An illustration of what I meant. This is a bitmap texture mapped on a cube. The edge of the cube is visible here.

Vue bump map from diffuse image

Bump map generated with CrazyBump (rather blurry)

Displacement map: diffuse bumps and CrazyBump maps combined

It would need some fine tuning but I think the third one gives the best results.

I have given a few tries to CrazyBump recently. It is originally made to generate normal maps, but can make very good bump maps usable in Vue as displacements.
I published a tutorial about using Crazybump with Vue a few days ago.

I found that using a diffuse map as bump map, or even pre-made bump maps provided with some textures gives far too many small details and does not look good in Vue, especially with strong bump amplitude. CrazyBump enables me to tune finely the accuracy of my bump map and choose small details or large ones.

The best approach would be to have at least two layers:

• one for the larger details, treated as a displacement map
• another on top of it for smaller ones

I started with Bryce 2 back in 1996 and used it until V6.1.
I spent several years not working on 3d between 2001 and 2006 as I was more interested in photography.
I switched after trying a demo and figuring out my tries to make ground vegetation in Bryce were totally irrelevant, given the fact that it was far easier to make with Vue Ecosystems.

I use Vue as I use Bryce: to design landscape and as a renderer. As many users, I use pre-made assets or make them myself when I cannot find them. I tend to make more large scale scenes as Vue leans towards it.

After all these years, I have found that there were some keys to making successful images, and that many of them are not linked to the program you use:

• Idea: the quality of the original idea is critical. When I have an idea, I do not start straight away. I wait a bit and if I keep thinking of it again, then it is probably good enough to make an image of it.
• Artistic guidance:  I have started to purchase books about fantasy illustrations and look forward to get art books about landscape paintings. I am still light years from my inspiration sources.
• Workflow: starting from a sketch and patiently working towards the final image generally gives better end results than just playing around in the program waiting for something to happen (at least for me). Howto books about illustration can help in that respect. (eg: John Howe Fantasy Art Workshop, but there are many others)
• Composition: I have learned the basics from photography and tend to think of it a lot more than I did before. This is critical in making a good image as in 3D you can theorically make the best composition possible as opposite to photography where you try to give your vision of an existing scene.

I think someone having an artistic background, a good eye and no problems with learning can make wonders with any program accessible enough. Years ago Bryce users like me were in awe before the works of Martin Murphy who started to produce images we would have judged impossible using several different programs with equal ease. I think he is a good example of what you mean.

Thank you for the reply. I understand the specific product banner issue.
I may PM individual merchants to get their approval for using banners linking to their stores.

You should make the generic banners available on the affiliate program page : https://market.renderosity.com/affiliate.php

My first thought would be: import the characters separately and save them as .VOB objects.

I have tried them and they do.

They corrected the bug they had with the first Vue 7 versions.

The disappearing ecosystems on the undos are not systematic. It takes several tries to trigger this behaviour for me.
Anyway, this was an annoying bug and correcting it is indeed interesting!

I found that rather than painting fire entirely in Photoshop, you can use photos and get a more realistic look.

I used a photo for this candle flame:

and a blaze photo for torches near the pillars:

All you need is to find good images of flames on a black background. Google image is a good source but there are also some at CGTextures.

Quote - (being really happy with Hexagon)

You are happy with Hexagon? Happy with a program that: - is slower to use than its Amapi 7 ancestor

• has lost features compared to it
• crashes more often than Vue and many times for small errors
• is no longer developped by its owner

Quote - 2) made product like Carrara competitive, providing business to DAZ (on DAZ forums there were several threads about Vue, now, lots of people are looking into Carrara and apparently no Bryce user is considering defecting to Vue, even after DAZ mistreatment of Bryce);

Bryce is a perfect example of a failure to develop a promising app. Its successive owners have mistreated and misused a considerable user base which has dwindled considerably over the years. Vue has gotten a good part of it (including myself and an number of other persons on this forum).
The remaining users are the hard core ones and from discussions with them on another forum, they are indeed considering Vue, despite the price tag. The free Pioneer edition and the PLE ones help them make their decisions.

When I purchased Bryce 2 in 1996, I paid close to €300 for it, about the price of Vue Pro Studio.

I have seen quite a bit of venom being spit towards E-On, from this forum and even more so, from the E-On one.
I can understand that some people have a lot of trouble getting Vue to work properly with their setup, but as far as I am concerned, things are definitely getting better.

E-On is improving its product, adding new functions, though they stubbornly ignore some user demands (such as making a plant creator, not just an editor).
After making several bug reports, I had e-mail exchanges with their teams and saw the bugs I reported being corrected.
All in all, Vue covers my needs (3d illustration), and does it better and better.
So, even though the price tag is getting higher, I will stick with it.

Besides, I never got used to Terragen and can't stand Carrara. I still have Bryce, but have not used it for ages.

The people here complaining about Vue remind me of former colleagues that were moaning about the company we worked for, day after day, week after week, but spent months before finally leaving. My colleagues did not have much choice. It's not that easy to find a new job in the branch I work in.

It would be far easier to choose not to use a program like Vue. And if you hate it so much, why not do so?

I use ImageSynth to make seamless tiles from photographs.
Quite powerful, but it really depends on the type of image.

If you are out to purchase a model, take a look at Dosch Design. They have a fine collection of ships coming in several formats including C4d or Obj.

I did not know this one.

BTW, I found out a page full of links to free 3d models here: http://www-c.inria.fr/gamma
/disclaimer.php. It is the most complete I know.

My website is listed there and occasionally gets trafic from it. That's how I found it.
 

Displacements are an sure way to crash Vue 7.

Create a terrain, resize it to 2048 * 2048, apply a displacement map based on a bitmap.

Then play with your scene a bit, make test renders and you will see memory usage climb steadily until you get an Out of memory error.

I submitted this bug to E-On and got this answer:

• Displacement uses a lot of resources. I would suggest reducing your terrain - try 1024 or even 512. With displacement, you don't need the resolution to be that high.*

Which version of Vue are you using?
And how much system memory do you have?
Does it happen on one scene only, or on several different ones?