although to a lesser extent, if I'm working with heavy and interactive scene changes, like the ones that could result from ecosystem painting.

Bruno, 64 bit systems also have the same warning.

Paloth, I agree with you, I have stability problems all the time, I recently rebuilt my machine, all new parts, new graphics card, everything. And yet still having problems, from freezing completely to crashing while just selecting a material. I am using 32 Bit windows and still the problems come.

For me Vue 7 will have to be stable, I am fed up now of paying out for something that is not stable, yet other people seem to have no problems at all. I wish I was one of them.

Jon

I feel for everyone who has problems with Vue's stability as I had real problems with Vue 4 Pro.  It took some system updates,  fiddling with video driver settings and ditching another software package which I discovered was doing really nasty things on my PC in the background.  The final fix was moving the machine away from the wall to stop the CPU overheating.  Vue really pushed that system hard.  Vue 5 was a lot better and Vue 6 only crashes when I do stupid things - mostly with python scripts or trying to heap too many vastly oversized poser textures into a scene all at once. 

How did I get there?

I sent e-on issue reports and worked with them till it worked.  I'm sure they were sick of seeing another report from me.

It took time but it was worth it. 

One of the key things though is to make sure you send as much useful information as you can - system settings, the scene that broke Vue, step by step instructions on how to repeat the problem. 

The other key thing is to be nice when you send in the report - this is true for any software problem.  When software crashes its frustrating and its tempting to swear, make threats and be obnoxious because you can.  Shout it at the mirror but don't mail it - it won't get your issue sorted faster.  Some companies (in all fields) now just write off offensive customer issue reports as being from customers who are going to walk anyway so its a waste of time to fix.  Remember the person reading it at the other end has invested a significant chunk of their life into the software and cares about it at least as much as you do.

I hope you can work succesfully with e-on to solve the problems your having because once you get there its really worth every minute you spent on getting there.

I have "tried" to use Xstream which is a disaster in my opinion. It didn#t work witht Cinema4D AT ALL and the attempt to install any update resulted in crashs shortly after start.

So I went back to Infinite and now running one of the latest patches and works fine, I get about 1 crash once 1-2 hrs which is takable for me.

Some good words there Mark, as for reproducing the problems, that is easier said than done.

My crashes are nearly all random, I could do one thing and crash, then repeat and it works, heating is not an issue on my machine I can assure you and its a fresh install of the OS with latest updates, the newest drivers blah blah blah. And this was happening before I really installed other programs.

The randomness of bugs is always a nightmare, I have sent E-On reports before but the replies are all the same now, we will look into it. And thats it no further response on that problem or any others. Following the problem it just gets into a we are looking into it debate. So for me I just gave up sending report after report.

As I said, I just hope Vue 7 proves to be stable. And yep, I have an ATI card, which are a complete nightmare when working with Vue. But that same card works fine with Cinema 4D, Hexagon 2, Reaflow 4, Carrara 5 Pro, Blender and even POV-Ray, so I really can't accept the its an ATI card get a Nvidia argument either. I think its a Vue issue plain and simple, I just hope I don't spend more money for more of the same in the future.

Cheers
Jon

Well then, get an nvidia card if you've seemed to have come down to that issue at fault! :p

No, I never said that was the fault, I said that ATI cards are a nightmare to use with Vue, I also said that they work fine in every other 3D program I have got, I am not changing my card just so it will work with Vue. Thats a Vue problem in my opinion and one they need to address.

As I said I just hope Vue 7 proves to be more stable. I love using Vue, and when it works it works great.

Jon

And just to add to the confusion, I also have an ATI card, and it works well with Vue6...

Lol, ah well, seems I can't win with Vue whatever card I have :) 

Interesting before I upgraded my machine I had a X1950 Pro, my new card is an HD4670. Still the same problems, and they are from different generations but as Bruno just said he has a ATi card and that works with Vue 6.

:)
Jon

Mine is an older X1600 pro series. Maybe Vue works better with older cards, I know Christina has an x1550 pro and she has no problems either. Strange but ... possible?

It could possible Bruno, unfortunately I don't have any older ATi cards around to test on.

Jon

Jonj1611, you might want to take a look at something like this for your ATI card.

http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html

or do some google searches on "opengl ati issues" or some combination of these three key words to see if you can track down the sources of your problem.

