Been waiting for folks to kick the tires, is the upgrade from 6 infinite to 7 infinite worth it?
Thanks

Yes I like it much

Mazak

Yes!  I love the new clouds.  Render time is much faster. 

Yes and No!

Sure render speed is much improved and the atmos are better also, but........................

If you use the shaders from Poser be prepared for extreme disappointment, they don't work nearly as well as they do in Vue6 and a lot of the character packs for Victoria 4 and Mike 4 will show up as green.
It's a long standing issue from the first update and still isn't fixed, I keep asking and they keep saying "don't know when"
For me personally, the shader issue is such a biggie that I have mainly reverted back to Vue6Inf unless I'm doing a scene without Poser characters.

I've already decided not to jump again when Vue8 comes out.

Why don't you download the PLE and see for yourself?
Personally, I would recommend Vue7 over Vue6, a lot more stable, great new atmospheres and improvements in all areas (except the Poser shader tree, apparently).
Metanodes and scene/object graphs are a real power booster that can take your scenes/animations much further than before.

Yeah man, thank you bruno...

jeez fuck man..i would hate to be banned from here 2x

I vastly prefer Vue 7 over Vue 6 - I had a lot of problems in Vue 6 with certain VOBs not loading or loading incredibly slowly which have been fixed in 7.  The radiosity renders are so much faster it's unreal and I love the new skies and terrains

g'day fixer,

was wondering if you had tried to export from poser 6 to vue 7 inf yet, whether that has a different affect with the shaders, as i had read that it is a problem with poser 7 and/or pro, working with vue 7 inf.

am wondering as i still use P6 and am getting my vue 7 inf tommorow,

don't wanna start me day with a load of grrrr moments.

Thanks all.  I went ahead and ordered it so will probably get it next week. I always keep the last version installed so if there are problems I'll work in 6.
Marque

I never used the Poser shaders, much preffer using SkinVue and tweaking mats by hand :)
V7 is a lot better IMHO.
Still think the price has gotten too expensive though.

Chudo121,
eh?! what was that about? scratches head

If you work with Poser then maybe its interest you Vue7i has Collada support now. Collada is a modern interchange format for 3D applications. You can export from DazStudio, PoserPro (and many other 3D programs) animated figures and objects.
About the Poser shaders I agree with silverblade! Skinvue is a must have, with Version 7.2 SkinVue supports now 2nd skin material and 64Bit and Multicore machines.

Mazak

Vince: Haven't tried it from Poser 6. but all my stuff is in the Poser 6 runtime, I just use Poser 7 for set up.
Take a look at my latest upload [Mysteria], that shows the Hulk issue clearly.
This is a V4 texture from the Poser 6 runtime, scene set up in poser 7 and rendered in Vue7Inf.
I happen to like the look of it but the skin shouldn't have that green tint.
As for SkinVue, no job at present means no spending so I'm stuck with the shaders which are really good in Vue6Inf.
Anyway, e-on list using the shaders as a feature so it should work correctly, you shouldn't have to buy something else because they haven't fixed a problem with their software.

Don't get me wrong peeps, I love Vue7 and there are definire improvements but the Shader issue is a problem that they need to solve, after all they do sell it with that as a feature and it doesn't work!
You wouldn't accept a car with ABS listed as a feature and it doesn't work, why do we always accept software that doesn't do as it says on the tin!!

g'day Fixer,

well got a bit of good news, in a so far sense anyway,
i have only just installed me vue 7 inf, so have only done one test with an A4 custom character i'm working on at mo',but i don't get the hulk effect, poser shaders imported perfectly.

i just tried a GR in broadcast settings render to test the speed diff really but will have a go again tonight (gotta go out now) and let you know back 'ere.

so far i would guess that the hulk effect is a problem being caused by the way poser7/pro saves the Pz3, i don't think which runtime you access will be affecting it one way or the other as you could have multiple external runtimes, which wouldn't be dedicated to any version of poser.

i think if you try to open your P7 character/scene up in P6 and then save from there , then open in vue 7, you may not get that effect, worth a try anyway, worst that could happen is you may lose some exclusive to poser 7 mats (guessing)

( man vue 7 inf renders fast - vince puts on his happy-chappy face)

Yea, another thing Vince is that some shaders do come in ok while other's don't.
For example anything by Rebelmommy has the Hulk effect but anything by EricFarris doesn't!
Go figure, beats the crap outa' me!! [LOL].
Usually I restrict myself to shaders that work for now but it's not always ideal.
Anyway glad you like it, as I said it is better than Vue6 in a lot of ways, if they would just sort this issue out..........sigh!

