Quote - After all the moaning of e-on and its Greek chorus of 'yeh' sayers how  it isnt a problem, and if it was it would be impossible to fix, and why are you using a mac anyhow?

It's one thing for you to continually attack e-on regarding your personal experiences...

It's a whole different thing to attack us as a "Greek chorus of 'yeh' sayers" just because we don't have your same problems.

ArtPearl-- perhaps you're having a problem grasping the fact there are some of us who don't share in your disatisfaction regarding Vue. That is our reality-- obviously different from yours. It's not necessary to call us names because we don't share in your misery.

Quote - But we may have enough spare cash to buy little nice things. And now we find we have been left behind.

Perhaps, but as a C3D vendor who does have product available for both 6 & 7, I will also be forced to market to V7/8 users as the render engine did change from 6 to 7.

Furthermore, If users have money to upgrade the main product, then I assume they have more available funds for purchasing add-ons.

Lastly, there are those who are unhappy with V7-- just as there were those unhappy with V6-- just as there are those unhappy with V5-- and so the story goes...

It's rather funny, it seems different users can't use the even versions, while others can't use the odd versions. I, personally, can't make much sense of it all, as lucky for me, they all seem to work on all my computers (WinXP and Vista). I did recently come back from SigGraph, where I specifically asked the president of e-on about 7.4 versus 7.5 and if there was any difference in the code base (other than the newly added features) and he replied that no, both versions are compiled from the latest 7.5 codebase.

Here's another interesting point he made regarding polygon count and importing objects. It can take upwards of 10 times the amount of memory to handle polygon meshes versus a height field terrain. So, importing a million polygon model, can chew up some serious memory!

Sadly, for Mac users, without a 64-bit version of Vue (or Max, or Maya, or Modo, or SketchUp, or Lightwave, etc..), memory restrictions play a huge part in not being able to create complex scenes in many of the 3D suites (Cinema 4D  is the only one I know of which already is Cocoa compiled for Mac 64-bit). Because Apple forces developers to use their tools, those with optimized cross-platform development environments find it more difficult to cross-compile for Macs...something Apple will probably have to find a way around-- or lose the high-end 3D crowd.

Quote -  since im getting the vue 7 core package with sci-fi, is it still good enough on its own to add to film? like green screening and all that stuff?
or
should I just wait until I can buy add ons for it? 

Huh? You're trying to do film work with a $50 software package? Not going to work.

Exactly what are you asking about green screening? Typically 3D rendering products save alpha masks with their output. The green screen is used when shooting live footage and compositing with CG mattes.

I doubt Pioneer can render animations at film resolution. I suspect, if you're serious about really doing film work, you would need at the minimum Infinite (multi-layer pass) and depending on how much work, you may need xStream with another 3D package like Max or Lightwave.

It sounds like you're pretty new to this stuff. If you're serious about it, I'd suggest you consider purchasing Esprit-- as it can be upgraded to Complete. Even though there's no 'official' upgrade path, e-on has said on several occasions they're willing to purchase back your copy of Complete (not at full retail) and apply it to a version of Infinite.

HTH.

 I've seen this same problem in other programs (including my own!). The header can be different for different JPG files. My programs couldn't open a JPG saved in CMYK format. Glad to see you solved it!

 I would be careful with direct painting of ecoSystem instances is it's been my experience, on occasion, they just disappear. I can imagine the frustration that would cause if you spent a few hours painting an ecoSystem to have it vanish. Save early, save often!

I have also used grayscale maps to control orientation of ecoSystems-- and it works quite well. You might check out this OLD, but effective webpage:

http://www.graphique3d.republika.pl/

Click on the left SCENES button, then click SILENT SPRINGS at the top. HTH, Chipp

 Pnina, quite a wonderful image! I especially like the difference in color of our solitary friend. It almost has a night appearance with the sun actually being a full moon. Nice job!

 Yes, it does work. Though I needed an opposite function rather than an invert, but the results speak for themselves.

 Super eonite! Thanks for the idea! Here's a start based on the one you shared...

 Splendid work Pnina. Your talents as a watercolor artist continue to amaze. Keep up the good work!

