I have question for Mover users (and Phoul). Do most people render to raw and then compress later or is there a favorite compression scheme? I just used the top one that was selected by default and it looked really bad. Then rendered to raw which was large but better looking. Do many people use Quicktime Pro? Can you import raw into quicktime and save compressed?

Phoul - I really like the castle/church fly through. You could probably make some creepy haunted house kind of footage with that. You've inspired me to play around with something like that. Thanks for sharing!!

These were all really great but #4 sticks out to me

#8 is so darn cute - great job to everyone else

Thanks - I did the roof with a canned spanish roof type texture I found on the web and some creative scaling on the bump map vs. the texture map...

I created the support beams by grouping some orange cylinders.

Sorry mightyPete - as a newbie on this forum I didn't mean to hit a nerve! I know you are respected by everyone around here and you offer very knowledgeable advice.

I have not used win98 in a long time so I can't say whether vue runs well on it.

I can say as someone who works in computer security that all operating systems have flaws, winXP, 2k and linux all can be exploited over a network and sitting at the computer some easier than others.

When talking about fresh installs of one vs. the other I still believe XP is more secure despite having new vulns found everyday. The architecture of 98 was not meant to be secure or keep people out. There are many file share and remote registry exploits available for 95/98/ME that allow any determined hacker an ample oppurtunity to take over the computer. I think going into detail is quite off topic but would be happy to discuss it with you further on a private channel.

Running ZoneAlarm will certainly help protect you from hackers whether using XP or 98 and it is a good practice.

As far as bloat,cost, stability, these are all relative to the consumer and their needs. I personally run XP and Vue and it works pretty well although I was getting a weird crash with custom materials recently...

again sorry to stir the waters - just trying to offer my outside perspective.

• Jason

I'd say stay away from 98 or ME if you are looking for stability and security. I agree with MightyPete that XP has a lot of bloat but I bet Vue runs faster on XP than 98 and the OS is a lot more secure if you are running this computer on a network or cable modem/DSL.

Plus I would imagine that XP is a lot better for plug and play as far as using newer cards and devices.

In terms of what operating systems do best (memory management, disk i/o,process, thread management etc) XP/Win2k is in a whole different class over 95/98/ME

As far as home networks... I would recommend linksys type routers like this one

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10235958&loc=7074

IMO it is the easiest, cheapest and most secure way to get a bunch of computers to talk to each other (and get out to the internet)

I'm also curious about texture sizes... I took a picture of some grass with my digital camera, loaded it into photoshop 512x512 and made it seamless (by copy/paste blur middle technique) when I load it onto the ground plane it looks too noisy is 512x512 too small/big? Any tips on creating materials from pictures?

I have photoshop - is their a filter to do this or do you resort to the copy paste quadrant and blur method? I thought there might be a plugin that does this but I don't think I have it

Great tips... thanks Thomas!

Quick question... when you create your own textures from photos do you make them seamless? What is a good program to create seamless textures from a jpg picture?

(I found Iris for creating seamless procedural textures but I don't think you can load pictures in this tool)

Jason

Zorares - looks good although the image is kind of dark on my cheap Optiquest monitor (looks great on my laptop) you may want to bring up the brightness a bit

Slightly off topic but... I have Poser 5 installed - I want to install Poser 4 so I can use it with Vue - will this screw up my Poser 5 install (cuz 5 is already installed before I install 4) also - do I have to have Poser 4 installed or do I simply need access to the dir structure and exe - I'm wondering if I can copy the dir structure from another computer with Poser 4 installed and point vue here without actually installed Poser 4 on the Vue machine...

Phoul
I send you a very big THANK YOU! in advance for the excellent tutorials. I agree with DaleB that your work is very impressive.

I am sure you will find your voice again soon - inspiration can come from the strangest places.

Good luck and thanks for the great information!

Very nice - told ya Norton was crappy (although I'm a bit biased cause I work for a Symantec competitor!)

I'm waiting for my copy of Vue/Mover to arrive. I ordered it on Wednesday - hope to have it next week.

Now I know who to come to when I start messing around with distributed renders!

What is the transmap flicker problem?

Can the machines ping each other?

You don't really have to run Norton Internet Security internally if you are using a cable/DSL router like the RT314. I'm assuming it is similar to the LinkSys in that it has a hardware firewall of sorts that will not let anything into your network unless you explicitly allow it...

Have you tried disabling Norton completely? I have not used the application so I'm taking a stab here on the network side but like MightyPete said, Norton is pretty intrusive and is probably the culprit (assuming both machines can ping each other and it's not a routing issue)

Zone Alarm (free) or BlackICE ($$) are better alternatives to Norton but like I said, if you are using the router - your internal machines are somewhat invisible to the outside world...