YOu did not say from what version you were upgrading from.  If from 5 I would go for the upgrade, burt if you have Pro Studio 6 then I would wait until 7 before I go to Inf. 

As mentioned, Pro Studio does support background images.

I have not tried to load anyone’s Inf eco content with painted objects, and since Esprit Pro Studio does not have that feature you might try sending a painted eco to someone to see what happens.  As far as a regular eco made in Inf I can load them in Esprit or Pro Studio, except. 

There is one problem when I load an Eco, if the Eco was populated before loading and not cleared then I will always get a crash.  That goes for Pro Studio as well.

Hope that helps.

Aa an Esprit only purchaser and user I upgraded module by module as I needed them and that helped keep the learning curve down and let me focus on what I wanted to do.  The next big module you will want is Botanica so you can make plants.

The modules in Esprit are not as workflow efficient as they are in Inf.  As Peggy notes with the discount of 50% off Esprit and when you purchase all of the modules, you save, and in addition qualify for an upgrade from Pro Studio to Infinite.  When Esprit has all of the modules plugged in it becomes Pro Studio. 

So as othes suggest, get the EcoSystem module, maybe even Botanica to get you on the road to building your own.

To access the Function Editor for Esprit and Pro Studio: 

To repeat;  Load an object with the default Material or any object with any Material.  Double click on the Material Preview in the World Browser, and then choose the Advanced Materials Editor.  As indicated by silverblade33, under any Tab, say Bump, right click and from the List Menu select Edit Function in the Bump production preview window to bring up the Function Editor.  Do the same when working with other Tabbed Attributes. 

To access the Filter Editor, double click on the graph next to the Preview window of each Tabbed Attribute.

Nice work Frank, enjoy!

Good luck with that.  I have read the manual at least a dozen times, and I think every page has a sticky note in it and am still scratching my head.

In the Atmo Editor under Effects, Stars, unckeck Colored stars.

Find out what VS version it is.  I think that Vue uses the Visual Studio 5 x86 or x64 depending on your system.  You have two optioins here, to uninstall Vue and reinstall and one of the patches will reinstall VS5.  Can't rmember which.  There are two versions of Visual Studio 2005 32 and 64 bit, and you can get either redistributable from MS

32bit

http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=32bc1bee-a3f9-4c13-9c99-220b62a191ee&displaylang=en 

64bit

http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=90548130-4468-4BBC-9673-D6ACABD5D13B&displaylang=en

Thanks for the info, will get Inf 7 when it comes out.

This is an old AMD, 1.6 gig, 1.5 gig ram, with an ATI 9600.  This was one of the machines that Microsoft crippled with 6 lines of code in the Registry that had to be removed during installation of the OS to get the installation to continue. 

I have always had trouble with the drivers when using any graphic intense software.  I still keep it around since it is the machine I do all of my Abstract artwork on, which requires few resources, and it is paid for. 

I have a newer Intel 3.7 gig I use for the 3D, but it has Vista installed so have not tried to install the Ivy Generator on it.

Bub it in, of course it is going to work on a MAC.  Nothing works on the PC! lol

I noticed my Esprit Pro has been having the same problem, which started when I installed the Deep Access Module.  Seems to be affecting the World Browser some how and it does not update correctly. 

I do not have an Extrapolate, is that an Inf only feature?

Volumetrics take forever to render.  Carrara has a good particle generator and can make nice firestorms.

I cannot export, I get a lockup or crash everytime.  No idea why.