**melikia,

Thanks for your thoughts as well. I plan to try a combo of things now from what has been said and see what effects I can come up with. I am sure that using these methods will prove useful.
**

Quote - 1) Import poser figure

1. Select it in Vue and in the material preview click on the little triangle and choose "edit all materials"
2. Go to the transparency tab, make it, say, 75% transparent (that's the number I used) and tick 'variable transparency'
3. edit the transparency function and create a node 'angle of incidence'. Connect to the transparency node through a bias filter. See screenshot.
4. adjust the bias filter to vary the transparency decay (I used 0.13)
5. now to the inside parts of the body (eyes, teeth, mouth, gums, etc). These need manual editing or it'll look funny. Select material by material and make it 100% transparent, not variable.

That's it. :-)

Thanks, that's what I was trying to do but couldn't quite get there.

I was missing steps 4 and 5 and had not considered how to get that achieved. I was working with 70% transparency and tried editing all materials and some materials by hand but it did not work. The other steps you did was what seems to be missing so that should work just fine.

I would suggest at least 12GB RAM if you intend to work with anything heavy Vue or other 3D applications. C4D I know is a beast and REALLY shines with memory just like most 64bit software.

Personally, I use a Mac Pro with dedicated duel-boot drives, one for Snow Leopard and the other for Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. Right now I only have 10GB but will soon be getting a new 2010 Mac Pro when available with 24GB RAM and SSD drives. I plan to relegate my 2008 Mac Pro as a dedicated Render Node and make it a part of my render farm for my 3D software that allows multi-computer rendering.

In short, get the most you can afford if you plan on any detailed work.

It's best mainly I find for working in Photoshop and ZBrush. A VERY valuable tool for sculpting and painting, but Poser no so much.

Also, I am posting an example of one of my edits from a skin mat I am currently working on. As you can see, I have done as suggested by "Unicornst" and used the "clone" then "healing" brush adjusted for softness. The left side of the image shows my edit while the right is unchanged.

Any tips so far on what you can see? I tried my best to remove the hair as you can see. I am going to finish the other side then re-do the eyebrows.

BTW, anyone know of how I can flip or mirror a brush easily? Some of the "brow" brushes I have for Photoshop need to go in the opposite direction. I was thinking maybe do a layer on top and flip the layer with the brows? Any suggestions for flipping directions?

Thanks for your feedback on the image edit and other tips.

Quote - So far with Vue 8 Infinite, I'm not getting resources back after doing a render.  So I've been exiting Vue and starting it up again to get back RAM for my next render.

Now that is interesting and could be a huge hassle. I know others have said they feel there is a "memory leak" or some sort of memory issue too reporting various slow downs and other issues.

Are you running the Mac or Windows 64 bit version? I will be testing both this week and was wondering if there may be any difference between them. Soon I'll find out though.

Quote - > Quote - Gill.  Your MAT dies right near the end of loading it.

Yep, that's where it crashes every time.  Thanx for double checking

Gill,

I'll try yours on mine as soon as I can. The bad news is it seems from what I have read here and other topics on various sites, Vue 8 is FAR from being stable. There is the eco bug as you found, some cloud/atmosphere issues yet again, render times and more. I said it before and I was hoping e-on would WAIT to release Vue 8 until late next year. The reason is they have a history of releasing versions full of bugs, making a patch or two then announcing a .5 release without fully fixing prior issues. It has been going on for some time and I really wanted to think they would wait to fix the bugs and do more work in 7.x THEN release 8 sometime late 2010 making it more solid but with a few new features.

I will report back on what I find using both the Mac and PC version and what my render times and resources are then. In the mean time, it looks like I may be working with Vue 7.4 until some BIG patches are released for 8 as the older version seems to be more stable at this time for some things.

