Quote - renders M.E. Butt Kicker Device, by ACME Inc ;)

Oooooh, I want one of those! Heck, I want 3 or 4 of 'em. Re: larger number of folks with health issues on forums. I think that's quite probable. I know that the computer has been one of the things that's helped me the most. I'm able to cyber-visit friends, when FTF meetings would be impossible. Since I had to quit work, I'm home nearly all the time and can and do go online more than when I was still working. I have a Pocket PC that is my new "brain." It remembers all the things I can't. I set reminders with audible alarms for virtually everything - pills to take, phone calls to make, doctor visits, etc. I set it far enough ahead of time, so that if I totally forget an appoint (which I usually do), I still have enough time to get ready and make it there. I also use it for shopping lists, as shopping without it is a disaster. I think at one point I cornered the West Coast supply of tin foil. I kept buying it, thinking I still needed it - forgetting that I'd bought it on the last 12 trips. :rolleyes: GPS has been a God-send for me. When I go out, I get tired. When I get tired, my memory gets even worse and I sometimes forget how to get home from places I've been going to for years. But there has been a good side to CFS for me. I was struck down at the peak of a sucessful career as a scientist. Loved, loved, LOVED my job. I found all this losing of health, career, fair weather friends, etc. a bit depressing. I heard the siren call of depression and vowed to fight it. As a result, I faced my disappointments and conquered them. I found I was NOT my job. I found that real friends and family were totally supportive. I found that seeking out humor keeps my spirits up. My mental health has never been better. My slower way of life allows me to savor things I missed while working. I used to garden, but never had time to enjoy the results. Now I can no longer garden, but my roses have endured and I can see them from my favorite chair and marvel at their beauty. I guess it's the one door closes, another door opens type of thing. For me, digital art is my open door. Nelia

Steven, What a great article! I took up digital art, when I became disabled by ME or CFS as it's more often called here in the US. When brain fog hits, I don't have to try to remember where I am or what I'm doing in digital art - it's right there on the screen for me to see. And, if I tire, I can leave my project at any stage. Vue is the perfect program for folks with ME/CFS. It's fun to play around with. And it is challenging enough to exercise our brains, which I think helps fight the memory problems. In Peggy's class, I recently ventured into the Function Editor. I figure that should keep brain fog away for months. :biggrin: melikia, Sorry to hear about your Gall Bladder. I went through that in 2006. Getting used to the pain of CFS made me think what I had wasn't a big deal. The docs thought otherwise and rushed me in for emergency surgery. It was a piece of cake - not much pain afterward and the recovery didn't knock me out as much as I anticipated. Good luck to you both, Nelia

Attached Link: Introduction to Vue Class

I just finished this class and highly recommend it. Peggy explains things very well and is ultra responsive to questions. I really learned a lot in this class - even on things I thought I knew how to do. I'll be taking her next class, when it's available. The format at LVSOnline is nice, as you can work at your own pace. Lessons are posted each Friday night for 6 weeks. You do the lesson and post your results - usually one Vue scene incorporating things from the lesson. Generally you post your results within that week, but you don't have to. In fact you don't have to post anything, if you don't want to, unless you want a certificate. The lessons are not like a tutorial, where you follow each step to duplicate what someone else has done. Instead you're given the basics on different parts of the program and you design and render your own scene. The lessons generally took me 1 to 2 hours to do and then as much time as I wanted to spend on my scenes. I've attached a link to my postings from the class to give you a rough idea of what we covered: Nelia

I got Vista Ultimate 64-bit on a new laptop the first week it was released. On the plus side I've found it more stable than XP. It also has a lot of nice new features. For example, if a program crashes, Vista automatically tries to fix it. If it can't, it often will give a direct link to new drivers, etc. on a 3rd party site. I have XP on another computer and it now drives me crazy. However, much as I like Vista, I'd never try to upgrade it on an XP computer. Getting it on a new computer avoids most of the problems folks are seeing with Vista. On the minus side I'm not sure I'd get the 64-bit version of Vista again. In fact I've just gotten a new desktop with Vista and made sure it was 32-bit. Support for 64-bit has been very slow, which isn't the case with the 32-bit version. I've written a number of places asking for 64-bit support for programs and add-ons, but usually hear back that it's not worth the time and effort for them to provide something that has so few 64-bit users. That's even true for the Microsoft fingerprint reader! For me the extra security of 64-bit has been wiped out by the lack of 3rd party support for it. On the SP1 issue. I'd read that MS never intended to have SPs for Vista, as they were automatcially updating users computers as they went along.(No more manual updating in Vista.) Thus, there'd be no reason for a SP. Well, so many folks were waiting for the mythical SP1 to go to Vista, that MS decided to make one out of the updates to boost sales. As far as Vue, 64-bit has been a bit of a mixed bag. Vue is one of the few programs that has a special 64-bit version. For the most part it takes advantage of 64-bit, but I've found odd quirks evidently not present in the 32-bit version. Tech support has jumped on all my bug reports, so they do fix them fairly quickly. My only current problem is Vue crashing when trying to import some (but not all) .obj files.

