Just some problems: 1 ceiling: Why do my ceilings always turn almost complitly black. What ever color I use. How do I get light to hit in, just as it do in the real world? I can't turn the rooms into solariums! (In worldcraft, the light is reflected around the room.) 2 mahogny: Do this looks like varnished (hmm right word?) mahogny? If not, then I have vasted a lot of time. 3 parquet: Anyone that have scanned or have a texture of parquet? 4 bent cylinder: Are there any way of getting a bent cylinder? A want to make round edges on a table, but that seems to be impossible. 5 curved cones: Are there any way of making a curved (curved towards the inside) cone?

There are cylinders and cones in Vue... With booleen difference (most likely spelled wrong) you can make many different shapes. The ceiling looks reflective... what material did you use? I really like the wood. The whole room looks really nice to me.

Hey, this looks very good, really! It looks as though your ceiling is reflecting the walls below. What material did you use? In Vue, you do have to get a little excessive sometimes with the lighting, placing point lights and spot lights around the scene to get the lighting effects you need. I often add a dozen or more lights, with most of them having the shadows turned off. When you turn off the shadows for a light it will save render time, and also it looks less realistic, having shadows going every which way, anyway. Maybe try some directional lights too, though you have far less control over a directional light that you do over a point light. The quadratic point and spot lights in Vue 4 have a more realistic falloff zone than the non-quadratic ones do, so experiment with them. There is no way really to "bend" anything in Vue, though by using the primitives with boolean subtractions, and intersections, you can get close. Vue has no real modeling tools, so assembling primitives is really the only way. However, all the boolean operations will add to render time, so if you can get an actual modeling program which can do these things, I'd recommend that way instead. What's parquet? And yes, your mahogany texture looks VERY good, I'd say. You did a great job on this. :)

Wow, this it beautiful.. Sharen

Very good work ! Near perfection, I think. Maybe too much reflection for wood material, to my opinion. It's a personal point of view since this type of wood could exist in reality. To have the perfect image, you should try to add defects to textures or objects. Yves

Alekssander, I have nice parquets and will prepare a zip for you. I'll tell you when it is ready. To make the ceiling more clear, do the following : Go in the material editor of the ceiling material, click the EFFECTS tab and bring up the lightening for diffuse and ambient to a highter value. You have to try what is OK for you. The mahony could be a little more shiny, just (in the material editor) give more highlight to it. You also could choose a light orange highlight color for it, just try several things. What do you mean exactly with round edges on a table ? Like the pic here ? Then I can send you one. I also can send you courved cones if you tell me how they have to look exactly or what you want to do with it. Guitta

Attached Link: http://members.tripod.com/~GUITTA/parquet.zip

You can download some parquets here. I got them on the web 3 years ago (don't remember where). I leave it there for 1 week, if any one else is intersted. Hope you can find what you want. :-)Guitta

Thanks Guitta, this is great...Sharen

I forgot to say : The mahony more shiny... try also to put a small shadowless point light in the center of the room. Sometimes 20 or less Power is anough. You have to try out with several powers.

A beautiful room, Aleks! I think everyone answered your questions quite well, but here are a couple other comments from me. I think the wood looks quite polished/varnished, but perhaps a little too much so. Adding some blur to the reflections would make those reflections more realistic (IMHO). The walls are also super-reflective, and I would lower their reflection down so it isn't so mirror-like. I'd tone down the reflections on the countertop, too. The celing is also very reflective, so it's going to pick up all the colors within the room, which are quite dark and make the ceiling appear dark. You can lower the reflections for the ceiling and, as Guitta mentioned, raise the diffuse and ambient light settings in the Effects tab. Using Boolean operations, you can create almost anything with Vue's primitives. Don't forget there is also a torus shape, and that may be a helpful place for you to start with to find the "bent cylinder". Nice work. Keep going! :)

Nice picture... I think everybody has said it all for making the pic better.. A little too reflective... But a great room...

Great start. I think I have seen a set of advanced primitives (with rounded edges, unusual shapes... ) either in the free stuff here or in the 'models' of Lannie's 3D model world website. These are a must have to compensate from Vue's absence of beveled shapes.

Attached Link: http://amapi.idevgames.com/html/download.html

Looks to me as if you could use a good modeler. Try Amapi 4.15. It's free, and more than just capable. Try this link.-Fernando.

