Hi to all,

I have just purchased Vue 6 (actually it was a gift from my wife!) and I am starting to play with it. I am a Poser user and.... what a difference! The program is surely powerful and friendly enough, but there are so many new concepts, I hope to be able to understand them all.

Some really newbie questions, to start:

1. Where are the best free tutorials? I'd like to start on the right foot...
2. Terrains and units of measure. I don't understand how I can create proper scaled backgrounds compared with Poser figures. For example: if I import a Poser character and I want to create a mountain behind him, should I   1) scale the character so he has "human size" (i.e. 180 cm tall) then create a mountain-shaped terrain 2000 m tall and VERY far? Or a small, near terrain just with a tiny texture?

My head hurts!  But I am very happy, it's a great program!

Thanks in advance,

Giorgio

1- http://www.geekatplay.com
2- In your general preferences, under "file" menu, you can set display units to "real world units", and choose meters, feet, etc. Then your poser imported character should load at the right size ( eg 1m80)

5 foot 9 inches is what Vue/Poser assume is average height ? Very interesting to know. Helps me with alot of things(; Thanks.

Real world units are set, yet Poser models are imported too small (a character is around 10 cm tall).

But this does not matter: I have just learnt how to scale them.

My real question is about backgrounds and PROPORTIONS. Let's assume I want to create a mountain behind a character. What is the best path to follow?

1. create a terrain and scale it accordingly to the character (that is, hundreds or thousands of meters/feet tall), put a non-resized texture on it and move it VERY FAR?

OR

1. create a terrain just some meters tall, place it NEAR to the character and put a VERY resized texture on it to give the illusion of distance?

I hope to have been clear enough: I am not English mothertongue. My question derives from my recent experience: I have tried to create a distant mountain with an ecosystem on it, but trees were absolutely huge compared to the mountain, so I wonder if I should move the mountain or the texture.... ;)

Giorgio

The April newsletter from e-on had a great artical on this.

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/about/newsletter/?page=3

Thanks Peggy. The article is about aerial perspective, that is, the fading of distant elements when seen through a spectral atmosphere.

My question is a bit different: it is about size and proportions.

The article says:  "In effect, the mountain is often much closer to the camera, and much smaller, than what it would be in reality."

So it seems that the correct path is 2)   (referring to my previous post). Is this correct? And if this is correct, how can I scale the textures and the ecosystems to be put on the "much closer" mountain?

Giorgio

I always try to stick to real world scale.  Make the mountain big and move it back.  When you try to make terrains small, but the figure it large in relation to them, you can end up with weird shadows that ruin the scale you are trying to create. 

To scale a texture there is a little box named Scale in the right sidebar texture window. You can use that to increase or decrease the texture scale on any object I believe. I know I've played with it to do just what you are describing, making texture on hills smaller so they look farther away. In the case of my Junk render (posted at Cornucopia but not here yet) I used it to enlarge an environment to make small plants appear to be trees or large plants seen from a distance. The reason for that was poly count, when I tried it with a tree environment my count went into the billions, where with the smaller plants it stayed at a more reasonable level.