I just realized something about Vue lock ups/crashes...and I would like to take a sort of poll so that it can be presented to e-on as possible CLUES... The two or three major lock ups I have had where vue tells me "it will try to create a back up and save the file, but sorry for this" stuff... is when I have specifically loaded VOB format of my saved mesh objects. These are houses, bridges and even using some of vues cubes.... when the scene has say 5 copies of a zippy cottage along with a saved pavement street mesh, some sidewalk mesh, OR when there are two mesh bridges and vue cubes (4-6) plus a building like the Taj Mahal and THEN I bring in people - that is the "breaking point". It is NOT when I have 3-4 fully clothed figures or two humans and lots of animals...these are not a problem!! It has dawned on me this last time I tried to build a really elaborate scene with both free mesh objects and some poser mesh objects (again, all outside objects are brought into vue, saved as vobs but un-grouping, and re-grouping to break the bond with poser and the textures saved in the vob as well) - that THIS is when vue cannot handle the scene! The file size does not matter, it is the objects!!! and the number of them!! When I worked on my Dinotopia one, I thought to only have the Taj Mahal and one fancy bridge in there and then to HELP vue, I made the streets out of vue's own cubes..... but after the scene was set with these items and a couple of mountains, I brought in two dressed people...and it locked up, crashed and I lost it all... !! The seeming trend is MESH objects?? But why can vue handle human models with clothing and hair (non dynamic) and all my animals so well.... and yet too many houses, or other mesh is a problem?? Has anyone else noticed this? This has happened with both vue 4 original and right up to now, with vue 5 infinite, high end machine with 2 gigs of ram, PC.

The problem I still get from time to time when Vue says that it can't save a file due to lack of disk space (despite 100+ Gb stil being available) also seems to be due to imported meshes. I have tried importing these then saving immediately as .vobs and this seems to improve things. So I agree that there may indeed be an intermittent issue with imported meshes.

i think it's in a big scene when i try and move/reposition something too fast without giving vue time to think. love esther

Something that tends to help when using Poser objects in Vue is not importing them into the final scene. This is my workflow: - I set up the scene in Poser, without materials. Poser can easily handle a dozen or so Millenium 3 figures when untextured. - I use a terrain figure/prop to get the feet placement right. Usually RDNA Macrocosm. - I save the scene as "All.pz3" in a folder dedicated to the project. - Then I save the characters one by one as their own .pz3. Wrote/adapted a few Python scripts to help in the process. These "small" PZ3s are fully textured. - I import the terrain .pz3 in Vue, and add a basic material. The final material - often an ecosystem - comes later. Save as .VOB - Then I import the .pz3s that are most helpful in determining the correct camera settings. Usually the leftmost and rightmost figures in the image, plus the one in the back that's closest to center. I fix up the materials, save them as individual VOBs, and use them to position the Vue camera. - When I get the "low memory warning" at 25%, I delete most or all of the imported figures, clear the Undo buffer, and import/fixup/save the rest. Sometimes it requires 3 or 4 batches. - Lastly I delete everything and save the scene. Exit and restart Vue to clear up the memory. Now I can populate the scene with .VOBs And I make use of showing/hiding layers. A lot. It certainly helps. So does an Athlon64x2 4400+ /4 GB RAM / GeForce7800GTX. This workflow has enabled me to render 2400x1600 Final with volumetric GI, 16 Poser humans (9x V3/M3/S3/A3/Freak, Terai Yuki, Eternal Judy, V2, M2, Don, Posette), 2 x P4 horse, a cart, plus a detailed hires medieval city. 15 hrs, to disk, it was too much for screen.

Open GL seems to be my problem. Despite a 2.5GHZ P4 with 2 gig of memory and a 256 meg ATI graphics card, I still get out of memory errors trying to render anything larger than about 1700 by 1700 pixels. As soon as I turn Open GL off, all the problems go away.

Those are the problems I get smallspace, so I'll try the Open GL turn off.

Lyne, I would say this is an openGL problem. Have you tried to set up a scene like this in wireframe? Also, in those scenes, do you move your objects around a lot? Sometimes, Vue can't handle it when there are many "real" polygons, again an openGL thing.

Experiment: Loaded old urban scene with 235 separate objects (many imported houses, 5 P4 people, clutter, 3 terrains but no ecosystems). Then, as an experiment, added 3 more houses including 1 by zippy, iskwen castle, a new terrain, V3 with dress, hair, boots, jewellry plus mil cat. Up to 1.2 mil polys and still ok. Added V3 and P5 child with clothes, bag, toy all pre-saved as vob. Still ok. More buildings, 4 large xfrog trees. Up to 2.97 mil polys and still going. Moved a few things around. Still ok. Then tried to drop one tree to surface. Bang! Crash! Out of memory. Maybe it is ok to keep simply adding objects as these are just appended to some sort of list structure internally. Certain sorts of modification may require storing some sort of 'shadow' object or list to keep track of changes. That would need a lot more memory, especially if the whole scene was duplicated rather than just the object changed. It is only a theory and may be wide of the mark, but it might explain problems I've had when creating textures for new objects. The object was imported to the standard startup scene, materials loaded, edited etc. The object was saved at various points but not the scene. After a while Vue would crash.

My problems all went away too - I don't use Open GL and everything runs smooth as silk!! :)

Me too. I never use openGL. However, I would say a better wireframe couldn't hurt....

That is the thing!! I NEVER EVER EVER use Open GL! ALWAYS WIRE FRAME! That is what is so frustrating....and FYI I just uploaded the problem vue render in my gallery, where I made comments on the creation of it so you can see what prompted this thread. I could never use Open GL so wire frame is not it... I suppose it is just an individual thing depending so much on the systems, from monitor to ram, etc... I have a 64 bit system AMD...a 3+ gig cpu and 2 gigs of ram, high end COMPATIBLE video card...what more could vue want?? :/ I just thought I had figured out a reason, but maybe not...thanks for all the input...

Lyne; Have you checked the health of your OS lately? And other apps? Infinite is far more interconnected to the OS, and things like blown application upgrades, and a dirty registry will bring it to its knees in all sorts of crazy ways. Hm. Vob is also an extension of a certain kind of video file....have you uninstalled any video players? Or updated them? A few weeks ago, I suddenly found Infinite simply would not initialize. After more experimentation than I like to do, I found the problem was a blown update of AnyDVD. No connection between the apps, save that they shared the same OS. I would start by looking at what processes you have running, and finding a website that defines the ones that -should- be running, and see what else is there. Something like the WildTangent web display driver can get into a system and wreak all sorts of issues, and digging it out is the proverbial pain in the ass. If the registry is healthy, take a look at your apps. If things worked before, then didn't, you may need to uninstall whatever you have installed between the times one at a time....and write down the sequence you do it in. Sometimes apps, just like drivers, need to be installed in a specific order to play nicely together...

OH LOL... my machine is newly loaded xp home, has no "blown" anything and works really well with all other apps... actually vue is working as it has always worked...while my other apps are working very smoothly...so don't think that is it. I never do any updates to my windows but critical updates and I do those MANUALLY...and I do not update any other apps at all. Vue infinite is working the same as it has since I installed it, I just don't "push it" like I have the last 2 or 3 times I tried to make complex scenes, recently. (I did try this type of complex scene long ago and gave up then too) I do find it interesting that with human figures I can load it up and it does not crash!!! It's with objects as I said.

I found out that I can sometimes crash vue by moving one object from one LAYER to another. Nothing changes in the scene, just the layer to which the object belongs to. I don't know what vue is doing then, but apparently it needs a lot of memory for this process...