Review Mover 4 for Vue d'Esprit 4

I have created only a handful of animations, so I decided to see how quickly and easily I could create one in Vue d'Esprit 4 importing a small animation from Poser Pro Pack. I used a Pentium 4 1.8 GHz machine as my major machine and a Pentium III 800MHz as my "RenderCow" machine. What was important to me was:

  • How easily I could do it.
  • How quickly I could do it.
  • If I could build it around an animation I had previously created in Poser.
  • And how much time RenderCow would save me.

I chose these criteria because if they worked, then I felt Mover 4 will have truly enlarged the animation potential of Vue 4 and was not merely an add-on. I'll, start by saying that the program met all the criteria comfortably. The animation I created that I will present at the end of this review is not polished nor complicated. But it demonstrated to me the potential of Mover 4 as an extended animation tool for Vue d'Esprit 4.

As stated, Mover 4 extends the capabilities of Vue d'Esprit 4, especially with Poser 4 or Poser Pro Pack. Full scenes from Poser can be brought into Vue as an object. They then can be manipulated almost as if they were still in Poser. They can be resized, turned, twisted, etc. In Vue, you can take for instance someone who is walking and insure that the steps will coincide with the length of the scene in Vue 4; you can, also, determine how a sequence from Poser will repeat; choose the "Look Ahead" property from the drop down menu in Vue so that a character will walk, for example, facing in the proper direction, etc.

If you discover that you need to make some changes to a Poser scene, make the changes in Poser and, when you bring the changed scene back into Vue 4, it will replace the older scene perfectly.

However, all the new animation effects do not only involve the importation of Poser animated scenes; other new effects have been added to Vue 4. One can spin objects and vibrate objects controlling many aspects of the object's movement. The manual shows how to initiate twinkling stars, how to spin and vibrate objects, and extends the use of the Mover Wizard (a part of Vue d'Esprit 4) through the Mover 4 Wizard.

A remarkable feature of Mover 4 is the HyperVue Network Rendering Manager. When I, initially, saw this feature, I must confess, I didn't pay much attention to it. I didn't even install the RenderCows (yes, that is what they are called) on any of my other machines. The HyperVue Network Rendering Manager is able to coordinate network installed rendering engines called RenderCows that can be activated to help render a scene. Initially, my render time for the video I produced was 3 hours. When hooked up with the RenderCow on my other machine, it cut the time by 1 hour.

Since starting the HyperVue Rendering Network was foreign to me, I made images of some of the screens. The screen on the left shows how to access HyperVue network rendering, and the screen on the right shows HyperVue Network Rendering Manager and the two RenderCows, my machine, PaulaP4, and my husband's machine, Don, the PIII.

While creating the animation was easy, I had some problems with the rendering options. When I tried to create a smaller file size using the QuickTime format of MOV by reducing the number of colors from one million to thousands or by lowering the quality level from medium to a lesser amount, the program would show an error and close. Also, even though I had the latest version of QuickTime on the machine, I kept getting error messages saying it needed to be updated. I had no problems creating AVI files.

To test out Mover 4, I chose to take a small animation I made a while ago in Poser. It is an unfinished animation, and I am aware that it has some flaws. However, I was more interested in how it would work when brought into Vue/Mover 4. As an aside, after one installs Mover 4, Mover 4 takes over Vue d'Esprit 4 and the term "Mover" is added to the latter's splash or initial screen. The following is a screen capture of the first frame of the Poser animation.

The animation created in Vue/Mover 4 is also not polished but creating a polished animation was not my objective. It took me about two afternoon/evenings to visualize and create the animation, especially since it had been a long, long time since I had done more than just play with the animation capabilities of various programs.

QuickTime Animation Created in Mover 4*
Spaced

If you do not have the QuickTime Player installed on your machine, you will not be able to play the animation. Your browser should automatically look for it, but it doesn't always. If that is the case and you want to see the tiny animation, go to http://www.apple.com and download the QuickTime Player or Standalone Player. The first downloads and installs automatically. The latter downloads and, then, saves to the hard drive to be installed manually.

Included on the Mover 4 CD-ROM are the two programs - Mover 4 and RenderCow, a manual, and some DAZ animal and cartoon figures. The cost of the program is US/Canada download $89 and CD version $99 plus shipping. For information on the cost for other currencies and for various shipping charges go to the e-on software site as well as for more information other e-on software products.

Mover 4, of course requires an installation of Vue d'Esprit 4 and in order to use with Poser, Poser 4 or Poser Pro Pack must be installed on the host machine.

The requirements for Mover 4 are taken from a handout and not from the web. They are:

  • Windows 95/98/ME or NT4/2000/XP or Macintosh OS X
  • 600 MHz Pentium III processor or faster or G3 class CPU
  • 128 MB free RAM,
  • 16+ bit video,
  • 800x600,
  • Resolution of at least 1024x768 in millions of colors
  • CD-ROM Drive

An OpenGL accelerated video board is not required, but is a big plus and Multi-processor rendering is only available on Windows NT4/2000/XP Pro.

*Spaced compressed with Sorenson Squeeze for QuickTime.