Did you study how their shaders are done in Poser, and notice differences between the 2 artists that could be the culprit?

Once more.... the "Hulk" problem appears when you use Poser shaders that have a non-white Diffuse Colour. The majority of Poser skin shaders use a light blue diffuse colour, and therefore produce the Hulk.  If you don't want to wait until Smith Micro fix their SDK, then either change the diffuse colour of skin shaders in Poser to white, or use Skin Vue, or make your own shaders in Vue.
The problem is not e-on's fault, it's Smith Micro's fault. they are, according to e-on, working on a solution. I just hope that the fix isn't part of Vue7.5..........

By the way, there is a much more serious problem with using Poser shaders - displacement and bump are not passed over to over to Vue.

(and I'm not even going to mention dynamic hair.... ooooopss :-))

Rob

I'd love for DAZ studio to ge tbetter get integrated with VUe and Poser to disppear, OR get massively changed/improved as it's a clumky hunk of junk, sigh.

*Did you study how their shaders are done in Poser, and notice differences between the 2 artists that could be the culprit?

*Bruno, I don't think that was called for, this is a KNOWN issue that e-on have freely admitted to and are in collaboration with Smith Micro to resolve.
If you want to site my art as the issue, that's up to you but you may want to check earlier forum posts on this issue and see that even the great artist Artur Rosa or Rutra to you has this issue and has reported it also.

It really is galling when people like you defend the programme at all costs, even to the point of insulting my artwork when the fault has been confirmed by e-on.
Vue 7 is great as I've said, but it's not perfect by a long way!

TH: Thanks for the diffuse tip, I'll give that a try.
Never use dynamic hair, too much bother IMO!

TH: Many, many thanks for that diffuse colour tip, that worked a treat!

Not sure what you mean by the displacement, I've used displacement from Poser in Vue 7 and they seem ok, can you elaborate on the problem for me so I can try it again, maybe I missed something.

Hey, thefixer, I had no intention of insulting anyone's artwork, we've both been here a long time, so you should know I've never done this. Ever.
No I was just asking this out of curiosity since you're very much into using Poser shaders, and you might've found what was causing this. There was nothing more to my post. I wasn't trying to defend e-on or Smith Micro.
Now this thread was very useful anyway, because you found a solution thanks to TH.
Maybe this would help e-on and SM to pass on the information to their tech supports.

Ok bruno, my mistake, apologies.
I'm no expert on the apps I use and to be honest I hadn't tried for a solution, I don't have the time to look for solutions to faults that shouldn't be there, I'm too impatient to get my ideas out! [LOL].
I still don''t understand though why the Shaders work in Vue 6 but not in Vue7, maybe someone could explain that one to me. I do nothing different with my imports in either, they both look at the Poser 7 installation so why the different result?
TH maybe??

i have had a little play now, and am not getting the hulk effect so far, i stick a piccy up, sorry it's a bit rough, it was just a quick test,( click for clearer pic )  

on the left you have RM girl4 character and RM skin tex, on right you have my character with maybe "anais" tex with my sss nodes added.

now, during pre render pass RM's tex does have an olive hint to it but i don't think i would of seen it if i wasn't looking for a hulk effect, and it is not there at all after render, i haven't checked the diffuse colour as mentioned above but that could be a factor, also the resourse photos could of been from a mediteranian skin-type model, which the shader transition from poser to vue might be exagerating a bit.

i honestly think this maybe a poser7 thing more than a vue 7 thing,

anyway sounds like you might have found a fix above with the diffuse, if that don't work out you could try my P6 theory or try adding sss to your character and see if that helps.

