Xstream nightmare

#1

Hi all,
recently I bought Vue Infinite and Xstream, ant to be honest I think I wased my money.

If I open Xstream witheen 3DS Max and do some changes in Vue, I can see them in Max, but if I add some object in Max and toggle to Vue, I can not see those objects in Vue. That means Xstream is not fully compatible with a 3DS Max!
I really like those demo reals and would like also to do those things myself. Demo real looks amazing, btw.

I am 3D architectural visiualiser. If I go into Max and try to export scene into 3DS format, it just takes forewer, I got scene with about 1.5 million polys. If I take one single building and export in 3DS format, certain things jump, and can not edit them in Vue, and if i try to resize to original size, Vue can not hendle it.
My approach to this must be wrong, but not having any tuts about Xstream and help files makes it even worse. Are there any suggestions whitch I can follow about the flow of technics putting 3D into Vue.

I will appretiate if someone can put me aout of agony I am at this moment, or at least some hope.

Best regards
Srdjan

#2

sucks to hear that, especially as over-priced as that plugin is. We’re still on the fence whether we should buy it or not and your post helps us think closer to “no”.

#3

Hi pixelmonk,
I am still new to it, and there is possibility that there is a way to overcome those obstacles.
I dont know did you guys download their show reel, looks really brilliant, and many other guys have done some amazing stuff with it, but somehow Xstreme looks tricky. Vue Infinite is not that bad, I managed to make some terrains, water, plants. Just do not buy it in a hurry (as I did:scream:)

Lets see if somebody coments this thread, hopefully someone of the “pros”, in Vue. Vue deffinitely got potential. Maybe Vue 6 will be better. If you can pospone untill Vue6 comes out, and see what is going to bring us.

Regards
Srdjan

#4

This is sad.
I wonder what they have for an ad at their site that tells about this software or not correctly?

Because I would think info on this xTream thing would be so that people
would know before they decide to buy it just what it’s job is and all that, no?

Cuz as far as I understand things to be, xTream’s job isn’t supposed to be so that
you add things in from, Max/LW/C4D/Maya/whatever?, but that you are able to load
the Vue scene into said 3D app of choice and let your 3D program do it’s own wonders.
Not have it so you load things into Vue, that’s not what it’s for.
Vue can already do what you are wanting, by using the Synchro plugin and simply
working mostly in Vue and only using your 3D app for synncing things like cameras and lights.

I’ll have to read up on what they say at their site on this plugin,
because I have no clue what it says it’s supposed to be able to do and all that?

…md :slight_smile:

.

#5

Hi mdunakin,
I had totally differebt idea about Xstream, I thought that you can go forward and backwards from Max to Vue, and back…
It is quite useless to render in Max while Vue is about 3 times quicker, talking about mental ray, if I try Vray, it doesn’t work, so the best is to render in Vue itself. I was also thinking that Xstream would “understand” Max’s native format while working simultaniously. But now I can see: Xstream’s engine is very small and yet underdeveloped, and not supported as it should be, if there are not guys like you mdunakin, to help others,life will be much more difficult.
Another thing I dont like is proportion. You can not import 1:1 building into Vue, You can up to certain extend, like 5m or so, if we are talking tall building, than you can not see the camera to start with.
I bought AsileFX CD’s I went trough all, thay are very good, learned a lot about Vue, but nothing about what is very important to me, about Visualisation. I have seen a lot of people doing some amazing stuff in Vue, specially architecture, how thay did it i really don’t know. But I would like to know about 3DS Max and Vue, what you can do to make it work.

Best regards
Srdjan

#6

My view is basically the same as Srdjan. xStream is clunky, underdeveloped and really does not integrate at all with Max.

