I have been looking at a lot of work done by vue, and I'm totally speechless! Could someone explain the main difference between the two. I have been using Bryce for a while now, but find the finished products so "rough" if that makes sense. I am thinking of switching when I can afford it, and would like some imput from other users. Thank You in advance S AS

Attached Link: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Products/vue5infinite/

The pulse side of Bryce is it has a better render engine. (My opinion) Vue has easier controls. Poser imports. Faster renders and upgrades. I have been waiting for Bryce 5.5 for sometime now. Get Vue and skip Bryce Dale

The difference is like the difference between a sports car and a truck when you have a lot of moving to do. The sports car (Bryce) is quick and pleasant to drive; the truck (Vue) is slow and clunky. But if you have a lot of stuff to shift, you use the truck.

What you can do is to download the demo version of Vue (whatever version you are looking for) and test it.

"bryce is perfectly fine as is" This humors me :-) Wonder why so many Bryce user abandon Bryce and get Vue..... Wabe offered the best advice, don't ask us all of us have different opinions. For me Vue is a slick sports car with all of the high tech stuff and Bryce is just an old truck.

No, not at all. The analogy is Gets things done = truck = Vue Nice to drive = car = Bryce By and large in any difference bewteen the two that involves render abilities (engine, terrains, atmosphere, lighting) Vue wins and anything to do with actually using the program Bryce wins. It's Vue that has camera controls so sluggish as to be practically unusable. It's Bryce that gives you one keypress changes to major views and one click access to all stored cameras, not Vue. Where's the ability to drag objects constrained to X or Y axis? In Bryce, not in Vue. Where's area rendering for spot-checking detail? In Bryce (two varieties) not Vue. And so on; I could continue at length. Bryce has a steeper learning curve, which is why many people never "get" it, whereas the Vue interface is more immediately accessible. But believe me, if you know how to get the best out of the Bryce interface, Vue handles like an old truck. Unresponsive and clumsy. But it GETS THINGS DONE IN THE END. That's why Bryce users switch. Even if Bryce is nicer to use, I can't any longer be waiting two hours for what Vue would render in under ten minutes.

I expect with confidence that the interface will get better because the tools are there all right ! :)

I played with the demo last night. I reallylike it.. It just seems the renders are nicer, and more professional looking... Perhaps I am still not very good with Bryce yet lol... THanks for all the wonderful input everyone... AS

Phantast, all the problems you mention, I don't see as a problem at all. Sounds like you may need get into the basics of Vue again. Don't mean that offending at all, don't get me wrong. There are actually a number of ways to constrained axis in Vue. Also I've got no problem the camera controls at all. I never cared for the way Bryce does things, I find everything so much easier to accomplish in Vue.

Alone the fact that Vue offers a 4 windows view means a lot to me. With complex scenes the fastest switch between views ion Bryce can't be as fast as in Vue where you have all views already there. And need only dive into one when finetuning needs to be done. I used Bryce from version 1 to version 5. Since i found Vue i never looked back one moment. Especially the switch between the different views i always found a big restriction. And the difference between main view and camera view i never really understood there. However, everybody has their personal povs. This is good. Thats why i proposed the demo version. The best way to find out whether a software fits or not.

well phantast if you would have read the rest of my reply you would have seen that i said i would never imagine myself using bryce (when comparing it to the v5 generation), saying that bryce is fine as is, but recomending vue is called being polite, bryce is a fine application, just how it is, but its not up to par with vue in my opinion. In other words theres no need for me to gunn down bryce just to recomend vue, vue is the better application by quite a wide margain in my opinion but bryce is still a capable app.

Arctic Scorpio you already have Bryce so keep it and Get Vue. It's what I did and very pleased with my decision. Cheers

From what I've heard, www.cgtalk.com is planning to open up a Vue Infinite forum upon the release of VI.

By contrast, I seriously doubt that CGtalk will ever feature a Bryce forum.

I used Bryce through version 4.

Vue does it all -- the program needs improvement, sure.....but what software package doesn't?

Get Vue. You'll be glad that you did.

