http://www.cornucopia3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&p=99186&sid=6d0b96e59776d7d7e61a3c88fb6e1143#p99186

It's perfectly normal.

In my experience all rendering programmes will max out your CPU when rendering. Some like Reality/Luxrender offer the option of setting how many CPU cores to use, but most will just use all the cores/threads.

If you didn't already know, the maximum number of cores/threads you can use in Vue Complete is 8.

You will probably find you can still do other low level things on your computer while Vue is rendering, such as listening to music, watching a movie or using a browser, etc. But something like playing a CPU intensive video game is a no-go

Yeah, hypertextures are just for hyperblobs, to the best of my knowledge.

With Metablobs you just use the bump section of the default texture. Turn on displacement mapping on only that texture, and add a function like the readymade fractal functions. Or if you have a good idea of what you're doing with the function editor, you can create your own function.

Add any other materials or ecosystems as new layers. Don't forget with new material layers to turn up the alpha boost and add to underlying bumps.

Yes, it's possible to put an eco on a metablob. This is just a quick example for you.

I really don't have the money to fund 6 core i7's. I'm still undecided on an i7 4770K as they're about £70 more than the Xeon I'm looking at. The downside with the Xeon is it can't really be overclocked. But then, it seems to be a bit of a lottery as to whether the i7 4770K you get can overclock beyond 4.3 Ghz, because Intel went cheap on the TIM.

There's no sense in me getting anything beyond 4 cores/8 threads as I can't afford Vue Infinite, and the artist series are limited to 8 threads -which sucks!

Thanks for the reply, thd777. I'll probably opt for the GTX 660 or 760 then. The K600 only has 1GB of GDDR3, whereas the gaming cards will have 2GB of GDDR5 which should perform better.

Incremental saves are what I got told to do when I blew a fuse and posted a rant on the Cornucopia 3D forums, lol. At the point of time Vue wasn't writing the saves properly either. shakes head

Regular saves are supposed to be the way to go with most programs like Vue. But with Vue I'd say they're extremely important as you just never know when it's going to get its freak on and start crashing or doing other kinds of weird stuff. Despite all the issues, I do like Vue, and I will persevere with it. Though I do think the fact it has a compatability mode is kind of a red flag about its stability issues, lol.

Regarding the memory, I think Vue is one of those programs that will happily use as much memory as you give it. It's probably much the same with VRAM as it is with regular RAM. Can't test that myself though as I only have a 1GB card, and won't be able to afford anything above a 2GB GTX 760 unless Nvidia cut their prices again.

Thanks for the reply, iborg64. That's a nice rig, though way out of my price range.

The Xeon's compare pretty well to the i7's. An E3 1230 V3 (Haswell) Xeon costs about £190 and looks comparable to an i7 4770 (non K) performance wise. At least if this anything to go off http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E3-1230+v3+%40+3.30GHz&id=1942

Would really like to find out if the workstation GPU's are worth the investment, or whether something like a GTX 660/760 would be suitable. I know that the drivers for AMD's workstation cards aren't as good as Nvidia's. Which is why Nvidia rule the roost when it comes to workstation cards. More than anything, I just want a rig that helps Vue to run more stable. I've never had a program that crashes as much as Vue does. At times it feels like trying to work with a petulant child. Some scenes it will have maybe a hiccup or too along the way, but be otherwise fine. Other times it persists in flipping me off and crashing.

Thanks again, Janl. That sounds like a good idea. Very helpful of you :thumbupboth:

Thank you very much for the info and link, Janl.

I think Advanced Material Manager may be a little more than I need at the moment, but it's good to know multiple material editing has been included for Poser. Even if it is via a script. I'd also like to see it implemented into the materail room by Smith Micro at some point. Presently, what takes me minutes to do in Poser I can have done in seconds in Daz.

Quote - Really no such way currently within Poser. 

Thanks, hborre.

Thank you very much for the reply, Miss Nancy.

Just so I'm not being misunderstood -as I'm not always the best at explaining things-  in the above image I've selected four material zones that all use the face texture, which has then been browsed for and selected as the diffuse channel image for all four zones. Is there really no way to do the same thing in Poser? It seems that using the shift button and clicking to select multiple items is a basic function of many programs. I'd have thought it would be included in something such as Poser.

My apologies if this question has been asked or answered elsewhere, but I'm wondering if there's a way in Poser to select multiple material zones and apply a texture to all of them in one go.

In DS, if I want to apply a skin texture to my model I go to the surfaces tab, select all the body parts with a 1 next to them (excluding eyebrow) and then add the face texture to the diffuse channel. All four body parts textured in one go, nice and easy.

I see the same numerical system in place in Poser's material room, but I can't seem to select multiple items, so I have to waste time by selecting each body part individually, apply texture and move on to the next body part. In DS to select multiple items you hold the shift key, so maybe it's just a different key in Poser.

No problem, Kristi! It only took five minutes to get here this time, too, so I think the burgers worked.

Back to running bad again for me too. It took me the better part of ten minutes to get to this forum thread.

I've also noticed that if I get a comment on my work or something similar, I get one email to notify me, but when I manage to get to the site there are two site notifications for the same thing.

I'm going to go and make an offering to the Great Server God, to see if that helps. I hope he/she/it likes vegematarian burgers :)