The new Vue Challenge (VC) for this month, as decided by Guitta, who won July's challenge, will be: Invite your friends for a nice dinner. This is the first of the NEW VC's. To quote from the Vue manual, "here's how it works...": This is a thematic challenge. The theme is a dinner party of some sort. Guitta's exact words about this: [[[[[ "My idea was "invite your friends for a nice dinner". And I imaginated this could be an inside scene in a kitchen or a dining room, but also a pic-nic or a barbecue in a garden. And I hope not to see everywhere the turkey from 3D cafe, but something elaborated. A dinner is in the evening, anyhow. So we have to play with lights. What I really wanted to see is a nice done "table" (wherever, however) with a nice choice of food on it as you all would do in real life to create a pleasant atmosphere for your guests." ]]]]] NOW, though this is different from what we've been doing, I like this idea. We are not doing away with the idea of having something technical to be "challenged" by, because that's where the second part comes in. For example, if you do not have time for the full dinner scene, or simply want to explore some facet of Vue that maybe this idea has given you, that's where the sub-challenge comes in. Simply put, August's VC is "invite your friends for a nice dinner" That means, obviously, a depiction of some sort of gathering involving food, with as many or as few people in it as you think your scene needs. Please refer back above to what Guitta had originally written, since after all it's her idea. The SUB challenge would be to concentrate your efforts on one technical aspect pertaining to theme. Some possible examples: 1) A glass on an outdoor table, refracting sunlight through it 2) Maybe some wine bottles on a kitchen counter 3) A complete table, all set up and ready to go 4) Your Uncle Bob, passed out in a lawn chair (just joking...) 4) The turkey from 3D Cafe (sorry, had to do that. ;)) You all get the idea! It is the THEME that will be voted on, however, so if you want the opportunity to be the one to set the NEXT Vue Challenge, you must enter with a thematic picture. A "thematic" picture is defined by the author, in this case, Guitta. Clearly, you can't just render a chicken on a barbecue grill and call it finished, until there are people, your friends (remember?) in the scene. I would really prefer that entries to the theme part of it be placed in the Vue gallery, with a link to the image being placed in THIS thread. The reason for that is, say we get 5 or 6 entries that are all over 50 KB... before you know it, this page is taking a full minute to load for some people. :( WE don't want to scare anyone away now, do we? BUT, you can place images here too, if you'd like, but if you chose to do so, please keep the file size reasonable. The SUB challenge entries can be scattered all about, and need not be in this thread, since we won't be voting on those. Why is this changing so drastically? Simple: I thought the VC needed a boost. The "Theme" is for us as artists or aspiring artists. The "Challenge" is for us as Vue technicians. :) Since we are so behind schedule with this, this one will run until September 10, which is 4 Mondays from now. On Tuesday, September 11 and 12, we will vote on the entries. The winner gets to name the following challenge, and will have 2 days to decide, and present it. And so on.... I'm really sorry for any and all confusion that may have come from this past month. It was a difficult one for me. :( Cheers, and HAVE FUN! -Mike

Thanks Mike. I think for all of you who don't have Poser, it could be also a dinner scene without People, let's say they are just on the road to come to your home :-). What do you think ? Guitta

OK, that sounds good. After all, it IS up to you. :)

Okay, I understand, it sounds like a real challenge at least for me....I will give it a try....it may turn out awful but that is okay too. This isn't for a million dollars right? Right? Okay, just kidding. Shash (this is my nickname, I just got tired of writing Sharen) you know one more extra letter an all.

::passing Gramma a couple extra letters she can use anytime...then ducking because I called her Gramma again:: ;) I think this'll work great, Mike! To depict a dinner scene need not include people, but if someone wants to have people in their scene but don't have Poser, models of people can be found in various places around the web (freeware), such as: http://www.3dcafe.com http://www.3dup.com http://www.klicker.de/e_mod.htm And, I think we should go with Sharen's idea and make the prize a million dollars. grin

LOL - Sharen (aka shash) not grandmama

This sounds good. Especially since Varian volunteered to put up the prize money. ;) Rich

Umm...Sharen was offering that! I just think it was a mighty generous offer and we should take her up on it! :D

Oh, ok. Sounds fair to me. ;)

Can you just imagine the computer you could buy with a million dollars?!

Why stop at one? :)

Yeah, not having poser, I'm going to opt for the turkey at 3d cafe... Thanks for the heads up on that Mike... :) No, I'm going to go for the Mary Celeste trip and do a dinner with no people... For those of you who don't know what the Mary Celeste was, it was a mystery ship, that was found floating, all the people missing, but there was dinner served, food warm, things were left as though people were there just a couple of hours before, but they were never found again...

hello All, where can we see what has been done so far??? jp

Interestingly, JP, I don't think anyone has made a submission as yet, to either the Theme or Challenge. The Challenge, of course, will be open at all times for anyone who wants to try light refracting through glass. The Theme is only open until September 10 (if you want your image included in the voting), so folks better hurry. :) When ready, images can be posted to the Gallery, then a message posted to the forum giving a link to the image.

I've got one in progress. :) This months' challenge is a little more complex than what we've been used to, since it involves a sort of "story" in it, and probably best done with multiple figures. So, it doesn't surprise me we haven't seen any yet.

I just started one and have only done a little bit during the week-end, because I'm relly too busy at this moment. I will try to finish it before the 10th of august, just to participate. I hope the rules were not too difficult for you:-) and myself :-). I discover that I have to learn alot about Poser ! Poser in relation to Vue especially. Varian explained the other day to a Vue user that it is possible to import Pz3 files in Vue 4 and Vue 4 also says so, but I never could do it. Every time I try, Vue 4 says cannot read *.Pz3 (BTW, Vue 4 also refuses to open my *.raw files from Terragen). Also it is a big and long work to create *.obj files from Poser and then search for each body part the right texture, because here again, Vue 4 is not able to find it by itself in the Poser folders. Maybe I do something wrong in exporting from Poser. But As my Poser 4 is very new, I even had not yet the time to read the entire handbook. Please friends, don't worry too much about people in your scene, they will come anyhow when they capt the nice smell of the food you have prepared ;-). Everybody is hungry in evening. Guitta

Attached Link: http://www.curiouslabs.com

Guitta, try this: First, download and install the Poser 4.03 update from Curious Labs' website, if you haven't yet done so. Then, though this sounds utterly ridiculous, in your Poser 4 folder, find "poser.exe", and rename it to "poser.exe" (without the quotes, obviously). No, that's not a mistake, and I realize it's the exact same name, but that's what's on E-on's FAQ page, and it works for people having PZ3 import problems. After that, it should work fine. Hope this helps.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=81248&Start=1&Sectionid=3&WhatsNew=Yes

ok heres my entry http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=81248&Start=1&Sectionid=3&WhatsNew=Yes hope you'll like it. jp

Guitta, follow what Mike said, and also make sure you have the 4.01 Vue patch. You should be able to simply save a PZ3 in Poser, then import the PZ3 in Vue with Object - Import. It's not a fairy tale, it really does work! Yours should be made to work, too. :) JP, that is an excellent tackling of both the Theme and the Challenge! :D

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12368&Form.ShowMessage=392056

I just posed my entry for the sub challenge in a new thread. (see the link).

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=82628&Start=1&Artist=agiel&ByArtist=Yes

And here is the entry for the Challenge itself. I took the liberty to reduce the number of invited friends to only one, for obvious reasons :)

Boy, have you been busy! These are both wonderful! :D