Fortunately my PC has the c drive in a removeable drawer, so I can have alternative operating systems, because under Win 98SE Vue 4 will not load the transparency maps properly, so foliage etc. looks horrible. Also, if I make a cylinder primitive, the image is immediately covered in noise. But none of this happens when I run the program under Win 95. I can make an image in Win 98 that looks like the dog's breakfast when I render it, and render the same file in the Win 95 copy and it will be perfect. E-on support say they don't think it is a problem with the OS and Vue 4, because most people are running it successfully under Win98, and I am the only one having trouble. At the moment I am having to switch to Win 95 to render anything that includes a transparency map or a cylinder. I can do that, but switching drives is a pain involving closing down the computer, switching the drives, starting the computer, making changes to the CMOS, and booting up under the new system. There are comparison pics here (good one) and here (Win 98 one) I moved the blossom tree across a little when I did the Win 95 render, but other than that this is the same file. If anyone else is having problems I should be interested to know. If you are running it successfully under Win 98, are you doing so with Win98SE full version with the Windows Extras package installed, like me? I should love to discover what is causing this, because I think E-on help have given up on me now.

Curious problem indeed! Any chance of some quirkiness relating to video card? What card do you use? I'm alwaus having trouble with vid cards and 3d apps - such as amapi for instance. I use win 98 full version - no extras - with no problems SO FAR. Good Luck, MUD

Oh, and another thought...sometimes ecc memory and non ecc memory in combination or without motherboard support for one of them will do very very strange things sometimes related to only one function of only some software - drive you nuts finding it. Just a thought.

Video card and/or video card drivers was the first thing that sprung to my mind. Have you checked for a video driver update in awhile? And how does your card handle OpenGL? Laurie

I will look into the video card question, but the curious thing is that the program behaves exactly the same on my husband's PC and his video card is not the same as mine. Thanks for the suggestion, folks.

This is quite bizarre, but shouldn't be related to the video card since rendering does not use the video card in any way (but, of course, the openGL preview does). If you haven't already, try reinstalling just in case your installation was corrupted. -Karl

Hi Caroluk, Access the material editor for the leaves from the material summery button, and see if the trans map is correctly loaded for the vegetation and that varible transparency is also checked in the transparency tab. It looks to me as if the transparency map has not loaded properly for some of the veggies for some reason. Hope that helps, Cheers

Did you install under win 98 or Win 95? Could that even make a difference? I dunno, 'cause I'm waiting on Vue 4, and using Vue 3.1 on W 98 SE--- no problems with that at least.

The plants work well for me under Win98SE. I'd go with what Karl and Cheers said above -- try reinstalling Vue first, because it "should" all work properly. Also check the actual plant materials (transparency). It may be that your Plants folder didn't install completely, so reinstalling is a good way to go. Can't hurt at least. :)

Thanks folks. I have reinstalled about 8 times. E-on sent me a new cd but it is the same. It is exacly the same on my husband's machine and none of his hardware is the same as mine. He has Win 98. I have Win 98SE. We both have the Win 98 Plus extras. But I have Win 95 on my alternative drive (my C drives are removeable in drawers) and Vue 4 works perfectly on that, which rules out all my hardware which is the same whichever drive I am using. The transparency maps do not load correctly - white is turned into black. A transparency map made by the program from a coloured jpeg usually works fine. But at least I have a workaround now. I render anything needing transparency maps in Win 95 - it means powering down, exchanging the drives, powering up, making changes to the CMOS and rebooting, but I can at least do it. Another little quirk on Win 98 is that if there is a cylinder primitive in the scene the render is covered with noise. This again does not happen under Win 95, and Win 95 will render scenes which manifest all these problems in Win 98 perfectly. I am answering this on my husband's machine because I cannot access anything on Renderosity on mine. I get forbidden notices all over everywhere in Netscape and IE. I think I shall have to throw away all my cookies. I would wonder if I had a virus but my anti virus program is up to date and says not. Just gremlins I expect. Carol UK

