Xstream nightmare

#21

It crashes. Immediately. Totally locks itself up. Only way to kill it is via task manager. CPU usage goes to 0%. Task Manager reports its peaked at 500Mb RAM usage. Vue notice comes up and says;

“Out of memory error! Your system has run out of memory. The current operation cannot be complete and the application is about to crash. E-on softwares fault protection technology (now thats laughable) has intercepted this error yawn yawn yawn…”

I can make it crash by simply pressing the clear, then populate button…

#22

(Shakes his head)…memory errors, crashes, no useable support…Hey, anyone still excited about Vue6? Can you imagine the hit when 6 tries to calculate true volumetrics, (clouds)?
I sure hope ILM is enjoying their copies of VUE, cuz from what I’m reading here, they’re the few that have e-on’s attention. Sad…
E.

#23

Hey guys!

Actually im from the 3DSMAX Forum and i was thinking of buying Vue InF. I have heard many cool things about that package.

But when i saw this thread - i was totally shocked. Is that all really true?
First thing - you need the Xstream plugin in order to integrate Max into the workflow? I thought that the VUE Infin. will do the job also?

So is the Xstream plugin commercial?

Really strange man - few weaks ago - Jeff Paton opened a Thread about VUE and the workflow with Max - and as far as i know he didnt mentioned the big problems you all got…
How dissapointing…

regards

NAIK

#24

Yes, you need xStream to ‘integrate’ it into Max (laughs hysterically at use of word integrate)
Yes, it is commercial, you can pay for it. Please just send your money to me though. You’ll get the same feeling of being ripped off.

Seriously naik, dont buy it. It is a pile of steaming dog turd at the moment.
I’ve asked for a full refund. Vue wont give me one. They’ve offered me a free upgrade to 6 when it comes out. Yay, I can hardly wait… yawn

#25

I have no idea how smooth (or not) Xstream integrates with 3d studio max. It seems that it is more a work in progress.

However, I for one am quite happy with my copy of Vue5inf. Maybe I have not pushed it to the limit, and I have not tried it to integrate it with anything.

So for me, it works. My needs are not that sophisticated as other users in this thread obviously are, it must be really frustrating to think that a product (whichever it is) seems to be able to do something, and then when the time comes, it does not perform.

So naik, if you plan on using Vue solo (as in not integrated to 3d studio max), and you do not plan on using it for extreme stuff, it performs nicely. And I hope, Vue6 will perform better.

#26

As a stand alone product, Vue probably works just fantastic.

If you want to import large terrain files, and then integrate these from Vue into Max via xStream, it appears to be absolutely hopeless…

#27

naik,

I have used Vue Infinite for over a year now and am quite happy with it, but I haven’t heard the same for XStream. I would recommend Vue Infinite, but if you’re needing to integrate 3DS Max withi it then I would wait or look at one of the Good Max Plugins for making trees, grass skies etc.

I’ve seen great plug-ins for Max that can produce instances like Vues Ecosystem and very nice skies etc but unfortunately I don’t remember where I saw them.

#28

Why not import your terrains into max and load your Vue scene around it? I think Max has more robust file support.

I thought the point of xStream was only to integrate Vue content into your 3d app of choice, not the other way around.

#29

The problem with that is that the average Vue scene is upwards of 500,000,000 polys so turning that into a 3ds or obj and importing that into max just wouldn’t be worth the time and effort since you would still loose so much information in the process, and Ive never successfully gotten Vue to export any object into an importable format. it would also cause all the objects to be static and you would loose the ability to add wind and other effects to the trees and plants in real time.

essentially the way we’ve been doing it is creating the scene in Max then exporting that into Vue 5 and creating the environment, then taking the Vue elements and linking them into Max using Xstream.

I probably should have said this earlier in reference to crashing issues is that you have to make your scenes in Vue 5 Infinite, NOT with xStream! xStream only acts as a conduit between the two programs not a tool for creation.

#30

newtype311 -

yeah, I dig it.

I haven’t heard of huge problems from other people who use xStream apart from this thread. Perhaps what wasn’t clear in my last post is this:

Why are users importing large files into Vue, THEN trying to get it into Max via xStream? Why not import your large terrain file into Max directly, which most likely handles the files better, then use Vue with xStream to integrate the elements it does well - sky, ecosystems, and distant terrain? They both render together anyway.

I would try it myself but there is not an xStream for Maya on the Mac (yet).

#31

I have been testing Vue5 inf for a week now with regards to Architectural Viz. Things you should know:

  1. Set options > resize and center imported objects to OFF (unchecked)
  2. Use Vue default Open GL settings
  3. Basic steps to synchronise Max with Vue:

a) Synchronise camera from inside Max. Synchronisation successful message should appear.
b) Make sure your building axis thingy is at y-axis zero or your model will appear above or below vue’s horizon line. Export your building to 3ds format
c) launch Vue and accept synchro data.
d) import your 3ds model with the resize and center option set to OFF. At this point you will probably see nothing.
e) Select Vue main camera
f) At the top right hand Main camera menu, select Motion rollout to synchronised. Scale of sync will appear as 10.0. Set it to 1.0 and click the sync camera again in the top right hand menu
g) Your building will snap into view, perfectly synced with Max camera view.
h) Create your terrain around the building, it doesn’t matter if trees grow in front of it, the masks later will separate the ecotrees. When you select your ecosystem material, do not auto populate the ecosystem as the terrain will be very, very huge due to importing objects into Vue at Max’s units.
i) Select edit ecomaterial and go to root material, scale UP all plants, rocks, etc by at least a factor of 10. This will enable Vue to populate the terrain witthout self destructing (Edit: For me it was very slow and I tired of waiting). The scale will be about right visually plus minus twenty feet or so for tree heights. You have to experiment here.
j) Select render options and set quality to final and above. Select multipass and LEARN how to render out the alpha channels and SAVE as a MULTIPASS PSD format.
k) What you want for arch viz. are the object masks, layer masks and shadow masks. In twenty words or less, these masks allow you to separate trees that are in front of your building and separate your building from the ecosystem. (Edit: I lied, it’s 21 words)
l) Render the scene in vue. If its 800 x 600 pixels here, use same for max.
m) Render your building in Max with alpha channel. If its 800 x 600 pixels here, use same for VUE. (because the camera are perfectly synced, remember?)
n) Bring both renders into PSHOP and figure out the masks and separate the elements. Replace the building from Vue (because of the masks, you were able to separate the Vue building into its own layer) with your building from Max
o) Composited happiness.

This where I got to so far. Since I know it works, I am confident of integrating Vue ecosystems renders into Max renders. Believe it or not, I have not crashed Vue so far. Perhaps it is because I have not started high resolution renders yet. Judging from 800 x 600 settings, the render time for high res will be horrendous.

I have also successfully exported small gardens created with Vue plants into Max and they still look better than the standard crossplane tree method.

Regards,
Vincent

#32

Uploaded a very quick and dirty composite, the building from inside Vue has been replaced by max building.

#33

Hello Vincent,
Thank you very much for sharing this with us!

I will try it over the weekend. I have got one question for you, Are you exporting building un its original size, or resizing before exporting to 3DS format?, and how may poly’s does you building has?(lost my count, it was two questions :))

Regards
Srdjan

#34

it looks kinda… well… like cards. Even the building doesn’t look 3D. It looks like an image projected on a card. Maybe it’s the resolution and the edges… dunno

#35

Srdjan_R:
The building is original size and unresized for Vue. I am one who will only throw one stone if one stone is all it takes. Face count is 250,000+, Object count is 6875. therefore it is a real world project model.
Also bear in mind that instanced objects will not import into Vue, you will need to collapse them. In theory and in practice, it will be better to just export the shell of your model into Vue, since it will be composited out with the Max version anyway.

Here is an earlier test that has half the model in Vue with an ecosystem on the roof level. This is completely rendered in Vue, model weighs in at about 100,000+ faces. With the above technique, one could separate out the roof ecosystem by rendering ecosystem mask and shadow mask and composite it onto the Max model.

