Ok, I'm a former Brycer and here recently I've been paying a lot of attention to images rendered with Vue - I am totally impressed! I followed Sharon's (SAMS3D) suggestion from another post about downloading the Vue demo, and so far I really like Vue. I've been a Poser user for a while now, and I've been doing a lot of Poser 5 stuff lately. Nothing really P5 specific (with the exception of some hair and clothing) - the brunt of my work still uses standard P4/PPP items. Right now I've only got P5 installed so I couldn't import any PZ3s to do a test render in Vue (no valid serial number, but I read about that in a previous post also). So I tried importing an OBJ and I ran into one of my big issues with Bryce - searching for the textures. Ok, so that's my long winded history, I guess my question is, how does Vue handle textures when it imports a PZ3? I won't get a chance to install PPP until the weekend, I just don't have enough time to re-install the software and content:) Also, if you wouldn't mind or if you feel the need, I'm interested in your opinion of Vue. Thanks in advance for your input and putting up with my long winded post:), and I'm looking forward to becoming the next convert:) ~ brent ~

When importing Pz3 files from Poser into Vue (on PC!!) it comes with all the bums and transparencies, but not with the Poser lights. The only thing you might like to change in Vue are metalic surfaces, because Vue handles it much better then Poser and to give some more highlights to Poser eyes. Inside Vue, if ever you change idea after import, you can change any texture of your Poser import, even the eyes, hair color or other details. hope this answers your question. Guitta

Thanks Guitta! I appreciate the input. After I read your post, I started looking around a little more and noticed the huge FAQ link at the top of the page grin I guess I should have looked there first:) What a wealth of information! Thanks again:) ~ brent ~

If you ever have trouble with mesh import as it the textures get lost. Vue has a extremly easy cure. Just drop a copy of the textures into the Bitmaps. Vue aways looks there next if it cannot find them the first time. If it finds one there it will grab them all from there for the rest of the mesh. Vue also looks at a file called texture.bmp & texture.jpg differently but at least it asks then and you can select the correct format easily in the box that opens up.

It never happend to me that Vue asked for a texture of an imported Pz3 scene. Vue automatically get's them from the Poser folders, wherever they are. This is true for PC, not for Mac. With a Mac you may need to behave as described by MightyPete. Guitta

One of the things that Guitta pointed out to me in the past is that you need to change the highlight from black (Poser) to white (Vue) for all of the materials. I nearly started to cry when I thought about all the materials in my poser scenes! BUT, my partner (lynn) wrote a (PC) command line program that will change all the settings in a PZ3 file. We are doing final testing on this now. I will put it up on our website as a free item if anyone is interested.

Oh, now that is cool dadamson. I ran into something similar way back when I tried a LightWave PZ3 import. The transmaps Poser uses were opposite what LW used. That was a pain to hunt down and change each material that used a transmap and invert it:) Not that I don't mind doing some work to get things to look right, but the easier it is to import a scene the better:) MightyPete, what you explained sounded similar to what I had to do to get the OBJ loaded last night. My friend here at the office wrote a little program (PC) that will read the MTL file and go find and copy the textures to a folder where Bryce could find them to make importing OBJs a bit easier. It worked well, and I think it might work for VUE too (with a little modification). Come on IRS and process my refund - I WANT VUE :) Thanks for all of the input:) I really appreciate it. ~ brent ~

Right now, the utility I'm writing for Debra will change all diffuse (Kd) colors, all ambient (Ka) colors, or all specular (Ks) colors in a PZ3, PP2, PZ2, or CR2 to a specified value. Tonight I will enhance it so that, as an option, it will only change those colors that are black. This will keep it from messing up any highlight colors you have for hair, and such. I'm trying to keep the interface simple (the default will be to change all black highlights to white), but if y'all can think of other color-related functions that would be useful, now's the time to speak up, while I have the code open. Thanks, Lynn Grant Castle Development Group