Quote - 3DNeo, I have a Nvidia 8800GT card like you and 12 GB of ram, so IYO do you think, Vue 8 Infinite will run fine on my mac? Gosh it seems just yesterday that I bought my Mac Pro Octocore Tower and now it's already needing upgrading! lol. : )

I don't have any problems running it on mine so if your Mac Pro is the same then yes, you should be just fine. NOTE, I have not yet installed the FINAL version of Vue 8 but will very soon. However, not many issues with it right now so I don't expect it to change.

One other thing to consider is if you are running the Mac version of Vue 8 it will still be 32bit until e-on releases their 64bit Mac version. They said to expect it within about two months of Vue 8 being released, but that is only a Beta. Most Mac people think it will be around the late January/February time frame for it. For the final 64bit build it most likely be Vue 8.5 or sometime late 2010. Some are saying it will be in Beta until Vue 9 but no one knows for sure.

Reason I say this is you did not mention if you plan to setup a dedicated Windows 7 drive on your Mac Pro. I can tell you that if you plan on doing any resource intensive scenes and importing say several Poser/Daz figures, you will need to run it that way. It will see all your RAM which makes all the difference in the world for your scenes. Right now, that is the only solution for us Mac guys until e-on at least comes out with their Beta on the Mac.

Let us know how things work out, but I'm sure you will be just fine with those specs.

Quote - Thanks Wabe, I might just order one.
 can you have both in at once and is there any advantage to doing this?
Love esther

I would HIGHLY recommend that you go with an nVidia 285 card instead. 256MB is very LOW for work like this and in fact I am getting ready to build a killer workstation later on that I will post pictures of. If you can get it, then I would. Also, swapping out your graphics card can be somewhat tedious and I would advise you watch some detailed videos on the web, make sure you have all the right tools like a Mac Pro specific screw driver with a LONG thin handle, etc. Otherwise you may want to take it into an Apple store for service. I have Apple Care and it's great for what they do there.

Also, I too am on Leopard and am running triple dedicated drives right now on my Mac Pro: Leopard 10.5.8, Snow Leopard and Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. I have NOT tested Vue 8 on Snow Leopard due to all the issues they are having with it. Once 10.6.2 update comes out that corrects some of the serious flaws like erasing ALL you data on other accounts if you have a "Guest" account, etc. Right now, I don't trust that OS until Apple releases that patch.

Hi,

I have used the beta of Vue 8 Infinite and will be getting the full version soon to try out. So far, there are some bugs as you have seen on some Mac systems. As you know, it mainly has to do with OpenGL and graphics issues running under the Mac OS. However, I am not seeing the graphics issue you have right now on my 2008 Mac Pro with the Nvidia 8800GT card (see my signature). 

Also, I have NOT tried the final version, but I was not seeing any major issues like that in Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit running on my dedicated drive using Boot Camp. Note, Apple has already officially said they would support Windows 7 later this year with updated Boot Camp drivers. My Vue 7 Infinite is running just fine under current Boot Camp Vista 64 bit drivers on my Mac Pro although not "officially" supported yet. Apple says they will only "officially" support it if you have Snow Leopard too (got me stumped on that one).

Anyway, I will post back details once I have bought Vue 8 Infinite final shipping version and tried it on both Mac OS and Windows 7 64 bit here. It may be a good idea to bump this thread in a couple of weeks or so to help other Mac users with useful info.

Quote - Ah ... here's a question right off the bat ... LOL

I set up the boot camp partition, which appears to be 32 bit because when I reboot with the 64 bit DVD it doesn't recognize that it's there. So I think the missing piece of my puzzle is, how do I get a 64 bit boot camp partition?

I don't use Boot Camp on a single drive, so can't test this for sure. But, what I would try is to use your 32 bit disc to get things started and activated. Once everything is setup with your Windows 7 32 bit OS and you have confirmed the serial number and Windows has been activated, insert your 64 bit disc for Windows 7 and choose the "custom install" option and do a CLEAN install over the 32 bit one. That should work OK because it will see that you already have the 32 bit Windows 7 installed and activated but want to install with the 64 bit version.

