I just posted a message and it vanished! I just wanted to know if anyone could help me with a small problem. Ever since I upgraded to 4.1 I haven't been able to preview any materials. All I get is a bunch of blue buttons in the preview window. I have no idea if I've chosen the right material until I click ok and it loads!

Then my message turns up again! Go figure!

Right click on your wallpaper go to properties then click the settings tab and check that you have the screen set to 24 bit or 32 bit color. Press apply If that don't work you got a problem with you graphics card so ya need to tell us what kind is there. You may have to upgrade it or it's drivers.

thanks mightypete, tried what you said, no change. The trouble is I've got a packard bell P3 computer,it's 2 years old and it has an integrated grapgics card, we've been told that we can't have this upgraded, and we've tried! So, I'll have to put up with the inconvienience of finding the material before loading it the normal way.

Stay away from OEM's. The graphics card probably doesn't have enough memory or it's drivers are not working right. Most computers will do the same thing if you start running out of graphics memory and open a new window. Christmas is coming. Maybe time for a new box.

I have P3DO installed on my graphics machine; it's like a visual browser, mainly used for Poser. But one cool thing is that it allows you to see thumbnails of all graphics format files. I keep this open when I'm running Vue, and when I'm hunting materials, I look in P3DO first, find the one I want, and then load it in the material editor. I think you can get it in the Marketplace here, if you're interested. (I got a disappearing message too, when I did my vote for this month's challenge. Posted yesterday...it's gone this morning. Oh well!)

That's a great idea, I forgot about that program. I got it here too on my desktop. D'Oh ! The other thing Jilly you may want to try is try to free up as much graphics memory you can by going to wire frame which you probibly did already and then in the options part turn down the detail level lots and that little preview window on the right. Set that so it only updates when you click on it instead. Some where around there you can set that up. I don't know how big you got your screen size set too but you may want to try a smaller size. And that really sucks. If you got both 32 bit and 24 bit color available set it to 24 bit. You'll never see the difference.

You could try to delete the .prv files in the material's folder. This file stores thumbnail previews.

hey guys, thanks. I'm not sure I want to try deleting the .prv files though, God knows what would happen to me if I did that, probably get the computer up and thumping me! I will keep the screen size the way it is coz I'm having enough trouble seeing details clearly now! But I will have a look at the P3DO prog you told me about. sigh.

Jilly, Vue will automatically create a new .prv file if there's isn't one in the material's folder. Charles

Ya sometimes the file gets corrupted. You have to delete it. When you import sometimes and save the images all end up black and white and other weirdness. Deleting it, cures it.

You may also try keeping Windows Explorer or My Computer open while you're using Vue. Usually, you can get a little thumbnail preview on the left in the window when you single click on the file name. I prefer 3PDO as the thumbnails are larger and easier to see a bit more detail.

Jilly, Charles is right. You can delete any *.prv file from materials, objects, vegetations and whatever without risk. If something doesn't show up in the browser, this is the only solution:-) Guitta

Thanks folks, I will give it a try!