Looks good on mine - HP 19" CRT. That's funny! -Lew ;-)

Then the last step of mine, instead of making the Saturation 100%, drag it to 0% B&W. Good luck- -Lew ;-)

So, given that this is such a headache for many folks, is there a workaround? Like, in XSI you can "Freeze" an object or scene - it dumps everything you've done up until that moment - you'd better REALLY be sure! Is there any manual way to "dump" your history - or whatever it is that's causing the holdup or leak? Dump your history (like all your test renders as an example) before you hit "render" to free up as much resources as possible?

Yeah, ditto Paula Sanders - both Vue and Bryce are good beginner tools just to learn the general ideas of 3D. Setting a scene up, lighting, composition, basic texturing, etc. The good news is also that Vue Easel and Bryce 5.5 are around $100 - take your pick. Not terribly expensive in the grand scheme of things. And while their modelling is basic (yes, you can do some cool stuff with it, but it's basic resizing objects and boleans), you learn how to create and stretch this cube, that cube, 2 more cubes (or just duplicate the 1st cube 3 times), and a pretty flat cyliner on top, texture them, and viola - you have a basic table! THEN you can start thinking of more advanced programs to learn how to bend, extrude and basically custom create said table so it is more stylish, etc. Also more complicated custom texturing, more deep lighting and camera controls. Start simple, and above all - have fun! Don't invest a truckload of money and time just yet, just to have a mindbending experience because of the learning curve starting all the way at the bottom. Good luck, and again - have fun! -Lew ;-)

"The software industry is not religion -- it is PRODUCT, a THING, a TOOL. Corporations own the rights to these products." LCBoliou- Yeah, it is and they do. And we CANNOT take it personally if something doesn't work as well as we'd hoped, or our particular use of it wasn't as good as we'd hoped. The virtue of being "unbiased" is that you can look at things objectively, comparitively, without mental hampering - and to "trash" something is biased. Unbiased does not equal uncritical - got no idea where you put those 2 together... POINT OUT problems without extended personal commentary - that's the professional way of doing things. When someone is contemplating dropping $500-$600, they don't need amateur-night bickering. They need to realistically know what it is they're contemplating to purchase. "As I write this, a VUE 5 INFINITE scene is rendering on one PC, and a Carrara5 Pro scene is rendering on 2 Dual core PCs." ...That's nice... On my other computer (an Athlon 3800+ / 64bit x2 - just one machine, sorry to say) a Vue scene is rendering, and when I finish this I'm going to finish a product shot's background objects in Strata... We don't necessarily care that you use both, or care that I have multiple apps myself... It's that we talk about the software's capabilities and limitations in a civilized manner - and trashing is not valued information - ie. the likes of "...it's not even rational to compare modeling" and "If Vue wasn't constantly breaking (want to hear the latest?)...". BTW - how does a software "break"...? Never had that happen myself. I've crashed my computer a few times, but the software itself... Never "broke"...

hehe - I'm reaching for the Advil just THINKING about doing that process.

"If you havent delved into C5Pro to any real depthhow do you know?" #1 - People are just getting their BOXED versions of C5Pro so that's kind of a cheap shot - and I haven't played with the beta version since I have XSI and C4D - don't have any need, really. And I never will, yet I USE VUE FOR COMPOSITING MY SCENES. THAT is what he wants to know about. #2 - Carrara DOES have nice modelling capabilities as I've toyed with in PREVIOUS VERSIONS. So, yes, I know what it's capable of. #3 - which has nothing to do with the statement above - I don't seem to be having problems with memory leaks - I'm sorry you have and it's been a nightmare for you - not been a problem for me so far, so stop making it the number one complaint for ALL Vue users. While we were making comparisons, we ALL seemed to take it without saying that he wasn't going to be using Vue to do ANY modelling - and he NEVER ASKED about Carrara in the first place - that was something YOU brought up to steer him clear of the app he asked about in the first place. We ALL understand you like it better than Vue - yes, there are MANY things you like better about Carrara, and that's not what he wanted to know. He wants to know if Vue will integrate into his production pipeline with MAX - which it will, and you can import camera data as well. YES, so would C5Pro - YES, so would EIAS (yes, very limited modelling but animation and compositig is top-notch) - but he ASKED about Vue so it would be nice to stay on target. SHONNER - Great post! Bingo! Pleasantly unbiased!

Actually, what you COULD do is make a static shot (locked down camera, still frame 3D matte - even animated environment but a still camera) - render it wider to give yourself some room on all four sides as mentioned before, composite your characters in the environment, and create the handheld jitter in AE. That'll save you the headache, and you still get the handheld feel.