Geez, those are some powerful gremlins. :/ I'm afraid I don't have a clue since all those mentioned items have been tried and checked out. The transparency maps do not load correctly - white is turned into black. Although I don't know why this would be happening, there is a way you can "fix" it without going to Win95. Load a plant, open the material summary, then open the editor for the leaf (or petal) material. Move to the Transparency tab. Towards the right-hand side of the window, there's a section marked Transparency Production, and alongside the larger image, there are two filters under the notations "Transparency" and "Blurring". Right-click the filter under "Transparency"; select Load Filter. In the Filter Browser, select the "Other" grouping. In the middle of the second row from the top, there is a filter named INVERT. Select INVERT and you'll see the change immediately in the material preview. Click OK to exit the editor. Now you can save that material to be used again later, or you can save the entire plant as an object with its current material settings. If you save the material, save it with a new name, not overwriting the originals, just in case the problems get worked out at some point.

I think I have tried that, Varian. I have tried loading the colour map as a transparency map, and inverting that, but that only works partially because the leaves etc are all pale and semi-transparent. I think that is what you are suggesting doing, but I will go back and do what you said step by step, in case that is not quite what I did before. Many thanks. I have also discovered why Renderosity is giving me all the forbidden notices. The site seems to have take a morbid dislike to my ADSL line, or more probably to my fixed IP. If I disconnect from my ADSL and use my husband's ISP on dialup I can use Renderosity normally. It means downloads from here are slow, but at least they are possible. I have reported it to Admin so maybe they will discover what is causing that.

I tried your method Varian, but the result was that the leaves became totally transparent. The transparency map is solid black, having rendered all the white areas as black, so when you invert it, the black areas behind the leaves disappear, but so do the leaves. I had not tried the invert filter before, only the invert button on the transparency map - which changes the transparency map from solid black to solid white and the leaves vanish. So using the filter has the same effect. Thanks for the suggestion though. I think I am stuck with the Win 95 for renders solution. It is lucky that I don't have my husband's PC, because he does not have a working Win 95 drive, and if he was into Vue d'Esprit he would have to start one - he too has removeable C drives but does not have an alternative to his Win 98 drive. If I could open the *_a.prv files in a graphics program I would try making a set of transparency maps with the white areas recoloured to green or yellow so that the transparency loader would not recolour them to black. I think that might work because if the transparency map is not a separate black and white image, but the program makes its own from the coloured image, it works fine. (An example are the window and door grilles in the Vessel object where the same image is loaded for the colour map and the transparency map. That renders perfectly). Using the colour map does not work for plants, but recolouring the transparency maps just might. But I have tried renaming the .prv extensions to .bmp and .jpg and they will not read in the graphics program. Thanks again for your suggestion.

Carol, Is there a map loaded in the transparency part of your material? It sounds to me that if it's either completely solid or completely transparent then your transparency map is not loading at all. Right click on the sphere in your transparency tab in the material editor. Look and see if it's a mapped material or a procedural. It SHOULD be a texture map of which you should see the name at the bottom of the window. If there is no map than that is your problem for sure. Laurie

Daffy34, there is a transparency map loaded, and with the right name. The map must be OK because it works when I am in Win 95, but using the program under Win 98, the transparency function display stays solid black.

Carol, Try reloading the transparency map. If your sphere shows up with the map on it, then you are good to go. If you can't find it, then maybe you should let eon know exactly what's going on with the transparency. That shouldn't happen, and you are the first person I've ever heard of with this problem. Laurie

This whole thing is kind of baffling, especially soince I know many people, myself included, who are running Vue under Win 98 with no problems. And you also mention the problems with this website, but I too have a static IP (cable), and have never had those problems. Sounds like a problem with your W-98 install?

