Quote - The other issues I have is time, in that learning the materails and Ecosystem is difficult and trying to use the terrain modification tool is next to impossible with my hardware.

Hmm, let's see.... I'm using Vue 2014 and Vue 10 on a laptop with an i5 2.5Ghz (2 cores, 4 threads), ATI 7450m 1Gb and 6Gb of RAM. Compared to your system that is nothing at all. I'm working on the laptop creating the scenes and rendering on my PC with the same CPU as you do have (i7 3770, but only 16Gb of RAM and no graphics card, using the internal Intel one).

Saying that using the terrain modification is next to impossible on your hardware makes no sense what so ever. My laptop can even do terrain modification easily, no problem at all. I can create massive scenes on the laptop (check my gallery), but I can render them due to lack of memory, that's why I use the i7 with 16Gb. I do all kinds of modification in my terrains and I haven't run into a problem at all.

I honestly think that your problem is not your hardware but your software. You using outdated software on a quite modern system. Vue 8 was released over 5 years ago in a time when most of us used single cores and we started to switch to dual cores and beyond. Vue 9 and 10 had quite some changes to utilize the more powerful hardware available.

Saying that an i7 with 32Gb isn't good enough for terrain modification just doesn't cut it, then most of us wouldn't be able to do it. Perhaps it's time to update your hardware and enter the new world of Vue :)

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk