We are approaching Halloween- so how about a Curious Labs-Daz Studio NIGHTMARE scenerio... Looking over the new features in Vue 5 I was struck at how it seems E-On Software has NEARLY thrown in the entire kitchen sink. It's a very impressive list. SO- What then could the Coming Vue 5 Pro offer to TOP this and get people to shell out for the "Pro" version? How about... 1. Fully posable Poser characters in Vue 5 Pro, just like Poser. Why NOT? Vue 4-5 can already import Poser animations, including P5 dynamic effects- so what's stopping them from fully Posable controls? If DAZ can do this in a free program with a limited programming staff, certainly E-On could do this! 2. Load Poser RUNTIMES DIRECTLY! If DAZ Studio can do this, so can Vue 5 Pro. Vue 5 already reads in Poser files better than DAZ Studio at this point, so reading in Poser Props, Cameras, Lights, etc directly from the runtimes should not present a difficulty for E-On! 3. Phong Renderer- just like Poser 4 and Pro-Pack. E-On certainly has the technical experise to write a Phong renderer to approximate what Poser already does- after all- this is an ANCIENT render technology compared to E-on's Ray-Tracing, GI, Radiosity and HDRI features! (A Phong renderer would allow FAST scene setups and test renders BEFORE going to raytracing, etc.- and provide full Poser4-PP compatibility,) 4. Anime Cel-Shaders- It already appears possible that with Vue 5's advanced new Materials Editor that Anime Cel-Shaders, like those used in programs like Lightwave, will be possible. (There may even be the POTENTIAL to either convert, or very closely approximate many P5 materials). Since Vue Pro also uses Python, Z-Toon Flat Camera effects are also possible. O.k.- with these four steps, E-On "could" become Number One, combining most (but not all) of the features of Poser, plus many of the features that attract users of many other POPULAR 3D applications that cost MUCH MORE. I don't mention Modeling features because most people use a different modeler software- theres TONS of them and many are FREE or very low cost. People who want HIGH END will buy High End software ANYWAY- so I'm talking about the Poser-Bryce-DAZ-Truespace-Carrara, etc. mid-range market! ........The coming Vue 5 Pro could be a MONSTER! ********************************************************* P.S. E-On will soon be opening their own On-Line Store.

Note that E-On recieved a very sizeable chunk of change from e-frontier prior to the merger of CL and E-frontier. Investments of that nature involve participation -- there is more there than is visible.

Veritas, please don't take it personally :-) but why put all those Poser features and renderer inside Vue? If the Poser renderer is a priority for you, and so are Poser runtimes and posing Poser characters, then... why don't you simply use Poser? :-) Vue Pro exports scenes, so it's simpler to export a Vue landscape and load it into Poser, where you have all that other stuff that you like, than writing billions lines of code to make Vue become a second Poser :-) Here's what I consider priorities for Vue Pro instead: - a better, more advanced and more precise scattering device (the current one is too cumbersome) - displacement mapping - faster export of scenes - advanced radiosity control parameters - customizeable planets - some basic deformation tools for the primitives (such as taper, bulge, etc) - a river tool (I know it's not easy, but one can always hope...) - a weather lab (for rain, snow, etc. - same consideration as above). plus other things, but I don't want to bother everyone with this :-)

have to agree with orion. i would much rather see e.on improve the scenery part of vue5 pro then adding more poser features. weather fx, rain,snow,real fog, etc. solidgrowth pro :) better planets flowers and more stuff like that, vue5 is neat and a great improvement, but it can still improve the scenerey and import/export alot, its still missing functions like flv export. other then that i agree with you that vue5 is a hugh improvement, its a great step up from e.on.

"- a river tool (I know it's not easy, but one can always hope...)" Does Vue have a particle system? Making a flowing river would be fairly easy and convincing with the combined help of a particle system and metaball technology like the hi-end software is capable of. Not to mention a particle system would be useful for making "weather events" like rain and snow (ideal for a landscape program). So, if they don't already have this, I think it should be something they might consider adding. Currently, I know of no other landscape program which uses particles to accomplish these otherwise difficult objectives. Would definitely give them a leg up on the pack.