I have reloaded the transparency maps, Laurie, and had lots of email exchanges with Vue support. They even sent me a second cd but it was the same. Mike, I would suspect that my Win 98 had something to do with it, except that it behaves exactly the same way on my husband's PC. He is running Windows 98 upgrade from Win 95. I am running the full installation (not upgrade) Win 98 SE. Vue tech suggested that maybe we have a program in common that is interfering with it. I would suspect our virus checker were it not that Don and I both exited it before installing and using the program. I cannot think what else we both have, because our interests are very different. The only other thing that we have in common so far as I know is that we both have the Windows 98 Plus addons. I suppose there could be something there that is causing it, but I think they are pretty common and someone else would be getting these effects if that was it. I think Renderosity's Apache server is for some reason blocking my specific ADSL IP. It was all fine until the middle of last Saturday. I started this thread and came back to read the first responses on my ADSL line. Then suddenly the forbidden notices appeared later in the day and have been there ever since. I have no idea why this happened or what is causing it, but apart from the slowness of downloads, it is only a matter of seconds to switch to dialup, and my husband's connection, which is what I use for Renderosity, is unmetered too. I should be a bit more concerned about it if I had to use an ISP that put by-the-minute call charges on my phone bill.

You say you are running Win98SE and it doesn't render properly. Have you rendered a scene in Win98 and then openned it in Win95? If so how was the render quality then? Its not widely known but Win98SE is very different from Win98 or Win95. So different that many of the peripheral equipment drivers including graphic adapters needed to be modified i.e. updated, to run properly on Win98SE. When it was first released it caused several compatibility issues. But now most companies have updated their drivers accordingly. Vue4 is very Open GL intensive. If the graphic adapter driver you are using is the same for both Win95 and Win98SE I would highly recommend you download an updated driver for SE from the video card manufacturer. If they don't specify Win98SE then simply download the latest driver because most manufacturers made the updates but never bothered to specify SE. I know people who are running Win98SE and Vue 4. One had an older system and required a new graphic adapter driver installed to resolve their issues. All are running Vue 4 with only the "normal" issues you find on this board, otherwise they are fine.

I run Win98 SE and have never had a problem :) Laurie

Zstrike, I tried getting a later driver, but I have the latest for my video card. My understanding is that Open GL is used for the workspace display in Vue 4. You have the option to turn it off, when the 4 worspace boxes revert to wireframe like in Vue 3. It made no difference to my renders, nor to the noise that appears all over everywhere when I create a cylinder primitive. If I make a scene in Vue 4 under Win 98 and render it under Win 95, it is perfectly normal. That is, in fact, what I do with scenes that involve transparency maps. If I want a cylinder, it is usually quicker to make one in Rhino and import it than switch to Win 95. I would agree that Win 98SE + my video card sounds the likely suspect, were it not for the fact that it behaves the same on my husband's PC. His motherboard, chip, video card and sound card are all different from mine, he has 512MB RAM against my 256MB, and he is running Win98 and not Win98SE. All of which makes me a little bit wary of buying a new video card to make Vue happy, if there is a chance that it would make no difference. At the moment I am a bit stumped, and inclined to put up with doing some renders in Win 95. Bryce 5 should be delivered in the beginning of next week. If that too gives problems I shall have to think about changing the video card. Laurie, Vue Tech Support say that most people are running it under Win98 or Win98SE and I am the only person having problems (apart from my better half who does not use it - we only put it on his machine to test whether it was SE and/or my video card causing the trouble). So what makes Vue4 dislike this corner of Coventry seems a total mystery.

Somehow I doubt that Vue doesn't like Great Britain...LOL! I hope you can solve your problems soon :) Laurie

Ok I really didn't think that was the problem but I wanted to get rid of a variable. What has gone unsaid here is on what drive is Vue installed. This is what I assume you did and then I will explain what your problem is. You say you have your operating systems loaded on removable drives. But I am assuming you loaded Vue onto a fixed drive (i.e. "D" drive)so that you wouldn't have to load duplicate copies of the program. If this is what you did then I would also assume you were in Win95 mode when you loaded Vue. If what I've just related is the case then that is your problem. When you load a program on a computer the program "hooks" into the operating system via what is called dll's. These dll's are registered on the installed program so it knows where and how to make calls to the operating system's functions. Win98 probably has about 3 times the numbers of dll's then Win95. About 35% of Win95 is integrated 16bit DOS code for backward compatibility purposes. Win98SE is 100% 32bit code and runs 16bit codes in emulation. So when you run Vue from "D" which was installed under Win95 and your "C" drive is in Win95 mode everything would be fine. But when you change to Win98 SE you have a problem because some of the dll's that Vue is making calls to are different or don't exist in Win98 SE. The only solution is to reinstall Vue on to each of the removable drives that holds your different operating systems. If you simply try to load it on the Win98 SE drive and leave it on the "D" drive it will probably cause conflicts.

