Usually there are some tweaks n such you WANT to turn on with a new program.. what stuff should I fiddle with right away?

Any settings I should change to optimise render speed, memory, render quality, ect?

turn off the camera height button (height above ground/objects, click on camera and it shows up top =D) - if you dont and wanna work inside something... the camera will bounce all around and you'll get nowhere LOL.

Yeah I read yer issues with that.. LOL!

I'm just tinkering with some of thier canned scenes, to see how fast things appear.. man, a new quad core would be a nice holiday treat with this now...

no joke... and even though it fies faster on this machine than pro studio ever did (dual core), i can see where it can go even faster... more power! more power!!!!!

i DID do a test run.  I had a scene that pro studio eventually would hang on in rendering (in calculations of all things)... there was just too much stuff.  (and i wasnt even half finished!  lol)  this is the scene that caused me to have to reinstall vue numerous times in a row until i learned - NO TOUCHY.

well, being the oddball i am... i figured if im gonna have to reinstall it, might as well do it early on, right?  so... i loaded the scene... crossed fingers... hit render.....

18 minutes later, it spat out the result.

this same scene BEFORE i added in freak (in pro studio) took 12 hours to render.  after adding in freak & tweaking his skin to a great golden.... well, shortly after... it went kaboom.

so... yes, it renders faster.  there's a few more things to tweak and play with - i noticed a few in atmospheres, but coming from pro studio as i did, i dont know which are new to 7 and which were an infinite feature i never had to begin with (except for negative ambience, i know THATS new... and loads of fun!!!  speaking of... hmmm)

the water editor is new... and if anyone can give hints on how to work with THAT i'd be thankful... i flip-flopped back and forth between my water plane and the material editor & water editor... and couldnt figure it out.

yawns  ok, got my coffee and am supposedly awake for the day... time to fire up vue ;)

Stupid thing is, it took me almost as long to install it after I got it, then it took for them to get it to me.. LOL!

Not only turn off the camera height button, but delete it all together...............that damned thing.  I only wish I could delete that camera height button.

Melikia,
GeekAtPlay, Vue7 video tut talks about the water functions :)

basically if you wish to tweak the water, for your own likes, click OFF, the "Use GLobal Wave COntrol" box which sets it automatically.
now, you cna tweak away

displaced water surface pops the water up, making very realistic waves, poly heavy though, mroe maths to work out but really sweet for ocean waves etc!

the SHADOW SMOOTHING function, in atmosphere, don't need ot mess wiht much, usually does good job of stopping "grainy" shadows.

Feathers and sharpness for cloud detialing is new

The macro function doesn't work well enough at moment for what I want, it sitll hangs, grrr (made macros for tweaking poser materials but it always hangs Vue, after doing the changes, os I'm pretty sure Vue can dothe macro, there's jsut somehting going wrong)

I liek the buttons for SHOW and SAVE colour pictures, neat

Selecting by wireframe oclour is cool way to navigate scenes, though I sitll like Bryce's "ctrl click"or TAB  to sort through objects

Being able ot paint an eco on ANYTHING in any direction is..madly wonderful, lol!! :)

if you have a decent cideo card, go to OPTIONS, DISPLAY OPTIONS, and tick off "Limit OpenGL Polygons" just turn it back on if need. so oyu cna see everything in the scene in OpenGL....mmmm!

In Options, Operations, I added my texture and HDRI folders for "additional texture map" folders, so easy to hunt for new textures for materials

Like wise, in options, setting your scale wto whatever format you like is a must, I like "feet"

:)

=D  i just found how to use the other part of the water editor today... i just randomly started clicking at it and suddenly it worked LOL.

then i started painting rocks on things....

had a bit of fun painting in one view... then the other... and the other.........

next thing i knew, everything was rocky.

oopsies =D

Melikia, where is this "spit it out" button? Can't find it, seems faster than the render button :)

its buried in the render options... basically, you have to sacrifice a goat prop to the poser & e-on gods, dance in circles around your computer - clockwise if you're in northern hemisphere, anti-clockwise in southern - all while singing the barney song... you know the one... "i love you, you hate me..."

if you do it just right and the Gods approve... you get that marvelous "spit it out" button - it decreases render times by 3/4!!!

Practising as we speak....

i want pictures! =D

about to bust a gut laughing

Well, just picked up a new quad core system last night.. now I'll have to figure out how to install v7I on the new system and activate it.

Do I need to install v6I first on it, if it's an upgrade?

I should still be able to run v6I on the old machine, right?

cant run them simultaneously on two machines... and yes, you have to install 6I first if 7 is an upgrade and not a full version.

Still, I can run one or the other I think.. that wasy the wife can tinker around with v6I if she wants to when I'm using something else..

I don't think you have to install 6 first - at worst you may have to insert the CD for 6 during the installation of 7, but 7 should install without 6. 

I've got to drop a new psu in first, as well as my video card as well.

If nothing else, I'll be th egunea pig to see how it all unfolds.

yeah, im curious about that, too, now...  thought with an upgrade you HAD to have the original one installed...

interesting.

grins and waits to see

I've got turn it on first, to make sure it's appreas to be working properly, then drop a new psu and my video card in it before I can even consider installing software on it, so it'll be at least a day or so.

Not sure how much I really want to mess around with this right before christmas, but my wife gets my old system, so we both get nice speedy upgrades out of the deal.

I always hate migrating from one machine to another though.. so many damned things to remember to install.. LOL!

no kiddin, huh?  thankfully, this thing is built in such a way it'll be some time before i have to do any migration... it can have quite a few upgrades shoved into it.

i'm STILL digging through backup CDs and DVDs finding things i thought i had lost forever - or thought i had dreamed i had.... and its been almost a year.

but i had looked forward to it as well... a chance to update my computer oganization system (ok... so that only lasted a month)... yadda yadda....

this thing is now as cluttered and chaotic as my old machine was LOL.

however, i HAVE defragged this one more than i ever did the old one.  yep - i spent a day recently letting it do just that  -- the first time since i got the machine LOL.

and yes, that means i NEVER defragged the old one =D

only good thing, is I can just yank the 2nd hd in my old system, and drop it in my new one.. ;) that saves copying over time

LOL cheat!!!!  ok, i admit - bro did that one for me!

my old machine crashed & died right after i sent him money to build this monster...

so, i yanked out anything that could even remotely be usable in the future and shipped it to him (in lieu of payment for actually building it for me) - he put one of the old HDs in an external HD case for me, and the other went into my daughter's computer (after he ripped info off it for me) and he gave me a different HD in exchange that works better with this machine (and was, ironically, bigger).  My old video card went into daughter's machine as well as the memory.  All of the scavanged parts were immediately put into use, resulting in 2 computers (besides my new monster) being usable finally.  My daughter got a much-needed updated system for christmas last year from her mommy & uncle, and mom & dad got a small "guest use" computer.