But I thought the "sims" were going to put DAZ/CL out of business.......OH wait!!! that was last weeks earth shattering prognostication from the inimatable "futureman"!!!!!

I think greater Poser compatibility would be a logical step for E-On since they have done a major amount of work there already. While terrain and other things would be great- I think that from a MARKETING standpoint, you cannot ignore the importance of using Poser figures more directly and COMPLETELY in Vue. Figure animation are MAJOR selling points for Lightwave, MAX, etc. There is just TOO MUCH CONTENT and CONSUMER APPEAL there to ignore. The only thing to brake it would be some kind of deal between E-on and E-frontier that would PREVENT this. But frankly, I really don't think it should. E-frontier seems to have BIGGER plans than just selling Poser 6. I think they want the market for 3D Characters (which they are very good at) and especially for making consumer multimedia products with Poser's code. Selling Poser 6 isn't going to make them a bunch of money- and its not why they bought Curious Labs. They bought CL to develope NEW products that will be money makers. ******************************************************** Well, on the subject of terrain features- I would like to see E-on work on Ocean Wave Effects. Currently in nearly all 3D apps, you have to import 3D meshes to get really good ocean waves. I would like to see a feature that would create ocean wave effects (not surf waves). The two apps that come to mind are Psunami- a realistic ocean wave generator- why can't E-On do this? The other app is my first 3D terrain program- Vistapro. Vistapro 4 (which is dirt cheap) does some extremely realistic ocean water and wave effects. Especially if you tweak the materials. Vistapro generates waves as good as the VERY EXPENSIVE World Construction Set. However, you can't import 3D models into Vistapro. I wish E-On would take a look at this...

I have to agree with Orio's choices. For example, the ability to "paint" at terrain to establish grassy areas or define an area for any type of plant or plant mixture would be very useful. Or how about something similar for boulders and rocks, paint an area and voila - river stones or moon rocks or cobble stones . . . I think that there is a lot more that Vue can do to improve terrain generation, plant generation and weather. I also think they ought to stick to their core strengths and keep a good Poser importer . . . If Vue 5 is reasonably stable - it ought to be a great product . . .

Vue also needs to add the ability to use animated textures, like using an AVI for a texture. Imagine using an AVI of the sea to texture the sea. Poser has this feature, and it isn't too hard to implement.

If you think about the price of all the applications and features, players in the market it's really not hard to see where it's going, and it ain't poser to Vue. Though the players are right. Think Vue to Shade with full scene and features. Digital Elements already does a similar thing with World Builder 4 Pro with Max and Lightwave soon. Daz|Studio/bryce. Being able to use the trees and advanced terrain in Shade would be a boom to the Shade community especially with the Architecture plugin that comes with Shade 7 Pro, trees and buildings. It's one of Shades strong places in the market in Japan similar to CAD. If your efrontier new owners of CuriousLabs, and partnered with e-on makers of Vue to a plugin style importer Vue/shade makes sence as it opens markets for Shade and Vue, plus Shade already has the Poser Plugin so reinventing the wheel doesn't take a chisel and large boulder. look at the prices and the markets. Vue $200, Vue Pro $599. WorldBuilder just dropped it's price a great deal and now WB 4 is only $179 for genesis, or Pro for $699. Daz with daz studio and bryce is for hobbiests, some may use it for proffesional work, but not in the main stream. Stay tuned to next weeks crystal ball reading, sure it will be a doozie. "Poser bakes bread with internet PDA interface", though I think with ocham and python it already could do that soooo.

