Why is this program so unstable? I was thinking of buying one fo the above mentioned programs, but it keeps crashing everytime I do anything. Sometimes when I'm simply importing a model, sometimes when I'm saving, sometimes when I use mover at any given point, this program or these programs crash. This would have been the perfect program to make some seriously great movies, but why the crashes? I was going to buy it, but I'm glad my friend gave me a copy, well I'm gonna trash it and uninstall it off my system. I did that open gl thing unchecked, updated my video driver and still either it just disappears or just that it generated an error. How does anyone get any work done on this program? I wanted to buy this program next payday but glad I didn't. The program looks great and I want to purchase it and actually put it on my system this time, but I'm afraid to do so cause of the crashes I experienced. Is this normal? Does it crash just for no apparent reason and often? Is it worth buying?

I suppose I will be in the minority but I will take a good long break from doing corporate projects with Vue Pro (or semi-Pro) until a few more patches come out. I've had the misfortune of committing to some projects that I've paid for dearly in terms of numerous hours devising workarounds. Several of those workaround attempts resulted in lost work because no solution could be found within the timeline and I'd have to give anothre excuse to management. A real creativity-stifler.

It's definitely one of those Jekyll/Hyde things - when it works, it's great, but when things go wrong, it's like you stepped on an ant hill and all the bugs come streaming out.

I've installed Vue on 5 different XP/Win 2000 machines, trying to find something that worked, all to no avail. In my experience, Vue is good if you have the time, patience and skill to deal with a lot of inconsistencies, because there are huge payoffs to be had, but under tight production schedules, I could not recommend it.

I look at the videos from Phoule and others and I always wonder to myself how many workarounds, compromises and crashes they had to deal with in creating something that awesome. They get me inspired to try one more time, but unfortunately, it doesn't take long for me to run into a bug. The only thing that's kept my sanity is this forum and the quick responses from the many helpful members.

I really don't know why Pro crashes on some user's computer. It doesn't for me at all. "At all" means that I had maybe 1 or 2 crashes (and I found out why), but I'm using Vue 4 Pro for many hours a day. XP Pro Radeon 9700 Pro card 1 G Ram Pentium 2.8 Guitta

Therein lies the gap - why do some users have little to no problems while others like myself can't go more than an hour without having to restart, reload and/or reboot. I consider myself a beginner, having only several months of effort under my belt and I'm thinking that I can't possibly be straining the limits of the program.

XP Pro
Radeon 9800 Pro 128 mb
764mb RAM
AMD 2400

The graphic card cannot be the problem, because Radeons (all) works fine with Vue d'Esprit 4 and Vue 4 Pro. Possibly, if your scene is very heavy in polygones and objects, your memory is a little too low. I consider that my 1 G Ram is not anough for extremely heavy scenes (mine are always extremely heavy), 2 G RAm would be better but I cannot afford right now to buy new ram. You can try to do the following while working on your scenes: 1. group whatever is possible to be grouped (trees, objects) 2. hide all objects and/or layers you don't need absolutely to see while working. This makes it possible to work faster and Vue will need less memory. Also render will be faster. 3. When deleting an object from your scene, select the object and type DEL on your keyboard. This deletes definitively your object. If you select "CUT", it will stay in memory and will need memory, of course. 4. Save your scene and close Vue after a certain time of work. Don't wait until it crashes for memory lack reasons. :-)Guitta

Flog: If you are running a 'borrowed' copy, presumably installed straight off the CD, it's not going to have the most recent patches, and will be unstable. Download the demo from e-on to give it a true test on your machine.

My experiences with Vue d'Esprit 4 and Pro seem to differ from just about anybody else's! Still, in case it's any help to anybody:

My first experience of Vue was 4.12 on:

W2K Pro
GeForce 3 Ti200
Athlon 1600+
1 Gb RAM

And it was 100% stable, never crashed once in 12 months. Strangely Vue was the only program that did work with that graphics card. The arrival of Pro, and the 4.2 beta, coincided with my MoBo failing and taking the HDs with it :-( So they got installed on my laptop:

XP Pro
Radeon IGP 320M 64Mb
Mobile Athlon 2400+
256 Mb RAM

Again 4.2 was completely stable, Pro choked on large scenes but obviously out of memory. So I put in another 512 Mb and they both developed a problem! As I installed Poser 5, and pointed Vue to it, at the same time it's difficult to say what caused it. Anyhow, both started hanging if I attempted to do anything before all the viewports had finished redrawing, so I disabled the background draw thread. Since that they both seem totally stable, and actually faster.

John

For me, after a few patches to Vue 4, it ran very stable except it had serious speed issues in OpenGL, which I never used because of that.

When I bought Vue Pro, it was very unstable (and really unusable on my machine). After a couple of patches, I've gone back to try it again and I will have to admit it's been a bit more stable and usable. It still does have some sort of resource memory leak on my computer which shows up after an hour or two in which the menus in windows start to disappear and do all sorts of weird things. I never had this problem in Vue 4, which I could use for hours. I haven't been able to track th leak, but it seems to have to do with the material editor. When it goes into that crazy mode, it is still usable (unlike originally where it would just crash and burn), but the material editor does slow down quite a bit.