If it's the demo vid I'm thinking of, it looks very much like he made several terrains and applied ecosystems made up of Moebius' Dystopia building blocks. You can go into the marketplace (I think he may even have some in the Free Stuff section?) and do a search of the word "dystopia". He then animated a camera flying over the whole thing. Hope that helps- -Lew ;-)

Well, I shut down all programs before running Vue - or XSI or C4D - sometimes I'll leave my mail open when in PS, but Bridge is such a memory-hog I am shutting mail down more and more because it slows things down so much. I know I can have several apps open at once, my wife does it all the time, but I just want to give my computer a chance to handle what I'm doing with the most resources I can give it. Right now, so far, I can't say I've had any problems with "memory leaks" in Vue - haven't gotten the "out of memory" except once when I wanted to render something obnoxiously big (I think I set it to 6,000x10,000ppi) just to see if it can do it - I only have 1GB of RAM, so I knew I was about to make it upset at me. So far, despite many complaints I've read about, my experience with Vue has been great - it does everything I expected of it. But given that I have XSI, C4D, and access to 3DS Max6, I don't expect that much from it. Just to put everything together in a scene that I create in the above mentioned, texture them (just basic textures - anything really custom I'd do in, again, above mentioned), light them, maybe the occasional ecosystem, and render. I just didn't think to check the Task Manager to see how everything's going. I also just had no idea what that particular compaint meant as it never seemed to happen to me - and yet they claim the software ALWAYS does it, and it's a nightmare to deal with. (confused look on face) Basically, I didn't get it... Thanks again- -Lew ;-)

Thank you! That clears up a lot! I'll check the Task Manager while in Vue to see how it's going, see if I can find anything that causes a slowdown or aything. Thanks again- -Lew ;-)

LCBoliou - we didn't compare modelling - he's GOT 3DS Max 8 - that trumps C5Pro without a sweat. It also comes with Mental Ray so - ditto. You can stop and save an image partially through the render, and close Vue altogether. Open Vue back up again, open your scene file, go to Picture>Resume Render and it starts back up where you left it. I don't HAVE to "break it up" - I'm just impatient, and don't wanna wait over 100hrs (or more) for a render, and I use that computer for my business during the day. And by breaking it up, the individual pieces render faster than the whole scene in one shot. It also give me more flexibility in post. wildstormfilms - everybody has a favorite app, and has had problems with certain apps. Wabe is right - download the demos of as many as you feel you have time to try out and make a decision after that. But given that you ALREADY HAVE 3DS Max8, I'm gonna guess all you'll really ONLY need something like Vue for outdoor scenes to create faster, and better landscape modelling - which you can import back into Max for rendering. Good luck- -Lew ;-)

Yes, you would need to animate the wheels seperately. And while Vue has animation capacity it doesn't really come close to what you said you already have, which brings me to: You've got 3DS Max 8, so you don't need the modelling tools of Carrara. Vue makes a great compliment to Max (as well as Maya, Lightwave, C4D, and XSI) because you can do the more intimate scenes (up close shots of facial expressions, single room scenes, complicated animations, mocap, etc.) with those, and when you want something roaring over a complete environment you can throw your objects into Vue. That's what Vue is fantastic about - you can do the "small room" rendering, but you really get the highlights of the software (when you already have a real pro app like Max for the interiors and animation) when doing complete environments. Vue is also fantastic at just creating still shots to use as mattes and backgrounds for your animations to interact with. As far as color, contrast, environmental FX - you'll be changing and tweaking that in your compositing software. While I may be wrong about this, many of the problems I hear about seem to be coming from trying to make the ENTIRE render and "final look" come out of Vue alone (or, frankly, ANY app), when you need to tweak an image or animation from ANY software (including the $7k versions of Maya and XSI) in a compositing tool after you've finished the render. Put too many calculations on ANY app and it'll go haywire. Vue is a great choice - yes, picture Bryce on steroids and you've got it. While you can dig deeper in Vue, it has "about" that feel and learning curve. My only problem has so far been when I put together something complicated (by my standards - my scene files can get over 100megs - maybe some others here get bigger, I dunno), when I start upping the quality settings it starts spitting out numbers of over 100hrs rendering times to be expected. I find myself breaking it up and rendering things seperate and just assembling them in Photoshop - since Vue puts together the alpha mattes for you if you save as a PSD, it's a snap, and I can even place better environment tweaks (mist, light beams, debris in the air, smoke, etc.) between layers without having to do any complex masking. Hope that helps- -Lew ;-)

Okay, so no general fix - just keep doing what I've been doing. And JC - thanks for all the info - didn't realize that about the Ambient levels with Radiosity! I have some experimenting to do now! -Lew ;-)