Very nice content! I am highly impressed with the tutorials.

Amazing detail.Well done,Chipp!

Sweet! Many thanks.

Very nice work! Thanks!!

Awesome package! I'm looking very forward to using this!! Great work.

Sounds sweet Lyne! Good to see you again! Looking forward to some images off that new rack!!

I don't feel it's a matter of wasting time, but taking the time to tweak paramenters. To be honest, I don't  have Esprit and I'm not familiar with the options in that build of Vue.

About 2 weeks ago,I started a WIP and I could not for the life of me properly texture a tree that I had included in the scene and then modified to fit what I'd wanted in the plant editor.I asked around on this board,and other boards about this.I, too, have used a large texture map 1200x1000 for this one tree.Tried every option,the tree never did map properly. I ended up hiding the worst parts behind some other plants.I liked the lighting I was getting,and tried an animation.Same as yours, I had that "swimming" as it was described to me.I've described it back to you as it was described to me,and I've nutshelled it a bit from the responses of about 12 different people.Most answers came from people that use Maya and XStream.

I would think that with any product, what we see advertised would be the best that product had to offer.Map resolution and file types of the maps always play a factor, but I don't believe they are the only factors in play. Graininess in renders has been mentioned many times concerning Vue.When I tried the Maya PLE it took me a lot more work to get a mediocre render than with 3D Max,but the toolset in Maya was far more advanced.One thing suggested to me was to render much larger than intended and then resize.Another tip was to bake the illumination before the render.I haven't tried this as the animation wasn't as important to me as the still.

If you could, let us know if you find a solution for your animation.These are problems that have been presented before, I've encountered the same,and I'd like to know more.Using displacement was also suggested to me, but I took the easier road and just hid the parts of the tree that looked stretched.

This has a bit to do with the parenting of the texture to the object,which is assigning a shader node,and then choosing the mode of the parenting; i.e. World Parametric for instance. What seperates the high-end applications from the more affordable hobbyist apps (besides price LOL)  is a LOT of programming which means more tools and more options to said tools.
Textures by nature are dependent on the "view" used to map the textures.World Parametric vs. Object Parametric for instance, will appear different in Vue.  Add motion and render an animation,and you have this come into play as a sort of texture swimming or artefact noise.The object keeps it's place, but the textures tend to stretch to fit the camera angle.Trust me, high end apps,like Maya or 3D Max, have this problem.I would try differing mapping nodes in Vue and render very short sequences and see what happens.I'm very new to Vue,and I'm still figuring out the mapping,but this holds true in most every 3D program that uses texture nodes.

Vue has grown tremendously since Vue4.It is becoming an application used by the large production houses for film work.E-On has brought these features to us at a very affordable price.Infinite or XStream is about 1/3 the price of 3D Max or Maya.Terragen has an awesome texture rendering engine,but it's still very hard to add plants,objects,etc Give E-On a little time and Vue will rival the high end applications one day.I'm sure rendering and mapping tools are always being looked at the folk at E-On as improvements for the next major build.Till then, just try differing modes and work with the bump mapping,too. I just went through this with mapping the Dead Tree I'd messed with in the plant editor recently.  Happy rendering!

Birn's site is 3drender.com. He outlines the book there and has tutorials.I grabbed some of the lighting challenges he's posted there, like the haunted stairwell and the bottles.It's worth a look if anyone has time.

Looking forward to it! I just grabbed your Terrapak and am very impressed with it already.

I'm using the color map as the bump.I'm too new to V6I to map on my own like this without being in the Basic Mat Editor as of now.There's so much to learn at this point. I did mess with the tree editor some so I could get an ecosystem on it for the spanish moss effect. I'll open the editor and play around with the bump map and see.Thanks for the fast reply!

@FrankT: I hear you.The toys aren't cheap; then one needs more add-ons and the wives take strong notice of  credit card spending summaries.LOL    I had Max,then "had to have" FinalRender.Now VRay is the top of the foodchain there for GI/Radiosity.   I simply cannot afford all that I like out there.Vue was affordable and will keep me out of trouble for a while.

I'll definitely buy this when it's available! I've heard so much about it.

Chippw: Thanks for the welcome! Your tutorials have proven very helpful to me for learning Vue.I thank you and Peggy so much for past help! I am indeed enjoying Vue and the creation of my world, which I call "Midian". It comes from a story I'd started way back in high school and has lived on,now in CG form.

Traligill:A few of my friends had probs with Xstream and Max files.I'd asked a few of the people here about Xstream. I took a while to decide on "just" Infinite.I may lateral out at some time.I'd like to try C4D some time.I've seen amazing models done with it. Thanks for the input!

FrankT: I will check into those, for sure! I'm pretty comfortable with Max,so I'm hoping to get some models out to share soon with some modeling app.

I like architecture,especially anything gothic in nature.I'm also looking at Zbrush,and I may start some figures for Poser eventually.My friend, Neomea,here at Rendo is willing to show me the ropes in the areas of custom Poser textures and morphs.I always liked Sanctum Art and Sixus1 for creatures,and stonemason has always created cool stuff. I just discovered those Cliff Demons last night and bought a set. So much awesome stuff out there. I want to try those SeaVue mats I keep seeing in the great water pics.

bruno021: Yes, they're spectral.I'm pretty hooked on the spectral modes Vue has now.Especially the AO. I tend to use metaclouds for fog effects.I'll try nudging to the right.Thanks for the tip.I have so much to learn about this app still.

esther:I'm always looking for modeling tools. I tried to get my head around Maya when the free edition came out some time back, but Maya's learning curve was a little too steep for the time I had available back then. I haven't upgraded Max since R8. It's too expensive a tool to keep updating now that I don't do Archi-Viz any longer. I also had better responses from the E-on support team when I had a video card issue than I ever did with AutoDesk.