Basically, ATI cards use some version of OpenGL Emulation software (a very technical long story-short, here), while nVidia cards use a more direct, more hardware-oriented implementation of OpenGL.. The various open gl implementations for ATI cards have been known to cause exactly the random crashes you describe,and the problem is compounded by or even originates with interactions among various combinations of Windows components and the ATI card drivers. These issues are being resolved much more frequently lately, but the ATI implementations of Open GL differ among the various ATI cards, are very complex, and not all of the issues are well understood, even by most developers. For 3d applications that make any kind of use of Open GL, ATI cards are more problematic than nVidia cards - that's just the  fundamentals of the the situation.

Jonj1611, do you know if you have an nVidia controller chip of any kind on your motherboard?

Paloth, this could be due to a scaling factor. maybe you are trying to populate too big an object with very small instances.

I used the Poser import of a human-sized figure to set the scale by which all other obj. imports were adjusted, including the leaf blobs. My leaf blobs are just low poly obj. imports from Modo that serve as roofs for the buildings and as an invisible support for the eco system leaves. The blobs are much smaller than most terrain objects would be, a dozen yards or so in this instance.  

Vue froze 10 times in about 15 minutes while I was painting bushes onto one of the blobs. I eventually got the object painted, but decided that the leaves were actually too big for the model. The eco system will actually need to be scaled down a bit.

I have an ATI Radeon 3850, Windows XP 64-bit.  

I’m having more luck populating the ecosystems on the leaf blob geometry instead of painting, with a few exceptions on the slopes. I should have been doing it this way from the start.  It's much easier and the crashes have stopped. 

Thanks for the info Forester I will have a look into that.

No, no Nvidia chips on my board, I have an Intel P35 chipset.

Cheers
Jon

 Paloth,

Have you tried turning off OpenGL in the preferences? Set it to use wireframe and see if it still crashes. If it doesn't, then it's probably your card that's the problem.

When I changed from OpenGL to wireframe, Vue 6 Infinite crashed every time I tried to open my file. 

If I wasn't so burned out by this it would almost be funny. 

I assume this problem is due to some Vue/ATI disfunction. (Do they have ATI cards in France?) Seems if I were testing or updatting my software I would include the ATI specs in the equation, but even the Vue updates and ATI updates haven't fixed this.

Did e-on really release an X-stream product that didn't work at all? Why do I find this easy to believe?

It seems the programmers have their hands full so I won't be bothering them with my little problems. The fact that I'm still trying to work around the pitfalls is a tribute to the awesome results this program is capable of-- when it works.  
 

Quote - I assume this problem is due to some Vue/ATI disfunction. 

Yep, that'd be my guess. Never seen anything like THAT on any of my Vue machines-- and they all run nVidia.

Quote - It seems the programmers have their hands full so I won't be bothering them with my little problems. 

I certainly woud submit this to support. Else, it can never be fixed.

Couple of thoughts:

1. I assume you have the latest drivers-- just thought I'd mention it again;
2. You might try turning COMPLETELY OFF hardware acceleration on your card (WinXP-> Display Properties -> Settings tab->Advanced button--> Troubleshooting tab and then see if it doesn't work. If it does work, then start moving the Hardware acceleration slider a bit towards "FULL" and keep checking until it breaks. It may solve your problem-- hope it helps :-)

I know I'm rowing against the flow here, but sometimes it's necessary to use the not-so-latest drivers. There was another thread in this forum where the culprit of some problems was the latest driver. When the user (jartz) stepped back to the previous driver, the problem disappeared. Some investigation is required.

Thread was this one:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2753561

I agree with what you say Rutra, but its impossible using old drivers for me, the latest Catalyst 8.10's are the only drivers that support my card, as my card is brand new.

And Paloth, think thats an ATi issue, I had that using my X1950 pro, but dont have it anymore using my new card.

Jon

So, why are we always blaming these problems on Vue's supposed instability? 

Maybe it's more likely in people's minds to produce a "change", since everyone knows there's bugger all chance of anything changing "for the better" if the problem is really down to a "name" like Micro$queak or nVidia.

Especially when you think of how the buck gets passed around by such "names", saying "it ain't us, it's them".

Not to mention it especially can suck to get your box up to the latest greatest leanest meanest state of the art on steroids spec set you can think of, then find out your software doesn't work, and you think "they didn't upgrade to my standard", skipping wondering if the latest and greatest is what's busted.*

*Guilty on this one

Quote - So, why are we always blaming these problems on Vue's supposed instability? 

