I don't know why the thread "V5I vs Carrara 5 Pro" was so mysteriously and heavy-handedly locked - it was neither unmannerly nor off-topic. So, since there was some interesting exchange of opinions on the mini-preview, I'll open the subject up again.

I find it really indispensible when lighting a scene to get some sort of immediate feedback when moving a light. Even if the preview is out of focus, I can see at once if it is too bright or too dark without having to do a render.

So do some people really prefer to work without it?

I closed that particular thread because I had to delete two posts back to back, which were turning the discusion into :

1- Personal fights
2- Heavy handed ads for Carrara

I have no problem continuing the discussion in a different thread, especially on subjects such as the one you bright up.

Now about the subject itself...

The mini preview is one of the main aspects of Vue I prefer over Carrara, even if I have to disable the live refresh of the preview on large scenes, I do like the option of being able to quickly render the scene with one click.

I suppose you can do the same in carrara using the 'render area' feature - I just prefer not having the extra step of having to select a rectangle each time I was to render.

I like the previews.  Just wish I could re-size them any size I want.  Vue and Bryce have small ones.

I find the mini-preview a necessity.  I also rely on small selected area renders as well.

I like them, but they often make you unable to see inherent flaws in your scene.
I did a scene with some metaballed-function-driven fog, the preview didn't show any hints that Z-ordering was wrong with the ecosystem, and I just had to go into PS for correction.

Still, it's nice to look at (compared to rendering 640 in preview quality ;) )

A hidden feature of Vue is to pull on the side of the preview window and you can make it bigger.  Not a whole bunch bigger, but a noticable improvement.  It won't remember the size though, so once Vue is restarted, it goes back to the default setting.

Peggy

That hidden feature works only for Vue Infinite - Vue 5 has a fixed preview.

I wish V5I's preview could be made bigger than it lets you drag it.  But I guess that's what Main Camera View Preview Rendering is for.

Bryce is even better than Vue in terms of handling previews. Apart from the Vue-like updating preview, rendering a small part of the view is more handily done. In Vue you have to choose the menu option "select render area", then select it, then render, then clear it. With Bryce, as I recall, you just drag a rectangle and it renders (possibly with RMB or something - I don't remember exactly, but it's more direct than the Vue method).

Then there is the spray-on render preview, which at first I thought was just a gimmick, but then found very useful in being able to preview exactly the critical details of a scene.

Just by the way, it's conventional in other forums here to post a reason for locking a thread in the locked thread. Particularly if you are also deleting posts. Reading the thread as it stands, there is no reason apparent why it should have been closed.

I personally find the preview nearly useless. When small (to keep workflow speed up), you can't see enough...just easier to do a preview render in the viewport. When large...well it can't be detached so you lose viewport space, so yet again useless for my workflow.
When E-on allow more user GUI configuration (i.e. moving and detaching of panels), then I may find the preview more useful.
Another one of it's downfulls is that it looks like it uses the same rendering engine as the main renderer, which isn't great for speed. It would be nice if you could control what channels you can render within the preview so you could increase the speed at a higher resolution...such as Modo's Iview.

Cheers

What you can see - and what it makes it so useful IMO - is the lighting level. It's useful, when dragging lights around to get the best setting, to have some sort of instant feedback, otherwise it would be move light - render - move light -render the whole time. The preview gives just enough detail to see the effect of the light move, and for me this requires more fine tuning than anything else.

If the Vue preview window was more flexible, and could be resized to the users satisfaction, then it would be a much more usefull tool.  I use a 24" LCD, and can get quite a bit bigger P-window without taking up too much work space, but it simply lacks that needed flexibility.  I'll bet that Vue 6 will have a  much more usable preview window?

I actually do like the "Select Render Area" option, with the ability to define a zoom; however, if the preview window helps out some artists, then it is doing its job for those folks.  I do think most would agree that a truely resizable preview window would be a big help.

BTW, comparing Carrara5 and Vue5 is inevitable when one owns both applications (I have a Vue render running on one of my PCs as I write this).  I also own C5Pro.

Got Vue5I - haven't tried the resizing of it yet - but I bet it won't change how I use it. So far I only find it good for general camera/composition check, and general light/dark values.

Whenever I'm unsure of whether or not an object is where I want it to be (or not as usually happens) I use the Select Render Area function.

Otherwise when I want to see a bigger view of the composition, I put the render quality to Sketch (with a frame size somewhere around 800px wide or high) - not gonna help you at ALL for the lighting, but you can see where everything lays out pretty quickly, even on complex scenes.
-Lew ;-)

If I maximize V5I across two 19" screens, and then stretch the preview window from the edge, I get a nice big preview window.  Undocking would be the next best thing though.

For checking if an object is in the right place, the Bryce spray-on render was very nice, because you just needed one click on the tool, then scribble with the mouse over the are to be examined. Good interface design is about minimizing the work the user has to do.