I know it is a premature, but this has been bugging me for a while. Now Vue Pro is aimed at professionals, or at least keen amateurs...thin line i guess. Most other landscape creators in this area have soem sort of particle weather system. World builder does, I think 3dnature does too. I reckon the next version has to have proper physics for fluids, rain and snow particles and better control over wind and breeze direction. Some road creation tools which cna deform the landscape would be handy too. Given it would make Vue more complicated to use, but it has a great interface and I would love to see these. World Builder has all these things, but some do find it very hard to use, it is buggy and atmospheres and shadows require a lot of work to get right. So give me proper control over water and weather, some terragen style procedural textures and I will be happy. :-) Where do you think/where would you like, they will go with Vue 5 and Vue Pro 5?

"Most other landscape creators in this area have soem sort of particle weather system" Bryce does? Mojo does? Terragen does? Well, i think any sort of particle system would be great to have. I normally use Cinema 4D for that and export the models to Vue. But regarding 5. Nobody knows i think, beside E-on. A while ago we did a collection of wishes we had and sent it to E-on. Can't find it at the moment, maybe you wait till Gebe is back from her holidays and ask her. There you can see what was relevant to us at that time for a new Vue version.

How about just some basic things that should be fixed in order to be considered professional or even semi-professional in the animation arena: 1) Cut/copy/paste of keyframes (sheesh!) 1b) Ability to turn of auto-keying 2) Better keyframe management 3) Elimination of flicker/noise when animating camera moves 4) Real ROTATION instead of ORIENTATION 5) Graph editor for animation with time indicators 6) Proper naming of axis (including roll, pitch, and yaw) 7) Write the TIF or TGA (etc.) files instead of TMP files during image sequence renders! I'm sure there are more. :)

My wishes are: 1) Particles for better smoke,rain,snow,fire etc. 2) Animation tools so that I don't need an outside applications for animating my own characters. 3) A Vue Simbiont Vue plugin so I can use Darktree textures. 4) Subdivision rendering.

Interesting stuff, lets hope they impliment some of them, especially in animation. I did not mention terragen, bryce, vue stadard etc, as they don't proport to be pro products. But Vue Pro will soon weigh in at $600 or so which wil put it in the same bracket as applications in the same area that have far more features, if less plug and play. For my money I don't mind a steep curve for added flexibility. It will be interesting to see what happens, a great time to be around 3d land I think. :) LOL@Cut/copy/paste of keyframes :)

i like to see more UNDO and no only one:( ..and some of vue pro in vue 5 version:(

"LOL@Cut/copy/paste of keyframes" ... because it is so overlooked (like UNDO) but highly desireable. Or do you think it's truly funny, i.e. not worthy? Just curious. -Tim

1. Particles for better smoke,rain,snow,fire etc. >2) Animation tools so that I don't need an outside applications for animating my own characters. >3) A Vue Simbiont Vue plugin so I can use Darktree textures. >4) Subdivision rendering. LOL! I'm not picking on you, but what you are really saying you want is a pro level 3D program like Maya, Lightwave, Max, C4D or SoftImage. It sounds like Vue Pro could use some improvements, like all software could, but I for one would prefer to see Vue Pro focus on improving it's landscape and vegetation tools rather than adding other features like particles and such. The program integration with other applications is the pipeline to these other features, and what Vue does it does better than the Pro leve apps. So why not fit in those workflows rather than trying to compete, which is what I think E-On appears to be going after in a very smart way.

Agreed. And animating characters -- that's what Poser is for! :) I just wish Vue could REALLY handle it as advertised. I also want to see Vue "Pro" truly be worthy of the Pro title, so I sincerely hope they update the animation tools (and a few other unprofessional items) in the very near future. -Tim

You know, being able to set a key for only what is moving rather than automatically keying E V E R Y T H I N G would be a big step toward that true pro title. ; )

Amen, bruther! See 1B above. I have posted about this many a time, and complained to the poor E-on tech(s) about this. It's called: having a toggle to turn AUTO-KEY on and off. Bryce has it, 3DS Max has it, Poser has it (for lights, cameras, materials), the list goes on.

My request is a little simplier... how about deleting scene's from the scene menu?