(sss in poser is crap by default, so you will need to tone down the value settings on all the nodes that come with sss, also if you do test renders in poser prior to taking it to vue you will also need to turn down all the light intensities, so roughly 60% max for a front light and 80%max for any backlighting, also turn off all shadows bar one for the lights, as auto sss activates shadows on all lights, nothing to do when you import it to vue though as it doesn't seem to react the same way as it does in poser.)

happy to do any more test renders if you want 'em, or give you some sss node settings if you wanna give that a try, just let me know mate.

so far i'm pretty impressed with vue 7 inf, definately feels like an upgrade to me, the render process is kinda strange (pre render bit) but definately works out in the end, just confused about the extra content disk at th mo' as to whether any of it is actual content or just a load of unusable examples.

but lovin' the fact this is my first true 64bit app, so i know i've got 8gb ram to play with now, when are all the other softwares gonna catch up an go 64bit?

I'm happy you have it working for you.
If it was just me having the hulk issue I'd think it was down to me, but I know there are a number of people who get this problem including Rutra who is exceptionally experienced using Vue, much more so than myself, and as e-on have also admitted to an issue that's good enough for me.
The Hulk isn't down to how I use Vue/Poser, it's a genuine fault acknowledged by e-on.

as i've only done a couple of vue renders i'm only in guess terratory but something else i noticed is that the radiosity light settings in vue have:

light colour as yellowy orange,
and ambiant light colour as blue.

which in my mind would make a green light effect.

might be worth a try to change those colours a bit.

sorry i was typing while you replied

BTW i'm not saying it is anything to do with what your doing wrong,

it just looks to me like it will be a poser7 fix needed as opposed to a vue fix, so not your fault.

i might be biased but i don't have much faith in poser anymore, poser 7/pro to me never sounded like a step forward really.

so i'm having a dig at them, not you mate.

@Bruno:- e-on and Sm already know about the diffuse- white... the info came from them.

@Vince3: let me put it this way... (based on what I've been able to pick up on various forums - I may have a couple of details wrong, but I think that I'm basically right. Please correct me anybody who has better facts)..........
SM (Smith Micro / Poser) produced an SDK (Software Development Kit) in order to enable other companies (for example, e-on) to write code to (for example) load Poser scenes and interpret what is in them. This may or may not include (in this example) the Poser shaders (depends on what options the user chooses). So far so good.
However there were some changes to how Poser (pro and/or 7) save their scenes. This meant that SM (Smith Micro) had to change their SDK, no real other choice. Vue6 used the old SDK, Vue7 uses the new one. The new one has problems with loading Poser shaders (regardless of which version of Poser is used) - but as you can see, with a bit of work in Poser we can get around it until SM supply e-on with a fix.

Hope this clears it up a little bit

Rob

Fantastic detail TH, thank you very much for that explanation, I thought I was going mad for a minute!!!

Umm.........Doctor, no don't do that.........not again..........they are coming, I've seen them when I'm sleeping...........please Doctor.................nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.....................

The simple answer is:

NO!!!

Unless you like really long render times.

E-on's day in the Sun is done.

Their old ways of doing things takes way too long.

Animations are almost completely out of the question.

I stayed with Vue 6 and invested my money in new software that uses the video card to speed up render time.

In the long run you'd be better off buying into a real 3D program instead of a fake hollywood software that takes ages to render a single cloud.

I still can't believe the fanboys are still waiting for poser and vue to start working perfectly together.  Maybe the dev teams will take notice this time.  Ha!

How long have you been hanging on to that dream...?

Vue is a train wreck!

In fact vue xstream  STILL DOESN't WORK with Max completely like advertised.  It never did.

Long render times ? Get real - you must be using a different version of Vue 7 than I am.  The renders are MUCH faster than 6

Don't bother, Frank.

well i don't know if any of the following info is of any use to anyone here or not, but i thought i would just share my experience and the fix that worked for me,

now i ain't too tech savvy so you'll have to work out the techy reasons for it yourselves, but..

i had a similar problem to fixer when placing an RM texture to my character, and importing that into vue 7 inf, since i last posted here, but instead of green i had an almost black, as though the sun light were behind the figure instead of in front,

two observations then followed,

one, looking at RMs shader structure, i notice she is using a method i haven't seen before, all nodes are attached to a single texture node as oppossed to the default node, with various first step input nodes coming off of that as you would normally see.
 
