Maybe I've been over this before, and maybe you all think I'm a pain in the ass for whining, but I really am at my wits end with this software. Good though it may be, I just keep running into too many bugs and/or problems while using it that I am sometimes in danger of not only throwing the software out the window, but my pc along with it. I'm on the verge of a good job deal with an advertising company, and the guy is going to phone me Tuesday (yes he REALLY is, its no joke). By all accounts this could be THE job I've been waiting for; well paid, plentiful work, and I can do it all online for them! Unfortunately, my continual problems using Vue4 (which would be required for the work) are putting this in jeopardy. I'm continually having problems moving objects around, and zooming in/out; the whole thing often freezes and I'm forced to reboot. I think its an OpenGL problem, but I'm not sure. I sent a file to eonsoftware, and they said they had no problems using it, including zooming in/out or moving objects around.Even with files that have less than 300,000 polygons, 50 objects, it becomes tedious to use, and often freezes. This has had the effect of limiting what I can do; I'd love to try more complex stuff than just landscapes, but it just won't take it! So actually, I'm beginning to suspect my pc, but it could be both. I'm using Vue4, patch 4.05, on a AMD K6-2 450mhz, with 256 ram, and I'm beginning to think it just doesn't have what it takes. But I just can't be sure; I'm not going to get a 1.4ghz, 1000mb ram, 32mb ram video card pc if I end up with the same problems! Please help! I'm lost and confused - is it my freakin pc, or is it the software! How the hell do I decide and nail it once and for all???!!!Can anyone suggest the optimum pc requirements that I should consider if getting a new pc for this kinda work? (I would consider keeping this pc for non-art stuff). Regards JoeBlack (relieved at venting his spleen) ;)

I have almost the same PC 1,9 ghz and ofcourse the same software. Do not have the problem you mention. (Lots of others i have ) Hope someone can reach you a hand. (If not I am terribly in need of a job ;)) regards Myske

Joe, I'm using a 2 year old PC with an Athlon 600 mhz and 384 MB RAM, and though it's not the fastest around, I wouldn't say I have any real slowness problems to speak of, except when the object count gets high. Have you tried not using Open GL? Just using the viewports in wireframe mode? What kind of video card? You can take a good amount of the strain off by hiding groups of objects while working. Build your scene up in layers, and don't add the high object/polygon count objects until later in the scene. Just a few sugestions. I don't think it's your PC, but it might be your video card. But really, if upgrading your PC is a viable option, Vue wouldn't be the only reason to do it. Congrats on the work, and I hope it can go well for you.

Whenever I hide objects they're still visible in the ports. I've tried using different viewing options for the objects but its still slow; though I've never thought of not using OpenGL...maybe I should lol. I've never really used layering in my work, so maybe I'll have to start learning. My video card shares RAM, and its 8mb Trident Blade3D/MVP4(66). Thanx JoeBlack

Ok bud. I am reading what the other have posted and I must say that I have no problems with vue. I am running an Amdk6-2 400 with 256 megs of ram with a 40gig drive and a 10 gig. Now some of the problems you are talking about come from the fact that the program need alot of room to work, so if you don't have alot of room on the drive it will not run right. Now how did I figure that one out you are asking well when i first got vue i was running it on an 6.4 gig and it locked up all the time and then crashed in the middle of me trying to render stuff. So i took a look at the drive and found that I only had 684 megs left on the drive. So I started to clean the drive up and found that if you have more then a gig of space on the drive and turn the 3d card accelaration down to min it will work find. so give that a try and i for one hope you get the job. Hope this helps if not then let me know via the mail thing ok??

Hi Joe !

I can understand your situation... I also had a few VUE troubles on "big" projects, and sometimes I even think that I should use it only for personal stuff.
But VUE is not so "buggy". I had a few crashes, some problems updating, nothing more.
Honestly, if you have so many problems, they come from your "freakin pc" and bloody "OPEN GL".

You should run VUE on a Athlon or Pentium III/IV processor with a faster processor. I did a test with my old PC and VUE was crashing all the time.
Getting a new PC is surely the answer your looking for...
With 1.4 GHz and 1 Gb of Ram, VUE 4.05 will run smoothly. Install windows 2000 or XP, they are more stable than 98 and Millenium. A "pro" graphic card is surely useful, but not necessary (I don't have one and won't get one !). Be also careful when you install/uninstall drivers, hardware and softwares. Many operating systems problems are caused by this.

If the job deal is good, don't let anything stop you ! PCs are very cheap now, for less than $1K you can find a very powerfull machine...

Eric

This is my opinion. I have an Athlon 600 Mhz, with 512 MB RAM. My video card has 32 MB dedicated RAM. I don't seem to be having these problems. It is my guess that the video card is causing most of your problems. Try Mike's suggestion, then if that helps, at the very least upgrade your video card. You don't need the real highend cards, but I would suggest at least 16 MB dedicated RAM.

Thnx senjin, I have a 10gig drive, and right now its got 6.27gigs free, so free space isn't the issue. I might try doing what you suggest regarding my video card, and see what happens. auditv, thnx I'll consider that. If the money comes along I might just invest in another pc, keeping this one for "non 3d stuff". I'll try experimeting with opengl, video card settings and the like, but I'm not hopeful ;) Thanx JoeBlack

