I am a new digital artist and have been working and learning Poser and Bryce 4 since Feb. Well I was wondering what, if any, advantages Vue may have over Bryce and visaversa. Anyone?

heya; you can get the vue 3 demo and try it out for yourself too. :) (www.e-onsoftware.com) the material editor makes more sense, but i'm coming from bryce 2, where THAT was mostly random luck. i think bryce has easier skies and atmospheres, and vue doesn't have a random atmosphere generator. that'd be cool. i think bryce's terrain editor was more robust; vue kinda tries to get you to use an image editing prog to paint terrains, although it has tools to do it. and i love vue's erosion buttons, and the effects like stones, plateaus, grit, etc.

I only wish you'd found us sooner and we'd been able to stop you from getting Bryce. Fortunately I spent 5 months making up my mind on which scene builder to buy. So I am a proud owner owner of a copy of Vue 3. In 90% of the things they do Vue makes Bryce look like cave paintings compared to Michealangelo. For the remaining 10% I have Carrara until I learn to trick it with Vue or the next upgrade adds it in... If you want to know which to get just open up two browser windows to the galleries here. Set one to scan for Bryce pictures and the other for Vue and compare. Ignore anyone who did post work on their renders (there will be more such work under the Bryce section, which in itself says miles) as that's letting in 'other factors that bias the judgement.

Well, I downloaded the free demo and will be trying it out a little. Thanks for the replies. One thing I would like to know is can Vue build complex odjects as with the bryce primatives using boolean? I can already see that the interface is more easier that Bryce. Can Vue do complex interior scenes as well?

heya; yep, vue does boolean stuff just like bryce. yes, it does complex indoor scenes. there's one that comes with vue... don't know if they have a picture of it at their gallery. lots of furniture, modern lighting fixtures, a sliding glass door, plenty of potted plants... :) vue's layers will help you organize your scene, and hide complex stuff outta the way while you work on something else. and silly me, the one MAJOR thing i forgot to mention... vue is MUCH FASTER than bryce! it's almost magical... :)

I also use to use Bryce 4, but haven't used it in a couple months since I got Vue 3. I think a lot of people here had Bryce first, then went over to Vue. I don't think you would find many people who had Vue first, then changed over to Bryce. I think Vue is the better of the two.

I use Bryce all the time but since I bought Vue I may change over for good. Especially now that Vue is available within Lightwave ( Ozone3D ) and now I can create any landscape and use LW's superb render engine.

heck, i'm gonna sell my bryce on ebay. :)

ludvigo: When transfering from Poser to Vue, make sure all props are "unparented" and choose 3DS as the export. Make sure that all your textures have file names that are 8 characters or less. (Vue's importer won't find files with names longer than that) Even though Vue now supports TIFF, I still suggest using JPEG or TGA formats in Poser to prevent transition problems. Remember that Poser uses white for solid and black for transparent while Vue uses black for solid and white for transparent, so you will have to invert your transparency maps. BTW: Vue doesn't have volumetric rendering, but most people won't use it in Bryce because of the amount of time it takes. - SMT

I have used Bryce 4 for sometime and tried the Vue3 demo. I think Bryce is a little better in rendering water and much better in rendering glass etc. because it fakes caustics. Not even 3dsmax producees caustics without expensive plugin, nor does carrara. ( I read that the new free strata studio version does caustics !!!!) So my conclusion: If you want to render landscape scenes, Vue 3 is better. If you want to render outher stuff as well, i.e.: still life objekts on a table etc..., Bryce 4 is better. P.S. You can find a render comparison between Bryce and Vue 2 on http://www.gdiekert.de/

Bryce has a surreal quality that no other program has. The cost is render time. -Gear