Well World builder does have a road tool, which follows terrain and can deform it to your wishes as well. It works them out on a energy time basis which you can adjust. Then apply whatever textures or procedurals you want to it. So you can set it so it goes over a hill or carves a valley through it etc. It has the same for rivers as well, more or less. But it has its own problems with atmospheres and shadows not to mention stability. The plants are a bit limited, especially likes of Oaks, Elms,etc. Though I guess you can make them in solid growth...Perhaps they will start creating more they don't seem to make many. I would love soem grass that could be applied to areas of terrain, as in individual blades wrapped over the terrain with some levels of detail. I guess voicing ideas is the first step to getting them though :-) I might post an example of the problem, as I had this set of downs with barrows on them. In vue it looks fine from a distance but up close the textures breakdown a bit, in WB it looks great up close (bar having to redner shaodows in 3dmax and use communicator to merge) but further away the atmosphere looks a bit fake. I guess wanting it all :-) But if someone does create a landscape program that combines some of these along with a good interface then it would be great and I think E-on are best placed to do it.

Tim, I meant as in I am amazed it does not have it :) Quoll, not at all, but Vue Pro is aimed (and priced) at a similar market to World Builder World contstruction set etc, which are not all rounders but landscape specific, they do have some of these features and allow far more leeway, though they have their own problems as well. But, given the new focus and cost of Vue Pro, I think they do need to look at proper fluid control, particles for weather and a road feature would be handy. I agree about character animation that is for other products. Oh I just noticed you were not talking to me Quoll :-) Must need sleep! A road tool which followed terrain and allowed some deformation would be very hadny too and maybe open up more prof markets to them. Don't get me wrong I think Vue is great value for money, but with Vue pro if they really bump it up another $100 I reckon next version they will need to give out more control and probably loose some of the ease of use...

Interesting stuff, lets hope they impliment some of them, especially in animation. I did not mention terragen, bryce, vue stadard etc, as they don't proport to be pro products. But Vue Pro will soon weigh in at $600 or so which wil put it in the same bracket as applications in the same area that have far more features, if less plug and play. For my money I don't mind a steep curve for added flexibility. It will be interesting to see what happens, a great time to be around 3d land I think. :) LOL@Cut/copy/paste of keyframes :)

Yes, pedestrian will make it follow the terrain, though I think it is a lot experimentation, as if you get the scale wrong the figure will end up head in the dirt etc. If its a vehicle then you cna choose some of the other ones. The best, imho, are the air ones, which can bank round terrain etc. Also remember you can edit the paths in 3d if you want to say fly between some terrain or go through a tunnel. There is a good bit in the manual on this. What I am still having trouble with is looped animation in poser, and creating paths for it in Vue, have a dragon walking backwards at the moment )-: Belino, I think thats his name, has some good examples and tutorials on editing timelines to get pans etc for cameras, very handy.

Yes I just clicked update and it pops up witha screen detailing the fixes, G buffer in network renders, importing textures properly with Obj etc. Hope it all works, did not take them too long, though it did feel like a long time :)

Hmm not sure, but remember you can edit the waypoints in 3d mode and so correct any weird stuff that mover throws up. I often, with walking folks, do the walk path in Poser. Reason being it can be hard to get the timing right in Vue, sometimes they looks like they are on amphetimines and other times like sloths :-) Saying that, for flying creatures mover is very handy indeed, but with walking I would try hand editing it...ALso maybe start on a flat terrain to see if it is a mover bug or... thats all I can think of..

Tim, like JB had no problems, this update has been out for ages. Not sure on improvements, more fixes :) My Vue Pro is running on a win2kpro as well and agian no problems really.

I think the advantage is the options. Vue Pro is aimed at people doing a lot of compositing and using different apps I think. Plus render times can be higher as you can pump up the subrays per pixel to 256 instead of 25. There are also things to optimise rendering like shadowmaps and such. So some features aimed at animators too I think not just getting the best quality but finding a good medium...there is a ton of stuff in the manual that I hav enot read yet. My own opinion is that unless you want to export, do some limited syncing, do some animation etc (ie the wind) then you might not notice a huge difference. It is certianly capable of rendering to far higher specs, but whether you will notice that just on a typical monitor I am not sure. Also unless you have a few machines you are going to be rendering for days at the high end. Maybe some comparitive shots might be good. I will do some of the samples if I get a chance. See if you can see any difference.

I have the Gefx5600 256ddr, with the new drivers it is working very well both in Vue and 3dmax. Not that much faster than my Geforce3, but that was a top end version when I bought it a few years ago. I say hesitantly that if you are going to shell out a lot, don't get the latest gaming card, get a specific workstation one. It might not test as well in something like 3dmark but it will work a lot better with apps...I think. Maybe someone with one of the medium workstation cards can weigh in?

For sure, well its weird not woring on one of my machines. They are all running win2kpro, but I think this one needs service pack 4 applied, that should do it I think :-)

"Your underlying support and willingness as a new person here for Mullor is very suspect IMHO. Again this thread should be close." RDS Hey now, think what you like. I was just posting a level response, I can see what he means to an extent, but it has to be seen in respect of renderosity overall, which as I say has a lot of Poser users. I don't see anything wrong with that. I am not going to get drawn into a semantic argument over highlighting. But, I will say that your suspicions are a little paranoid and somewhat offensive. I may only have been posting here for a short time, but I have tried to be at helpful as I can, if you check my posts. You should take a leaf from your own book before levelling them at others... Xo, I would agree :-) Nothing wrong with a bit of passion.

JB, you are a saint, I have been posting on that support thread and had not checked it tonight....it works!!! Woop! :-):-)

Well I am quite new to posting here too, though not browsing. I think that forums always attract people looking to stir up a hornets nest...sometimes no bad thing as it can highlight an issue and get people thinking, even if the manner in which it is done in not condusive to polite converasation. But there are boundaries. I think the fact that the response has been so emotive maybe points to some truth in the matter. Though having said that with all 3d applications there is no wonder program all of them are better at different thing so everyone from amateurs to professionals use lots of different ones and either composite or import to achieve the final goal. Also, renderosity is heavily orientated towards Poser. Why, well I guess because it is popular, easy to start using, has sufficient depth to keep people intersted and renders great results. So I am guessing a lot of the users are primarily Poser users who then render in various programs to get their backgrounds etc. Bryce and Vue being the most popular due to their price. So what I would say :) One thing I would like to see more of is animation, Vue has a great animation set, yet people only post stills...THough I suppose rendering animation requires more hardware or lots of time.. My own thoughts on people trolling, from running abusy lotr site, is this. If you think they are then don't take the bate just stop replying and the thread will drop off and the troll will get bored. :)imho

Oh, forgot to say, the FX was recommended to me to. TRHough in fact the guy said I might be as well and keep my geforce 3.....but gmaing reviews of the fx5600 are pretty bad from what i have seen. But seems to working fine for me. :)

Sam thats what i have. I found at first I had no joy, I switched Open GL off in Pro as it was so slow, today I got the latest Nvidia drivers off a 3d site and it has fixed the issue. But if you want tip top performance go for an medium level workstation card. Even though on paper they might look less powerful and more expensive than soem gmaing cards, from what I have read they are properly optimised for these tasks, which are not so important for gaming cards. I saw some on Ebay today actually...