her nodes look very impressive, but as i don't have P7 i don't know if that is how the nodes structure now, or whether that is an exclusive structure she has made.

second observation was that the only thing i had done in between using her tex on her character ( which worked )and using her tex on my character ( which didn't work ) is that i had had a look at some of the sample scenes on the extra content disk.

which makes me wonder if by simply opening the sample scenes, which i will guess were all made on the first build version of vue, onto my latest build version of vue, whether that could possibly revert any of my personalized settings to the settings of the user who's scene i have just looked at, and whether if i then went to load my character into a scene, it is now loading my scene with the settings of that user...........( i aint tech savvy so don't know)

so i first revert all my setting to default from the options menu, that doesn't work.

next i notice the way i import into vue, which has me selecting NO for reposing in vue and YES for using poser shaders in vue, warning window pops up and i click on the get on with it option.

texture doesn't look right with whatever GR, GI, or AO atmos i load, but i notice a running red man where my mats are normally shown at the top of vue, i double click on him to edit, in there i click on " simple material",then click ok,  then the texture ( for that part) is now showing up correctly when i test render, i carried on to do that with all the mat parts and that was one way of fixing it, but then i found a one click option that  also fixed for me...

this time when i imported my pz3 i selected NO for reposing and NO for posers shaders, no warning window this time, and no texture errors either all came in correct......vince sits wishing he had tried this way before the other way but both worked and fixed it for Vince.

if it works for anyone else then bonus.

i officially retract my wavey finger of blame that so recently was pointing towards poser makers, give it a fancy gunslinger twirl and holster it for use another day, fact is i don't know who if anyone's fault it is.

i am also not saying this is RMs fault in any way, i just used those for testing as it was mentioned there was a problem with them working as expected with vue 7, i will be continuing to buy and use RM's textures and characters as they kick ass', she is an awesome character and textur maker.

anyway i have probally wasted my time writing all the above as it probally won't work for anyone else but i thought i should share info, just incase it makes some sense to someone.

vince.

I have found the render times for the majority of things in Vue 7 far far quicker than in Vue 6 Inf,I am using 7 Complete. A render I recently did for my wife in Vue 7 took 47 mins, in Vue 6 it was 9h 27m. Quite a difference.

Only real problem I had was 2 HD trees not working, E-On have sent me new trees to fix that and I have found all atmospheres to be dark, which E-On have said is due to changes and that things "do" need to be rebalanced. Other than that all cool, only 2 crashes so far which is better than my 5 a day with Vue 6 Inf.

Would I recommend Vue 7? Simple answer yes, I did have some doubts about whether things had change and to be honest some of the changes aren't as dynamic as I thought they were but they are changes none the less, the rendering engine is improved a great deal, though I think I had a better deal with Complete than Infinite, the differences are marginally for me as I don't really use the features that Infinite comes with over Complete, for others that might be different.

Bottom line, get the PLE and try it yourself, only then you will know for sure :)

Jon

Yeah, good advice, but I remember when vue was hopping with users.  Things have changed.
The times have changed. Shooting clouds in full HD is better than rendering clouds in vue.

E-on has pulled so many stunts they lost most of their fanbase.  This hike in upgrade price and paying extra for .5x releaese with such buggy software is real slap in the face.

E-on has shot themselves in the old proverbial foot.

Even giving $6 with voucher gimmick away at C3D won't save them now.

CobraEye
Go make some art, instead of bitch.
Maybe then, folk will listen to you.
That is what adults do: earn respect, show they know what the hell they are talking about.

@cobraeye  "Yeah, good advice, but I remember when vue was hopping with users.  Things have changed."

1. • there are more issues involved here :-)

2. What do you suggest as an alternative program?

Look forward to hearing from you.

Rob

@vince3

1. Please read my posts above.

2. if you want to use an object in Vue, you need to load/import it.
   e-on advertise that you can import a Poser scene using Poser Shaders. If you do so, then you will see the "running red man" in the material shaders. Of course you can change this, as you wish, and can then start using simple materials. However, this will not be very satisfactory for you. The default "simple materials" will give you a very mediocre result.

3. As stated above, either use Poser shaders with white diffuse colour (either standard, or modified by you), or SkinVue, or your own shaders.