two questions I'm reasonably stuck on if someone could help -I'm on a Mac, don't know if that makes a difference in the organizing of these things. And I'm asking for ideas/ good working practise because I remember what a mess i made in my Poser runtime when I started out ... trying to avoid a similar mess in Vue !!!! 1) I have found a number of 3ds models I want to use in Vue 5Infinite..... can you suggest an organised way of doing this ? For instance where do you keep the new 3ds things on your HD, in the Vue folder or elsewhere ? If the 3ds model has a .bmp file will Vue automatically import it along with the model or do you need to assign it separately ? When you save object from an imported item do you save it in the main object folders or do you put them in that Vue folder in Documents ? And where do the relevant texture jpgs go ? I see them all bunged In with vob.s. It all seems a bit confusing and messy to me . And 2 is - I downloaded some free atmospheres from Varians site and Vue is telling me I need to use the ' conversion utility " to be able to use them in 5 as they apparently were made in 3. Where do I get this utility ?? Thanking you in advance for your patience with new-user questions . I'm still awaiting my Infinate manual in the mail ! 8)

No, it makes no difference wether you are on Mac or PC - the organisation is always the same. I (Mac too) have the following structure. #1 i leave all that come installed with Infinite where it goes automatically. This in ANY cas can be recovered without problem. #2 i have a folder on another hard disk (not necessarily) which is called "Vue Addons". There i have a sunfolder for atmospheres, materials, objects, .... All parts that are relevant inside of Vue. I as well have an additional "converted Poser models" folder. To be able to track a little where what came from. Now inside each of the category folders i have subfolders, mostly named as the source where the models came from. And this means mostly the name of the creators. Like Kaol stuff, DM stuff, Cornucopia3D stuff etc etc. For all that does not fit in that i have a folder "misc" and all that goes in that. This method has several pluses. I know more or less always where the things came from - this i find important for giving credits to the creators. And they deserve that! Another plus is that i can use this structure for the different Vue versions i have. Same structure for all versions. Reinstallation, updates, version change is MUCH easier with that structure as well. No need to worry about those things really. A word to all the items that need to be imported. I decide for myself fitst wether something i need only for one project or wether it has the potential to be used more often. If there is the smallest grain of possibility that something will be used more often i import the item first into Infinite and save this import as vob with embedded bitmaps. Then i can use this much easier (a preview is only one advantage) later and i do not have to care for textures anymore. The original format i archive as zip file on several (thousands) CD ROMs. But i as well think that different people may have different strategies. Which is more than ok!

Thanks for your answer, Wabe. I will probably will organise my stuff in a similar way...particularly keeping new downloads separate from the things that install with the app . I'm not sure what you mean about different versions of Vue... do you keep older versions installed even if you upgrade ? 4 is the earliest I have but it's no longer installed on my HD. If I have understood correctly why do you do that ? And do you know of that version conversion utility I have come across mentions of ?

Sorry for not being too clear on that point - the Vue versions. I am a beta tester and therefore indeed have several copies on my disk. So for me it is evident to have a flexible structure that can react quickly to changes. Conversion of Vue 3 stuff on Mac. The conversion software does ONLY exist on PC. Full stop. What i did with those items was to use a PC with a Vue 4 d'Esprit version on it, load those items in there (between Vue 3 and 4 it works like that) and simply save them back to disk. Then i copied them over to my Mac and they then. Reason for this is that Vue 4 was the first version of Vue on Mac, there was no earlier one available. And by some internal memory reasons, 4 on Mac is not able to read PC Vue 3 stuff while Vue 4 on PC is.

Now I see... thanks for clarifying. : )