I have a DXF of some terrain from a client. Standard starting poing for all my visualisations. I have imported this into Vue Infinite. I have saved it as a VOB file. To start, when I import it, as the dxf has world co-ords on it, Vue cannot even see it. Its off in the distance somewhere. It also scales incorrectly. I cant zoom in on it. Is there a Zoom Selected Objects button? Max has no problems with any of this on its own as an imported dxf or 3ds. Get vue involved and the whole plot falls apart. I try to put an ecosystem on it, and within about 2 seconds, Vue tells me it is Out Of Memory, and is going to crash. I have updated. I have 3Gb RAM. How much does Vue need? Then when I open Max8 up and try to open that Vob file, the real fun begins. If you leave the xStream interface open, the whole thing locks after a few mins. Max locks also, and you have to kill the lot. I am so disappointed with this software. To say that this is a Plugin for Max is bloody bullshit. A plugin works seamlessly within your app. So far, this has not done one thing it says it can do. I’m not giving up, but I’m nearly totally over it…

#7

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that this plug-in doesn’t operate properly. After all, we were supposed to integrate our app. of choice with Vue5I,( which we all know is B.S.). Oh, and for the record, I HATE Vue’s renderer.

E.

#8

Hello Kook!
Hello Ed!

I really appretiate your inputs, so we feel the same :sad:

But, what can we do (we paid a lots of money for the software, I bought Xstream and Infinite), the only thing is to somehow find out, what procedures we must use in order to accheive what we want to do. I will appretiate if someone can please help us with work flow.

Regards
Srdjan

#9

We’re currently having the some of the same problems with our copy of the bundle, for instance; we cant get it to render anything using backburner, which is sort of a problem since trying to render full motion with Vue objects takes nearly until the end of days.

We use Vray for all of our renderings and obviously made the switch to Mental ray for xStream but for some reason it looks like xStream and back burner are still trying to access Vray, causing it to fail. but on the otherhand we bought two new rendercows and tried rendering without Vray even installed and they still failed…

The App itself crashes allot and often causes a file curruption in the process, which is always awesome.

In a nutshell we’ve had the program for almost 3 months now and nobody at e-on seems to know anything about the program they sell, and the ones who do dont really care enough to get this thing running considering we spent well over $1000 on license you’d think they’d treat us like a valued customer but then I guess you’d be wrong.

on a final note i noticed a few of you were having problems with Vue rescaling your imported objects. there’s a small checked box in the options menu that says something to the effect of “rescale and reposition objects” the is check on by default. besure to uncheck that and you shouldn’t have as many problems I dont even know why there would be such a outlandish option much less having it as a default. It may not fix everyhting but it’ll atleast allow you to scale things correctly between max/maya and Vue 5.

let me know if any of you have had any problems or solutions to the Backburner thing.

#10

Hello newtype311,

I have contacted e-on software, and they said to me that whole scen has to be no bigger than 5000 units. If you export from Max, it wouldn’t let you export to 3DS format more than about 60000 faces, so besides unchacking box you mentioned in your message, you have to export several times, and objects are going to be placed in exact position, Vue recognise position in 3DS format. Lets hope that soon they will change Vue so we can have more user friendly environment. After yesterdays soccer match we got a big chanse for that to happend :slight_smile: not to mention, if they win World Cup :slight_smile:

Regards
Srdjan

#11

Most of the times, I cant populate ecosytems. it keeps giving me Out of Memory errors. I just rebooted my box. Start Vue. Load a vue file. I have the ecosytem set to the sparsest/least dense settings I can, of 1%. Press clear. Press Populate. Out of Memory. I check my peak RAM usage in Task Manager. It tells me I’ve only used 525Mb of a possible 3Gb RAM in Windows XP. Absolute piece of crap this software…

I’m now requested my money back. The $1,000 I handed over to them, was obviously going straight to their R&D dept to get this pile of junk working…

#12

Thankyou for pointing this out I was about to plonk down some cash for this program setup but now I think I’ll pass unless it improves considerably with the XSI version which I was waiting for. I’ve had to deal with another overseas company with a buggy program before and there is no way I want to go through that experience again.

Cheers,

Clair

#13

If you call this comment positive, unless they fix ALL bugs (knowing NO software is bug free) they may have to re-think their pricing strategy and adjusting it accordingly. DOWN !

