"Yes, Renderosity has my permission to use my artwork from my art gallery for promotional use only".

Thanks, Audity, for those tips. As a newcomer to Vue (just going over the terrain editor in the manual) I'm inspired by your example of what you can do with terrains! And the best part is that you can export them to other programs, and tweak some more! Thanks, Chas

Just a point of curiosity . . . I don't know much about zbrush. I thought it was a program for painting directly on 3d objects. Does this program actually create 3d models? If so what formats does it export? Thanks, Chas

Thank you all for your suggestions. Being a new user, it's great to see the multitude of help on this site. I'll test out your suggestions at some point, but it's a sparkling bright day here in Vermont and I need to get outside and soak up some inspiration! Thanks, Chas

Very nicely Done! Both tablecloth and glass look great. I was interested in the fact you mentioned about using the terrain editor to create other objects. Are there any tutorials on this, and what types of objects can be created? Thanks, Chas

It's Beautiful! As a new user of Vue (meaning me), I'm very grateful that you've offered this for free. Thanks, Chas

Haven't touched the volumetric controls yet, but I found that when I opened in photoshop there was no banding in the final image. So I believe my previous conjecture was correct. I have an old nvidia 8 meg video card in my agp slot from '98. Currently waiting on a case so I can build my new athlon xp system with geforce4. Hopefully, that will help. - Chas

Hi, I'm a user of WB v.2.2, and I've just purchsed Vue so I can add a few comments to this thread. I've had world builder for a couple of years now, and have loved it. The professional version has what's called a communications plug-in with 3DS Max which allows you to combine and render a scene in WB with elements from both programs, while both programs are running. I've never used this plug-in because by the time I purchased Max it was up to v. 4 which required WB 3. I fully intended to do the upgrade to WB 3, but I wanted to wait for the traditional shake-out of bugs from any significant upgrade. Unfortunately, it appears that people are having some difficulties with a bug that causes crashes on large projects. In addition, WB3 shipped without a manual, which was a major, major Faux Pas for the company. Attracted by the breathtaking artwork done by the people here who use Vue, I decided to spend my upgrade money on Vue 4 (which was actually cheaper than my upgrade price to WB3!). I received the package 2 days ago, and have delved into the first tutorial. Initial impression: I love it! A beginner or newcomer can delve into this program without any trouble and do some nice stuff right off the bat. I also find the easy importation of Max objects a definite plus (also in WB). Let's just say this about the 2 programs: World Builder is profound, and has a great deal of depth to it. With enough time and effort, you can create amazing landscapes which include the aforementioned wind animations, leaves floating into running rivers, frogs leaping into ponds, etc. It is going through some growing pains with its new company, but I hope it will come through stronger than before. Vue strikes me as a marvel with its own depth and beauty. Everything I'm discovering, I'm loving. I'm not sure if you can do the precise fine-tuning that you can do with WB, but I'm sure going to find out. So that's my 2 cents. Sorry for taking up so much space, but I really wanted to give a fair overview of both products. Regards, Chas

Thanks for the quick replies, everyone. I did the render to screen and did not save the image. It was late at night, and after it rendered, I tried to save by clicking on the disk icon in the upper right, but my computer froze (probably tired, like me). I've seen a similar thing in max, where I rendered a scene where the rendering options were set so that it saved a jpeg file. The rendering looked fine in max, but when I e-mailed the picture it came through with color banding. When I opened it in photoshop, there was no banding. Perhaps my ancient video cards are dropping hints that they need to be disposed of. Thanks, CHas

It's a nice image. A couple of observations: The glass looks a little bit like it's floating in the image. I think one partial reason for this is that the ground does not have a distant boundary. There is no point where one can differentiate between the ground and whatever else surrounds the glass. It also seems like the glass is a little bit too opaque. Just out of curiosity, what kind of system are you running to do this work? - Chas