I am new to VU. I have made some pretty landscapes. But I just looked at the VU gallery - WHOOOOO!!! - amazing. There seems to be something almost magical about those beautiful images. I have VU2. Is it possible to make buildings and urban enviroments with VU2? If so what would be my first steps? (I have looked thro the tutorials section)

All you need for giving your pictures this kind of 'magic' is... blood, sweet and tears ! ;-) More seriously, for making buildings and urban environments, you can use the simple primitives of Vue. With lots of imagination and patience, you'll see that boolean operations can make incredible things... If you want to start slowly, go to the renderosity's freestuff section. Here, you'll find buildings and other urban models. Use'em, and maybe mix them with 'booleaned' vue primitives, for hours of pleasure... :-) My only one advice is : a good picture are for the major parts good textures and, as important, good light settings ! The most beautifull pictures that you can see in the galery are not always complexe pictures. Placement of elements could sometime take only three or four hours, even less... But, the textures of all these elements, what makes a Poser character don't look like a Poser character, but a real people is the time you spend to work on textures. And, for the global look of your scene, for making all elements exists in harmony, it's lighting settings... A free other advice : always think that you can make all you want to make. The only trick is to find how... and if you don't find by yourself, post your questions here...

m_steadman, do not try to download the buildings or any thing else from the Vue free stuff here at Renderosity, they would not work with Vue 2. Maybe Alekssander's stuff there (by chance) is an exception, you have to try. The only site where you can find Vue stuff for version 2 is HERE. You also can have a look at 3Dcafe", from where you can choose OBJ or DXF files to import in Vue 2. 3ds files will not work. Vue2 contains in the speial effects some mappings you can apply to cubes to make them look as buildings. And as Bop said, you can use lots of booleans (see my image "Greece" only created from primitives and booleans, with only one light, the sun). In opposit to other users I never could create an image in 3 or 4 hours, I need 50 hours at least, often more. But if you do only classical landscapes without many details, you even can get some beautiful effects in just a few minutes (except the rendertime). Put some terrains, some trees and plants, water and the image is ready:-). You can find lots of tutorials for Vue 2 HERE. And believe me, you can create great images with Vue 2 what will bring you at the end, when you become addicted, to buy Vue 4 (LOL). If you need help, just ask here. :-)Guitta

Thank you for the help. Looked at the Greek postcard - amazing. Followed the links and downloaded tutorials. Also downloaded the PlantStudio. Seem to have struck gold with all this wonderful stuff!