I am new to the "World Generation" stuff... Can anyone help me understand the difference between Bryce and Vue?

Yikes....that's a toughie....to try & be unbiased LOL.

I would suggest going to e-onsoftware.com & review the feature list. There are more updates to Vue coming ealry next year :) IMHO...Vue rocks....they are constantly upgrading. Vue's lighting/plants & rendering engine are superb IMHO. The UI is easy, as it's windows based so to speak. The above mentioned website will give more explicit details.

Bryce - The UI is ancient...it hasn't been updated in years and as of NOW can't even compare to Vue. That said, Daz has recently bought Bryce from Corel & is currently working on mini upgrade from 5.0 to 5.5. There will likely be a complete upgrade sometime next year. Bryce renders if you are lucky take days! Their plants IMHO are hideous.

But of course, the bottom line is what fits you & your workflow the best. I would suggest, looking in the galleries here..under Bryce & Vue & try the free demos available to see which YOU like the best. Also, if have Poser, Vue is definately a lot easier...even with Daz putting out the Turbo Importer for Bryce, I haven't read too many good things about it, as in making life easier. Both camps are very loyal to there own choices & can become quite snitty at times when asked 1 way or the other which they prefer :)

Hope this helps :)

Message edited on: 12/22/2004 19:28

See my post here. Version 4.0 of Bryce is free. I prefer Vue but Bryce does seem to have better modeling ability, especially it's lattice support. I've seen some awesome models modeled in Bryce.

Bryce has a better rendering engine it might not be updated like Vue but If I had a choice for doing just landscapes as old and out dated Bryce is, the renderings are better. period. Now do I use Bryce or Vue? Vue; because I work with Poser. The ability to setup figures in Poser than place them in a Vue seen is almost unbeatable. Vue alone is not worth the price. The first problem with Vue is what I would call water pixaltion. Never quite rendering completely a water plain in the far distance. Second is Atmospheres changing the over all color of the materials, Bryce does the same thing but not as bad. If you want to do animation and have 12 computers with over 12ghz processing power with Mimic, Poser and Vue you can get it done. Dale

There is a lot about that issue in our backroom (link is right above in the header) - maybe you check that out as well. I have used Bryce for years. Then Vue came out on Mac. I tried it out, stayed and never looked back. Vue is so much more user friendly and the Poser import is unique.

I started with Bryce. I was soon frustrated with its interfact and I didn't like its plants. Found Vue, and like wabe, never looked back. It's ease of use won me over. And the plants are incredible.

I have used both extensively now, and regard myself as unbiased. The difficulties of using Poser figures in Bryce can be exaggerated. I made some tutorials (at phantast.actionbabecentral.com) that show how to streamline the process of importing Poser figures into Bryce. In both Bryce and Vue you still have to retexture for best effects, see thread below. True, Bryce plants are not as good as Vue's, but you get more of them than the stingy little collection in basic Vue. The main issues are the interface and the render speeds. Bryce's interface is quirky, but once you learn how to get the most out of it, it is far, far easier to use than Vue. It is lightning fast and responsive, and it is much easier to position things accurately. In Vue you click the mouse and three seconds later you get a response. But the Vue render engine is MUCH faster. People exaggerate how slow Bryce is - of course you can crank up the render times by adding more complex render options, but many of my Bryce scenes took 5-10 minutes to render. However, in my experience the Vue renderer is about ten times faster than Bryce's and that really swings it for me. Daz promises that Bryce 5.5 will have a much faster renderer. We'll see.

The speed and the quality of the VUE renders differs from image to image. (Ok, I'm using VUE4 Pro which offers quite a lot more rendering options than VUE4 "Classic"). When using DoF even the fastest machine will put you in the situation of waiting for your render (not only drinking a coffee but going to the shop, buying it, bringing it up, cleaning up the coffee machine, cook your coffee, drink it and afterwards have an extensive dinner or so lol). But with with VUE Pro you are able to do your own plants and stuff - so, there are practically no limits for you.

Quote: "Bryce has a better rendering engine it might not be updated like Vue but If I had a choice for doing just landscapes as old and out dated Bryce is, the renderings are better. period."

I tend not to agree with this statement at all. When I switched from Bryce 5 to Vue 4, I was so impressed with the Vue rendering engine. My images look so much better rendered in Vue 4 then they do in Bryce 5. Bryce landscapes and renders at times look very unrealistic, while I can achieve both realistic and artificial renders with Vue 4 easily. Never really got the hanf of creating realistic landscapes in Bryce 5. Now with the render engine improvements in Vue 5, I'm so glad I'm not using the ancient Bryce 5 rendering engine anymore.

