Thanks all :) Winged One: I didn't realize that the emblem was the emblem of the City of Berlin (a bit out of range of the location and time period of the play which is set in England and certainly much earlier than the formation of Berlin.....I guess my German heritage prompted me to use it :) What the heck! Glad you enjoyed seeing it :)

Well I suppose I should just pass on by and not make any comments, but it's not my nature. I hope you can get the problems fixed Sharen. As you know I love your work and will continue to download freebies that I need and purchase from you when I see something I can't live without :) Chuck: bless you heart....you have a good soul :) It is clear that you are an honest man :) Now....the real reason for my comment is in response to Wladamire...who I'm sure is a nice person and probably didn't mean anything so severe as his comments suggest (or maybe he did, who knows). He seems to imply that there would not be a problem if we all simply made our own models! He goes on to say that he thinks it is wrong for people to create objects so they can sell them to those who don't want to take the time to learn??? Well....I'm one of those "shiftless, no count" purchasers of other peoples models!! Yes...I fess up!! Is it because I'm too lazy to plunck my butt in front of a computer for an additional four hours a day and learn how to make models??? No....actually...it's because I have a job that eats up an average of 12 hours a day.....at the end of which I have some time to do what I really enjoy....create images with Vue and Bryce! I barely have time to figure out how to use those programs for the purpose they were designed (which was not to make models). I certainly don't have time to learn a modeling software. Consequently, I don't own Poser or any other serious modeling software. Frankly I would rather compensate those wonderful artists here at Renderosity, 3d Commune or Sams 3d for their great work, and end up with a nice looking model to insert in my pathetic scenes :) If it's any consolation Wladamire, I get as equally excercised by the Linux geeks who think a computer is about "tweaking their Kernnel" and not about getting one's work done :) That's my rant for the day....I now feel better and will put my old grey behind to bed....!

There was another post here that covered some of these issues. This link should let you read through some of the other user comments/solutions they found: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=392234 Here is another link to an inquiry in Eon's knowledge base that seems to address you issue: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Support/ShowMessage.php?id=1026885058&stage=-1&chooseCategoryPage=&categoryName=&category=&subCategory=&superCategory= If these don't help, I would suggest posting at the Eon Knowledge base. Steve Bell is very responsive and I'm sure will help you work through the problem. Eon's support has been terrific....much better than most software I've ever used.

Hi Adam!! Great to see you here :) Now you will see just how wonderfully well that tree of yours works in Vue:) I'm also a Bryce user........the differences in the two interfaces does take a bit of adjustment, but Vue is very user friendly....more so than Bryce in my opinion. I go back and forth between the two, using Vue when I work with any nature scene. I think you get a more "natural look" with Vue. You should definitely notice the difference in render time.....Vue is much faster (at least it is on my PC!). Enjoy! And welcome to the forum.

Thanks! Glad you guys enjoyed it...I had fun doing it. The cats had a good time too.... :)

Well rockets I don't own Poser, so I can't speak to it's interface with Vue, but I do own Bryce 4 and I can tell you from personal experience that Vue is much easier to use. The interface will startle you a bit at first but once you've worked with it you will love the split screens and the ease with which you can work with textures. It is much easier to "move around" in Vue (I find trying to work on interiors in Bryce to be a real nightmare....sort of like roaming around blind!). The split screens make Vue much easier to move from room to room.....better camera control. The atmospherics are much better in Vue, making for more "life-like" output. And it renders a lot faster than Bryce! Anyway, I would highly recommend Vue. It is a much more user friendly program than Bryce 4.....and yes, by all means, download the demo and try it out! The little jump start tutorial will have you going in no time :) Plus, there are a ton of folks here willing to answer questions.

Jcleaver could be right and it would certainly be reasonable for Curious Labs to focus its resources to getting a stable Poser 5. But if that's the case then Curious Labs should simply acknowledge that's the problem. The thread I'm reacting to at Eon suggests that there has been a "policy" set by Curious Labs to not authorize Vue to write the importer and, according to the thread, without any explanation. Too many egos at work....I guess :)

Thanks Genny :) I had sent three emails to Curious Labs tech support, wishlist and services without any illusion they would ever respond. Low and behold I got an "immediate" (within 15 minutes) response from what was obviously a live person. They have apparently got the message from a lot of "ticked off" users and are working on a fix :) I think maybe it was beginning to affect their "bottom-line" :) I'm going to wait and see if their "fix" works before investing $300+ in their software. If I knew where I could get it, I would probably buy Poser 4....just don't need the Power Pack add-on for what I do. If anyone has a good reliable source for the full version of Poser 4 without the Power Pack, let me know!

