A bit of a followup.........I think I may have solved this .obj mystery. I had a few other .obj models and tried a couple of them. An .obj will load and display the list of individual materials if the .Mtl file is in the same folder as the .obj and if the texture files (.jpg textures) are also present. The "old pump" did not include an .Mtl file or the individual texture files. The image generated by this .obj did include all of these files (sorry, but I didn't have as many .obj's as I do .3ds files :).....a plaque. It may be that this is a version specific issue?? Do the newer versions of the modeling program still create the .Mtl files?? Hope this helps Sharen.

Thanks Sharen, glad you like it :) I live in Minnesota and grew up on a farm, so "snow" is a familiar thing to me. I love the old pump because it reminds me of one that once stood in front of the one room school house I went to as a kid:) Unfortunately when I do the summary window in Vue, I only get one default material for the object..........grey. I think this is a Vue issue Sharen. I don't have this problem with the object in Bryce.....just tried it and I can singly identify each of the object meshes and add textures accordingly. The folder I downloaded contained the .obj file, a .cr2 file, a pz3 file, an .rsr file and a .jpg (a wireframe view of the model, plus license and txt file. I know the summary window should show the different materials/textures used and does with the .3ds files I've imported. I think someone else reported this problem elsewhere on this forum...........if you can come up with a solution it would be terrific!! Thanks again for your kind comments...........and keep making those great models! :) Sandy

Hmmm........well I don't think your female, so you're not the one I was talking about (just kidding!). If you're a cat lover, check out www.claw.org. You'll probably find it a bit "corny" (A lot of old gals with too much time on their hands is about what it amounts to!), but it's good clean fun :)

Thanks for the feedback Varian and Mike :) I will be ordering.....very soon. Am glad to hear that the Vue creators listen and respond. They responded quickly to a couple of emails I sent them and were actually the ones who referred me to this Forum! :) I've been visiting Renderosity for some time.......but as a Bryce user. I've written Bryce twice with questions about Bryce 5........never a response from them. I also know someone in Florida who I collaborate with on some web based projects for a club called CLAW. Don't laugh.....it's a club for people who own cats (the domestic kind). Anyway, we're both Paint Shop Pro users and I turned her on to Bryce. She's had some of the same "learning curve" frustrations with it that I have. Now I can direct her to Vue :) I think she will love it, because she actually is an artist! Thanks again for all your feedback. Sandy

Thanks Mike........yes and I would add "Computers Funny Sometime"! :) I used the ultra setting to anti-alias. Vue probably couldn't afford to limit the anti-alias feature if they hope to use the demo to sell the software. The anti-alias system operates differently than Bryce. I'm not a technical person, but it looks to anti-alias pixels independently vs. the "pass" approach that Bryce uses....I could be all wet. I know what you mean about the materials editor :) I never mastered Bryces either and spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect material and then tweaking with the scale control. The Vue demo only contains four landscape materials....snow,snowy scrublands, snowy purple stripes and strange layers. Pretty ulgly terrain stuff if you ask me :) So I used the materials that were available for rocks:) The images I did were focusing on three things: vegetation, rivers and ponds/lakes because those three things are a pain in the arse to do in Bryce (at least that's my experience :) I think the Bryce creators were largely technical/programming types whereas I get the feeling that the Vue creators also included artists(based on the feel of the images that can be created) and maybe even some average users :) Thanks for the feedback Mike. Will look into that altitude dependent control. Sandy

Thanks everyone, for all the help. Mike, I made the adjustments you suggested. Changing the view windows to "wireframe" does help a lot when moving around the models (vob or otherwise). Nothing moves very quickly in the shaded main window :) This is still the one area where Bryce may be a bit more "sturdy" than Vue :) Regarding the Virus scanner: I do use McAfee, but turned it off when I first started using the demo (control-alt-deleted everything that it runs in the background). I had read somewhere that some Virus scanners will not interfere with your software if they knows it belongs there. So today I reloaded McAfee, checked all the scan settings and rebooted. It took a long time to load......like it was taking an inventory of my harddrive. After that I started Vue, with McAfee on the task bar and found that I can now load .vob files :) Go figure! I was loading the .vob files as Varian and Cheers suggested (load vs import). This is very similar to Bryce with the .vob file being comparable to the .obp file. The demo does not provide any useable objects. All that's provided is the preview and a reference to the cd where they are located. There are also some limitations on the size of an image you can save and of course, scenes cannot be saved at all. That was once reason I thought the demo itself might be "balking" at the sight of .vob files :) Thanks Varian for pointing out that little window with what looks like an L-Square at the top. I had overlooked that and it is precisely what I was looking for! The editing tools I'm familiar with are the ones in Bryce 4's "Edit" Menu to "resize", "rotate" and "reposition". I also prefer the mouse tools..........the camera trackball in Bryce is the one I don't care for :) I discovered that you can use the arrow keys in Vue to do some "nudging" and can always type in the coordinates if necessary. I whipped up three images today just using the basic stuff that came with the demo. If you have time, take a look and give me feedback on how to improve. Again, these didn't take much time, so they're not that great. I'm going to try some "imports" later :) http://leoslair.8m.com/vue.htm I have held off purchasing Bryce 5 and am glad I did. Unfortunately, Vue requires the registration card and receipt for Bryce before it will honor the upgrade price. I purchased Bryce at Best Buy about two years ago on a Visa card and registered on-line when Bryce was still owned by MetaCreations. Who knows where any of that stuff is now. So........I will most likely buy Vue anyway :) Regular price is only $30 more than the upgrade price....and probably well worth it :) Sorry for the lengthy response and thanks for all your help.

Thanks Clay :) Soon after posting this I found a tutorial on the subject in the tutorials section of the site :)