Sorry Analog, if the fountain was a childlike cherub and it was nude and you could see "chest, genitals, or buttocks", it would violate the new TOS.

LOL!! Can't blame him. I was trying to bring up some tears explaining to my wife why I needed to spend almost $200 on Vue 5. She finally crumbled, though. Gonna' need a whole bucketful of tears to get V5I. :^)

Myabe a little something about color theory would help in a book like that. Y'know, how they work together, when contrasting colors would work better, things like that. Good idea. Keep us updated!

I use Mover with V5E, and cloth and hair both come in just fine. Static or animated. If you upgrade to Poser 6 when it comes out, you'll have to wait a little while until Vue will be able to import those files. But it won't be too long for E-on to come out with a patch. So animate away and get that short film done! :^)

Okay, I'm not getting as into this as you guys are, some of this stuff is way beyond me! Interesting read, though. I'll keep an eye on this or other threads to see what you guys come up with. I have a quick question, though. After reading some of this stuff, I went and DL'd a couple of 10 m DEM's from GIS data depot. When I unzipped the archive, the only files in there were .ddf files, which no program that I have can open (Vue or 3Dem). I thought these were supposed to be SDTS files. Help?

You can get a free plug-in for Terragen called "FOE"; For Export Only. It will allow you to export the terrain as a .bmp. You can then use that in Vue's terrain editor. HTH, Mike

Its going to have SSS?! Can't wait to try that out!

After about 4 years of CG now, my wife finally understands when I disappear into the computer room to work on the latest image. She knows a heck of a lot about this stuff because she is the only one that will listen to me nattering on about the latest "new thing" in CG for any length of time. She did say just the other day that she was impressed that I taught myself all this stuff. But usually I just get the old "That's a nice image, honey. Are you coming to bed now?" I get pretty much the same reaction from her family and mine, although her parents have told me to print some of the stuff so that they can show it off to their friends. I don't care though, I love doing it and will continue to do so for as long as I can. Besides, I love sitting in a dark room, staring at the little white line as it slooooowly makes its way down the screen. Lol!

Sorry it took so long for me to see this, Stonemason, I just got home from work. The render was done in Vue 5 Esprit, with Global Illumination. The mat on mine is one of the ones that came with the Troll. BTW, when I got it, the read-me (yes, I actually read it!) said that there was a figure with IK set up and another figure with JCM...something. From what I read, the JCM figure will actually flex the muscles when you bend the arm. Sounds nice, but my question is...What the heck is JCM? This is something new to me. (And no, I haven't actually looked in the manual yet. So there!) :^P Thanks for any clarification! Mike

Of course Shadowlord, you could also do what the pros do and render it in layers. Vue can't do things like shadow passes, ambient occlusion passes, reflections passes, things like that. But, you could put your objects on different layers and tell Vue to "Only render active layers", and then composite it all together in post. It's a lot faster (and gives you more control over each element that way) and easier. Maybe that will help with the time vs. quality crunch that your in.

Sorry to bust into this thread, but I've also seen this wishlist many times. Funny thing is, I read something in 3D World magazine a couple of months ago where one of the bigger 3D production companies over in England had to render volumetric clouds, in human form, animated for about 15 seconds. Now if they went with standard video frame-rate of 30 fps, your looking at 450 frames that needed to be rendered. Know how long it took to render a single frame of that animation? (Keep in mind that these guys have pretty powerful workstations and renderfarms.) Get ready for it.... 16 hours!(that's right, hours)...per frame! Sometimes, to get the results that you want, you just have to wait. You don't have to render animations fast, you have to render them, (and animate them), well.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=886214&Start=1&Artist=miden1138&ByArtist=Yes

Does that mean that I can use the serial number that I got for Vue 4 in the one for Vue 5? Edit Duh! Just browsed the Vue 5 CD. The answer is there. Thanks anyway!

Message edited on: 02/18/2005 08:05

I actually used to junp back and forth between mustache, clean shaven, and goatee until one day I decided to shave off the mustache and my girlfriend at the time said that I looked like Kermit the frog. Started growing out the goatee on that day and have not shaved it since!

Very nice. I really like the sand, and that is an outstanding texture on the driftwood.