Ms_Outlaw I know I can make differents shape, but not the one I want :.( . lol Im beginning to get realy frustrated at the moment. MikeJ I used the same mahogny, since the white ceiling turned black and grey. Well I have VdE 2 free version, (some kind of uppgraded 2.0 advertisement version) but Im going to test more lights. Try to find out where the limits are. I realy need to bend things. (begining to sound desperate, am I not?;) Do you know any real modeling tools I can use? I got the corel draw 7 3d, but I cant load those objects into V dE. Parquet is a kind of wooden floor. The oak thing texture I used, looks strange. Try to load down the picture and use the zoom tool in PSP. The texture change in a magical way! sams3d Thanks, but Im not even half true. I just made a crystal statue, that I put into the system. But it takes 13 hours to render it. (realy old computer) Maybe I load it up tomorrow. YL This kind of wood do exist in reality and it reflects a lot more than this. I realy like the wood, but every father thinks his baby is the most beautiful one. How on earth do I add defects to textures? Im not realy sure I want the perfect image yet, what would I do after that? But I realy want to learn new things. (Thats a cry for help;)) Gebe Oh ok! I just tried to scan one. That didnt work, but I just visited my father and he thought he had some realy good pictures. But thanks anyway. The diffuse and ambient dont work. The white ceiling just turns grey. I have already tried that. Actually I have right and left clicked and dragged evrything! I cant make the mahogny to shiny. I already have a rendering time on 13 hours. (600x450) And when I render a frame from longer distance, it is shiny enough. And it cant be to shiny, because of the mirrors on the wall, and in the ceiling. No my table already looks like that. Curved from the top of the plate to the bottom of the plate. A curved cone is like a top of a bottle. What I realy need is a ring. Thanks for the parquets. Im not sure Im going to use them yet! Varaian The room should have been even more reflective, except the ceiling should have been white. The ceiling becomes dark, because the lights dont reflect. I dont realy understand how the torus works. That is why I ask questions:) Tradivoro Thanks! Agiel Thanks, Im going to look into that, and see what I can find. Kurka Thanks. Yes I realu need a modelling program, so Im going to load down that, and try it out. To you all. Try to find a magazine with the name Boat International. I like to read it, because Im interrested in design. The room should have been lighter and shine a lot more. Is my crystla dolphin ok? I know there are some smaller errors in it. Im trying to fix that. I had a 9 hour rendering time. Alekssander (puhhh. Have I answered all?)

Attached Link: http://www.openfx.org/news/index.php

Alekssander, The best of the free modeling programs I've seen so far, in my opinion, is Open FX, which you can download at the link above. read about it first, and I have to warn you it's a massive download if you choose to get the sample files which go with it. But, I don't think that it exports anything Vue 2 can use. It's a shame they didn't get around to adding a .3DS import until Vue 3, although you can import .OBJ and .DXF with your Vue 2. Neither Open FX or the free Amapi program, will export .obj, but I don't know about DXF. Then again, there are alot of versions of the DXF format, and I bet that Vue 2 doesn't handle most of the recent versions. Do you have any good 3D file conversion programs?

I also can give you a round edge table top (round or/and rectangular) if you like.

I have corel draw 6 3d, it exports in DXF. You can import dxf in Vue 2 :-)

Attached Link: http://home.europa.com/~keithr/crossroads/

Crossroads, free file conversion.

MikeJ Well Im going to read about both the Open FX and Amapi, to see if anyone of them can help me or not. Im not sure I need a lot of sample files. I just found out that I can use the Corel Dream 3d, but its not very good. It based on a one window view, and I find it difficulty to make complex objects. I can also import .raw, but I got no Idea what that is. No Im a beginner, so I dont have any 3D file con. program yet. Gebe Thanks, your right. There is an export possibility that I completely forgot. So I just made the biggest donout in V dE history;) Dont need that table then, thanks anyway. But the dream 3d is realy crappy. I find it difficult to use. Turning up all of them to 100% dont work, unless I turn the room into a solarium. I still get grey and black patches , depending on camera angle. Im used to use Worldcraft from the old days, and in that program, the light reflected around the room. The shadows also worked better. So I think Im going to forget that idea. It just dont look real :) Kurka Ok, Thanks! Alekssander

you can try amorphium 1.0 for organic object modelling. It's free, in a very recent "computer art " magazine was this program on a CD. Wonderful program, easy to use, to produce strange shapes from different ways. I suppose you can download the program on http://www.amorphium.com Yves

Corel Dream 3d is an older version of Raydream, which I always found difficult use. It's got a great extruding tool, though. If you try Amapi, there's a good forum at Yahoo,which is frequented by Phillip Steiger,a one man support powerhouse. The interface is not standart,but,once you get used to it, you'll whish your other apps were as well thought out. Good luck.

I will say one thing here, Alekssander: I've seen your pictures of your studio and the band, with all the props, and I can see you seem to be doing very well with what you have, that is the obvious limitations which you've mentioned. But I see you have very strong ideas, and definite plans for your graphics, so hang in there, and very soon your visions will become a reality for you. Your room, above, looks very good, to me, and slowly, we'll be able to help you get your studio in order, too. :)

Alekssander, it sounds like you're looking for a radiosity effect. Unfortunately Vue doesn't have radiosity (yet), but turning up the ambience setting on the materials will mimic it. If you want to affect it throughout the scene, go to the Sun/Light panel, the Light tab, and adjust the entire scene lighting there, shifting ambinence from uniform to sunlight -- play with different settings until you find what you need. And the doughnut shape? That's the torus I mentioned. But when I mentioned it, I didn't realize you were using v.2. The torus was new in v.3, so v.2 doesn't have it available, sorry.

YL, Oh ok. I think that organic modelling sounds interresting, so Im going to try that later some time. Thanks. Kurka, I agree that parts of the Dream 3d are very ok, but its difficult, not to look at an object from all of the angles at once. I manged to make the donout, and that was what I was missing. Im going to try Amapi, during the next week. Thanks. MikeJ, Thanks. Well I got a lots of ideas but unless you can send me a supercomputer, I want be able to do much with the studio. I move an object, wait 20 seconds, ooops wrong place, another 20 seconds. lol And of course the endless rendering. Hours after hours, just to find a tiny little error. ;) Varian, Well I have already been right and left clicking and dragging more or less everthing,(that could be the problem though;) but Im not realy satisfade. But Im not giving up yet. Radiosity = supercomputer ? I manged to import a donout in the end, and I have already used it several times. So Im a little bit more happy;) Alekssander