ShawnDriscoll posted at 10:32AM Tue, 04 December 2018 - #4340589

Good question. I couldn't find an example in my 9.5 install.

Thanks Shawn for looking. I've posted the same question elsewhere bit had no response. I ended up using a grayscale image made in PS using noise that was motion-blurred in the direction of anisotropy I wanted and then used it as a highlight map. Not as good as doing it as a procedural texture though. I made some really nice bare metal textures in Max using Arch and Design materials, but sadly there seems no way to export them with an object from Max into Vue unless there is a way I'm not aware of. This was my result. The highlight reveals the bare metal surface, and the "grain" of the metal, but is still too coarse. Guess I'll keep plugging away at it.

ShawnDriscoll posted at 10:59PM Wed, 11 July 2018 - #4332776

Last I checked, the GPU gets used only if toggled on in Vue's render options. And then only if there's an object in your scene that can benefit from GPU maths.

Reason I asked is that I’m rendering a scene with clouds and lots of blurred reflections and different brightness/shininess/anisotropic values (bare metal on an airplane) and all eight cores of the CPU are running at full chat. I leave it rendering and go to work, but upon return the PC has rebooted. After taking a look under the hood I think my culprit is going to be my eight year old (!) 750 watt EVGA PSU. Replacing that with a 1000 watt unit tomorrow morning since I think it was hitting it’s overheat limiter and causing a reboot because it was overtasked. We’ll see if it works...

Hi John. I'm sure I haven't been using Vue as long as others here, but I do have a bit of experience with your particular issue.

I use an older version of 3DS Max to model objects and I import them into Vue Studio as .OBJ files. Unless it's a very simple texture (e.g. Blinn, Phong, etc.), the textures for the object will not be used by Vue. I've made Arch and Design textures which, unfortunately, couldn't be used at all in Vue. Since I don't have Xstream, I don't have access to the plugin for 3DS Max which would enable me to export objects as .vue files.

A couple solutions come to mind for you though. If you have, or know someone who has, a 3D program for which there's a Vue plugin, you may be in luck. You can import the .OBJ file into that program then you should be able to save or export the object and its textures as a .vue file. I'm sure someone here will correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems the easiest thing to do.

Is the object available also as a .vue file? Would, perhaps, the artist who created the object be willing to convert it into a .vue file object for you if you're not able? Just a couple more options. Good luck!

whbos posted at 12:15AM Tue, 30 January 2018 - #4323302

That's what they say, but they probably don't know and may not know for several years. So what do they do? Sell out to somebody else. Why should we trust them? I don't. So many companies have done the same thing under the same circumstances.

I think they now know what occurred and how it happened. That's why they hired a company from outside their own to investigate.

I'm not certain I understand what you mean by saying they "sold out" to someone else. E-ON was purchased by Bentley in 2015, wasn't it? Three full years prior to learning of an ongoing criminal activity of which they/we have been unknowing victims for five years.

Which companies have done the same thing under the same circumstances? Would you be able to cite examples?

I am not an E-ON fanboy or apologist. I'm just trying to be reasonable during a difficult period. I do believe things could have been handled differently as far as informing customers. Perhaps more information could not have been passed-along, however, without compromising their investigation. I'm also certain their corporate leadership did not want anything but uniform and official statements to be made regarding the situation. It was all an annoyance to me, too, but a small one in the grand scheme of things. I'm quite certain a fuller investigation will be conducted by law enforcement authorities who are no doubt eager to learn the source of the incursion into E-ON's computer systems. We may never know the outcome of that, but I'm certain such an investigation will occur.

whbos posted at 11:43PM Mon, 29 January 2018 - #4323300

It takes a long time for many customers to trust a company again especially since they intentionally withheld information for several years. I don't care who took over E-on. I never heard of them so why should I trust them? Their apology is a canned response and meaningless to me.