For the record, Steven is right, the only setting that matters is how many pixels the width and height of the render are. FORGET THE DPI SETTING It's only there for -- oh heck, it's hard to explain and not important anymore-- though it once was sorta important-- now folks resample dpi with zero loss in Photoshop in less than a second with a click of a button. So, just forget the dpi setting and use pixels.

So, say you wanted to print full size at 13 x 19 as Paula has stated above. She said she renders the width at 2400 pixels wide-- which means the 2400 pixels need to stretch to fit 19 inches thus the end result dpi-wise would be:

2400 / 19 which would equal around 126 dpi, which is what she is currently printing her images at (assuming full bleed, i.e. the picture goes all the way to the edge of the 19")

So, if Paula wanted to print out the same image at a full 300 dpi (assuming her printer can print out at 300 dpi, which most can) then she would need the width of the image to be:

19 * 300  = 5700 pixels wide.

Some printers want this resolution, but my tests and experience tell me typically 150 dpi is fine for most print work. If you really need higher resolution, then you can use a 3rd party product like PhotoZoom Pro to 'upsample' it using s-spline technology. This takes only a few seconds and does a great job.

So, in Paula's case, printing out full bleed on a 19" wide print would require a width setting of:

19 * 150 = 2850 pixels wide.

Of course, higher resolution is always preferable, but the render cost is significant with respect to the barely perceived higher print quality. I'm currently staring at 7 different framed renders in my office, which have a print dpi of between 150 and 300 and I seriously can't tell the difference. And I use a very nice Epson archival print quality printer...

 Sorry, you're going to have to give us a bit more information, as in what are we looking at? Rock, water, ?? 

The purple could be reflected from somewhere else, or it could be part of a material, or a clipping issue, but without information about the scene, it's difficult to diagnose.

Among my favorite Vue features are the rendering quality, EcoSystems, Material Editor (including Function Editor), Metablobs, and Vue's Interface. And probably the least favorite feature(s) are probably the presets and the standard terrain editor. I find just about none of the presets usable in their current configuration. Especially the atmospheres and landscape materials. And the standard terrain editor, IMO, is not even as good as Bryce's which was created e-on's ago (pun intended!)

I do really like procedural terrains and am using them almost exclusively these days. :-)

 So Pinina,

You reported the bug as the inablility to export a terrain as TIFF, but exporting as .obj did work.

After they responded to you they could not reproduce the problem, you went back and saw where the path had not been defined. So, your sleuthing actually found a work around and allowed you to provide a much more accurate recipe for the new bug back to e-on. Good job!

I supposed it has been fixed now, as it works as it should on my version. Like e-on support, I can't make it 'not work' given your original recipe for the problem. But, once you provided the information about having a bad path, things made more sense. Even so, if I delete the path, it still offers me an error condition, probably due to the fact the issue has been fixed since your bug report.

My thinking is this is basically how things with computers and tech support are supposed to work. A productive back and forth with help on both sides to find the answer.

A funny supposedly true story: A person calls tech support and tells them they can't get their CD to load, the tech support guy is confused and after a long back and forth, finds out the user is using the CD tray as a cupholder!

Here are some more ideas to try:

1. Are you using any customized theme or desktop settings? If you are, I'd suggest try resetting all the way to default.

2. Check out the display hardware acceleration slider and move it all the ways to the left just to see if Vue will run.

To do this: right-click the desktop and select properties.
Choose the settings tab
click advnaced button
click advanced tab
There you will find hardware acceleration. Move it to the far left and Apply. Then try running Vue again and see if it works. If it does, then it means your graphics card is conflicting. You can try 'bumping' the hardware accel slider to the right and trying again-- keep doing this process until it starts crashing again. But the real problem, in this case, would be your drivers.

1. Also,consider downloading the free version of Pioneer and trying to install it. If it works and your xStream does not then somehow xStream is misconfigured. Perhaps it's one of the apps which it is supposed to connect to that's the problem? Can you install xStream in isolation mode where it doesn't depend on any other 3D apps? I dunno as I don't have xStream.

 You might check my blog for the latest in uninstall procedures for Vue:

http://blog.chipp.com