Hello All, I've been a member here at 'Rosity for a few years. I've been a Poser 4/3dMax 4 user since the beginning. Most of the time my work consists of still imagery. Poser I own, but 3DSMAX I don't. I had been given version 4 to learn on a few years back from work and hence don't have the company support for it. It is also now three versions behind. While I love it's abilty to edit mesh's and it's traditional 3d program layout, I don't have the cash to buy a new version of the program. ($2000 or $3000) It's only a hobby after all. I also want to be able to do a lot of outdoor images and have the tech support of the program maker. Long story short, I've been looking at Vue as a new tool for me and I've downloaded the version 5 d'esprit trial. I immediately liked what I saw by following the quick tutorial on the e-on site, but once I started to try it with poser, I've been a bit more nervous. Here are some questions I have before I go and decide to plunk down the cash for a new program. 1 - What are the main differences between the pro version and the d'esprit versions. I've read the website, but would like a more user-friendly explanation of the differences. I have noticed that the handling of objects seems a bit more clunky compared with max, but perhaps that's due to my newness with the program. Does the pro version have more tools for manipulating objects? 2 - Does the d'esprit version have any tools for mesh manipulation? I.E. when a poser figure "pokes through" the clothing, I can pull on bits and parts of the mesh in max and fix the poke through. Can this be done in Vue? 3 - Can Sub-parts of a mesh be edited. In max I have the ability to click on polygons/faces/or whole groups within a single mesh. I.e. when a poser figure is brought in, the hair becomes one with the figure (if it was parented). Can this object be separated from the body? 4 - In max, the starting scene is just all black. A figure renders in black, etc. In vue there is a horizon, haze, sun, etc. Can I get a similar setup to max where all that renders is the object? 5 - the Vue 5 d'esprit version is supposed to have the ability to quickly create multiple versions a plant, and the new one would be different than the first. In order to do this, I have to go into the plant editor each time, instead of just clicking where I want the new plant. How do I use this "solid growth" thing. (sorry for the description, I'm not even sure what it's supposed to do in the first place) I may have more questions, but for now that's all I can think of. Thanks for your help. I really like what I see with Vue, but am finding the change a bit hard. Thanks, Dragontales

1. I deal with all poke thru in a paint program, that said, I've accidently at times moved my clothes, off the import & have been to adjust & fix rather quickly 3. You can edit the material not the mesh
2. You could place your object on a separate layer & only render that layer.
3. There is no plant editor in Vue5 only in Pro, that said, in Vue5 there is a scatter & replicate feature, that can be used on any object. When you click on a Vue plant(in any version) you get a new "version" of that plant. That works ONLY on the Vue plants not plant objects.

That's all I can help you with...hope at least this much helps :). More of the experts will be along shortly, I'm sure.

Message edited on: 11/22/2004 17:08

Message edited on: 11/22/2004 17:11

For starters, Vue Esprit and Pro are not modeling applications, they have primitives and the new metablobs go a long way to improving their capabilities but I won't lie, there are NO mesh editing capabilities here, you can move, stretch or rotate meshes and pieces of meshes (provided they are a separate entity) but as far as actually editing a mesh (or parts of a mesh) Vue is not capable of it (which is fine for most users anyway as adding mesh editing capabilities would probably push the price higher and is not what most people try to use Vue for). As for splitting the hair off a poser figure, you can edit the material using the material browser window without having to select the individual object. I seem to remember (but can't test at the moment) that you can bring a poser character in and have it split the figure into it's separate parts, but then again I have Mover and that might be a mover feaure only. Regarding your plant question (as dlk30341 mentioned), clicking on the plant creation tool creates a new version, you don't need to use the editor to create a new one, the editor is a Pro only feature but will be back with the release of Vue 5 Pro (eon says by the end of the year). As far as differences in the Pro version, there are more advanced lighting options (or will be in Vue 5 Pro anyway, right now the variations between Vue 5 Esprit and Vue 4 Pro are a little frustrating). Pro has more advanced animation and exporting features for cross application support. Pro also has the plant editor of course and a few extra rendering features (hiding objects from a render using the browser rather than different settings in the render box), saving embedded alpha information in renders (for easy masking) and a few other things I can't remember off the top of my head. Rendering in a black background can be done by loading the atmosphere "Black Back" from the effects/others folder. If that isn't in the demo then simply reduce fog and haze to 0 and fog in sky to 0 and that should do it for you. Bottom line, if you are still considering Vue, wait for the Pro version of Vue 5 and see what that looks like, it will make Vue 4 Pro obsolete at that point and it will have all the newest features available from Vue 5 Esprit.

