Now this is very strange. I've been building a new high-end machine. Bought an ATI 9800 Radeon Prowith 256MB of ram on it, even though I'd rather have had the nVidia. But it wasn't out yet. Installed my Vue 4 and the Vue 4.2.2 update, and started working with it. Forgot that I needed to turn off the OpenGL to do anything decent. Just now remembered 10 days later, after many, many pics. So.... Apparently Vue 4's OpenGL works just fine with this video card, for some reason. I wouldn't really recommend this card, by the way. I just happened to get stuck with it along the way, and its too expensive for most purposes.

I bought an ATi Radeon Pro card to use OpenGL with Amapi with which it works just fine, cetainly better than my old nVidia GeForce 4 card (although I accept all set ups 'respond' differently).

Concering Vue: in my experience, if you change or update your ATi drivers, Vue's OpenGL function can cease to work. The next update might cure it, the next nobble it, etc. This is for d'Esprit: no idea about Pro. So if it's working, don't change anything!!

Looking forward to Vue 5's "advanced" OpenGL engine. :-)

Message edited on: 09/19/2004 05:42

Just another one of those things. I bet you could find someone with the same card, who would say Open GL not only doesn't work, but causes Vue to crash not only itself, but the OS too. You probably have your PC sitting in just the right position, maybe pointing towards Paris or something... According to my NVidia FX 5700, the OPen GL version is 1.4. Don't know what that means, though I do know that out fof all my software and games which support Open GL, Vue 4 is the ONLY program that has a problem with it. shrug

LOL! But, after reading this Forum for the last few years, I thought OpenGL NEVER worked with Vue!

That was my impression as well (that it seemed to work for very few out of the majority) Even though open gl actually works on both my machines with Vue 4 Esprit and vue 4 Pro I find I have to turn it off pretty quickly as my scenes get huge very quickly, so now I just don't use it, it's a nice feature in theory but in practice it only works when you've got a brand new box, tons of memory and aren't trying to cram every bit of detail you can into a scene (which I always try to do).

Sorry to disappoint you but OpenGL is working well for me on both Vue Pro and Vue 4. I have windows XP and an nvidia GeForce 5900. In my experience, you need to make sure both Vue and your video drivers are up to date. There is also an article in e-on's FAQ dealting especially with that issue (see the FAW link at the top of the forum's page). As for the performance with a large number of objects, it is not just a propblem with Vue. I have Carrara running with openGL as well, and guess what - it is going very slow when I have huge scenes. There are ways to deal with huge scenes: - if you can, group objects together and into layers. Disable layers when you don't need them. - with Vue Pro, use 'bake to polygon' as soon as you are satisfied with an object. It will simplify the number of objects in your scene (especially if you have complex boolean objects). - be careful with using high resolution poser models and textures. You will not see a difference in image quality if you use a lower resolution texture or model for distant characters. - finally, there is Thomas Khran's wonderful tutorial about handling large scenes with alpha planes.

It's no disappointment: it's encouraging to hear that it works for someone! :-) I have some sympathy for E-On as they struggle to code a product with a 2-3 year life when OpenGL 'standards' seem to change each quarter. I'm hoping that Vue 5's new OpenGL engine will sort out the problems. Agiel, many thanks for tidying the backroom. It's looking good!