Great images, chippwalters - yes, i've seen them already looking through the Vue gallery before - haze settings  are looking good there - superb Vue renders.

Haze and fog settings in different atmospheres are influenced by another factor, too, which is the overall scale of your scene. For example the same atmosphere and fog/haze settings in a scene with terrain size like in meters are very different looking in a terrain size in km's ... in a spectral atmosphere this is an extra way to get another look and feel in your scene...

Thanks a lot, chippwalters, a very interesting, informative and well done tutorial - for sure great for many other Vue users, too, who are struggling with those settings ...

However, like you've hinted above - for spectral atmospheres it's a very different approach towards fog/haze - it just works very different compared to standard or volumetric atmos ... and in a spectral atmosphere i've got that line problem before, but at least it's rare.

(And if i get problems like that - and there are always spots in my images, that don't turn out the way i want, or leave some bad artifacts - well there is always a little postwork possible, which i use in just about any image, i do ... if it's to take care of some faulty spots, or to add extra details ... or make a bad fog line disappear ;) ).

As far as i have experienced this effect in my image before, moving the fog or haze sliders back and forward, different heights or whatever for the fog, the line never disappeared, only when the fog was totally turned off, logically.
Only with this movement i've described, as odd as it appears, the strong fog line, which bothered me too, vanished - no explanation what should be the difference compared to the slider settings.
But - like i've said, it probably only works on certain settings/atmospheres ...

Well, i hope you'll find a solution for this soon.

You could try the following:

Select everything in your objects list to the right - except of the sunlight object. Now that you have all, the camera, the objects, the layers, the ground selected as one, zoom into the side view window and grab the Z axe and pull it upwards a few small steps.  Mark a small render area right including this fog line to make a quick render and check, if the line is still visible.

Repeat this upwards movement in small steps - render again - move a few pixels - render again, until this line hopefully disappears.

Before:
img467.imageshack.us/img467/8316/fogcutlinepic1hj2.jpg

After:
img467.imageshack.us/img467/4008/fogcutlinepic2yh1.jpg

This way you only make short movements and it doesn't affect the angles of lights/shadows and the camera view/angle/position are staying the same relating to your scene, but this strong perfect cut line could disappear.

Not sure either, if this would work with any atmosphere setting or style, but it's worth a try ...

Why Vue is doing that ? No idea - but it could be something, the programmers could take a look into for one of the next updates.

THX for the tipp, keenart, i will take a closer look, sounds interesting !

Why choosing one Operating System ... if you've got plenty of harddisk space for partitioning ...

I always run more than one Windows ... 3 different ones on different partitions - in case there is a problem, i can always start another Windows and can rework the faulty Windows version or partitions from there.

I've got WinXP SP2 twice installed on two different partitions - and one Vista Ultimate on a third partition - installed last in the row, to get the Vista bootmanager to combine all three Windows versions and to choose easy, what i want to start and work with.

This way i can always fall back to the best working system for a certain application or whatever and like mentioned above, i've always got a working system running (sure, only as long your boot partition isn't damaged  ;) , but that can be fixed, too, with a little more work again, as long as nothing else is damaged...).

LMclean - i've added another option to my above post ... would be an easier and faster way, i guess ... not sure if you've seen it already, because edited later...

In the advanced material editor is a tab called "Density" - there to the right you can activate the "variable density" option.
Doubleclick on the sphere and you can choose a different greyscale pattern or use a filter, or even rightclick on the sphere to jump to the function editor and add a greyscale image to this variable density, where the image would be like bottom white and up to the top slowly fading into grey and then towards black or vice versa (or something similar, like more or less spots, just the way you like it) ... You can add a greyscale image by adding a textue node and then loading an image texture in the appearing bottom part of the editor window ...

Another way (faster):
Or you could place rocks or something at the end of your terrain - in the "Density" tab activate the slider at the bottom right for the placement towards foreign objects and adjust it to your likings, start the ecosystem and the plants being positioned towards the foreign objects will be less and less. Once your eco is done you can erase those foreign objects or deactivate them from render.

Well, PointLady, if you look right to the top of this forums page, you should see some menu names, you can click to go to:

• like there is "Vue Gallery" to view Vue-only graphics, what other users come up with using this incredible 3D software

• or "Vue Tutorials", that's what you are asking for, brings you directly to quite a lot of tutorials, but there are more over the internet, even the Vue producer e-onsoftware.com got tutorials listed in there website-menu

• or "Vue Backroom", being there examine the menus to the left - there is a lot to explore about Vue

• or "Vue Free Stuff", which points you towards free available stuff to be used in Vue, like objects, atmospheres, textures ... more to be found through the internet, again (doesn't have to be Vue direct objects, since Vue can handle other formats, too, like importing 3DS, OBJ, LWO, DEM terrain files, DXF, PZ3/PZZ (Poser files in combination with installed Poser )  ...

Poser 6 files seem to be more compatible, but i work mostly with P7 and most of the stuff i transfer will work - you have to make sure, too, that in the Poser preferences, in the MISC tab, you have "use external binary morph targets"  unchecked for higher compatibility ... (anyone correct me, if i'm wrong ...)

