Hi there,

I'm totally new here, as well as being totally new to 3d rendering.

I am in need of a landscape generating program for the Mac that does not require a huge learning curve and can provide the most photo-realistic effects.

After researching a bit, it seems like Vue might be the best for my needs.

Before I break open my piggy bank, I wonder if my machine will be powerful enough. I have a Mac 933 (756 ram) with the nvidia GeForce 4MX video card(sp?).

I realize this depends on what my final rendering requirements are. I will be using this strictly for high-quality 4-color printing and will need to be able to go up to at 11x14 image size upon final output.

So my question is two part: A-Can my machine handle the rendering, and B-will the image quality be high enough at the size I need?

Lastly, does anyone know if you can upgrade from the regular to the "professional" version? The professional seems to have quite a few more features, but I hate to plunk down the extra money now not knowing if I'll really need these features.

Thanks so much for your help!

Karen

I'm using a dual 867 Mac and have rendered 11X14 images at 240 dpi with no problem. It took about eight hours to render the five and a half million polygons. There is an upgrade path available from Vue 4 to the Pro version.

Well, i think your machine should be able to deal with Vue. The question of render times is always a little tricky. Depends really on the content of a scene - AND how it is organized. Discussed here very often. I had scenes with around 50 million polygons and i dont think that i am on the upper end really with that. I did some bigger renderings as well, some simply needed more than 100 hours, others only 4-5. Really really depends. But my Mac is even weaker than yours, i am on a 876. 1 GB Ram. How about buying the version 4 first, work a little and then decide wether to take the special offer for Pro? You only must be aware of, that this special offer is limited in time.

Thanks so much for the info. Can you tell me where I can find out about the "limited offer" for the Pro version? I didn't see anything on the Vue website, but perhaps I wasn't looking in the right place. Thanks again, Karen

Hi Karen, your always welcome. Sorry, i can't find that information right now. But i was sure that there still is a limit. Maybe i am wrong. I only wondered because originally there was a limit til end of October i think. When i see it again/find it again i will think of you. But maybe gebe knows as well - when she reads this thread. see you, Walther

Hi Karen, welcome to the club! I work on a G4 MP 500 (dual proc) with 1.2 GB RAM and your mac might have the same performance as mine. So you should be able to get your things done. As Walther already said it really depends on the images and render setting. Some of my works took ages to finish others not. I'm currently struggling with a new image (1600x900 pixels), but that's because of the render settings I use. Just give it a try... Have fun, Phil

Not to rain on the parade but there's some things you should consider beyond everyone's comments about rendering etc. Firstly, the mac version of Vue is very buggy. Expect crashes and weird anomolies. Secondly, Nvidia cards and Vue don't like each other very much on the Mac. Vue is much happier with an ATI card on the mac (it's OpenGL issues). Thirdly, Vue doesn't work with Panther (OSX 10.3) - yet. So you'll have to use OSX 10.2.x. Finally, Vue can really bog down on the mac with complicated scenes. Moving/resizing, etc. will start to take forever with lots of objects present (even with the layer hidden). All that being said, your machine should be beefy enough to handle it (especially thanks to the generous ram). It's unfortunate that there's no Demo available as you're taking a bit of a gamble with the Nvidia aspect. I've heard of Mac users with Nvidia cards having lots of issues with OpenGL & Vue. Hopefully it'll work out for you. Lastly - If realism is what you're after then I'd like to suggest you take a look at Terragen. It's not good for close up vegitation work like Vue but for distance Terrain shots, etc. it's fantastic and the realism surpases Vue. Also the Mac version of Terragen is dirt cheap, rock solid and fast. Be warned however, it's very unconventional (as far as 3D apps go) and has a significant learning curve. But check it out - you may like the results. http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/ Personally, I use both on my DP G4/450 & ATI Radeon 8500. E.