You should loose NO data in the transfer, so maybe this is your problem: You are probably aren't doing this, but I know people have had a similar problem because they use jpg format. You should not use jpg's within any application unless that is the only format you have the image in. There are two basic types of comression, those that give you back exactly what you put in (tiff compressed, zip etc), and those which degrade the data (jpg). JPEG format was designed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group many years ago. It is a system which seriously compresses an image by actually removing data, and replacing it with a simpler, but hopefully 'subjectively' acceptable area of visual data. Consequently image detail and dynamic range are lost, even with compression set to minimum. It is designed for what you see on this forum, sending pictures at reasonable size of reasonable image quality, but it should never be used for saving image masters, or transferring images between programs. I've gone on a bit there, but I'm aware that some people don't realise this, and several problems hightlighted in this forum are due to the use of jpeg's inappropriatley. What Guitta says is also important, keep your resolution constant, and match the terrain blank in Vue to this resolution.

sorry patiaz - I've checked the site and the link is working fine, so maybe something in your browser or a typing error. Anyway, I'm going to take Guitta up on her offer, so there will be a new url soon, I'll let you know. I need the web space for some stunning drawings by a blind child I work with, and more landscape research stuff using Vue as a final renderer.

I don't know if this is the case, but you may not have reflectivity set to zero. I can't remember in vue 2, but the fully transparent areas may still reflect.

Try double clicking on your house in vue, and reduce the 'maximum smoothing angle'.

This is not really a bug, its a limitation. Its been in Vue terrains since at least beta vue 3 days. e-on know about it, and you can either move the camera angle slightly, or paint it out.

First, compression. If you can, don't compress. Render 'full frame uncompressed'. That way all your rendering time at high quality isn't wasted by being degraded by a compression algorithm. You can then compress the avi in an external application as needed, if you have one. I use Corel Photopaint to compress my uncompressed avi's to .mov format. With renders taking a week or more even on a 2GHz machine, I prefer to compress later. As a guide to avi uncompressed size, a thirty second avi at 25 fps and 640x480 is about 600mb, or a cd's worth. 320 x 240 would be a quarter of that size. I now have a video card and processor which can play 640 x 480 uncompressed back without any problems, and they look beautiful. (You can't play them back from cd, not fast enough, you have to read them from a hard drive.) I 'think' the current quicktime player may allow you to compress and save avi's to mov format, but I haven't got it in front of me. If not, there's probably something free out there to do it, or get Corel Essentials, containing Corel Draw and Corel Photopaint version 8 for a price of about sixty pounds UK. These two applications will help with all of your Vue work, both post and pre, as well as converting avi to mov. Hope this helps.

The best package you can get in addition to Vue is Corel Draw. Corel Draw consits of a drawing package, and a brilliat bitmap editor, Corel Photopaint. Now, this package costs in around 400 pounds uk for version 10. BUT, there is a release of version 8 called Corel Essentials (I think) for about 60 pounds uk. This package allows you to all sorts of pre and post production. I've even used it to master the parts for a beam engine, brought into Vue as terrains. If you haven't already got it, I can highly recommend it. Photopaint on its own is worth the money, it makes Adobe photoshop look like the over priced badly designed app it is.

Audity - The immage is already at the limit for Renderosity, so its a bit difficult. The original is 32 mb. If you really want to see a better version, write me a note and I'll post a 2mb version on my web site temporarily for yu to download. Thanks for the comments. Guitta - I will be sending the whole series to Nico, including animations, when I've finished the project. You can get these aerials from lots of sites now. Multimap is a good one for uk coverage. (uk2/multimap.com).

Save the alpha map at the same time to produce a ready-made mask in your bitmap editor.

In win 98 vue 4.06 I see 'all picture files'. I'll check win 2000 later. Eon (and others) have a tradition of the default file type in a 'save as' box being odd in some way - I'd hate to see such a long established practice ended. Its become part of my life...

I've just tried this in Win 98, and I've got it too. I've just rendered a load of 'real' local landscapes from contour data for research use. I'll have to render them again now when the bug is fixed. I did wonder why Derby came out 20 metres below sea level...

Hello, I've had the opposite experience, created my terrain at exactly the same size as the bitmap, and still got the steps. Oh well... erode gets rid of them.

Yes, I think I've found in the past that even full colour formats seem to only produce 256 steps in Vue. Maybe vue converts them, or maybe at 16 million you still only have 256 brightness levels, I don't know. I presume you are not using the jpg format - as this will show compression artifacts. I'll have a fiddle tonight, its worth looking in to. Several times in the past I've done stuff like this with loads of resoultion and colour levels, only to get various forms of step effect in Vue.

I've seen something very similar when converting contour-map data into greyscale bitmaps and then into a terrain in Vue. The terrain ends up with lots of little steps, and they vary a bit depending on the bitmap format I use. I get rid of these using a quick 'diffusive erode' in terrain editor, but when you are using it directly to drive bumps, it may not be so easy. Are you exporting as a greyscale image, or in a high-colour mode? Saving your image in 16 million or more colours may help, but I don't know. We may be seeing different things, I don't know, but remember, there are only 256 levels in a greyscale picture.