Thanks yggdrasil, Thought it might be something like this.

Thanks, I'll try that, although the topic was animation...

Yeah, that makes two of us! Tired of exporting my C4D models in 3ds, and import them back in Vue with Vue's (mis)interpretations of the C4D shaders.

Yes, it's possible to use soft shadow maps in Vue5 Pro Studio & Infinite. I guess some practice will be needed to know about this.

Very interesting, Orio. About soft shadows: does your advice stand also if you're using soft shadow maps?

TG2 will not suport Poser files, I'm pretty sure about it, but if you can export Poser files in obj format, then you'll be able to import your obj files in TG2. Back to the topic, I think Polax almost has it, but reversed; looking again at his render, it seems he achieved exaclty the opposite of SSS: the surface of his ice is darker than the inside of the rock. Is there a Vue function to reverse this? if so, it will be even closer to the real thing!

Not the true thing maybe, but very close! Congrats my friend! Now I think I really made the right decision by buying V5I instead of waiting for TG2! ( Oh, ok, there might be TG2's ultra photorealistic renderer!)

I think that if you remove most of the ambiant light, your renders will be a lot crisper, without going the 90% quality boost, which will increase render time 4 times at least! Do this in the atmosphere tab.

About the SSS: I'm sure the answer to this lies in the function editor, but I'm afraid I won't be the one to find out. The editor is way too complicated for me right now, but I'm learning!

Well, I kind of have the same problem, except that I have no Poser content. Here's what happenned: I had a scene in Vue5 Pro Sudio that I wanted to tweak in Infinite, by adding eco-systems. It all worked fine until I decided I needed one more patch of grass to cober a tree base. I dropped the grass from the plant editor and placed it, Vue crashed, reloaded the scene a few times, and finally saved it the way I wanted it. When I tried to reopen it, an error message tells me Vue5Infinite can't open the file... Since it is now populated with eco-system, I can't open it anymore in ProStudio! I run on XP home edition.

@ LordWexford: Tne registered version of Terragen lets you build and import bigger terrains, which means a lot lore details in your scenes, plus improved anti aliasing, plus bigger renders ( = 100% more details in your final renders.) The next version of Terragen , TG2 will be a lot like Vue, with import of 3d geometry, multiple lights, displacement mapping, subsurface scattering, import of Xfrog plants and so on.. Terragen is a fantastic program, not to mention it's the most photorealistic landscape rendering app you can get. But right now, I'm really bored with it, as all of the fantastic features I mentionned are yet to be implemented. Now Bryce: Yuukkk!!! Ugly renders, bad imports, most unfriendly user interface, very complicated yet powerful material editor, great terrain editor. Nuff said.

You have a point with XFrog plants, they take a long time to render. BTW, does anyone know if there is a difference in render time when importing XFrog models in 3ds or lwo? Lwo seems slower, but I'm not too sure. But it's definitely easier to export/import in the lwo format.

Sounds really cool. Thks for telling me.

I think all plants look bad in Vue, except the rubber plant, stangely,and it has to do with the shading ( reducing ambiant lighting gives better results), and you need to work on the size of the procedurals used for trunks (scaling them differently), be it colour or bump. Give your leaves a little blurry reflections (increases render time). you can also change the image map if you have any images of the leaves you want ( must have an alpha channel), and it doesn't always work ( few chances it's gonna work with the palmtree, mut may work with simpler plants). That's all I could find to have better Vue plants (apart from modelling my plants in XFrog, that is!), and it's true they work better in the background. PS:These advice work for Vue5.