Is there any tricks to Help render time when using xfrog trees in Vue. The render time using xfrog trees is unbelievable slow compared to Vue trees and other trees form various places. I know I can use alpha planes in the background where detail doesn't matter but what about the trees in the foreground. Curious how others do with Xfrog trees and if you notice the problem also. I really like xfrog trees but hope there is someway of helping my render time. System is 2.4 Pentium 4 with 1.5 gig of Ram on Windows 2000 using Vue Pro and Vue 4.2.

X-frog has a light version and seems to render a bit faster. I have the same problem with the X-frog trees some are just way to large to manage reasonably in Vue. Vue4Pro has the tree editor and I find it can do a wonderful job creating new versions of trees that render fairly quickly. Of course the best thing to help renders is a faster processor or tons of patients. :O)

Well its nice to see I am not the only one with the problem. That answers my question. I been test render one tree in ultra with only ground and atmosphere and it is going to take voer 2 and 1/2 hrs if the time is right on the render box and that is at 640 X 480. Patience and Vue are ment to work together. :o)

:O...My last pic "The Congo" has about 8-10 X-frog trees & that pic rendered in a tad under 3 hours :O. I export from from Xfrog as a 3ds file. I'm going to start saving my trees as .vobs when I do another scene that requires them. I get tired of having to fix the !@#$ textures. I'm not a patient woman ;) LOL I'm using WinXP Pro 2G of ram 2.6GHZ processor

oops - Using Vue 4.2...rendering in Broadcast.

The Xfrog folks have a product called Xfrog Tune which reduces polygon count in their trees. I think it's about $150.00 (US) and I've been seriously thinking about it because I love their trees but I don't like the increased render times.

I would like to hear from someone who has used xfrog Tune and see how much it reduced their render time when using it with the xfrog plants.

I love X-frog and would be interested to see how Tune works. I guess I will just have to break down and take it off the wish list and buy it. :O) Ultra renders take a long time I have noticed. But that is what I need for my prints @600dpi. So I feel the rendering pain almost daily. 4.2 in ultra mode is much faster than Vue4pro in ultra mode. But the results in Pro are fantastic if you can be patient and wait it out. Good things take time.

I am on TreePro (and Mc) but the problems are the same. My pov is, that Vue - like all other programs - does have problems with the specific structures of fully modeled trees. Many small polygons stuck into each other! I really would like to see how a polygon reduction works without reducing too much quality. So that you still can go closer. I think there is no trick at all - only patience. And a little experience in building the trees. Not to overdo the trees in quality. TreePro gives me the option to decide while exporting on which quality lever i want to do that - polygons per trunk, per branch etc. Maybe XFrog offers that too - i dont know. Walther