Still, I am starting now finally after months of craziness, to see the light at the end of the tunnel and the potential that Vue Pro has. I don't think it's quite done yet, but it's getting there. Got a chance to use the Poser changed reload feature which is awesome for what I do.

ShadowWind

I have a:
P4-1.8
512 Meg of RAM
All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro (what catalyst drivers are you running Gebe?)
Vue Pro is on it's own 30 gig drive.

Oh and I'm running W2K, Service Release 3. I know 4 is out, but I'm waiting for the shakedown before upgrading...

If you tell me what a catalyst driver is, will answer you:-)

When I first installed Vue Pro, it worked beautifully. Upgraded to first available patch, and again, it ran fine. Then I installed Mover 4 for Vue Pro, and all hell broke loose! Crashed whenever I did ANYTHING!

So I decided to uninstall it completely, re-install, update again and NOT install mover 4. It again ran like a dream. I did have a Radeon 9600 (non pro) at the time.

Unfortunately I had problems with my hard drive, and had to wipe it and re-install everything again. I also had to replace my burnt out radeon with a new 9600 pro. And guess what...no matter what I try, install vue pro with or without mover 4, changing graphics drivers, adjusting openGL settings, switching openGL off completely or whatever, IT WILL NOT WORK FOR MORE THAN A FEW MINUTES!!! Previously it ran like a dream WITH openGL on.

My Vue d`Esprit 4 works no problem, with and without openGL, so what gives?

Same version of WindowsXP Pro, with SP1, same graphics drivers as before, almost identical graphics card as before, and yet it won`t work, and yes, I have upgraded my copy with the latest patch.

I am tired of trying every option on my pc and graphics card just to get 1 program working again. It mustve been a fluke that it worked previously, because as it is, Vue Pro is absolutely useless to me, it just sits there clogging up valuable H/D space...I keep checking in here to see if theHoly Grail: THIS IS HOW TO GET IT WORKING-100% GUARANTEEDmessage appears, cuz the E-on website aint up to much by way of tech support. My system specs are as follows: AMD 3 Ghz 512mb ram HIS Radeon 9600 Pro 80 gig h/d Win XP Pro SP1 If anyone has any sensible suggestions, other than the usualupgrade to latest patch, upgrade your graphics driversorwell, it works for me`, please let me know Regards Gaz

Oh, and the drivers currently running my graphics card are the 3.10 catalyst drivers (Omega optimized)

Gebe, the Catalyst Drivers are the ones that are downloaded from ATI for your video card. The last one I saw was 3.9, but hadn't been there in a bit. So I guess 3.10 is out now.

The catalyst driver number, and I just learned this myself in these forums, is in display properties and then in the options tab. On the very first line there is a driver number that looks like (03.???). The ??? is the number of the revision of the catalyst 3 drivers (which originally came out somewhere end of 2002/start of 2003).

Gaz, I'm sorry I don't know what to advise, but I can sympathize with your pain. I don't have Mover 4, but it has taken quite a few patches to get it stable enough to use.

ShadowWind

PS to gebe: I would try that shutting it off before it crashes, but once the memory leak overtakes the resource table, it doesn't clear without a reboot. I don't mind the menus being a little funky as long as the program continues to run, but would be nice if it didn't do that.

I use my original drive, the one that I have installed when the computer was new (I have build it myself last year in April). The driver is ATI version 6.14.1.6307 from February 28, 2003. And I will not change anything to it nor update, as it worked always great, as well with Vue d'Esprit as with Vue Pro:-).

Thanks guys for the responses. I descided maybe Vue wouldn't be advisable to purchase. I see many others having problems. A program should just work on a computer. You shouldn't have to work around it, it should just work. I bought Poser and Pro Pack and it works great!!! I just wish there was a better way to work. My friend let me borrow his copy cause he said he was having the same problem. He said if I could get it to work then to keep it. I'm glad he spent the money and not me. Vue looks great, but when you can't use it for more than an hour and you have to cross your fingers before using it, then not good. I can use Bryce 5 and build mountains and texture it and such, no big deal and import them into Poser. To bad. Mover 4 with Poser looks like it had so much potential. Thanks for th all your quick answers. Glad I didn't spend the 500 bucks!!! I hope the makers of Vue and Mover stop for a while and work solely on the stability, Hash Animation master has the same problem. Stability would make this wonderful program in theory actually a wonderful program!!! I downloaded the demo and same thing happens. Well time for a purge of my system of this would be great program. I'll keep my eye out for the stable upgrade. Hopefully soon, this program does look great!!!