1 - What are the main differences between the pro version and the d'esprit versions. At the present stage the two programs are hardly comparable because Esprit is of a whole version number above, this means that Esprit 5 has features that Pro 4 does not have (but which Pro 5 will surely have). What Pro 4 has that Esprit 5 still does not have, is: - the plant editor - advanced lighting options - some advanced interface features - advanced handling of imported objects (like replacement) - some advanced animation features - export of objects and scenes - and some more You can expect Pro 5 (announced for the end of the year) to have all that Esprit 5 has, that is: - new rendering features (GA, GI, radiosity, HDRI) - new function editor in a redesigned material editor - parametric terrains - text tool - metablobs - integrated post processing features And of course, Pro 5 will have more new features, which are undisclosed now. 2 - Does the d'esprit version have any tools for mesh manipulation? No, neither Pro nor Esprit have polygon editing functions aside from smoothing meshes in import 3- Can Sub-parts of a mesh be edited. Can this object be separated from the body? Separated, yes (only if you imported an object defined with groups); edited, no. 4 - In max, the starting scene is just all black. A figure renders in black, etc. In vue there is a horizon, haze, sun, etc. Can I get a similar setup to max where all that renders is the object? Yes. 5 - the Vue 5 d'esprit version is supposed to have the ability to quickly create multiple versions a plant, and the new one would be different than the first. In order to do this, I have to go into the plant editor each time, instead of just clicking where I want the new plant. No. The random process happens automatically each time a new plant is generated. It's a one-click thing. Besides, you can not enter any Plant editor in Esprit because there is not one. You can of course edit the Plant Editor in Pro. There you can define the new basic aspect of a plant. After you save it, when you click to load it it get the random variations each time.

you can of course also load a white/black/grey etc image instead of a hdri in the atmosphere editor, which other then giving you some ibl advantages makes for a very easy setup to just render your objects and nothing else and did i mention it looks good to? :)

Awesome. Many Thanks for the indepth answers to my questions. It's one of the reason's I love Renderosity's Forums. So my basic answer is that If I want to use Vue/either version, I still need to have a Program that will let me edit Mesh. I suppose I could hold on to Max for that. So, then, one more question. In relation to Question 5 above, In order to create a new plant in d'esprit, is it necessary to always go back and click the plant icon, or is there a way to keep clicking in the view to create a new/randomly generated plant? It seems time consuming if you would always have to go, click the icon, select the new plant, and move it to where you want. One of the Demo video's showed them creating a "rubber plant" farm, and it looked a lot easier. I'm still not sure how they did it. Again, Thanks for all your help, Dragontales

When you click the right click the icon for the plants it will bring up the selection dialog box, if you want multiples of the same plant you can simply left click on the icon again and it will give you a new version of the last plant you selected. Hope that's what you were looking for.

Attached Link: https://secure.e-onsoftware.com/Support/ShowTutorial.php?t=Vue5Esprit/SolidgrowthGeneration&cf=/Pro

Well, no actually. I was looking through the tutorials on the e-on website and found this one about "Solid Growth" Showcasing Random Growth Technology. If you watch it it looks as if they only go to the plant icon once. The rest seem to get randomly generated. I'm just not sure how it's being done. Dragontales

Attached Link: https://secure.e-onsoftware.com/Products/vue5/index.php?Page=5

Just wanted to say that although the tutorial shows the pro version, this link goes to the vegetation page for Vue5 d'esprit and has a link to the same tutorial as above. Making me think that it can do it.

The only way you can do that is to use the scatter and replicate tools, which I've never used much anyway because it does it randomly and I like to place my vegetation in specific locations. Create the plant species you want, then (while it is selected) go to edit/scatter and replicate and that will take you to the dialog box you're looking for, just check the box for "with variations" and you should be all set. You'll have to play with the numbers a little bit in order to get the effect you're looking for though.

I guess this is not really what you have in mind, but I'll let you know anyway. :-) When I want multiple plants of a kind using SolidGrowth (using Vue d'Esprit 4), I go to the selection box for the first and place it. Afterwards, I shift my top view editor window so that the location for the next plant is in its middle and then left click the plant icon. I'm not sure whether there is a setting to control this, but in my setup, the new object will appear in the middle of the top view window. Indeed, you have to go to the icon each time, but for me, I think, this is the quickest way of positioning a variety of plants precisely. Clicking the plant icon is in my experience much less time consuming than correctly adjusting the height of each plant (lift and drop or drag manually) because they appear rarely at the actual terrain surface and dropping groups of plants will often leave some in midair over a wavy terrain when the first touch the ground. For really many plants, I use scatter / replicate or start with a group of plants that I copy / scale / rotate all over the place.

Just wanted to say thanks for the help with the replicator. I can see the good and bad points of using it. The one problem I am having is that when I use the scale command, It scales it in single directions sometimes, so that I get very elongated plants, rather than scaled in uniform direction. Any ideas on that? I'm sure I'm just using the tool wrong. Dragontales

Try scaling in the viewports instead of using the numerical values, if you grab one of the corners you should be able to scale it up or down uniformly. I don't know how you can do it in the numerical scale settings as easily, did you try multiplying the x, y, and z values by the same value, or rescale one value for what you want and figure out the scaling factor to apply to the other two values. Hope this helps.