I use Vue 2014 Complete and Poser 11. Time for a new computer. What are the must have features / specs I need for Vue? I have heard widely varying opinions on the importance of the video card. Will onboard HD video work or do I need a better video card? Looking a i7 processor. Is 8 gb RAM enough?

Vue uses the CPU for the final render, not the graphics card. Lesser version of Vue are limited to rendering on 8 CPUs (8 pure cores) and you would need Vue Infinite or xStream Vue to use more cores or integrate with a local render farm (or a home render-farm-in-a-box like the Boxx RenderPro 2). A graphics card will help speed up Vue's preview window, though, and let you run at larger size and with more settings enabled.

Thus Vue Complete can't do better than 8 cores. Cheapest I could find an Octa-core (8-core) i7-6900K kit on Amazon was a hefty $842, and that's assuming you have an existing PC it can just slot into with no hassle.

But if you're stuck with getting a fast i7 4-core CPU, then upgrading to Vue 2016 R2 should make a big big difference - as there was very significant render-time optimisation in Vue 2015, plus a few more tweaks on that for Vue 2016. You can download the latest Learning Edition to test that.

Or... you can get a www.pixelplow.net render farm account, assuming you have a credit card and fast upload on your broadband, and then have their fast CPUs render your Vue scenes for you. For that you're looking at their standard $10 deposit, and then probably about $1 a render.

If you're not a high-end videogamer who needs a hot $4k PC, and who only does about one Vue final-render a week, then the Pixelplow online renderfarm is probably the way to go. That would ding your wallet for a mere $60 a year, or thereabouts. Easy and cheap to test it, too, to see if it can do what you want. So far as I know, they're the only farm who accepts Vue files, and perhaps their Vue service may not last forever.

On your specific question on the onboard graphics, my Vue 2016 R2 xStream does fine with onboard graphics, though the preview window is small and sees a lot of features being turned off as the scene complexity increases.

Thanks for your reply. Budget constraints probably will limit me to an i7 7700 4 core, but good to know that high end video will not be necessary. Do you know if Poser 11 requires better video card?

Renderholic posted at 6:34AM Fri, 28 July 2017 - #4310853

Thanks for your reply. Budget constraints probably will limit me to an i7 7700 4 core, but good to know that high end video will not be necessary. Do you know if Poser 11 requires better video card?

Poser 11 still has Firefly and Superfly works with CPU so you don't require a powerful video card but it will make use of one for Superfly if available. Supports Nvidia only. The benefit of a video card is it allows for much higher render quality at same or better speed compared to CPU which is useful for removing noise. Re memory and Vue, IIRC memory becomes important when using displacement and eco instances so it depends on what kind of scenes you want to do and how much time you want to spend optimising to reduce memory. If you're planning to experiment with larger scenes then 8GB might be a bit restrictive.

Yes, I agree with Ironsoul - if you're getting a new PC for Vue then two extra sticks of motherboard RAM may be a good insurance against crashes. 16Gb rather than 8Gb. According to my research Vue may rarely touch the extra 8Gb, but when it does nudge into it for big scenes... it'll be that 'gotta have it moment' that may prevent a crash and lost autosaves. For instance, I can just about work with Cornucopia's new huge Green Canyon scene + Poser imports, on 8Gb with onboard graphics and wireframe preview. But I had two annoying crashes which I suspect might have been avoided by the OpenGL having access to 16Gb of RAM. Of course, if you're not loading vast natural landscapes with clouds and big ecosystems, then you may not need it. Someone doing architectural space-port / city / vehicle pictures probably wouldn't need an extra 8Gb of RAM. Same goes for those importing the stock 'three Poser characters in a room', but that sort of scene is probably best done in Poser + SuperFly anyway. Poser lets you work the artistic camera-framing of tight interiors much more easily than Vue does.

I guess the thing to do is get the new PC with the standard 8Gb RAM, but make sure the motherboard has the empty slot(s) needed to expand it to 16Gb if needed.

Good onboard graphics will still be needed for Vue's OpenGL preview and updating preview window, though. So it's not like you can just get the most piffling onboard graphics possible. If you can get the PC company to slot something good like a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6Gb slot-in graphics card, for an extra $300, then it's worth considering. A powerful graphics card will help power Vue's OpenGL windows + scene previews. But be prepared for an increased electric bill, a hotter PC, a required power-supply upgrade to power the card, plus possibly an annoying whirring noise from the card/PSU fans.

As for Poser, SuperFly is very nice, and a good graphics card will help with speed there. But even with onboard graphics you can get adequate results from a fast 4000 pixel preview render in SuperFly, reduced to 2000 pixels to take off most of the jaggies. That sort of approach would let you quickly render posed characters in a transparent-background PNG, to be dropped into the Vue render using Photoshop and blended in to the lighting scenario. Also, I assume you know that you can push Poser 11 files to Vue 2016 for quality rendering, very easily, and Vue knows how exactly to translate the textures nicely (Smith Micro and E-on have been working together for decades now). The advantage there is that a handful of online render farms are happy to see Vue files. As well as Pixelplow, also check out the garagefarm.net online render farm, who now offer Vue online rendering.

I just looked at the upgrade prices. For you, US $299 for an upgrade from Vue 2014 Complete to 2016 Complete, is likely to be a better way to spend $300 than a GTX 1060 graphics card. Given all the rendering improvements in Vue 2015, and the stability fixes and other improvements in 2016.

Thanks for all of your advice. Found a Dell Inspiron i7 -7700 with 16 gb RAM and NVIDIA GT-750-Ti w/2 gb DDR5 and 1 TB Hard drive on sale. Before I buy, should that run Vue and Poser satisfactory? Will also take HartyBart and look into possibly upgrading to newer Vue.

Download the demo version of Vue and try it first. The more RAM and CPU speed you can afford, will always make Vue run better.

That should run Vue and Poser fine. I have a similar setup and they both run fine. The gtx 750 ti is a way better choice then onboard graphics, it's a lot faster. 16gb is nice to have and that cpy will render just fine and has the max amount of cores vue complete can access.

Thanks Shawn and Aeilkema. You've been a great help.

for Vue and for most 3D apps, this question is easy to answer: Get the biggest render-beast, you can get for your money. CPU,GPU, Ram ect, ect. The more, the better. Maybe better stay with Intel and Nvidea to make sure your hardware is most supported.