heyas; okay, guys, what's the current status of the .05 patch? did it pass muster yet? i have the 4.03-02 and vue is giving me fits trying to render or even save my latest image. and no, it ain't norton this time, i killed that. i got it to render to disk, finally. it was rendering to disk. gonna take 11 hours, it says. well, i can't have that, so after 4 hours or so, i hit esc. wrote the pic. that's fine. then, of course, i go to save the scene again, cuz i know you can't resume render without doing that nonsense. then vue pops up with this empty dialogue/warning box that only has an 'ok' button. i say okay. it starts to save, BOOM! totally fails to save, destroys my saved work, the file won't load, and i'm back to square 1. square -1 even, since i have to do the final fixes in the scene all over again before starting the next render.

The 4.05 patch seems to be the best so far....I think at least. There's a problem with it not recognizing the .avi format, but if you're not animating, you won't care. There are also problems with the new Import dialogue box, but only in that right clicking doesn't allow you to do the normal Windows "Open" window things. The .BUM deal works now, but it seems only on "newer .bum files. For example, it will load Neftis' Casual hair .bum files, but not the original Vicki .bum files from DAZ. shrug Rendering to disk does not seem to be a problem and the volumetric lights seem "better". They can now be shined on a Poser character with transparencies without whiting out the transparent area. Seems to be rendering slightly faster, too. Just don't import as .OBJ the sphere or the torus from Poser (not like you're gonna), because Vue really screws 'em up somehow, although the .pz3 iimport of the same objects works fine. Go figure. I like the 4.05-02 patch, and am not having problems.

One other thing, it's playing hell with what seems to be randomly inverting face normals on exported terrains.

MikeJ - Are you exporting .3ds terrains? I have done that but when I go to import into 3D StudioMax 4.2 it hangs and acts like it is loading (25 minutes) is all I have given it before I kill the process - Any ideas?

Well, I use .OBJ for terrains, since Max has the limit for polygons set, and I like hi-res. I'll give it a try.

Just discovered it seems to be only the .ob format which is screwing with the normals. Incidentally, you have to convert the .OBJ terrains from Vue into somethign else, even .obj in 3D Exploration or (maybe) some other program before max 4 will "accept" them, or else it crashes on trying to import. All other programs I have will import them as .obj without converting though, but the normals are still screwed. I just tried it with a medium-res .3ds terrain from Vue and all the face normals were intact when imported into max 4, and it didn't crash. I was having problems with the 4.2 patch, so I don't use it, so maybe that's your problem with that. Also, the low-res .3ds terrains from Vue look pretty good, so I guess I'll just do that from now on.

We Japanese users can't use 4.05-02 because of garbled characters problem. We use English version Vue on Japanese Windows OS, but this patch seems trying change Vue menu and dialog etc. into Japanese. it didn't success. I'm still using 4.01, for 4.03 patch have the bug of bump material.. Hatsumi

05 the file dialogue has lost the Explorer commands - not even scroll wheel works .. boolean difference with an imported object works badly .. all else good

Well, my Vue 4 just stopped working. Couldn't even open it. Had to uninstall and reinstall and I can only patch up to version 4.02 now and I was using 4.03. So now, most of my scenes won't open properly. sigh

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12368&Form.ShowMessage=580953

Does any one have any experience backing up the vue directory prior to upgrading? I guess there could be registry updates that won't get caught, but that too could be worked around. I kinda want to upgrade, but with all of the other problems, I'm a little nervous. It works fine right now, except for a few weird material problems (try editing a material, and then canceling the edit box....it can sometimes really get things messed up) I'm using 4.03-02. I'll probably give it a shot this weekend, unless anyone can give me a reason to stick with 4.03 eric

Hi Eric, When you do an upgrade, the upgrader .exe file creates a folder named "Back" in your Vue 4 main directory. To revert after upgrading, simply open that folder and copy the contents of it and paste them in the main directory that vue4.exe is in. The Back folder itself contains other folder, such as "Modules", "Plants", "Environment", etc. It would be a good idea to make a copy of the "Back" folder and put it somewhere else on your HD prior to running a newer patch, though, just in case.

Sounds pretty easy. Thanks! Eric