i have a collection of xfrog plant cds.  They contain the xfrog extension for the plants. I load them into xfrog and then save them as obj files. However when i load them into vue they don't contain the textures, nor does Vue (vue 5 infiinite incidently) allow me to apply textures.
Is there another way to import them into Vue?
Thanks
Bruce Colero

Try saviung them as .3ds....Vue seems to like them better...dunno what xfrog does for textures but if it saves a valid .3ds type of path Vue should find them if, I guess you save everything to xfrog's default save location.

Export as OBJ works, 3DS gives less problems. XFrog uses compressed TIF with embedded A-plane as texture format, VUE can not handle that format. For Xfrog trees I want to import into VUE, I open the TIF in a 2D program, save the texture as JPG and make a 2 color copy of the TIF as transparency or A-plane, GIF works fine. After loading the tree, I scroll to the leaftexture in the Display Summary and replace the leaf texture with the ones I made.

Bit more work but atleast your leaves look like they should, maybe one of these years VUE really becomes the Pro tool they pretend to be, but after 7 years my hopes aren't set too high :)

I would say use lwo! Why? Because upon import in Vue, you don't have to deal with trasparency issues. Your model imports almost ready to use, with correct transparency without any need to edit it. But, in Xfrog, if you decided to apply bump to the export, the leaves will have bump applied as well as the trunk, so you may need to remove the leaf bump, or to reduce it very very low. Also, it the effect tab of the advanced material editor, you will notice that your model receives 100% diffuse lighting, and 40% ambient, thus emitting light itself! Change the diffuse to 60%, and you're done. Another nice thing about lwo, is that you don't need to wield your object, it's done automatically, and texture names are intact, unlike 3ds format that changes the name of the textures and components of your model to fit in it's 8 digit/letters only  writing possibilities.

Bruno as usual is 100% correct.  I use Xfrog plants quite a bit.  LWO export/import is the only way to go for Xfrog into Vue.

See...someone who actually has and uses Vue regularily always jumps in and corrects my assumptions, based for me on 60 days with the demo...LOL..way t go Bruno....

For some reason I can't export it as .lwo. I have the option of shade, obj, autocad or renderman.
Am I doing something wrong?

What version of Xfrog do you use?

xfrog 3.21

Then I guess you should use the shade format, but I don't know it,  apparently, it imports the geometry and the textures. If you have transparency problems ( like leaves appearing as squares in Vue), here's what you should do:

Create an alpha plane, and in the colour image, load the bitmap used by Xfrog for the leaf. If the bitmap has embedded transparency, Vue will recognize it and offer to load the transmap in the transparency channel. say yes!

If not, load the transmap that correspond to the color bitmap in the alpha image of the alpha plane. You may need to invert the transmap to get the alpha plane right ( click the little black dot next to the alpha picture of the alpha plane, upper right corner)

When this is done, copy/paste the alpha plane material onto your leaf material.

Using shade sounds like too big a pain in the ass...If I use xfrog 3.5 does that allow me to use the .lwo extension?
And in doing so, I open the plant in xfrog, export it out as a .lwo, import it into vue. Then ultimately save it as a .vob. Will they still be those obcene sizes (I had one plant around 90 megs)?
Thanks for your help Bruno

90megs? No, you won't have 90 megs, but it's true that the vob format is a hungry bast**d! But you may get 15 megs if you include texture maps, or 7-8 megs without textures incorporated, max.

But Xfrog 3.5 doesn't come cheap these days. I remember I got it for 100€, now it's 300!

So xfrog 3.5 is the way to go then...in terms of being able to export .lwo files

Absolutely.

Thanks Bruno. I appreciate your help.