Well like I said further up, my card works fine with every other 3D application and game I have, so isn't it a little bit odd it has problems with just Vue? I can hardly lay the blame entirely on ATI

Also the "supposed instability", there isn't really a supposed about it for me, it is unstable, everything from loading to saving, to selecting materials, to animating etc, loading and saving has nothing to do with my graphics card. As I said I know some people don't have problems and good for them I say, but for the people that do, then it is a problem and its a problem with Vue.

Jon

Quote - Well like I said further up, my card works fine with every other 3D application and game I have, so isn't it a little bit odd it has problems with just Vue? I can hardly lay the blame entirely on ATI

Perhaps Vue uses a less popular, but standard OpenGL call which 'other 3D applications and games' doesn't? For instance, Vue has to handle ecoSystems with millions of instances. I don't recall any other games or apps which has to represent something as complicated. My point, is just because others perform well using OpenGL still doesn't necessarily make Vue the problem.

Did you try my Hardware Acceleration fix mentioned above? It has pointed out the problem and provided a solution for others in the past.

-Chipp

You maybe right Chipp, I guess E-on are the only people that know, the point I was trying to make was while Vue runs well for some people for others it is a complete nightmare. Just because it works fine for one shouldnt be the assumption it should run fine for someone else. Some ATi cards are on the E-on approved hardware list so I really can't see it being just down to ATi and older OpenGL as some of those cards are pretty old anyway.

And if it is because of newer ATi drivers, then really its E-On the people that we buy the software from to make the changes to take account of driver issues. Vue supports the 9x00 range of ATi cards but they really are getting old now and hard to find.

Turning off hardware acceleration is not really an option for me, as I use lots of 3D apps that use the graphics card and games and they work fine. Easiest option is turning off OpenGL in Vue itself I guess, I have tried it before and it wasn't an experience I relished. But I may have to try that.

I dont have the graphics corruption that I used to get since installing my new card. And I can't really see how crashing on saving or loading is a card related matter.

Maybe its just time to start sending those reports back off to E-On lol :)

Thanks for the help though Chipp

Jon

Thanks, chipwalters. The  Hardware Acceleration fix allows me to render the views without the disruption posted above. 

Quote - You maybe right Chipp, I guess E-on are the only people that know, the point I was trying to make was while Vue runs well for some people for others it is a complete nightmare. Just because it works fine for one shouldnt be the assumption it should run fine for someone else.

Jon,

Excellent point and one which does not go unnoticed in this forum. 

The hardware acceleration thing I mentioned can also be helpful in figuring out if your board is a problem or not. Sounds like you already know it is.

best,
Chipp

When I activate hardware acceleration for OpenGL the problem reappears. 

Does rendering in the software OpenGL mode make for longer render times? What are the drawbacks that I can expect?

I tested the preview render with hardware acceleration on and off and saw no difference in the times. 

Ever since I tried to use 'wire frame only' on my scene, I can't open the scene by clicking on its icon in My Documents without crashing Vue. I can still open the scene by clicking on the Vue launch and opening the file within the program. 

This happens with hardware acceleration on or off. 

Vue seems to recognize my card. I guess someone tested it once. 

Not sure if this will help anyone but on EONS VC requirements it says:

Supported Video Boards

• Windows 2000/XP/XP64:
• All boards with NVidia Quadro and GeForce chips.
  All boards with ATI Radeon 9x00 chips.
• Macintosh OSX:
• All boards with NVidia GeForce chips.
  All boards with ATI Radeon 9x00 and Rage 128 chips.

Boards that are not on this list may work with Vue, but haven't been tested. If you are using Vista, we recommend that you check compatibility using the PLE version.

This may not fit here but I think it bears to the overall problems people experience.  I'll say the below in reference to ALL software companies.

I think a lot of issues arise from the listing of minimum system specs.  I think people see this & say cool my machine is up to speed.  I think software companies need to be far more specific in there sys. req. & comparable charts.

For example - you have the minimum specs, but what isn't stated is that with that setup you'll be lucky to get in 1 Poser figure & maybe a terrain before a crash.  You might as well forget displacement/SSS items of this nature should be explained up front.  IMO it should be stated if the programs were indeed optimized for x64 rather than x32.  IMO it should be stated if there are memory caps in the different versions.....Lite vs Pro(insert whatever levels a company has).

I know some of these items some people might think oh well those are obvious - well to most they aren't.  Being far more specific & realistic from companies regarding this would limit the customers upsets/dissatisfactions IMO.