Thanks Varian. I think one of the materials that I modified and mixed in to create one of these, is your purple fabric material (the one with the sparkles). I'm not familiar enough with how to modify color maps to get exactly the right effect with that material alone. Plus the sparkles show up better if they are on a darker material. That second image works because of it's transparency against the pure white background. I had to seperate that terrain and the tree with another terrain covered with a more opaque snow, or you would have seen the tree roots! The glow can work on small areas and if the amount of glow is set very low........otherwise it just looks "radioactive" :) Anyway, those are my musings :) Oh and before I forget....Mighty Pete in his last post said: "why not just use the Vue sparkeling snow material and load the picture...." If there is such a thing as a "Vue sparkling snow material", I would like to know where it is! :) I didn't think there was any....which was the reason I raised the question here :) Sandy

You all have been busy! I took advantage of your great suggestions and played around some to see what I could come up with. I've posted two images at: http://www.geocities.com/sandoppe/vue.html and would like to see what you think. I would have uploaded them here, but this thread is getting pretty image intensive as it is and these are not compressed :) The first image is a "combo" thing. I used Eric's instructions to create the ground cover for this one. Would be better on a little bumpier terrain, but I was focusing on the sparkle thing. The second image uses a transparent star map thingee as one of the materials, consequently this material only works on the terrain if you have snow on the ground! :) This one seems to work best close up. You need to use an opaque snow around objects (ie., the tree) The tree limbs were modified with a material I made from a little of this and a little of that. I call it my "area 51 tree limbs mat" since it uses the glow effect :) If anyone is interested in these materials, I will make them available. Sandy

I think there is definitely a connection between slamming your face into a tree or a snowbank as a child and later in life becoming a Vue user :) I did the same when I was a kid........with a much older sled I might add! :) In my case the sled sunk into hard packed snow and I kept on going! Sliding along on your face on hard packed snow is sort of like sliding on gravel! It was nasty for awhile, but we heal quickly at that age. Great picture Sharon! I really must get Poser so I can try my hand at creating those kids! :) Sandy Sandy

What a gorgeous painting Laurie! I think she would work very well for a visual rendition of "Little Women" or "Gone With the Wind" (she'd make a great Scarlet!).......not sure about "Mom's and Dads" :) You know, I ran across the link you provided and was wondering if Lyn's work was as good as it looked. I will definitely go back now that I have a "reference" :) I too am an "animal" person......keep looking for a good domestic cat....no luck so far! :) I will most likely get Poser at some point not too far down the road........but I better learn Vue first :) I'm going to check out the swan.........will most likely provide some incentive to spend more of my money :) Sandy

Thanks for the feedback Mike.........that was interesting information. I appreciate understanding how those things work. I don't have Poser or any program that is specific to creating models and meshes so I'm never quite sure why some things work and others don't. This is a bit off Vue topic, but is there anyone who creates Poser models that reflect "real life" people......you know like Mom's and Dad's and kids and farmers :) Most of what I see being done with Poser is pretty exotic. I'm planning to do a series of images in Vue and Byrce or both, on things I remember from my childhood.....the country school, the farm, the county fair, Christmas in the old farm house, etc. It would be wonderful to "people" some of these. I've considered getting Poser, but would like to see some examples of it's use along these lines. If anyone has a link or two, I'd appreciate it! :) BTW, I did sent the actual link to Sharen for the Orio tree. Hopefully she got it??? You have to join the Yahoo VuedEsprit Group to get it (which I did and would encourage others to do, since I believe Orio is involved with that!). I thought I would save her some time, since she was so patient with my questions :) Hopefully that's ok with Orio! It will be active until the end of this week..........then gone forever I guess. It is a large download.....16Mb. Sandy

Thanks Varian :) I grabbed some of your plants earlier tonight and will be back for more! :) Will also check out Guitta and Laurie. I'm going to fill up a folder so I'm ready when the full version arrives! I did make my way to the Yahoo Group Forum and got Orio's tree tonight! Big download!! :) But an amazingly nice oak tree! It is my favorite tree so I was glad to be able to get it. I ended up getting both......one for Bryce and one for Vue! Sandy

I guess I'm just a "visual" type :) When I saw the image of the explorer in your message, I opened Vue and sure enough.................there they were!! All the individual meshes!!! I was only looking in that summary window for the material summary. For that to work, I guess you need that .Mtl file and the jpgs. This is great! I also discovered that once you have changed the texture, you need to select the entire pump before trying to move it or your pail falls off the base! :) I apologize for the hassle Sharen, but greatly appreciate your help :) Now I can truly enjoy your great models in both Bryce and Vue!! Sandy