It's in the Windows directory in Vista.  If you edit it, be sure to save a copy first in case there's a problem.  Also, you need to run Notepad as an admin in order to save the file.

Got the answer from tech support! :biggrin: Two ways to change the default path: edit teh .reg file, which can be dangerous if you mess it up. Or reinstall Vue. I went the reinstall route and now am much happier with the correct paths. During the installation you're given a choice of where to install the program and where to install your content. No more endless browsing to the external drive, where my content lives. I did suggest they give path options in File, Options. Nelia

I have my content stored on an external hard drive, but the collections open quickly. That is, they do after reading them for the first time. That's slow. So, I went through and opened them all up - a time consuming project. But now they open faster. Or at least they do when I close and reopen Vue. Haven't tried this after rebooting yet, to see if the speed continues. Nelia

Quote - Do you noticed it slow to show collecitions from your external drive after shutting vue off and then going back. :)

 

Actually, it wasn't slow.   I was shutting down Vue and going back in a number of times. The only time it slowed down was loading new collections with lots of items.  After that first time, everything loaded quite fast.

Unfortunately, I hadn't solved the default folder thing.  The only thing I can figure at this point is that Vue defaults to User Documents folder on the drive containing the .exe file.

Nelia

Figured it out!

There was one - count it - one!  file still lurking on my D: drive from the move.  When Vue went hunting for where to put stuff, it evidently stops at the first location it finds content.  Once I deleted this file, Vue correctly then pointed to my H: drive.  

A freebie was automatically downloaded from Cornucopia3D and it created a new Vue folder on the D: dirve under my User Documents folder.  I'll have to remember to both move those things and then delete the Vue folder in the future.

Whew!  I sure was getting tired of correcting the path for each item.

Nelia

Quote - Have Vist 64 bit, and have had the same trouble with some obj files, got a free modeller and saved them and then imported into Vue.  Also think the modeller saved them in a non-compatible format, may have also been 24 bit instead of 32.

If they are importing into Vue 5, resave them and then try to import them into 6 and see if the problems still exists.

 

OK, went off to check this and got sidetracked.  Started to copy a few things from my neglected desktop onto a flash drive, then decided to burn them to DVD.  Realized that there was still quite a bit of stuff there that I hadn't transferred to the new laptop.  Then I realized that I'd replaced Roxio with Nero and needed to figure out how to burn with it. (grin)

Sheesh!  It seems with computer problems, one thing always leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another.

Back to .obj importing.  I've tried a bunch of other files now.  I'm only seeing the import problem on about 20 of them.  These could well have been problems in Vue5, since I hadn't already imported them.  So, it looks like importing is working properly.

And, in the process of checking things out, I figured out the solution to my other problem - wrong default folders.

Thanks again, all, for the help.

Nelia

Thanks for the replies!

I just checked and I'm running the most recent release - v6.1 Build 91050.  Have had the same problem through all the releases.  

I had tried various .obj files - about 15 different ones from different sources. 

Then, after posting this I downloaded a couple of new .obj.  Yeah, hope springs eternal. (grin)  They worked!  So, this morning I tried some other file formats: .3ds, .lwo.  They worked.  

I thought about it and here's what I think is happening.  It's not Vue.  The .obj files I'm having trouble with are older ones.  It may be that older versions of the modeler's software didn't save properly.   The files were mostly freebies and .obj's from one modeller.  

I'll be trying out some files that imported OK in Vue 5 and will see what happens. If they don't work, I'll contact tech support.

Nelia

Quote - Trying to import an .obj file crashes V6I - everytime. I'm running it under Vista (64-bit). Have tried running Vue as an admin and it didn't help. I can import Poser 7 .pz3 files. Just not .obj's. I'm tyring to import them to save them as .vob files.

Some more information I forgot. I get the "Importing obj object" bar along the bottom of Vue and it seems to finish. When it does, I get the error "Vue has stopped responding." Nelia

 Thanks, Clint.  I just tried and was able to do it in MSIE.  I had been trying before in Opera.  8.5 and Beta 9 with no sucess.  Maybe it's browser specific. 

I took Matrixmode's advice and drove over to Kinko's. Just picked up the finished product today. They did a great job. I had it coil bound, so that the manual now opens and lies flat. No chance of lost pages, either. It cost just under $12 to do - mostly because it's not a standard size and had to be cut apart. I took a couple of PDF manuals that I had previously printed and they were $6 each to be coil bound and have covers added. Be warned that they charge extra to take staples out, so do that ahead of time, if you've used them. This was well worth it to me to make the 40 mile round trip. Nelia

Matrixmode, thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for, but just had no idea where to go. Kinko's makes sense, now that I think about it. Will give them a try.