I have a 1.4 Ghtz Athalon, with a GeForce2 Pro 64MB video card. Vue worked like **** until Steve told me to turn off OpenGL in Vue. Since then it works fine, with the exception that it seems to "weed" graphics in preview windows. But no crashes and good enough for me. I just use it for hobby work. Since you are serious about getting real work, I think you should definitely upgrade your system. A fast PC is fairly cheap now. But I would not go with a gaming card (such as mine) but with a real OpenGL card, if you can afford it. Besides hoping to solve the Vue crashing problems, don't forget the other main reason to go for an upgrade. Time is money. If it takes you 12 hours to render something now, and it only takes you 40 minutes on a fast PC with a good video card, would that not earn you more cash? We all ought to have a rendering timing test, so folks like Joe can decide if it is cost effective to upgrade. If Mikej could make a complex scene available for download, and a bunch of us loaded it, rendered at the same setting, and reported back our system specs and the time that it took, seems like that information would be very valuable to folks like Joe who want to make a business decision on the question of whether or not to upgrade. Any thoughts? jon

Afternoon Joe . . .8^) I'm using a 3 year old system & I don't seem to have the problems that your having. My directional view windows refresh in Vue 4.05 does become a little slower as my file size goes up, but I also have it set to display using "opengl", so I'm sure that has something to do with that. I don't have any serious problems moving objects around or zooming in or out. I plan on building a new system soon, but not just for Vue - I use other 3D & 2D graphic software packages that today, with all of the new & powerful features the programmers are implementing in our new software, I really have to do a system update to be able to use all these new features properly. I hope you get your problems sorted out soon, & I hope your job prospect works out also & you have a good one . . . . . Mark.. . . . . ;^) System Specs: PIII 500 / 512 mgs ram / TNT2 Ultra Video Card with 32 mgs of video ram / 16 Gig Hard Drive with 7 Gigs Free / Windows 98SE / DirectX 8.1 / System display set at True Color 32 bit / Screen Size 1024 by 768./ 19 in Nokia Monitor / I do a "Defrag & Scandisk" about every couple of weeks & I try to keep all drivers up to date.

turn off open gl!!!!!!!!!!!!! gah, that solves like 70% of all the problems. but if you don't need poser import, and you have vue 3, you might go back to that. the render quality is a lot better.

I leave OpenGL on, but I have to wait for background draws to complete before attempting anything else. I can predictably crash Vue (freeze it completely) by dragging material from one object to another while a background draw operation is in progress.

Also, possibly linked to an asynchronous-timed memory-allocation thread, Vue will crash frequently when I hit ctrl-A (select all) with complex scenes.

Plus, when I try to undo some operations (such as material changes) Vue will crash.

Then I hold my breath when I create terrains with 1024x1024 resolutions. The terrain editor will drop out unexpectably during random manipulations.

So I'm more careful now. I save scenes with incremental file names (I have lots of hard drive space. Imagine having 500 files of one scene). I save the scene before doing an undo, and I wait for the background draw threads to complete.

I have 1 gig of RAM, an Athlon XP 1900, and a GeForce3 video card. Yesterday, I worked on Vue ALL day without a crash, but as I said, I was careful of Vue's limitations.

If I was in your shoes, I would definitely get more RAM, as much you can afford, and Windows XP if possible (it has superior memory management over Windows 9x versions).

For me, life without Vue would be a loss. For after creating something in Vue, I'll spend the rest of the day happily reflecting the marvels of Vue. :)

Charles

When I first got Vue4 I was using a three-year-old Pentium II 400mHz w/500mg o' ram and a 16mg video card. Vue ran perfectly as long as I used the Wireframe view in all the view ports. OpenGL would freeze it after a few minutes of work. If turning off OpenGL doesn't work for you, I'd try Vue in a different, more muscular, machine. If you can't find one to borrow, there are places that will rent them to you. If this job is that important, it may be worth it.

It IS open GL....I had similar problems till I turned it off. Almost all problems went away when I went to Athlon processor which does floating point much better tha either the K6 2 or K6 3 (I tried both at 450 and 400mhz) Vue does seem to have a few persistent glitches but the big problem is above mentioned - from my own experience. Very best of luck to you. Riv

Does Vue support dual cpu setups? .. if you get the job see if they'll tool you up with a dual box that'll "not only vastly improve speed output through the render bottleneck, but reduce internal errors that can cause a restart"

roadtoad,

I think multi-threaded apps (i.e. Vue) will use dual processors if the operating system supports dual processors. In Windows, I know Windows XP Pro and Windows 2000 support dual processors. Charles

Win XP, Win 2000, and some flavors of Win NT will support Dual Processors. Win Me, Win 9x do not. Also, Vue will use dual processors only during render, if available.

I've rendered huge huge poly pigs without any problems but I turned off the preview and I also turn down the detail on the wire frame views. Buy more ram and turn everything EVERYTHING off. Set a min swap file size to 160. It's not Vue it's Micronot !

Thanks for the heads-up on dual cpu - my old 350 is due for replacement; and as y'all say, more memory and a large swapfile is critical to keep Vue from crashing renders on borderline boxes such as mine. Hard to find good info on building a dual, though - all the performance sites seem to be orientated to single setups for gaming :(

Attached Link: http://www.2cpu.com/

I agree with everyone else, turn off OpenGL. Also you mention that your video card uses shared RAM - yuck. For a real video dependant program like VUE you need a decent video card. If your job depends on it, get a 3DLabs card that has OpenGL IN THE HARDWARE - not just one that SUPPORTS OpenGL. GeForce cards only support OpenGL, so you should turn it off if you go with one of those. Also, use Win2K or XP. Win9x can only support 128Mb of RAM per running application so even if you have 512Mb or RAM, VUE will only be using 128Mb.

micronot...hehe I have a 750 athlon (quite a good machine a couple years ago) and what was supposed to be the best "gaming" card at the time(I don't even play games...what was I thinking;), but i have to turn open gl off in order to maintain stability. I have had a couple crashes since turning off open-gl, but only a couple. Vue certainly has it's shortcomings, but I am still happy that I have it. Just save lots (and a lot of the crashes leave processes open....if you Cnt Alt Del and select the right thing, Vue will start back -- can't rembember what kind of things, though) eric