#14

MAYBE if you generate your own terrains in Vue, it works.
And MAYBE if you do ALL your work in Vue, it works.
But if you need to bring in actual geographical data, like I do, and get it to work with Max, then it does NOT work. It is not unstable. It is unusable. I would not be requesting my money back if it did work. I REALLY wanted this software to work. I was bloody excited about teaming it up with Max. Its all ended in anger and frustration and days of wasted time…

PS : Hello fellow Perthite, Clair… :slight_smile:

#15

Fresh day at work here. Thought I’d give it another go. First attempt, poor ole Vue chokes on itself again, and serves me up another Out of Memory error. It tells me that YOUR SYSTEM has run out of memory. According to task manager, its managed to use up a whopping 453Mb of the 3Gb RAM available this time, before it completely imploded on itself. And then has the gall to tell me that “Eons software fault protection technology has intercepted this error”. Gee, I feel so much better knowing that. It caused the bloody error in the first place…

#16

I actually do not have Xstream, but using 3ds as an export-import format is not a good idea, as it has a relatively small limit of polygons per object. Upon reaching that limit, strange things happen, depending on the program, some abort, others crash, etc.

Using obj would be a better idea IMO. One common problem with Vue is that very high resolution textures are not to it’s liking, so if you have one, be sure to downscale it for use with Vue.

If the scaling for working directly inside Vue gives you trouble, this is what I have found, maybe it can help you. If you select your imported object and go to the square ruler tab on the right, then to the tall rectangular prism icon (scale),one of the coordinates will be rounded to a multiple of 10 (10,or 100, or 1000, etc). Vue seems to get the largest measure along X Y or Z, and use that as a reference to scale it to the nearest power of 10. So with that in mind, just lock the scaling (I think it is the icon left of the Y value, but my comp is rendering, so I am just describing from memory) and substiture the rounded number to the actual original size.

Not so straightforward, but knowing what is happening with the scaling helps in finding the solution. BTW this works for me using the metric system, probably with imperial measures you should convert to metric, but I haven’t tried that yet.

I am no Vue guru, so maybe there is an easier way to do this.

#17

I’ll try exporting my terrains out of Max as VOB, then importing them into Vue That I haven’t tried yet.

I dont have any large textures in the scene.

I’ve got the scaling worked out. I move my terrain to 0,0,0 in Max, export, then import into Vue with the “Resize and center imported objects” button unticked. I can import, thats not a problem now. As soon as I try to populate, Vue kills itself, saying its run out of memory. And even though Task Manager tells me it has gone nowhere near peak ram usage.

I’ve now requested a full refund.

Thanks for the help anyway Juan. :slight_smile:

#18

Is Vue actually crashing on you when you it says its out of memory or does it say that and you turn it off?

Im asking since it says that when I have huge populations but when I click ok it just keeps running. we’re also running it on a boxx with 3gb of ram. It just seems to me like this program is sooooo incredibly buggy that things are just happening at random on different people’s systems.

Has anyone tried rendering using backburner yet and been successful?

Has anyone rendered at all?

And why hasnt Vue responded to my emails in like a month and a half??

#19

I must admit that Vue crashed a lot on me, but things improved dramatically after I installed the updates, and as a matter of fact, switched to a 64bit OS. True, vue is a 32bit app, so I don’t know if that helped or not, but it has not crashed on me since then.

I think the main problem in Vue arises from it’s screen displays. I switch the non-perspective viewports to wiereframe or box, and things improve enormously on heavy scenes. Some tweaking in the display properties could also help…

As to why they have not replied to your emails, I have no idea. When I emailed them some time ago, they responded before 24 hours were past. Did you get your confirmation number thingy?

#20

Well we were in heavy communication up until around a month ago when they had to write a special log to record our render errors. after we returned it to them they never responded back to us.

its really frustrating since we actually have our scene set up and ready to go with little or no crashes or errors anymore, but it doesnt help since we cant render it.