[1] I get some weird things happening with infinite when I'm either halting a render, or it has finished normally - sometimes it as though at the end of the render process (whether I stop it or it halts when its finished rendering), Vue has decided to close/delete the scene file but Vue is still open (sort of though its gone back to the "you have opened Vue but haven't loaded a scene file" stage). Anyone else had this? [2] Second thing - has anyone had the issue that when you import an .obj file, often I have to un-click the smooth mesh button twice before it actually stops smoothing the mesh (i.e., go into edit object, click the button to stop it smoothing, go out.. render and see it still being smoothed, go back in and it still hasn't unticked the smooth mesh button, do it agian, and then on the second go it actually unsmooths). This is a sporadic thing, not all the time. V5i 5.09 beta patch, P4 HT 3.2Ghz, 2 gb ram, Vue scene is about 100MB (pretty small).

edit - by "...close/delete the scene file but..." I meant that its sort of got rid of the scene from within Vue (it hasn't deleted it off the HDD).

I've experienced something similar to the first problem under very specific conditions and reported the problem to e-on but so far they havn't been able to reproduce it. Are you using a PC? If you are to see if we have the same problem you'll need to look at your Windows Task Manager and watch the CPU usage. The problem I was getting seems to happen when rendering and when the CPU usage is 100%. If I then run some other programmes (Mozilla Web Browser or a computationally intensive Python script for example) the render would carry on but the scene itself would disappear from Vue leaving it as though it had just been started. The only solution I've found so far is to shut down other programmes when using Vue which isn't ideal but I can live with it. Hope this helps you narrow your problem down.

On [1], a work-around would be to save render and scene at varous stages of the render. I do that with long renders in case of power outages. Of course, Vue 5i has the resume render option that works very well.

On [2]: I went through this problem many times with Vue 4. I haven't seen in Vue 5i though. I looked for the problem too, to see if it was fixed.

As far as other unreproducable errors, I've been getting these material edit problems. I'll change a material in the editor, close the material editor, and then find that the material didn't actually change. Go figure.

impish - yeap, sounds exactly the same - I think its only happened when I've been using other programs while Vue has been rendering (and yeah, I'm on a PC), and it only happens sometimes, not always. My Vue CPU usage is always at about 100% when rendering, as its using both virtual procesors to its fullest (as you'd hope). It's more annoying than fatal, though I do wonder if this has anything to do with some of Vue's alleged dodgy memory usage issues you see people mention every so often? sittingblue - once I start doing long renders (I've only been playing with the atmosphere lab and ecosystems so far), I'll be doing that "save during render" a lot - I'm a long time brycer so am experienced at coping with loooong renders and power outages lol ;) That thing you mentioned with the material editor - I had that the other night with the atmosphere I was editting - the changes I was making in the editor just weren't sticking. Thought it was something I was doing weird, but looks like it may not have been. Thanks for the confirmations, folks :)

Actually, on second thoughts, since the scene blanking/deleting/closing mentioned in [1] is also happening (sporadically) when I try to halt the render, then I wouldn't be able to save it as I go through the render (as there's nothing left in Vue to save)... this could be more problematic than I first thought :/ (and don't remember seeing this issue in the demo)

Message edited on: 01/03/2006 17:09

The possibility of a memory leak was the first thing e-on thought it might be but it looks unlikely since its happening with 150Meg+ of RAM free. I'd virtually come to the conclusion that it was just a problem on my machine and since I had found a passable workaround moved on. Have you reported it to e-on too? If there are several reports they may be able to identify something common to both our system. Cheers Mark

Heheh, I'm already on my way there as we speak (write).