Also, specific to the Video card issues - I have a feeling(this only applies to VEasel-Vpro)  I notice in the memory mgmt specifics listed at EON - these people are missing the clear OPenGL data before rendering, optional limits on the OGL poly count, auto degrade on screen when memory gets to high.  It's worse for Easel peeps as they don't even have the option to purge memory.

So I bet the above issues(VC related) are why so many are having OGL issues as there is really no way to "clean"....other than to restart :(

Quote - When I activate hardware acceleration for OpenGL the problem reappears. 

Does rendering in the software OpenGL mode make for longer render times? What are the drawbacks that I can expect?

Nope, the OpenGL is only used for displaying the wireframes and solid shaded geometry in the interface. The graphics board has no affect on the render speed or quality for a rendering (other than the refresh before and after a render is completed).

My answer to the question : yes.

I'm amazed of sentences like "a crash every 2 hours is acceptable" or "ATI don't work with Vue" or "it's not the right driver" ...
All of these problems reveal bugs in the application, not in the configuration.
Also a software which needs a fresh install and no other program to run is a ugly one.

I know these words are too much for people here who are very "tolerant" with e-on but that's what I think, a program that crash so much for random reasons is a bad program, a bad piece of code.
I work in software development and I don't know how e-on can release such program.

I was "correct" in 80% of my bug reports but sometimes I got very nervous because no solution was found, just  "I transmitted the problem to the development service..."

So wait and see...

2ni, the problems in Vue are not universal. I, for one, have very little problems with my configuration.  By the way, I already had two completely different configurations, with similar results in Vue stability (dual core 4 GB XP 32 ATI and a quadcore 8GB Vista 64 Nvidia, later changed to ATI).

My Vue always ran perfectly in my ATI's. I never cared about drivers of any kind in any of the machines, I have no idea if I have the latest or not (probably not).
Although I removed all programs from background (like widgets, accelerators for QuickTime and other similar stuff, real time spyware scan, etc) it's common for me to run Vue simultaneously with several other apps, like Poser, Photoshop, Zbrush, etc, and I never noticed any problem because of that. Only for render time I let Vue run alone, mainly for speed reasons.
In average, I have a crash every 20 hours of work (for me, that's once a week), when the scenes are starting to get really heavy. This doesn't bother me much. Of course I would prefer never to crash but I can live with this.

I would still say the problems out there can't be all due to Vue. Or I (and others) would feel it too. There must be something else too. It can't be the configuration alone. I would say it must be the combination of several things.

@rutra
I agree what you 've said, some crashes are not unacceptable when you know exactly what to do and what not to do,
Also for me, a big part of my problem (not all) was with Poser import, but hey ! that's a function they endorsed so it should work as other functions.

But what I try to say is that Vue crashed for many and not reproductable reasons and had many regressions from updates to updates, so I think the internal architecture of this program is completely deprecated. I think e-on should rebuild it from the  ground instead of adding always more complexity.
I remember a time when Blender software activity was mainly to solve issues and get the soft reliable, and that to get a stable base to be able to add new features safely.

I think e-on never done that because they have to make money...vicious circle

Quote - Also for me, a big part of my problem (not all) was with Poser import, but hey ! that's a function they endorsed so it should work as other functions.

Some times the problem with Poser import stems from the Poser SDK which is provided to e-on to accomplish Poser support. There are known bugs in the SDK, and unfortnately e-on has no control over Poser's programmers. I've read similar problems occurred in Carerra, which is owned by the same company as Poser-- so you can see it can be most problematic.

This is not to say e-on has zero responsibility with Poser imports, but rather to point out the complexity of the problem.

There are a number of excellent threads here, some by Steven James, which detail some ways to help import Poser characters. Hopefully, they can help.

Quote - I think e-on never done that because they have to make money...vicious circle

Indeed.

The 'Open GL software only' setting can reduce a multi-layered scene into a bunch of blocks in the preview and sometimes the interface slows, but I'm finding that it solves several of my problems. One issue I was having that I didn't post about was that some of my objects, at certain angles, resisted the painting of ecosystems. Once I turned off the hardware acceleration, this problem disappeared. Now the ecosystems flow as they should and Vue doesn't crash as often. 

*I've read similar problems occurred in Carerra, which is owned by the same company as Poser-- so you can see it can be most problematic. 

As far as I know, Daz (Carrara) and Smith Micro (Poser) are owned by separate entities. 

By the way, Daz even has problems implementing Daz Studio’s functions in Carrara, so I’m sure programming is very difficult.   