If a company has intentionally misled their customers of wrongdoing, and has not met their obligations to inform customers of any compromise which may lead to financial fraud as a result, then I would agree there is reason to be distrustful. There is no proof of that of which I am aware. E-ON took a drastic step in bringing down their website and servers with the apparent intent of uncovering the problem and investigating the extent of any possible damage. It took far longer than anyone would have liked, but they issued a rather public statement to all software owners regarding what occurred and what they did to remedy the issue. Their investigation of the issue revealed unknown suspects were acting in unlawfully entering a secured computer network for several years. E-ON say no customer financial information was compromised and I tend to believe that since they're using fairly sophisticated encryption algorithms to secure such information. While embarrassing, the issue does not appear to have been covered-up. Hiring an outside firm to investigate what occurred is no small or inexpensive undertaking, either.

Prior to ordering Vue 2016 years ago if I had known they were operating out of France I never would have ordered it. Canada is bad enough because there are some crooked companies there I've had problems with who do not supply usable product keys. I had to deal with the dysfunctional Canadian BBB to get my money back several months later. I don't even live in Canada. The company lied and said they had an office in the U. S. when they did not. If you have software product keys that suddenly don't work you can blame this Canadian company.

Did you say you didn't know E-ON was in France? Did you not do any research into the company prior to purchasing your license? Might the same thing have occurred had E-ON been an American company? It has. Computer system and network compromises occur every day and wreak havoc financially for thousands of people here in the US. From your local grocery store chain to larger, nationwide retailers, it's happened to all of them. There are three types of computer networks; those which haven't been compromised, those which have been compromised, and those which will be compromised. It's a matter of time for all of them. Most large companies do their best to stay a step ahead of it. Comparing this to your experience with whichever Canadian company is a bit apples-to-oranges, in my book.

This is just an example of not knowing who or what you're dealing with especially when a company was reputable at one time then turned crooked later. I know several examples of those. I think in E-on's case they were just negligent with protecting our information then covered it up for years.

Wouldn't it be incumbent on you to do your diligence and know something about a company's reputation prior to making large purchases from them? Do you imply that E-ON is now "crooked" because they (and, perhaps, I should say "we") have been the victim of a cyber-crime? Were they negligent? Wish I knew. It seems they took some very big steps to investigate and correct the problem once it was discovered. Is it possible they could have been the victim of ongoing criminal activity without their knowledge until now? Absolutely.

I haven't been a customer of E-ON for long. Less time than some of you, I imagine. I can give them the benefit of the doubt. Had a criminal obtained my credit card information and started buying the world with it I would have known by now. So, chances are quite good they've protected that type of information quite well.

andy.taylor posted at 9:25AM Thu, 25 January 2018 - #4322999

E-on should have emailed its customers about what was happening or at the very least posted on sites like Renderosity in an **official **capacity to put minds at rest. YES they have been very helpful to me once I contacted them, but I only knew about how to contact them because of another member on this site! Had they sent a simple email telling us all how to contact them etc it would have stopped all the 'idle and inaccurate speculation' in its tracks.

I am very happy with the way e-on have helped me and I am pleased to see the placeholder website up.

I would agree their damage control left much to be desired. It was only today I read their email regarding a multi-year incursion into their servers by unknown suspects. This has apparently been going on since 2013 and, once discovered, they took everything offline. E-ON say financial information (e.g. credit card data) wasn't compromised due to encryption. I haven't seen any fraudulent charges against my card, so that may be true. Of course, if the vermin have been gnawing at the grain since 2013, the damage would have already been done by now.

And that's the email we've all been expecting. Good, an official explanation of what happened and what they're doing to mend things. I'm glad they finally did this and I hope it's an indication they're closer to having most everything up and running again than they were in December.

On the other hand; since 2013 !? Really!?

chrysoula posted at 11:34PM Wed, 24 January 2018 - #4322792

Odd they haven't responded to me, though. I got an initial response from sales and sent my detailed query back to them early this morning. I hope it isn't a 48-hour turnaround for every email exchange.