No - it is not like that. I installed the Win 98 copy on my Win 98 drive, on the G partition (my C partition is pretty full except for space I keep free for expansion of the programs already on that partition and things like the Windows temp file. I keep that space at about 500MB and if it gets down below 300MB I uninstall something and put it on another partition). The swap file has a partition all to itself till I run out of space and have to put something on with it. When I put Vue4 on the Win 95 drive I installed it again on that drive - can't remember which partition now, but since it works there it obviously is not hooked on being on C. The D drive I use solely for my own files, for downloads, resources etc. that I might want to access from either drive - but no programs. I always install applications on the OS drive that I want them to run under, for just the reason you suggest. And I never keep any of my own files on the OS/application drives. I can then archive my files to CDs and remove them from D without having to search all over the computer for things. My husband's drive is not partitioned, so it went on C in his PC. I wondered if the existence of Vue 3.1 was interfering. That is not on my Win 95 drive, but Vue 4 is the upgrade and demanded my Vue 3 rego # because it could not find anything to upgrade from on that drive. So it sounds as though it expects to find 3.1 or another earlier version on the drive it is installed on. I am a bit reluctant to uninstall Vue 3.1 anyway, because I have made a lot of objects and materials I use with it, and am gradually importing to Vue 4 - and it works. If I don't need some of the new features for an image I can do it in 3.1. I am beginning to think this is one of life's little mysteries that will never be solved. I have Bryce 5 on the way. If it behaves peculiarly too I shall have to get a new video card, avoiding the one my husband has on the grounds that they don't like that either. But if Bryce behaves normally I will live with Vue 4 as it is and render in Win 95. At least the gremlin that stops me connecting with Renderosity on my ASDL line seems to be uncovered. Admin say that my problems seem to have coincided with them adding new security code to combat hackers. They have my ADSL IP and think they should be able to solve it. I am relieved that does not seem to be bound up with my Vue problems. I would credit all this to Friday 13th, if it had not been going on for about a week already.

Just to help add to the confusion (lol), my first installation of Vue 4 was on a Win98SE (upgraded over Win95), with Vue 3.1 on another drive of the same system. Worked great for me. :) My second installation of Vue4 went to a Win98SE (clean install), on the C: drive, where it's happily (although temporarily) residing currently. My third installation will be coming up soon, when I remove it from its present location and install it to a different partition. From my previous experience with it, I expect it to please me some more and would be very surprised if it didn't. I wish your experience was as satisfying as my own. I don't think the OS is the culprit, but I can't imagine what might be.

Thanks Varian. It sounds as though you have covered most of the possibilities - different versions of Win 98, different partitions and so on. I am beginning to think that it must be related to something like my virus checker, but I don't want to remove that for obvious reasons, and it is the one I like best of the ones around. I don't have it on Win 95 because I can't use my ADSL line with that drive (USB not supported). There may be more to getting rid of its activities than simply exiting it. Or maybe it puts a dll somewhere that Vue does not like. Don has the same virus checker, so it could be the culprit, and I already have to exit it to use Zip Magic and burn cds. Now if someone says they have Vue4 living like a dream with PCCillin, there goes that theory too. I suspect I shall never know.

EUREKA! I have found the culprit. It is a program called Keyboard Express which I did not suspect because I have it running on Win 95 and it does not interfere there. It allows you to set up hot keys for your name, passwords, favourite URLs and so on. I would be utterly lost without it while surfing, but it is very easy to turn on and off, so I can just close it down while using Vue 4. Thank you all so much for all your patience and help over this. I now have Vue 4 running beautifully under Win 98. I just can't surf and render at the same time, cos I can't even remember the URLs for bits of my own site without Keyboard Express.

Alright Carol! I'm so glad the culprit has been found! :D