This second install going from 32 to 64 bit should be done from your Windows 7 OS, do NOT Boot Camp it again. Just insert your 64 bit Windows 7 disc from inside the 32 bit Windows 7 OS. Keep in mind, I am assuming you are talking about doing this all with the same version of Windows 7. You still have not said which version you are using or wanting to install.

That should work though, but I have not tested it that way. Let me know what exact steps you took and if it works or not.

Good luck with the install

Quote - AHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Just the person I want to talk to. Can you recommend a GOOD step by step tutorial on installing Win7 to a MacBook Pro?  I tried and for some reason the serial number wouldn't take. Not sure if it's because I got an invalid serial number or what, but I refunded the download order and am now waiting for a boxed version to come with a new serial.

I'd LOVE to run Snow Leopard and Win 7 in 64-bit so I can upgrade my RAM from 4 to 8 GB.  Is there a "Windows 7 to Mac for dummies" page anywhere?

Hi,

I can help you out here as I have done several installs just to try different ways because I'm such a tech guy. :) Anyway, since you are using a MacBook Pro, you will need to have done a boot camp partition or else I would HIGHLY recommend going the dedicated drive route for each OS.

First, I think your last method would have worked, but there is a trick to doing it. You will NOT be able to upgrade with a clean install over the Windows 7 RC since most of them are "Ultimate" builds and you may have bought a lower end version like Home or Professional. You did not say which version you are trying to install so I will need to know that. Now, assuming you have a prior install, like Windows 7 RC, you can do a "clean" install by this:

1. Boot from install Windows 7 DVD and choose your boot camp partition.

2. Once the Win 7 install screen appears, do the install but do NOT type in your serial number. It will enter demo mode and be valid for 30 days (I think that is the time) for you to try. This is what you want.

3. Assuming the install went well and it says you have "30 days to activate Windows" nag message, you now do ANOTHER install over this install from within Win 7. But this time when you get to the Win 7 install screen do a "custom install" select clean install AND input your serial number this time.

Basically, the workaround is to do an install without serial number which puts it in trial mode, then do the upgrade install over the current install WITH the serial number.

That worked when I tried it.

1. Once Windows 7 has been properly installed with serial number and activated, you need to install the boot camp drivers from your Mac DVDs.

2. Run the check for updates MAC utility for boot camp and it should find updated 64 bit boot camp drivers from Apple. Follow prompts and directions and install those.

I can help more if you can post any issues or problems where you are stuck at just post here and let me know.

Quote - I did a clean install and didn't have to go to regedit.  To do a clean install you have to actually boot up from the Windows 7 upgrade DVD and then proceed as usual. During the process you have the opportunity to do an upgrade installation, or a clean installation. If you do a clean installation you can also choose to keep your old windows OS (which is saved to a folder named Windows.OLD), or you can choose to completely reformat your hard drive by selecting "more options" (or something like that, going from memory).

So if you want a clean install, just boot up from the install DVD rather than running setup from within your current version of Windows.

Yes, but the way they say to do it on WinSuperSite will work even if there is NO prior install of XP or Vista. I duel-boot my Mac Pro and have 2 dedicated hard drives for each OS, Mac and Windows 7.

I would recommend a starting point of 10-16GB of RAM if you don't want many limits. In fact, I am getting ready to boost my Mac Pro up to 24GB this week. Not only will renders be faster, but you will have little limitation on your resources for building a scene. Since I want to do renders with no limits and have my scene with views close up, I can use as large of maps as I want for detail and have them on multiple figures. It just depends on how much resources you are planning on needing and most 3D software have a resource usage indicator so you can know how far you are pushing things and if you need more.

Yes, was going to post that link on the clean install when I had time, works fine. They will be updating on any other methods they find as well. That info in my first post was stated on the WinSuperSite at:

www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_skus_compare.asp

But few people saw that article from the responses I have gotten and few others have mentioned this including several tech sites and magazines. It was the same with Vista, but some people did  not even know it then and also if it would change any in Windows 7.