Working good with an ATI 8500 in my XP box and a Geforce3 in my OSX 10.2.6 box.

Sure, sorry to get you all wet Phily. It's obviously important to you to be right, so I'm going away. Enjoy yourself.

information, but only about 5% or less deals with computer techniques. >As a more general reference, I too recommend it. ; ) Ah, but therein lies the crux! "Digital" art is still 'art" and uses the same visual techniques. As you surely well know, learning photoshop is not learning to paint, or to draw, or accurately represent emotions, volumes, time, stories, etc. "Digital Techniqes" are to art what a brush or canvas is to art.

Digital Lighting and Rendering is by far the best book availble on Lighting for 3D applications. That is the only lighting book you will need for any 3D program, and the principles apply everwhere. The texturing book is really good too. I was actually a little let down by the Digital Fantasy Painting book. It is not nearly as 'step by step' as I would have hoped. It's a good book, but I found it to be less technical and more art gallery. Also, some of the work in there wasn't anything to really study. A book along the same lines that I found far more valuable to me was "The Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Science Fiction Art Techniques" by John Grant and Ron Tiner. While being a much older text, it deals directly with real artistic principles such as Juxtaposition, distoration of form, body language, false perspective, etc. There are a few pages on each with many examples. All in all, a great set of tools for visual storytellers. You can pick up a used copy for about 5 bucks on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1561385344/qid=1063817815/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-2232774-0232061?v=glance&s=books

Don't forget that you can render in each program and then composite the results. There are still a lot of opportunities.

I have a question Lynn. Assuming I had several scenes created in Vue 4, when Vue 4 Pro comes out, would I be able to simply open up my V4 scenes and add dynamics, wind, etc, or will those elements need to be completely recreated to take advantage of the new features? In other words, if I put in a lot of time now working on scenes, will I need to do that work over again? Thanks so much.

Your timing is perfect! I have some animated stories to complete this year, all of which require rich outdoor visuals, and Vue Pro meets my needs dead on! I am so very excited about the compositing capabillities you have added, which will make Vue a viable part of my workflow now, right alongside Maya, Lightwave and After Effects. Well done E-On, and much thanks! I'm chomping at the bit to get the update and get to work! BTW, I think the pricing is very fair for a product with these capabillities.

Another thing to keep in mind, Vue doesn't really support OpenGL like other programs do. For instance, Maya, Lightwave, 3DS, all use OpenGL to it's fullest with a much higher quality of previews, etc. Vue uses OpenGL to it's advantage, but shouldn't be used as a benchmark of what Vue or OpenGL in and of themselves are really capable of. That being said, I use Vue on a Geforce3 in a Mac and a Radeon 8500 in a Windows XP box, both of which work very well.

all vue needs to be professional is 1)cloth dynamics and 2)a realistic >dynamic hair/fur/grass generator like sasquatch. Not quite. There are many other features that would be far more important to a truly professional audience, and many of them seem to be present in this new version. Cloth dynamics in Vue would be nice, but very off target for the programs intended use. What the Pro version will bring are some things that would allow you to use it for truly "Professional" level work, really for the first time. Scripting - This alone will be amazingly powerful. I don't know the depth of the scripting capabilities, but this would let you do things like dynamically adjust the wind strength dependant upon the proximity to objects of another object, or a camera, etc. You could control water effects, cloud values, and so much more, with more control than simply "on and off". Scripting is what allows an animation technical director to really "direct" the elements in a 3D scene to get desired results, and allows objects in the scene to interact with and drive the values of other objects. Wind - We don't even need to talk about how cool this one is! Without wind, trees look kind of, well, 3D. ; ) Dynamic Motion Reaction - Sounds like a dynamics system to me! This is great because it saves hours and hours of hand animation. You can set a pile of rocks to have a certain weight and solidity, and the same for a hill object, then simply push the rocks down the hill and you get an instant realistic landslide animation. Or a falling tree could take out the trees next to them rather than simply fall through them. Very, VERY cool stuff here. Camera Tracking - THIS is the best feature yet. Camera tracking means synchronization with another programs camera moves. So you could create a Vue animation, then use the camera tracking information to get EXACTLY the same camera moves and settings in another program where you could then animate planes, bugs, birds, people or whatever. Even advanced particle effects from programs like Maya, Lightwave or C4D could be composited in. Then the two videos get composited into one. This is the way most all professional 3D work gets done, in many layers, almost never in one 3D scene. Hybrid Motion Blur - I would guess this is a faster algorithm for rendering motion blur, so rendering animations would take hours instead of days. Good news indeed. Export - I can only hope this is a feature like World Builder, which can export its scenes fairly completely into Maya, Lightwave and 3DS. This would allow a user to work in Vue to build the world, then export it into the 3D program of their (supported) choice, taking advantage of the more advanced rendering engine, particles, etc. Needless to say, I am super excited about this new version. I really wanted to use Vue for a couple of my short animations coming up, but the lack of some of these features was making it impossible and I was already shopping around programs like World Builder. This version of Vue looks like it will directly address all of my "professional" problems. LOL!

Yeah, looking very nice. What was the cost in render time for the volumetrics?