I sent an email to support regarding the update for my software and it may have been almost 48 hours turnaround time. Plus, they're in France, I'm in the US, and I know I'm not their only customer with an inquiry. So, any short delay is expected and not a big deal. I'm a bit concerned about the process of obtaining an activation code after updating my software, however. I'm in the middle of two projects and really can't afford being down very long.

What I find interesting is that Bentley seem to be renewing on a four year cycle (assuming the last update was a renewal) and it would be far simpler from an administrative perspective to renew all domain names at the same time. They have all been transferred to the same registrar I think so this would be really simple to do. But the recent updates to Cornucopia3d seem to have been for some different reason. Note that the redirects for e-on and cornucopia3d seem to be going to designated dns servers which is also odd.

So maybe they are not going to renew the domains. Nothing bad about that although you would want to hang onto them for a while to cover the transition period and May of this year is not that far away for cornucopia3d.com. Maybe they are trying to integrate with the Bentley site - LumenRT is there already - and it has gone pear shaped...well that should not kill off the old sites and normal services can be resumed while you lick your wounds and get ready to try again.

The only reasons for an extended outage are either (1) the site and all its data is lost...including backups... or (2) extreme incompetence managing an upgrade, or, finally (3) they are in the process of dumping it.

I seriously doubt it's your third option. Of your first two, the latter seems a bit more likely. I'm thinking it was something inadvertent, accidental, and, unfortunately, catastrophic. The kind of thing a new policy will be written especially for. The kind of policy with someone's name on it ("....oh yeah, that's new, it's the "Gary" policy..."). At least now they have something of a website up and a means of contacting sales or support personnel. I think if the lights were going out they wouldn't bother to waste resources and money any further.

SBriggs posted at 8:25AM Sun, 21 January 2018 - #4322648

Yes, well silence breeds my "idle and inaccurate speculation". All I want is the ability to access the products they offer for sale right from my copy of Vue. Is that asking too much? I see a nice tree and click on it to use in my work but all I get is that same blank "Maintenance" page. I don't think I'm being unreasonable. I'm 66 years old and would like to be able to use the software before I die of old age!

However, my dear Briggs, they haven't been silent. Barry and Walther, two very helpful guys from E-ON support, have been quite responsive to customers through their support channel. E-ON have been quite active on Facebook, with daily posts including tutorial videos and responses to group members. If E-ON were "pulling the plug", they simply wouldn't go to the trouble of being so active in this regard.

I agree, it would be great if a representative from Bentley/E-ON would make an informative and reassuring statement which shed light on the website issue and its resolution. That's not going to happen. I understand why, but I don't agree with it since it makes a lot of people start to put on their tinfoil hats, speculate, and spread unfounded rumors.

No one is being unreasonable who expects something he bought to work as advertised. This problem is temporary. It will be resolved, and before you turn 67 (Ha!). And, by the way, you're only about ten years older than I am. We're not "old". Ha!

lostchord posted at 7:58AM Sun, 21 January 2018 - #4322652

@John_Mathews "Large companies have policies and protocols"

Indeed they do. And this is why the relatively short lifetimes of the domain name registrations of Cornucopis3D and e-onsoftware made since Bentley took over are interesting. Do some whois lookups.

Not certain whether you believe I should do one whois lookup, or several? However, I did that toward the middle of the month when it became apparent E-on's website wasn't coming back up any time soon.

I wouldn't know whether it was a "long" or "relatively short" lifetime, regarding their domain name registration, but E-on Software's domain was registered from 7-1-98 until 6-30-18. 20 years doesn't seem like a "relatively short time" despite the domain name's expiration in June of this year. Their DNS servers are running, it would seem. Perhaps their procedure will be to renew their respective domain names prior to June, yes? Cornucopia3D's domain name has been in effect since 2004, it would appear, and may expire in May of 2018 if, of course, they don't renew.

Since you sound knowledgeable regarding the subject perhaps you can shed some light on the domain name renewal process, length of time for which a domain name can be renewed, the cost of doing so, and how long such a process might take?