I would try a spectral atmo and rework the cloud layers - meaning i would combine 2 or 3 spectral 'low clould' (same or different style, different thickness and whatever setting changes) layers in about the same height ... this way the cloud sections are reaching into infinite distance - definitely enough to animate for a longer distance and fast movement ...

I've just never used the animation part of Vue - animations can be cool, definitely, but just working with only one computer, the calculation of good looking anims is too time consuming for me ...

Anyway - looking at your animation, the rough part seems to be concentrated to that part in the anim, where the camera view is pointing totally at a lot of details covering the whole frame size and that in close distance.

Once the view moves into the sky area, and the objects are getting further away, meaning the details per pixel are far less to be calculated and the animations gets smoother.

Maybe you have to double or triple the frames to be calculated during this first period of camera movement and later you have to rework the movie in a good video processing program and recalculate the speed there - this way there would be enough frames for the processing program to drop every few frames and get to the right speed for that beginning part of the anim.

I know, this would be just a work-around, but i'm not even a beginner in Vue animation ... sorry.

Here is an example - Mount Moran next to Jackson Lake - Grand Teton in Wyoming ...
The quick calculated scene above and a real photo from the internet (through Google Earth photo links) in comparison between virtual and real landscape:

img253.imageshack.us/img253/9484/mountmoranjacksonlakevutp1.jpg

I might have to adjust the height just a little better - but it does work very good in my opinion.

Just to make sure, your DEM file will look right in Vue ...

The info, that 3DEM gives -  look at the image i've included
img524.imageshack.us/img524/9592/3demls5.jpg

You can see the highest point in your terrain by calling up this color scale bar (to the left in the above image) - here in this area it's 4.19 km ( roughly 4190m, the exact values you get choosing 'Modify Scale' - where another window appears showing the colors regarding to the certain heights and the exact altitude range values). You need to adjust this in Vue lowest to hightest point in comparison with your ZERO water line (ground line for example), to get the terrain looking right in the Z-value.

What else you need to know is the X and Y length of your DEM terrain.
By displaying the 'DEM Specifications' window (in the menu with 'Show DEM Specs').
Here you'll get the Longitude and Latitude range.

The above image shows -110.961 to -110.385 longitude.
Subtract 110.385 from 110.961 and you get 0.576
Multiply 0.576 x 110 km (110km is roughly 1 degree of the circumference of the earth) and you'll get 63.36 km as length in X-value.
Same calculation for the Y-value.

These are the values you'll need to input in Vue terrain size. This might be way to large scaled to work with in Vue - so down scale it by dividing it with10 or 20 for example - so you'll get like 6.3 km or 630m terrain size - to large of an area in Vue will give you trouble with eco or whatever, since it has to cover an extreme large area with plants ...

You can do it the following described way:

Go to the website:
seamless.usgs.gov/

There you can call up a US and a few whole world maps (mostly North America terrain in detail), a program opens up in your browser (it takes a moment to load the data), where you can find places through different search options for example  and use 'goto' at the bottom of the window from a list of found areas (There is a button 'Tutorial' for help).

img524.imageshack.us/img524/2271/usgs1kz4.jpg

You can use your mouse to draw a box around an area (be careful to check, you don't use a to big an area, but you can check later in the next windows appearing the size of the file and re-adjust your selected area again) or you can enter coordinates, or template selection.

img411.imageshack.us/img411/8859/usgs2uf3.jpg

Then the 'Request Summary Page' appears telling you, what area you've grabbed, the size in MB and the download button for this area. But that's not what you want, yet.
You click on 'Modify Data Request' .

img405.imageshack.us/img405/2995/usgs3sn6.jpg

There you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the list and select 'GeoTIFF', where it says 'ArchGRID'. Then push 'Save Changes & Return to Summary' button.

img524.imageshack.us/img524/5049/usgs4gb1.jpg

It will return to the summary window - then push 'Download' - another window appears telling you the data will be prepared and at the end of the process you can download the zipped data.
img524.imageshack.us/img524/6420/usgs5mj4.jpg

What you get is a 'NED-.....'  zip-file. Open it and extract the large *.tif image.

Now go to:
www.visualizationsoftware.com/3dem.html
and download this '3DEM' converter program and install it. You can use this program from now on to convert the GeoTIFF images into DEM-files or other files to be used in Terragen for example - just read the info on this website. The program itself is pretty simple to use.

img524.imageshack.us/img524/9592/3demls5.jpg

Starting the program a selection window appears, where 3DEM wants to know, what data you will be working with - click on 'GeoTIFF' and then load your GeoTIFF file.
The terrain will be displayed, in 2D or 3D (the square box area on the map will be calculated in 3D - you can move it around on the terrain-map) if you want.

Check the info regarding the height of the highest/lowest point and the size of the square area, because you might have to adjust the size in Vue by entering the right values in the X Y Z size input fields for this terrain, otherwise it probably will look stretched or squished
Now just save the terrain in DEM format (or what else you need), because this DEM-file can be loaded directly into Vue using the 'Files - Import Objects' option.

The rest is adjusting - sharpening or whatever you want to do with it ...

Mmh ... why don't you just use two versions of your scene ... one with and the other without eco ... or if you want to render just the Poser person and switch everything to invisible - then just erase the eco objects (the automatic and/or hand-drawn ecos) just for that render - shouldn't harm anything, if you have your comlete scene (with the eco) saved on your harddisk ...