"1. Fully posable Poser characters in Vue 5 Pro, just like Poser. Why NOT? Vue 4-5 can already import Poser animations, including P5 dynamic effects- so what's stopping them from fully Posable controls? If DAZ can do this in a free program with a limited programming staff, certainly E-On could do this!" Hate to break it to you bud, but DAZ Studio cannot import P5 dynamic effects. I like DAZ Studio very much, but at present it's more comparable to Poser (which it still pales in comparison to) than Vue.

I KNOW that Daz Studio doesn't support P5. It barely supports P4 models. I had much better luck with DS in its ALPHA release when they were using Python as an assist. (For whatever reason DS dropped Python, apparently.) Whatever method DAZ is using now seems like a down-grade. Support for Shade will most likely be in the same way E-On does with its Lightwave product- Ozone. So that would be fairly old news. It doesn't surprise me that World Builder has had to drop their prices too. There are beautiful renders to be had in World Builder but the learning curve is their major problem. World Construction Set is even worse. I can't understand why these companies can't get a clue from E-On and spend some time making their software easier to use. E-On has proven that it CAN be done. If Vue 5 is largely free of major bugs or problems, its going to be a major HIT!. My own upgrade should be arriving tomarrow (Wednesday), so after spending some QUALITY time with it- I'm sure I will have even MORE predictions to make, HEH!

Make sure you clean up your registry before you install Vue 5, Veritas; Like VuePro, there a few more interconnections to the OS, and any detrius from a previous installation that was removed can do icky things. Trust me. Helgard; Oh yes....the Alpha plane AVI ability would =so= rock (thinking of Mobius' Antares bridge with 'vued' consoles...). I wonder if the truly next big innovation to go into VuePro may just -be- that particle based weather system. VuePro 4 has the wind dynamic trees. It supports Python. Just adding the new lighting features wouldn't be -that- impressive...it would actually make it look more like just stealing the upgrades from Vue 5. But if they used the metablob tech to create serious wave capability, or added particles...even if it were limited to just weather features...now =that= would come across as a boon, and really make the case of the lines being different products. Now to get Vue5Mover5Cows5 reinstalled and start trying to break things....

Sorry Veritas, it looked to me like you were suggesting that Studio supported P5-specific features. I'm looking forward to the Rendo member reviews of Vue 5. I'm not going to shell out for it immediately, although I doubt I'll be able to hold back for long. :-) Love that Vue.

"I wonder if the truly next big innovation to go into VuePro may just -be- that particle based weather system." Yep. Particle systems can dramatically increase the power and potential of realistic weather FX in any program (if implimented well), and for things such as snow, rain, or even flowing water like that in a stream, they're hard to beat. So far, none of the "environment-specific" applications out there have a built-in particle system that I know of, unless you consider Carrara's Bryce-like enviroment creator, or use one of the higher-end apps for building environments. Particles can grind your system to a halt, however, when you start getting into the thousands or gulp millions of them in a scene. Distributed rendering is a must (and Vue already has this).

LOL wolf, don't you just love these weekly predictions? He's like Nostradamus with more enthusiasm. ;) SnowS

WorldBuilder has rain and snow that is effected by wind and animatable in the Pro versions. again, more of a pro applications and a steep learning curve.

I don't see why Vue wouldn't copy that, if not in Vue 5 Pro, then probably in Vue 6. I think Worldbuilder only did it in version 3 and not very well, revamped in WB 4 pro though. I own WB 3.02 and it was SOOOOOOO buggy I gave up, yet to decide if I want to spend more money to get a working application, Vue was the route I was going but I would want Pro and it's expensive and no side upgrade path.

