Is the challenge still on?

Quote - well unless you need a large expanse of water visible in render
hwy not use a terrain with a function to create waves, thus lower memory requirements as you can erase pieces of the terrian not visible in render which will reduce reosurces needed, and being a terrian, should be fixxed? :)

Thanks for the suggestion, that's a thing I always wanted to try anyway, so I think it's a good time for it NOW :)

Quote -
odd that the water is changing though

Found the reason: in the displacement function there's a time node (probably for animations).
Disconnect this node and the wave stays static. Easy fix.

Quote - Thank you both Crowning, & silverblade!

I am going to save the screen shots if that is OK?

That's what they are made for :)

One general advice: to learn a new program, start with a VERY simple object to get use to the control features so you don't have to wait to much. Move, rotate, resize, motify, re-texture and whatnot until you figure out:

• how things work

• what effects a change REALLY has. You won't see a small texture change one a +1000000 trees eco system, but you can learn a lot by looking at one single leaf.

Quote - Thank you for pointing me at the controls... I will play later and look for those, up til now I was trying control/pull and shift/pull on the icon...

Some screenshots for:

move object

rotate object

resize object

Quote - OK, here are the first 3 that I think may be important

• OpenGL warning pop-up: this is a general problem with ATI video boards. They are OpenGL 2.1 only (some (even new ones) OpenGL 2.0 only). Vue detects this and changes the OpenGL settings accordingly. With trial and error you can change some of the settings to something better, but I highly recommend using a NVidia card, which support OpenGL 3.1! I recently bought a GForce GTX275 (which is in your price range) and am a happy camper now. No big cubes in the preview window while moving an object but nicely textured 3D objects.

• I can't say anything to the poser options. I'm DAZ-Studio :)

• select your character, click on the left upper preview window and change the handle to 'rotate' (that's directly under 'move'). Grab the circle and rotate your object to taste.

• read that fine manual. It's pretty good and detailed.

Quote - I do not know how to add (*or what to add!) to get lighting in the front of the character, to fill in the scene without disruprting the atmosphere I created?

That's VERY easy once you now how to do it: add a Point Light to the scene in front of your Poser character, and somewhere in the object settings of that Point Light there's a setting "which other objects should be influenced by that light".
You can check a box named (from memory) "Include only marked objects". Now you can edit the tree view below and select the objects which should be influenced by that light.
Select your complete Poser character including clothing.
For indoor scenes it's often a good idea to remove/decrease the shadows of that light.

Add more lights to taste.

Tom

Quote -
I for example have several Vue licenses - Vue 6, 7 and 7.5. Of course i can open all my (locked to license) Cornucopia3D items with all these licenses. But I can not send them to my friend Crowning so that he can use them too and save some money.

That's true. I meant someone with several licenses under different Cornucopia3D names.

And before someone asks, it's curiositiy only, I don't want to offer or accept any Cornucopia3D items. The stuff over there is dirt-cheap anyway.

Tom

Quote - I have now worked out what my next animation is going to be .... No real story again unfortuntly;-)  but it is going to be a giant zigarat/pyramid surrounded by forest and rocks . There is going to be some kind of fighting going on at the top of pyramid with poser figures. As I mentioned before I rendered this at 1200 x 900 for my next animation I have been advised to go much lower and in some cases higher. 
If I rendered this next animation at 320 x 240 is it going to look real bad?
I want it to look good when viewed on full screen not full of artifacts/blocks/noise.

Any help would be great any suggestions for effects to use in my animation I will be gratefull for also.

My main concern is what to render it at .... 1200 x 900 looks pretty lush but takes a long time to render.

I would render in a resolution which is somehow standard.

The most common HDTV standards come to mind:

720p: 1280×720 with 16:9 aspect ratio
1080p: 1920×1080 with 16:9 aspect ratio

Even the first one looks pretty good, and, very important, most players and/or converters know this format, so the aspect ratio won't be  changed on e.g. television screens.

Tom

Quote - > Quote -

OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised if there is an easy way around this limitation.

Tom

There probably is, but as with anything that violates the EULA/TOS, it just isn't worth it in the end.

Although I wonder, when you buy it locked to liscence, that means you still cannot export it even with a valid copy of xStream??

I guess the export has still some license information. I have content which is locked to my license, but I can't test this because I only own one license for Vue.
Maybe someone from a graphics studio with more Vue installations can test this.

Tom

Quote -

1. What is with the "locked to license" versions of add-ons and other content?  Is this to prevent warez distribution?  Am I supposed to install it to my main Vue runtime, or can I install it in an external Vue runtime?

The license number of your copy of Vue (which Cornucopia3D got when you registered Vue) is incorporated into the content so that only your copy of Vue can load it so you can't give it away to other Vue users.

You can save some money this way.

OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised if there is an easy way around this limitation.

Tom

Quote - Vue immediately notices that something has changed and asks if you want to re-import it, which you do obviously. Nice and easy, with no hassles at all. Vue will even re-import to the position you may have moved it to in the scene, so you don't even have to re-position it either!!

Yeah, that's what I've never noticed because I exported the changed pose with a new file name. Couldn't be any easier!

Quote -
Personally I prolly won't use Poser 8 with Vue 7.4 at all, I'l wait for Vue 8 which is round the corner and no doubt optimised to use Poser 8 properly.

Good point. If e-on offers a reasonable priced update from Infinity 7.5 to 8 I should probably wait with Poser 8 until Vue 8 arrives.

Thanks a lot.

Tom

Quote - Oh, yes, I was assuming that you don't do a manual reimport. If you re-export your Daz character, Vue will re-import it to the same place. That's what I do.

Walther, Crowning wrote he uses 7.5 Infinite.

Oh, funny me: when I re-adjusted in DAZ Studio, I always exported with a new file name, so I've never noticed this.
Man, that is an easy solution

Thanks to you all for your help.

Tom

Thanks guys'n'girls,

your thoughts are much appreciated

@ Gary: I'm on a Windows system, so thankfully any Mac issues are not relevant for me

@ thefixer: good point about Poser 7 or older. Of course the additional Poser 8 content is tempting...
One question to you: right now, I pose my character in DAZ, import to Vue, place the character there, make small pose adjustments in DAZ, import again and so on until everything is right. This is of course not the best possible workflow.
Is this the same with poser or is it possible to make the fine-(posing-) adjustments directly in Vue? My hope is that with the native Poser format (which Vue is able to import) I'll be able to change the pose directly. Right now when I export from DAZ in .obj or .dae format the connections between the single parts get lost, so I can only move single parts of a character, not pose.

@all: Yeah, I guess it's a good idea to ask the same question over in the Vue forum

Have all a nice weekend,
Tom

Quote -  I'm thinking of upgrading my vue 7.4 xstream to  Vue 7.5 xStream but I want to get the free upgrade to 8 when it comes out - so if I get the standard maintenance plan + vue 7.5xstream sidegrade download, how much is the total - I know it must be on their site but I am having trouble quite grasping it all.
Is this still a good thing to do or is some kind of sale they had over with now?
Love esther
 

I've asked them a couple of weeks ago and they were still undecided on update details from Vue 7.5 to  Vue 8.

Tom

Quote - If you animate a car in Vue the wheels did not spin automatically. That is a complete different story. The Mercedes in Vue has no wheels object. :sad: So no spinning wheels. You need a more advanced object for that.

Mazak

Yeah, just watched a tutorial about spinning wheels in Vue, so I know how it can be done.
Seems not too hard to make.
I guess the steering will be really a PITA. Maybe time for some Python coding (...if the animation points can be read from the Vue Python API. I have to check when I'm back home).

Tom