There you go ... forgot about that one!

Well....from the little tidbits picked and pasted, Mover 5 should be capable of addressing some of the animation issues. And if it performs as discussed (dynamics capable with P5), then that takes care of everything but soft body dynamics so far as character animation, and that just isn't within Poser's price realm. With that as a caveat, I'd go for a particle system....or more accurately, a =weather= system. I'd happily trade being able to build Particle Man in exchange for hard coded rain, snow, and dust with some form of collision culling (as in particle field X collides with bounding box Y that is contiguous with a primitive, and cease to exist; but set a flag that activates a second effect, letting you create things like turbulence eddys around a rock formation in a dust storm. Or runnels of rain oriented to 'gravity'. More work than in something like Maya with far less flexibility, but that would be the trade off). And thinking about it, you could probably automate snow buildup on actual terrain, since Vue morphs terrain anyway. Clone a terrain section, flag one as the eventual 'snow'. The particle effect triggers, and first off controls an animated procedural ground texture. Once the white had reached a certain point, the 'snow' terrain starts to ever so slowly morph outward in size, with a slight amount of erosion to create a smooth blanket effect. For that matter, Vue Pro -may- be capable of that now, since it has Python. Maybe E-on should look into making a weather pack on the model of Mover 4; a seperate add-on. There is already a waiting market for more Pro enabled plants, and there are a lot of species that need building.

Tim, I meant as in I am amazed it does not have it :) Quoll, not at all, but Vue Pro is aimed (and priced) at a similar market to World Builder World contstruction set etc, which are not all rounders but landscape specific, they do have some of these features and allow far more leeway, though they have their own problems as well. But, given the new focus and cost of Vue Pro, I think they do need to look at proper fluid control, particles for weather and a road feature would be handy. I agree about character animation that is for other products. Oh I just noticed you were not talking to me Quoll :-) Must need sleep! A road tool which followed terrain and allowed some deformation would be very hadny too and maybe open up more prof markets to them. Don't get me wrong I think Vue is great value for money, but with Vue pro if they really bump it up another $100 I reckon next version they will need to give out more control and probably loose some of the ease of use...

"Tim, I meant as in I am amazed it does not have it :)" Thought so ... just wasn't sure (on these forums ... LOL!) And I mean, how freakin' hard could it be to add that feature? You just copying a few bits of number data onto the clipboard. It blows my mind this oversight was not corrected in Vue Pro. shame-shame. I like your idea about the terrain-following roads. Is any package doing this? -Tim

Yeah FattyB, a road tool would be freaking great! And that has me thinking that it would be great to have a kind of tileset brush painting feature in Vue, much like you get in game level creation tools (like the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset), or in SimCity to a certain degree. For instance, you make several building arrangments, then you can "paint" them all in at once over and over using one tool and a mouse click. Painting with the road tool would then carve a lane through that area, etc. I know, dreaming again. ; )

I would be happy with a more robust Plant Editor, something along the lines of Bryce's Tree Lab where just about any kind of plant can be made from it. Solid Growth is a great idea, but there are too many missing plants to make up the difference.

ShadowWind

Well World builder does have a road tool, which follows terrain and can deform it to your wishes as well. It works them out on a energy time basis which you can adjust. Then apply whatever textures or procedurals you want to it. So you can set it so it goes over a hill or carves a valley through it etc. It has the same for rivers as well, more or less. But it has its own problems with atmospheres and shadows not to mention stability. The plants are a bit limited, especially likes of Oaks, Elms,etc. Though I guess you can make them in solid growth...Perhaps they will start creating more they don't seem to make many. I would love soem grass that could be applied to areas of terrain, as in individual blades wrapped over the terrain with some levels of detail. I guess voicing ideas is the first step to getting them though :-) I might post an example of the problem, as I had this set of downs with barrows on them. In vue it looks fine from a distance but up close the textures breakdown a bit, in WB it looks great up close (bar having to redner shaodows in 3dmax and use communicator to merge) but further away the atmosphere looks a bit fake. I guess wanting it all :-) But if someone does create a landscape program that combines some of these along with a good interface then it would be great and I think E-on are best placed to do it.