Good idea, havent used negative point lights since vue 4.  =)

If you generally want all background a bit darker for mysticism, then i can always recommend playing around with a bit of black haze (sometimes i also use blue haze for dark areas).

Yeah, Bruno is absolutely right.

Its hard to explain all the tgechniques you mentioned in-depth here without writing several books about them.

I'd recommend reading the manual as it explains every single setting and button much better then i ever could, although many people usually never read manuals (including me), i think even pros can get a bit more knowledge from reading it. the vue manuals are really good if you want to know more about a specific setting or function.

For me it also helped me taking a look at the scenes and materials that come with vue. I was always curious about how a material is made, just take a look at these.

Basically theres just a few things that really eat up loads of rendering time:

• Reflections (Water, glass, metals, liquids, etc) . Depending on the scene it might sometimes be possible to reduce the number of reflective materials used. Transparency also effects render times when the "turn reflective with angle" is used.

• Depth of Field: A true killer for rendering time. Not really much you can do about it, besides dropping the DOF and doing it in postwork

• Ecosystems: Ecosystems with thousands of plants can eat up loads of rendering time. its much less compared to working with individual plants, but large ecosystems can cost you much rendering time. Try making it smaller by covering parts with large plants /objects and deleting the covered part of the ecosystem. Also try lowering plant resolution for polgon count and texture resolution, especially for plants that are far away. Just scale the plants larger, re-populate and you will also have less plants to calculate.

• Atmosphere A spectral/Radiosity  atmosphere will render much longer then a Standard/Standard atmosphere.  I have made some standard atmospheres that  look quite good on many scenes and greatly reduce rendering times.

• Complexicity: If you have millions of polygons used for imported models, then try thinking about reducing their polygon resolution or just using fewer of these.

• Lights: Dont use scenes with like 100 point lights, these can also be a killer.

• Shadows: soft shadows with quality boost take up quite a bit of rendering time. You may want to try adjusting the quality bias if you dont have shadows in the foreground of the scene

• Rendering settings: Most errors are done here. Some users render their scenes in Superior/Ultra mode and boost up their rendering times. While this definitely looks a bit better just think of what you get. often you buy a handfull of Anti-Aliasing for hours or days of render time. Use a custom set-up and reduce all AA  related settings. You can often get much better effects within seconds when using external programs, i use GIMP and neat image, these can in most cases do in seconds what takes Vue ages. Yes that may be a bit cheating, but if the final result is the same or even better i think this might be worth a try.

theres many more little things you can tweak. If vue keeps your HDD busy during render, then physical memory is the bottle neck, try to refrain from rendering such scenes as they take like 10 times longer when you lack the ram.

Phew, lucky.  :)

If I'd accidentially submit my very first bullet scene in good quality i could keep the whole farm busy for a few days on my own.  ^_^  Try the renderfarm trick from the guide - render a picc in a ridiculous small resolution like 10x12 and compare times with scenes  you already rendered and know the total rendering time. This helps a lot estimating render times...

The decay function would be the right choice here. Only catch: The object initializing the decay can not be included in the ecosystem...

If you dont want to remove the path from the ecosystem, then you can cover it with foreign (forgeign = not part of ecosystem) objects.

Set decay to like 5% (the correct setting depends on scaling of your plants/scene) and place cubes along the path. Assign an invisible material to the cubes (dont cast/receive shadows, transpareny 100%). Adjust decay values if necessary.

DIN-A4 is 8.25 x 11.7 inch, at 1200 DPI resolution this would equal 9900x14040 pixels, which would result in a recommendation to print this is a lower resolution, 300 DPI would still be 2475x3510. Generally you can print a 1024x768 at 1200 DPI and this would still look quite nice on an inkjet printer as the colours somehow spread a bit on the paper, it's not like you see every single pixel.

For private prints i dont think this is that important, it rather gets interesting when you get into print design.

Agiel is a nice moderator. I remember when i placed a thread some time ago about Shade model packages, i had bought several packages quite cheap in a bulk bundle on a vacation in Tokyo and had some of them twice, so i offered the Toli and Inax packages in the Shade forum, stating that I'd like to trade for other packages or sell them. The thread was immediately closed down with the nice notice that i should go to ebay.   =)

For boolean difference it is important that Vue knows which one the main object is and which one the cutter is. I always do it with keyboard shortcuts and mouse so you cant do it wrong. Here's what i do:

1. Place the "cutter" object (a cube or whatever) into the terrain just how you want it to cut out of the terrain.

2. select your main object (terrain!) in the world browser with the mouse so its highlighted.

3. hold "CTRL" and select the cutter (the cube), still hold CTRL.

4. While still holding CTRAL you press and hold shift and now "D".

5. Done, you should now see the terrain with the cube cut out.

I'd do it with a boolean difference, probably the easiest way to make that.

Vue 6 comes with many usefull functions - there are pre-defined fractal functions you can use for bump mapping. Just make a sphere. I'd recommend applying the function called "Asteroid" as a bump map, setting bump to about 0.300, but thats a matter of taste. For a colour texture take any picture of stone/rock, you can correct the look via the "overall colour" setting. The rest is individual tweaking, with a bit experience you make different planets within a few minutes.

For an athmosphere cover the planet sphere with a larger sphere. Apply some volumetric smoke or cloud material to it. Tweak density/size setting if required.

You can try copying the exe from another install to your vue folder. If vue doesn't start with that exe you can try installing the full 4.22 patch, which will bring a different version exe to the right version without resetting your folders/settings/etc.

Didnt notice we have a frestuff forum. Well we got so many forums, who can keep record of these?

=)

I have seen the freestuff forum, but not the vue thread.

Dont like the textures on the train, make it look so artificial.

BTW: Michael 3.0 and Aiko are now available for FREE at daz3D:

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/catmain/-/?cat=340

I dont think you can get Vue4 Solid Growth plants --> Vue 6 solid growth plants.

I tried importing old plants into vue 6 without any success, i ended up making a new one, using the old textures and materials (the materials can be imported without problems).

Thanks for your comments, you're all welcome!   Enjoy!   =)