Message edited on: 10/05/2004 23:00

"LOL wolf, don't you just love these weekly predictions? He's like Nostradamus with more enthusiasm. ;)" LMAO... Veritas is "off the wall" sometimes, but not always off the mark. hehe. Although I DON'T think his prediction here is going to prove as accurate as some of Nostradamus' were, that's for sure. I think his "Sims" prediction probably has a better shot. ;-) Hey Veritas... what's your prediction on DAZ someday making versions of their figures that are pre-rigged for use directly in Lightwave or 3dsMax? I'll bet there'd be a huge market for that. :-)

Actually I don't consider myself as a Nostradamus. I like coming up with what I think are innovative ideas and I have actually been right about a lot of stuff over the years. I use the logical process of EXTRAPOLATION. It's just that innovative thinking is hard for some to follow. I made the prediction on this same forum, after buying Vue 3 (shipped from their little Paris office) that Vue would become a very important software for Poser users, and posted some pictures of Posette (this was the pre-Vicky era) rendered in Vue--- and I was ROUNDLY ATTACKED and BOO'ed by the "mindset" that existed here then. People even accused me of FAKING the renders and using LIGHTWAVE! Heh! But I think it did help E-ON to see that there was an important connection between Vue and Poser- and once they actively started to develop Poser import capability it really helped Vue's sales. E-On was smart enough to do this while the Metacreations-Bryce-Poser connection never happened- and so the rest is history... -So much for the "Open-Mindedness" that existed here for people who are forward-thinking... (and the "tradition" continues.) (Arthur C. Clarke was called just a science-fiction writer when he made the prediction about global satellites- decades before any of the technology to accomplish it existed. He also is known for the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.")

To paraphrase Clarke-- "Any sufficiently advanced THINKING is indistinguishable from magic.")

yeah and he stole that from other sci fi writers before him

As a quick aside, the Z-toon effect is yet another useful glitch in Poser, having nothing to do with Python, since it has been available since Poser 3.

Actually, what would be the utter end would be that particle system with the ability to set =any= item...import or otherwise....into a deflector. You would see a small rush to E-on after that one.... Just think.... No more NVIATWAS... Now it would be NVIAFLUWRSDHWB... Liteluvr's Virtual backlot streets with rain dripping off the eaves... God, I don't even want to -think- about the time per frame rendering, but oh would it be so worth it in the end...

"Particles can grind your system to a halt, however, when you start getting into the thousands or gulp millions of them in a scene. Distributed rendering is a must (and Vue already has this)."

Not nessisarily. They could implement 2d particles. (Like the Primal Particles FX Plugin for Truespace) They are very fast and look great for most uses, but do have drawbacks, like they don't show up in raytraced reflections.

whatever technique they use Vue and a particle system would make a great combination.

Message edited on: 10/06/2004 09:30

"Not nessisarily. They could implement 2d particles." You're right. 2D would probably be the way to go for such things as weather effects in Vue, considering most people will use them in "distance" landscape shots, and not close-ups. But it would be nice to have the option to set them as 3D as well, so you can use them with metablobs and for "close ups" with 3d motion blur (if Vue has this). Also for things like flowing water, although for distance shots this could be faked with 2d particles as well.

Personally, I'd be willing to pay for looping wind motions like leaves blowing in the win that in a 60 frame loop did not jerk. That would be a major improvement and save hours of rendering time. BTW if anyone has figured oout how to do that I would be grateful if you shared your knowledge with me. cheerio lululee

Wish I could help you there Lululee, but I don't do animation, myself. However, I would like to announce a brand new addition to my household- Vue 5!!! ....Off to PLAY!!!

"Hey Veritas... what's your prediction on DAZ someday making versions of their figures that are pre-rigged for use directly in Lightwave or 3dsMax? I'll bet there'd be a huge market for that. :-) " They already will. Anything DAZ makes they will rig for any program. It is, however, by request only at this point. So all you have to do is ask them. It's even posted on their site.

Well, I always enjoy a bit of speculation, so here's mine.

Vue 5 Pro will introduce the abilty to rig and animate its own native figures. That even sounds a bit bizarre to me, given the existing competition, but what nobody seems to have noticed is that Vue 5 Esprit has already introduced it's own animated figure format. You only get one (lo res) male figure with V5E, but it looks like it has a much more sophisticated boneing and jointing system than anything Vue 4 had.

Thing is that you can neither edit, nor create these 'pre-animated Vue meshes' in V5E, so what's the point in them? Unless, of course, you WILL be able to in Pro.