If you are sick of off topic threads why did you start one? ; )

And look at the price difference. How many people not sure if >they want to get into this 3D stuff will spend those bucks on >a high-end program? Besides which I venture to guess that Sure, but we were talking about people who are not just now "getting into this 3D stuff", we were talking about those of us who bought Poser 1 and Bryce 1 in the mid 90s and simply can't get the functionality out of them that we now need. >With the proliferation of high speed connections, the web >is increasingly going to be used for publishing more >sophisticated 3d content. At the moment, it's mainly Don't hold your breath for that. It's been tried for years and even with high speed connections, there really isn't much use for 3D "on the web". Now, 3D data embedded into applications that are driven by real time data over high speed network connections is another thing. For instance, you will soon go to the doctor and much of your body will have been scanned and translated into 3 dimensional models for diagnosing and study. But this is something entirely differnt than what Poser does. >But to discount a tool that still works well, just because >its not new The "newness" of a tool is not in question, the modernity of it's features and functionality are. Don't confuse the map for the territory. >Ouch...sorry to be the one to open your eyes; let's look at >galleries and how many pics are in each... You have !!GOT!! to be kidding with this bull$hit! LOL That is the most rediculous thing anyone has said yet. Ok, fine, let's play in your sandbox for a minute. Any Bryce or Poser user can download a character, a pose, and some clothes, push a couple of buttons, render and poop out some "art", then promptly post it to the online image gallery of thier choice. The average Lightwave, Max, Maya, etc user will produce only a fraction of that volume because they are performing far more complex tasks, like setting up advanced particle and dynamics simulations, or modeling a unique character that everyone else isn't using, and creating for it an animation rig of high enough quality that it doesn't fold and crease at all the joints. And then lets not forget that while you were busy pooping out 512 Poser images, the users of the other programs were working on movies, television shows, commercials, product adds, behavioural simulation demonstrations, and all number of other cool things that exist outside of the relatively tiny world of online "art" galleries. >If you can't draw with a 99 cent pencil, you aren't going >to be able to draw with a 10 dollar pencil. I see the point you are trying to make, but it's simply not true. Yoyoma could not produce the same quality of music on a $100 cello from sears, you can't win the Indy 500 with a Ford Focus, Michelangelo would not have created the same art with finger paints, and Final Fantasy could not be made using Poser. You need the right tool for the right job. Look guys, Bryce and Poser are cool, but they don't do everything. That doesn't make anyone bad people for using them, but defending them like they are the holy grail is really rediculous.

The potential of any growth does not lie in your tools, don't >blame them. While you are right that some money could be made on a bryce/poser solution AgentSmith, I'm going to go with Wolf359 on this one. The tools can and do limit an artist, if the tools are not the state of the art, or very near to it. Poser and Bryce don't do what I need them to. They are still exactly what they have always been and have not gotten worse, it is me and my needs that have grown. For what Bryce and Poser do, they are fine tools. But for anyone serious about animation, especially of characters, or who needs a rapid pipeline for completing projects on a professional time table, or many other needs/reasons, a Poser to Bryce solution would be no solution at all. There are two factors at work here: 1 - The owners of programs like bryce and poser and several others in this price point provided a way for 3D artists to get started, by offering decent 3D tools at a low price. But those tools have not matured in any serious way lately, even though a large number of the users have. Which leads us to.... 2 - The "high end" professional 3D software solutiions have seen drastic price reductions in the last couple of years. This has closed a gap, squeezing some program out completely, and making the "entry level" far less of a bang for the buck, especially when you consider the bevy of modern features available, such as subdivision surfaces, radiosity, and countless others not available in the Poser/Bryce range. For instance, you could spend around $400 to $600 getting Poser, Bryce and a few other doodads, and then only be about $400 away from a full blown copy of Lightwave or C4D. That extra 400 clams would give you a huge amount of extra tools, performance and options, and also allow that artist to enter the professional realm of output quality. Knowledge in that program (coupled with other skills) will even make you a potential candidate for a job. It's hard to buy three or four programs and spend time wresting with their quirks when only a little more money will get you something really top notch, and that won't limit your artistic potential. Now, this is not a slam on anyone using Bryce, Poser and what not. There can still be some great art produced from these tools. I myself still use Vue on ocassion and enjoy it very much, but I realize it's limited potential in the larger playing field. Truly knowing what your tools are capable and not capable of is a strenght, not a weakness.

file IF one could get hold of a full documentation of mtl >format, which Lightwave Corporation keeps guarded. You will There is no "Lightwave Corporation". I think you mean Newtek, of which Lightwave is one of many products. That being said, Newtek did not create the OBJ format, that was Wavefront, which merged with Alias many years ago to become Alias:Wavefront, who recently changed thier name back to just "Alias". No program, really uses OBJ as a native format anymore, other than Poser. It's more of a file interchange format now. OBJ is an ascii format, which means it is entirely too large and slow to work with as opposed to binary formats, which is a large reason why Poser is so damn slow. The format also does not carry all of the modern information necessary for saving complex modern scenes, which is why Lightwave uses LWO, Alias uses ma or mb, etc. Even Poser has to keep a "CR2" file to contain extra data not available in an OBJ.

Vue has network rendering, called Render Cow, and it works cross platform. I've not used it so I can't speak to it's functionality.