It seems highly unlikely that either domain would not be renewed by Bently/E-ON. There is no evidence of anything nefarious or suspicious afoot.

SBriggs posted at 2:29PM Sat, 20 January 2018 - #4322618

I agree completely. There is no good reason for their total lack of an explanation or even a simple response to their loyal customers. I have been using Vue for many years now and I always promote them to anyone who asks. Now I feel like a liar to every customer I've pointed their way.

What happens if I build a nis down, Vue reverts back to the PLE version without even the ability to save renders. "Not a good look" is an understatement!

I would say the “total lack of an explanation”, of which you speak, is not “total” at all. Need to activate software? Email support (support@e-onsoftware.com). They respond to customers quickly and can help with activation.

Why the “silence”? They are owned by a large company. Large companies have policies and protocols. With regard to this situation I’m sure one of them calls for employees not to make statements regarding the server/website maintenance issues except for what’s been approved by their leadership. Neither you nor I are going to get “the reason” why the sites are down. Accept it. Idle, and inaccurate speculation is pointless, and rumors only serve to misinform when/if they spread, which isn’t helpful.

TheBryster posted at 12:44PM Wed, 10 January 2018 - #4322016

I'm really glad you managed to sort this out. It's a really splendid model! As a child I made every airfix model plane I could get my hands on. This brings back many wonderful memories.

Thanks very much! I started making that during June or July of last year. The work got sidetracked by some commissioned work, which is great, but filled all my time. The commissioned work is on hiatus until February, so I’m trying to get as much work as I can on the F-105 now. I’m getting a grip on it in Vue now and hopefully will be able to render it in different scenes with some authentic markings in the near future.

andy.taylor posted at 4:41PM Tue, 09 January 2018 - #4321922

What's priceless is I had to reinstall windows 10 and when I contacted Vue about reactivating Vue 11 they had the temerity to inquire as to why I am using Vue 11 when I have the very latest Vue activated. I explained that I use skinVue with Vue11 infinite and then afterwards thought about how cheeky they are considering I need to go through this because their site is down and they are taking forever to fix it. I can't believe the shoddy way they are treating customers! Not even an official presence on here.

As long as I am only using it on one computer at a time as far as I am aware I can use Vue 11, 2014, 2015, 2016 or even Vue 5 infinite as much as I want! I can't download the latest Q4 update for 2016 because their site is down.

In the meantime I still haven't got it activated on this computer.

I can imagine the level of frustration you're having there. Did you contact them via phone or email? I've been emailing Barry (BMDesigns) and all has gone well. I'm sure Barry, or Walther, or someone else will be happy to help you (support@e-onsoftware) if you haven't gotten it all straightened out.

I know it's hard to be patient when we're used to things happening "right now" quick though. I believe they want everyone to be happy (or as happy as possible), especially given the unfortunate situation with their servers. Trouble is, from everything I read from those who've commented, folks seem to be happier speculating, thinking the worst, and making inferences rather than just being patient, finding facts, and moving forward.

It's likely no one has yet been given any authority to comment or make statements on the nature of the problem(s) with their website. I have some concerns regarding the situation, what may have happened, and when it will be set right. However, there are bigger things to fret over than this (unless, of course, you depend on this software for business and then it's critical). Not being Pollyanna, just practical. Not trying to diminish anyone's frustration, just trying to be reasonable.

-Cheers!

.

ironsoul posted at 9:29AM Tue, 09 January 2018 - #4321905

If the problem is at the boundary of two objects then there was a recent post in the Poser forum where the issue was caused by overlapping vertices that were not welded. The normals were not being calculated properly. I mention it here as black polygons often indicate the normal has flipped 180 degrees so the backface is being presented to the viewer.

Thanks Ironsoul, that’s a good bit of info to remember. I definitely check on things like that while I’m modeling the object, and all the verts in this model are welded and the normals face properly.