Edit: The ecosystem was grown on the roof top by just selecting the roof top mesh and appying the ecosystem material. I can select the roof top mesh because when I imported the model into Vue, I chose not to weld the model. So advanced management of objects and naming conventions are very important disciplines to cultivate as a habit.

So my workflow would be to model and texture in Max and sent a untextured shell version into Vue (making sure that the shell (minus all unseen internal geometry) of the untextured model is the same and in the exact position as the fully textured model. In my tests I didn’t even bother to remove unseen geometry as I experienced no crashes after switching to default Open GL setting in Vue. It doesn’t like my ATI FireXL driver at all.

Pixelmonk:
As mentioned above, it is a real world project model and highly detailed, I assure you. It is still under wraps, so I cannot show the whole model. It was a quick test to show the forum that the compositing and camera syncronisation works as advertised with a real model and not meant to “WOW” anyone.

I was close to burning down e-on headquarters but have now seen some light. Who knows, when this project goes into high res crunch time and animation, I may have to burn the HQ after all.

#36

Hi Vincent,

Thanks for the answer!

I spoke to e-on guys, and they said to me that you can export from Max only about 60,000 polys. So 250,000 is :eek:

I wanted to export one of my projects, which is 1,500,000 polys and Max was always crashing :scream:

E-on technitians said to me that I should ither export as *.obj or export piece by piece as 3DS, which is nightmare. Also what they said is that your scene in VUE can be not bigger than 5,000 units big, which means that you must work in ratio 1:100 or close to that, talking about big projects.

Your ideas about camera Synchronising is actually fantastic :thumbsup:
meaning that you can import real size project!

Regards
Srdjan

#37

I’m not aware of a poly limit for 3ds, at least not 60,000 poly, that’s too low. So, to give you the benefit of the doubt, I just un-instanced another real world model of 250,000+ polys and exported that to 3ds format; reimported that 3ds file to max and checked, it ’ is still 250,000+ faces and 3,200+ objects.

Then I switched to Vue and imported that 3ds model, in Vue it also read 250,000+ polys. It took about 90 seconds and after importing, it was very sluggish to move the model around but still manageable and I rendered a preview frame in about 2 minutes. No crash or protest.

EDIT: If you weld the model on import, the model will move about very freely, I guess Vue doesn’t like keeping track of 3,200+ individual objects.

My machine is a dinosaur, Pentium 4, 3.2 gighz with 2Gig RAM and 128MB ATI FIREXL card.

AND my model is in real world units (millimetres), the height is 72,000 millimetres which works out to 72 metres, that’s 230 ft high, that’s 2,765 inches. My VUE terrain is much larger than 2,765 inches at 9,995 units.

So that technician was not right.
Edit: The size of the terrain is only 61.5 in VUE, so maybe the VUE scene size unit limit is true but wrong about 3DS limit and layer by layer thingy.

I wish you well on your own tests.

#38

Hello Vincent,

thanks again for the nice answers. You enwoked some optimism in me :bounce:

Over the weekend I am starting with some eco estate project, and I am definitely going to post some feedback overhere.

Regards
Srdjan

#39

Hey Vincent, I just wanted to comend you since you accomplished something that seemingly no one else has been able to accomplish, your posts here have actually been of more help than the last 3 months of working with E-on’s technicians.

Speaking of which I would advise anyone speaking with them to disregard anything that they have to say unless you’re actually dealing with one of the developers from France, as I have found the Oregon based tech center is worth lest than the chewed gum on the bottom of my shoe.

#40

Thanks for the comments Newtype311. (newtype is a Japanese anime magazine, guessing you are an anime fan, too?)

I also tested the animated camera syncing and it works perfectly too. Also rendered individual masks to frame sequences. I think this will enable animated rotoscoping of ecosystem from the building; when the mask and render sequences are brought into a compositing programme like combustion or After Effects.

If this works as I imagine it would, we won’t even need to touch Xtream.