Ummm, Flog? Did your friend loan you his -original- CD's? The reason I ask is that E-on has some anti-warez tricks built into the installer; there have been several attempts to rip Vue that made it to usenet, and -all- of them were unstable (and the bitching you heard was...fascinating). Seems that there is a finalization pass that only occurs if you are installing from the orignial discs. A copy does -not- function; I tried it when I got Vue 4 out of curiousity, and the copy install would crash as soon as you moved a simple primitive in the scene window (I was also running a properly installed version on another HDD, and -it- was performing perfectly, so it was nothing done to the OS). There are also some issues that can crop up if you are using a combo CDDVD drive. There are firmware issues, and potential buffer over-underrun issues, depending on the motherboard. davidryuen; Did you get those assorted XP2k boxes from the same source, by any chance? Because one issue that gets consistently missed is memory quality. Something like VuePro strains system memory in a way that not even shooters do. The sticks heat rapidly, and if they lack proper airflow (and heat spreaders if they are DDR sticks), then you =will= have crashes, no matter what you do. And a lot of companies that build boxes shop for the best buy, not consistent quality. Compaq in particular is infamous for that... That strain also affects the memory controller in the northbridge, and a lot of those neato looking fans don't do a very good job; in fact a lot of them are placed so that the only air they have to force over the northbridge is what comes off the CPU heatsink. Akin to cooling a car with boiling water.

Jeez, Dale! You want to start getting into harware issues; what about my MoBo? Big name manufacturer, I was scared silly of leaving the path of Intel until several other pros recommended it! All the bells and whistles, built-in RAID controller, great price. Arrived with a seperate USB card and a leaflet explaining how the southbridge doesn't actually work with this VIA chipset, and on no account to try using the onboard USB. After building the box and trying to set it up I discover, nor does the Promise RAID controller! Exactly one week out of warranty it self-destructs, taking two good hard drives with it!!!

Now you tell me Compaq are crap! My laptop is an HP/Compaq, please tell me it's not going to happen again.

With the laptops it is =far= less of an issue; you simply can't pick and choose parts, as each laptop model is more or less custom. And laptop memory also tends to be more reliable, simply because it has to deal with harsher design specifications. Where you tend to find the 'Uncle Kim Special' components is in the minitowers. Who made that board?! Wait. That wasn't an ABit board of about 18 months past, was it? Abit was one of the companies that -really- got burned by a little industrial espionage. It seems that there was a company in Mainland China turning out electrolytic capacitors for the mobo power supply smoothing (all the big puppies usually clustered around the CPU). Only problem was, the formula being used was stolen from a Taiwanese company, and the thief missed a few pages of it. A lot of the oddball problems with the Athlon boards were finally traced back to those capacitors degrading, and allowing Strange Things to happen. Everything from bursting cans to smoking the CPU or one of the bridge chips....and with the southbridge, taking any IDE devices with it.... The intel boards didn't suffer as badly, as the P4 didn't have the same power demands that Athlons do. But there are still far too many of those flakey boards out in the channel....although most of what's left is starting to show up at the computer shows....

Nah, it was a valid copy of Vue, so I was able to update it and still the same issue. It is sad. This is a great program in theory!!!

Flog, if your friend gave you a copy, it is not a legal copy. e-on has protected their program, so you need a valid serial for you only to make it work properly:-)

It was a valid serial number, he has the VUE box and everythihg, he gave me his copy after he took it off his computer. So I could update it off their sight and the thing was it still crashes, it did the same thing while on his computer, so he didn't want it anymore so he let me borrow it to see if it was stable on my system. It wasn't. So I'm not gonna buy it now and I'm giving it back to him.

Flip-flopping between versions can cause all kinds of chaos because it leaves certain elements in the registry and other places. I have found in many demo to purchased program conversions that cleaning the registry of all remnants as well as any directories that were involved is a necessity in the uninstall process.

Dale, with all due respect, I seriously doubt that machines that are running Vue 4 fine and having difficulty with VuePro are having such problems due to motherboard/memory issues. VuePro has, well had, at it's inception, quite a bit of bugs that were software oriented. The fact that some people didn't experience these bugs, and maybe how they slipped by testing, can be broken down into two more likely scenarios. Whether one's workflow triggers such bugs, and what is running in the background.

For instance, there is a bug in the All-In-Wonder still capture in which it leaks memory from the resource table (causing the disappearing menu scenario that VuePro does). This bug is only noticeable under the most extreme still capturing and to the normal user and tester, it doesn't exist. I've only had it happen twice myself. but it does exist. The same probably holds true here. I'm a tinkerer with Vue, meaning that when I sit down to do a picture, I love to experiment and play. I load and delete things a lot, move stuff around, try many different texture combinations (both material and jpgs) and other such things, to get what I am looking for in the end. Many times, I'll admit, I don't even have a clear vision of what I want to do until I'm halfway through it. So perhaps my particular workflow (lots of undos/loading/deleting props, etc) triggers one of these bugs. So to me, I have trouble with the software, while someone with another workflow may not.

I will eat some crow and say that e-on has gone to great lengths to try to fix the many bugs that VuePro has and this latest session after patching to the latest has proven to be fairly stable. I still think some of the larger bugs were released prematurely upon shipment, but better late than never I guess. I really enjoyed using the new features that I bought VuePro for and can see the light is no longer necessarily a train. I was able to go from start to finish on a VuePro project (that had lots of figures and effects) for the first time. I think e-on still has some bugs to fix, but it's 100x more stable on my computer than it was when I first installed it (when it wouldn't run for more than 10 minutes without crashing).

ShadowWind