Trees look so much better in Vue4 / 5 too. Direct Poser 5 support without any tricks and gimmicks is great too. Bryce 5.5 may have direct Poser support too, but it will not be Poser 5 support, only Poser 4 support. If it is as bad as the Poser support in DAZ Studio, I fear the worst....

Working with Vue 4 / 5 is so much more pleasant then working with Bryce 5. With all of the new improvements in Vue 5, I don't miss Bryce even a moment.

Also knowing DAZ owns Bryce now gives me mixed feelings about Bryce. As soon as I found out that that happened and when I noticed how much more joy Vue gives me, I sold Bryce 5. E-On has a great team of programmers, good tech support and a listening ear for their costumers. I'm afraid DAZ lacks most of these qualities. They have terrible support, tend to neglect costumers at large and judging from DAZ Studio (which I find a real joke) and it's many unresolved bugs, I fear Bryce will become a disaster.

I'll stick with Vue 5, since Bryce is lightyears behind at the moment. For me Vue is easy to use, great rendering engine, excellent plants and trees, excellent import abilities and great support.

Message edited on: 12/23/2004 07:47

aeilkama wrote: "Working with Vue 4 / 5 is so much more pleasant then working with Bryce 5." I find the reverse. Vue has me cussing and swearing at its slowness and kludginess and poor design. But I stick with it because the results are better. Another thing I like about Vue is the atmosphere editor, which is much more powerful than Bryce's. I like the way you can radically alter the look of an image by playing around with global diffuse/ambient settings. On the other hand, individual lights are more flexible in Bryce as you can set power and falloff separately, which is missing from Vue 4.

Check out the comparison page in the backroom if you want an history of past opinions about both software (and others). It comes down to a simple thing - people prefer Vue or Bryce for various reasons. Both software can create exceptional artwork when used properly (check out czarnyrobert for Vue and rochr for Bryce if you was comparable imagery). Both are available as cheap, free or demo versions. Just download them and see for yourself which one fits you best :) Remember though - Vue and Bryce can easily generate landscapes (and much more) but they are not 'world generators'. If you want to play with generating entire fractal worlds, you will have to check out Artmatic and Mojoworld.

Indeed. They have the reputations of being "landscape programs" but it's better to think of them as all-purpose render engines.

"but it's better to think of them as all-purpose render engines"

Phantast, wouldn't most 3D apps outside of Poser then be considered the same? I mean, what do Bryce or Vue's render engine offer that isn't available in most other apps in the same price bracket? At the core, both apps offer terrific landscape tools and capability (which is what's really special and unique about them).

I already own Bryce 5, and I've been waiting for the release of Vue 5 Pro. I find Bryce more than satisfactory for outdoor environment creation (aside from animated vegitation, etc.), but I can think of many things I would need from a render engine that it just doesn't do currently, at least not without extensive and time-consuming workarounds. Same with Vue 5 d'Esprite. Of course, my primary focus is on animation compositing. I'm hoping the Pro version of Vue or the next version of Bryce will address some of these things, like more extensive G-Buffer output functionality for postwork in video fx software, which would really help make the render engine "all-purpose" as you said. Currently, only depth and alpha channels are available in Vue I think, but there's no output for a velocity pass, specular, shadow, ambient, diffuse, etc. etc. :-) Message edited on: 12/24/2004 03:01

No, because some are primarily modellers rather than renderers.

"No, because some are primarily modellers rather than renderers" Hmmm The only one I can think of like that off hand is Rhino. Truespace, Carrara, Shade, etc. all have powerful rendering abilities that are equal to or surpass Bryce/Vue's functionality as a renderer. Which brings me back to the notion that Vue and Bryce are both primarily landscape/outdoor scenery generators, because that's what they do most efficiently. For for other scene types like interiors, I don't see how it's any harder to create a great render in Cararra or Shade (for instance) than in Vue or Bryce. Happy Holidays. :-)

Bryce just never did it for me.

Vue, on the other hand -- fit like a glove.

Yes, I share the frustration of "hiccups" and "hesitation" while dealing with Vue scenes -- but Vue's overall interface is much easier to use than Bryce, IMO.

I'm waiting for Vue Infinite, the successor to Vue 4 Pro. Then we will see what we will see.