What I take from all I have learned now is that Vue will not mimic the function of a camera correctly with regard to depth of field. There is always a line marking the back of the sharp area. Thus, as my background is quite far back... I'll have to use other methods.

Thank you all for helping me sort this out. At least I know now that it's not just me being too stupid to handle the thing ;-)

(attached image: Blur 0% and 4% for comparison and documentation)

Thanks for your replies, but my tests show that the blur value only impacts how strongly the objects are blurred, but it does not seem to have any influence on which objects get blurred. I know the example is strongly overdone, but I wanted to illustrate what I mean as clear as possible. Target is set to the second cube which indeed is sharp in the picture. But the closest (1) and the farthest (3, 4) cubes are blurred. Same with blur value at 2%, only things are just slightly blurred. What I would want is to have the closest one blurred but 2, 3 and 4 sharp. This thing was easily done in Vue 4 but I just can't figure out how to do it in V5. :-( Any other ideas, please?

Number 1 would be top of my list.

Thanks! Really great!

Thanks for the screenshot - that will make it a lot easier to determine whether it makes sense to try following a tutorial while working with V 5 Esprit.

Thanks for the info. At least I know now definitely - another reason to badly need Infinite. walks off to feed piggy bank

The problem is not so much the node editor itself, but in there (V5 Esprit), I can't see any option for adding a node of type "Input" and checking any available node type, I didn't find any function called "distance from object below" or similar. Please tell me I'm just too stupid to find it and it's there somewhere ;-) (and where) instead of being a new node type with Infinite :-(

This looks sooo fantastic! But I guess it is only possible with V5 Infinite, right? Can't find the input node stuff in Vue 5... Any ideas whether something similar could be achieved there, please??

I don't know Bryce, but I'm really surprised that nobody even mentioned my preferred method of camera control in Vue (I gave up on the trackball immediately): Simply moving the main view window. Even with a reasonably large scene this works acceptably fluently for me and is rather accurate. For extremely precise control, I use the object controls and number entries, but to look for the right POV or using working cameras I mostly use the main view.

Hi Mark! I find this a very nice idea and would be happy to share my works if you like any of them. Take a look into my gallery and let me know if you'd want a high resolution render of any picture. However, I would not be able to sell those because I'm not sure which items I used in their creation and whether there is a restriction on them for commercial use. If well received, future images might be created with regard to allowed usage, though.

My biggest scene in polys with Vue 4 (on the same machine, but with less memory) was 230 million - no probs at all with that. In MB it was >500 - slow, but no problems either. Haven't tested my limits, but it's definitely not as good with Vue 5 - even when using wireframe. Usually, I don't have any issue with the graphics card with any other applications, so I'll give it a bonus in trustworthiness for now :-)

This is a sad day. Guitta leaves many traces among all of us who love Vue and she will always be warmly remembered. My condolences go to you, Gilles, and all her family.

As for me, I'm eagerly waiting for any news on the Vue 5 Esprit German Version that is also due before year end. Santa will really need some time to get his hands on it, once it is available, so it should better come soon lol

I guess this is not really what you have in mind, but I'll let you know anyway. :-) When I want multiple plants of a kind using SolidGrowth (using Vue d'Esprit 4), I go to the selection box for the first and place it. Afterwards, I shift my top view editor window so that the location for the next plant is in its middle and then left click the plant icon. I'm not sure whether there is a setting to control this, but in my setup, the new object will appear in the middle of the top view window. Indeed, you have to go to the icon each time, but for me, I think, this is the quickest way of positioning a variety of plants precisely. Clicking the plant icon is in my experience much less time consuming than correctly adjusting the height of each plant (lift and drop or drag manually) because they appear rarely at the actual terrain surface and dropping groups of plants will often leave some in midair over a wavy terrain when the first touch the ground. For really many plants, I use scatter / replicate or start with a group of plants that I copy / scale / rotate all over the place.

Your new website is nicely designed and well structured. Some more detailed descriptions and larger pictures of your commercial models would be fine, though (like what's in the Castle Construction Kit or so).