Jon

Quote - . And I can't really see how crashing on saving or loading is a card related matter.

Not so long ago that was a possible card related matter that always came up with other software I used (and probably still is). I remember page fault issues when doing things like that in other programs and it was video card related. If a screen is being called up when saving or loading, it definitely can be card related. Even though it might seem like a minor function, there are simultaneous activities in play to make it work and as is often the case it could be the final straw of memory issues or other conflicts. Video cards also use some of the allocated resources of regular RAM for system functions (other than the cheapo cards that always use part of RAM for everything).

Many times people think they have a flawless system because other programs call on the various devices differently and perhaps by luck miss the problem areas. Many times this could be RAM issues as some can have problems that go undetected with most functions. Just happened to me the other day working on a friend's PC. It had worked fine until recently. A clean reinstall was the chosen course of action. But we couldn't get Windows to finish re-installing. And there were different errors (and sometimes just a reboot and starting all over again), none pointing to the memory. I swapped out the memory sticks with two new Corsairs and the problem went away. I've read many times in the past of people coming to similar conclusions with other software, so I never rule out system issues, especially when others are having few or no problems with software.

By the way, I have an older ASUS (ATI) Radeon 9800XT and I've never had problems in Vue. And yes, sometimes older drivers are better. I also do not use any virus scan software on my Vue PC and have a fixed size for virtual memory. And all power management is set to always on and screen savers are disabled (all problems with various software in the past).

Quote - As far as I know, Daz (Carrara) and Smith Micro (Poser) are owned by separate entitie

Doh! Of course, I was thinking of Daz Studio. My bad-- thanks for correcting :-)

 Not completely true, Jonj1611.

Was not wanting to do anything but help, so did not point out earlier that other 3D programs do, in fact, have trouble with ATI cards. Maya has troubles with ATI - which is interesting, since Maya, like Cinema4D is based on a binary kernal. I'm a Maya user, so I switched to nVidia card an ASUS nVidia mobo for just that reason - maximum compatibility between hardware and software. Not wanting to belabor this minor point, but I can think of at least two other 3d apps that do not play nicely with ATI.

When I started using Vue, a year ago or so, I felt it was the most unstable piece of software I had used since Bryce 3.0 or Amapi 6.
Things did get better with the current version, but I still have crashes. Some are reproductible and most are probably not due to a system overload or video card setting.

I just started it in order to prove myself I could still crash it at will. Created a terrain, started painting an ecosystem of plants on it. Did CTRL+Z. Vue did not crash (previous versions did) but the terrain disappeared. CTRL+Z cancelled the terrain creation, not the ecosystem painting ;-)

Vue bugs are annoying, because they generally lead to an application crash or even scene corruption. But there are also many quirks with the interface. The main one is the fact that the display constantly flickers when you edit a scene, move a camera, etc. I thought it came from my video card but saw it on a Geekatplay studio tutorial.

Bryce 6 is more stable than Vue 6 and its terrain display more detailed and does not flicker. All this affects your confidence to work with this software.

I have not done bug reporting yet as I feel I am not a beta tester and doubt it can be useful without having access to the bug list with their status. I will probably do it once I get Vue 7 if things are still that bad.

Quote - Maybe its just time to start sending those reports back off to E-On

I would try that first.  Especially if the problem is repeatable for E-On to reproduce.

 Is Vue the most unstable software ever released? 

Yes it is and it always has been. I've been using Vue since version 2 and it has always been unstable. But even worse..... E-On has the horrible habit of fixing issues with the current version in the next version. Also E-On has no problem with releasing software that has known bugs and problems.

As much as I do like Vue, I hate the way E-On goes about these matters and if there was a really good alternative I would prefer using it, but since there isn't, I still use it. 

 I've been using vue since version 4 and it has always had problems.  The ethics of the company has forced me at version 6 to stop being fooled.  There have been many broken promises about their feature list that have never worked well.  The next version sometimes fixed the problems and other times it did not.  I've learned how to spot their bull early on and this release seems to have the most beef and horn in it.  Hd Trees?  Nice buzz phrase, but I'll pass.

Each person has a different experience... I've been using Vue for 2 years now without any relevant problem. In the very few times (2 or 3) that I contacted support they were always prompt in their reply. All the announced features as described in the manual work perfectly. I upgraded Vue 7 and I'm really happy with it. I find the new features really nice and they really add value to my workflow. It was well worth the money.