What do you guys think? Are those comments like "great sky!" rather foolish if the artist used an alpha plane that fills 1 or 2 third of the image? I guess it helps to get extra ratings. Is this a new trend? What's next, mountain and forrest alpha planes? Too funny! LOL

Been using alphaplanes for just about everything if it produced a better effect, it's the end product that's important, not how it was created.

I confess I've never used alpha planes for sky. Before I go searching, does anyone know if there are pointers or tutorials in the back room? If anyone wants to share some tips, that would be great. I'd like to try this. hein, well said. :-)

hein, you say that the result is all that counts...dont you feel like youre fooling yourself... i know that i would... i mean its easy to find thousands of great free stock photos and to combine that into a winning image... everyone with a bit of experience can do that... i agree with springbirdy, there are limits... its not just the result that counts... most people will have more respect for someone who can draw/paint a beautiful landscape, than someone who uses some ready made models in front of alpha planes... its just reality dear friends

Attached Link: http://www.digitaldreams.sk/downloadesprit.htm

heres a tut....it use bitmaps...step by step

Ofcourse it is the end result that counts, art is not how you make it but what you create, it's not the how that sells but the what, and a paid bill makes me feel a lot better than the respect of fellow picture makers.

Thank you very much dlk30341, I'll read it today. Hey, I agree that the harder you work at creating something from scratch in Vue, or at least tweaking it so that you're not lazily using default textures and atmospheres, the more proud you can be of your work. It's more yours to claim. I spent four hours last Sunday just working on a complex proceedural cracked-ice sort of texture, and learned a lot by working with functions and filters ... and ended up with something that I look forward to making use of soon. It was rewarding work. But there are certainly times, particluarly in mega-poly renders, where intelligent use of alpha planes is just another tool in the artist's arsenal, a means to an end.

Hein: "art is not how you make it but what you create" thats exactly what I was trying to say Hein... read the words "what YOU create", but copy/pasting to create good looking backgrounds is not what i call call being an artist... dont you understand what the word "proud" means?

Can anybody explain me why some features of a software seem to be no-no's? Why jpgs as textures seem to be a yes (only a guess) and as alpha planes an absolut no-no? And a final question. Why is it so important at all? If i don't like an image i don't look at it or don't comment to it. A very simple and effective behaviour. This discussion about good and bad seems very very odd. I left school a long time ago and don't need school notes for my images. A category "proud" i don't understand at all. Is the beginner who does a very simple image not allowed to be proud and post the image? Or do we have to spit them in the face because they are beginners and maybe do things that are very easy for the more experienced users? Finally we should never forget that this is a hobbyist place. And we should accept simply all sort of images that are done with the software in which category we are in.

~applauds Wabe~.....clap...clap...clap :)

"A category "proud" i don't understand at all." Maybe too much is being made of my choice of that word. I was speaking for myself. When I first got Vue, it was a joy just to be able to click the mouse and have a beautiful sunset. We can all be happy with our work no matter what level of skill we're at or what techniques we use to make nice pictures.

Ah...a familiar discussion...if you weren't "supposed" to use alpha planes in Vue (according to some obscure law I don't know about), I don't think Eon would have put alpha planes in the apps. How one chooses to use them, whether as a sky or trees in the background, or figures or whatever, is up to the individual. If someone achieves the look they want in their image using an alpha plane of a sky, good for them! And as I recall, Bryce has alpha planes as well. Hmmm.

I never suffered from proud, so I'm allowed to use all the tools, VUE Poser Pshop etc, at hand when I make an image, if going out and shooting a few pics of a sky or plant is the better way to go then that's the way to do it, atleast for me. A quick browse through the VUE gallery here shows 70-80% of the images are Poser scenes rendered in VUE, very few of these Poser figures and their textures were handcrafted for that particular picture by the creators of the images, that never seems a problem to the purists among us.

When I learned to make Alpha Planes it opened up a whole new dimension to my images. I have thousands of photographs taken over the last 50 years which I have been able to make use of. I see nothing wrong with using AP's, providing they are your own photographs or that you have recieved permission from the creator to use them. Sometimes an AP fills a gap that is hard to fill in any other way. My penny.

Being an old dog who doesn't miss scripting/rescripting complex scenes one bit, it does seem picayune to fault alpha planing in an app designed to free us from the scut-work that hinders the flow of creation.

As my first boss said, "let students and buyers worry about the art, you give me output." ..actually he was more succinct than that, but this is a family forum ;)

Too bad I missed this thread while I was out for the weekend. Using alpha planes or images of clouds to increase realism is no more different than using photographs of rocks or wood to increase realism of textures. It is just part of the bag of tricks Vue has to offer. If you try this technique yourself, you will realise it does require skill to perfectly integrate photographic material and 3D objects.

mm alphaplanes are there to be used, as pointed out its the same as using a photograph for a texture. of course as with everything theres a fine line, but using alphaplanes isnt wrong, using one sky photo and claiming its(the sky) 3d is another thing, but as a part of a piece of art or whatever render its perfectly fine with me.

Attached Link: http://www.knowsley.gov.uk/contract/golf/lo_vrmlcourses.html

Anyone who uses an editor like Vue, Poser, C4D, Max etc is cheating. We should all go back to creating 3D scenes by hand. Ok when I spent a year working on 3D projects for a living there were no editors that worked with VRML available. I had to edit text files by hand to make scenes. It was slow, laborious and boring but you really felt like you'd achieved something when you had a bit of terrain, some alpha planes and some other bits and bobs. It could take months to complete a simple project. The link is to the last of the pieces of work I did thats available to view on the web (but you will need a special viewer to do so). 18 holes of a golf course took about six weeks to do from start to finish - and we were able to use 3ds Max to produce the basic terrain geometries by then. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that using any feature of an editor could be seen as cheating. Having had to code a scene by hand I'd rather cheat any day of the week to get the job done in a couple of hours rather than a couple of months.