Personally I use & recommend Zbrush for organic models.
It's just fantastic.
I don't do buildings and the like just yet, so I can not really offer any sound advice in that department.

However...here is an example of a castle I did entirely in vue with booleans.
So ...there are possibilities.

Long render times depends on ones perception. If you have a look through my gallery keep in mind that almost all of my posted images for the last 6-8 months have not taken more than 3hrs to render per image.
It's definately possible to acheive DECENT quality renders  with some tweaking.

My PC is a p4 2.8Ghz with 1.5Gb ram..so..nothing flash.

**Veritas777 & Monsoon.

You guys rock.

Your posts are always informative & well written...great stuff indeed.

Thank you guys.
**

WOW..nice edgeloops, perfect mesh.
Skin texture is a little pale but, no doubt that will improve over time.

:-)
Well done to you & your tired Ms.
Best of luck.

Looks like your image is being tiled ?

Quote - One computer is bad enough never mind more of them ROFL!!

Blasphemer!
Don't ever, EVER say that.
One can never have enough computing power...EVER :-)

On a serious note:

Quote - But each computer on the Renderfarm must meet the basic system requirements of Vue 5 Infinite. Am I correct?

No.

With 5i you have to create layers yourself. Down the bottom theres a folder icon..that's add new layer.

As for addons, you can put them anywhere you like. Vue first looks for them here though -My Documentse-on softwareVue 5 Infinite.

DaleB is spot on. Don't waste your money on a whizbang grfx card if your never going to use it..Iit won't help with VUE. A decent nvidia 7600gt will suffice. Great card...awesome price bracket.

Indeed. Rather worrying, isn't it.
Maybe we should send a bill to E-on for the use of our hardware ? :-)

Phantast - what are the sizes of the textures on these poser figures?

I wasn't claiming to be speaking for everyone..only myself.

My motivation would be solely for getting a foot in the door to being a professional artist.

As opposed to receiving recognition purely for ego or a free software package.

My motivation is greed :-)

Just like E-ons really - No need to pay a professional artist to create an excellent image for their next box cover-art when there are so many talented armatures to do the work for free.

Quote - The problem is really if you want to sell your work and give exclusive reproduction rights to a publisher

That's the whole point.
I am apprehensive to say the least.
Not being able to sell ones most  notable artworks is what worries me.

Agiel - has having your work "on their website, on a brochure and in magazine ads" benefited you in anyway?

This is quite a dilemma for me. It is the main reason I have never submitted artwork to E-on.

By doing so, you are basically giving them your artwork for free. They will OWN your submitted work  from that point on.

GPFrance-they cannot publish ANYTHING you have done...only what you have submitted to them... but they will still own it just as much as you.

There are certainly issues with memory leaks IMO. I have posted about this in the past.
There seems to be an issue with VUE not releasing memory.
I've said many times that I believe most legit crashes are memory related.

I've also heard somewhere that  VUE is fussy with what type of ram you use i.e: not likeing certain types of dual channel ram.
So If your comfortable playing around with your BIOS. You could try disable dual channel mode (depends on your motherboard) & see how your VUE runs.

This type of issue is not unique to VUE however.

Cheers.

I see your points now. I can understand that you are frustrated with VUE.
You may well be that 1 in 10 that has a legit complaint.

And NO...I am not surprised that "Vue crashes because you use an advertised feature of the program".
It's not uncommon for marketing types to "overhype" their products.