Where this takes you next though is, will Pro include a set of proper modelling tools to make them, or will there be closer integration with a modelling program? Before Shade bought CL I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see an integration of Shade and Vue, doesn't really make sense now though does it? Maybe E-on are going for a complete suite to take on the real big boys? I actually wouldn't bet against it.

John

I agree John- I think E-on's out to take on MAX, Lightwave and Maya- not all in one big bite in the next release of Vue Pro- but I think they envision Vue Pro as offering "Big Boy" features at Mid-Level pricing. Someone was eventually going to do it- and I think E-on's headed that way. And yes- it will be interesting to see what E-on plans to sell in their new on-line store- maybe "Instant Animation" VOB's?

Veritas,

that's what I think too, and I wouldn't have given a really, really, small thing for their chances before I tested V5E. The fact that V5E "Instant Radiosity" render solution is up there with the best, in quality and speed, is already annoying the t*ts off the "Reflective Sphere Over a Chequerboad" brigade has changed my mind. The number of your photon bounces, relative to your bucket size, bores the hell out of me, I hear enough of that at work!

For sure the new online store will be selling "Instant Animation", where do you suppose some of the most notable Vue artists have disappeared to over the last couple of months? But what are they making the content in?

John

Making the stuff in Vue Pro 5 Beta??? Great way to do a beta- with experienced computer artists who will really test the limits- and then be making stuff to sell. Not a bad plan...

"They already will. Anything DAZ makes they will rig for any program. It is, however, by request only at this point. So all you have to do is ask them." Well, I did ask them today. Their MINIMUM job bid is $5000.00! So basically, if anyone wants one of their models rigged for Max or Lightwave specifically, that's the least amount they'll accept to do it. In other words, they don't take on small jobs by request. Just thought you should know.

"Someone was eventually going to do it- and I think E-on's headed that way." I think Softimage beat them to it. XSI Foundation is under $500, and has many of the features most of the "big boys" have. It also has one of the best renderers in the biz attached to it (MentalRay), so I'd say Eon is a little late there. ;-)

How does it handle Poser figures? Does it import them as easily as Vue does? I think what E-on sees is the vast amounts of Poser content that's out there ready to be tapped into by MANY folks who spend a considerable amount every month on Poser models. I don't hear of anyone connected to the Poser community talking about XSI Foundation. Not knocking the software, as Softimage is a great company, but if its so good and useful to Poser users- where's the BUZZ about it? The only other software that seems to be in a good price range, and which gets pretty good "buzz" among Poser users is Cinema 4D. Surprising to me is how LITTLE I hear about Truespace or Carrara as a prefered Poser companion software.

I will agree. There is little talk about Carrara or trueSpace in relation to Poser. I have both of these, and only Carrara does a good job with Poser figures; if you have the tranSposer plugin. With that, it does as well as Vue 4. Can't say yet about Vue 5, as I am eagerly awaiting delivery of it today.

Until Vue 5 (at least on paper for me), Carrara did the best job of rendering Poser figures IMHO. Vue 5 may very well change that, as well as Carrara's upgrade due at the end of this month may change it back again. I am also eagerly awaiting it as well.

In the end, it's all good. It's the end product, the render, that counts. Once that's done, it doesn't matter what was used. They are just tools.

" How does it handle Poser figures? Does it import them as easily as Vue does?" Nope. Doesn't import PZ3 files at all. However, that could change since XSI is now available to the masses (hobbyists) at an affordable price. You said, "I agree John- I think E-on's out to take on MAX, Lightwave and Maya- not all in one big bite in the next release of Vue Pro- but I think they envision Vue Pro as offering "Big Boy" features at Mid-Level pricing." That is the quote I was responding to. The fact that there's already a mid-level (pricing) program out that can take on the "features" offered by the big boys, which is XSI. I wasn't counting Poser integration as something important to the feature list of high-end apps.