I should mention that there's one thing that the Bryce folks could do that would help Bryce out tremendously --

Simply make it as easy to import Poser scenes into Bryce as it is to import them into Vue.

That would go a l-o-n-g way towards increasing the appeal of Bryce.

E-on understands the fact that the ease of .pz3 import is key to their program's popularity.

Victoria sells many, many copies of Poser.

As unpalatable as the idea is to some: Victoria sells a lot of copies of Vue, too.

"Simply make it as easy to import Poser scenes into Bryce as it is to import them into Vue." That's one of the features why I did get Vue 4. "E-on understands the fact that the ease of .pz3 import is key to their program's popularity." DAZ doesn't seem to understand that fact at all and keeps on pushing D/S on us. They seem to have something against Poser. Even the important poll (DAZ called it that way) they had last year, showed that far more users wanted direct pz3 import over D/S import, but still DAZ keeps on developing good integration between D/S and Bryce. They way DAZ treats Poser users and their unwillingness to give clear information on the features and release date of Bryce 5.5, made me abandon Bryce now and get Vue 5 Pro. E-On runs their comapny much better then DAZ does, they give excact release dates, reveal of the features of their applications a long time before the release dat and their tech support are very helpfull. Also E-On listens well to their customers, another thing DAZ hardly ever does. More then enough reasons for me to abandon Bryce for ever. I'm not placing my trust in some company that promises the release of an application beginning of last Fall, then pushes it back to the end of the years, then promises to release it by the end of February and then telling that it will be released in a few more weeks (which could be even more then 3 weeks still acoording to their few weeks). Now DAZ is even denying that they've promised to release Bryce 5.5 beginning of the Fall 2004 and later pushed that release that to end of 2004, while it has been in newsletters and on forum announcements. I'm not placing my trust in such a company treating me as a users as some kind of uninformed fool, not knowing what he's doing at all. Again even if the features would be the same, the way DAZ treats this whole Bryce 5.5 release process is more then enough reason to drive me to E-On.

OK Polax, you can teach me something. 1) How did you get the area render? If I try to do that, the selected area blows up to the size of the entire render window, which is completely useless. 2) How do you drag an object constrained on the x axis? I have searched for this feature to no avail. I have never quite persuaded myself that e-on left out such a basic feature, but it seems to be well-hidden. On the subject of four-pane views, I think these are over-rated. You can't study all four at once; one tends to look at one at a time. Each window is so small I feel very restricted. With Bryce, switching between different full-screen views is as quick as moving your eye from one small pane to another in Vue. Incidentally, I think one of the reasons that Vue is so woefully sluggish is precisely this: the program is continually polling five different windows for changes to the scene, and the software isn't fast enough to cope. If you have the material browser open as well, it has to poll five more windows! I should say also that I'm not running down aspects of Vue because I want to persuade people to move to Bryce, but because I would like e-on to add the functionality that's missing.

I have to agree with Phantast:
Once really well used to both interfaces Bryce works faster. It's easier to accurately place objects because of the fast switching between bigger views. It's able to handle more objects at once etcetera.

Once the scene is ready and you want to render it then Vue is better and faster by far (that is... if you don't enable too many gimmicks).

For me enough reason to use Vue for now. Doesn't mean I don't miss the, in my opinion, faster and easier to use Bryce interface

The cameras in VUE suck suck suck

I would use VUE so much more if I didn't have to spend an hour getting the damned camera moved into position which would take 30 seconds in any other app VUE is like a Cadillac with a loose steering wheel. Fix the steering and you have a full blown luxury vehicle.

Message edited on: 03/02/2005 06:20

What is the problem? I select the camera as object and position it as precise and quick as all other object. If you use the wheels under the little preview window i agree. But heavenly you can use the normal positioning tools as well - like all other objects. Is that possible in Bryce? I forgot.

yup, that's possible... But of course you hardly feel the need for it there because the other way works easier :)

I wonder if everyone is talking about the same version of Vue here?

Vue Pro makes a difference over V4. IMO - Vue Pro makes enough of a difference to justify the ++++price tag. I have to admit that I was never quite satisfied by V4's functionality. But Vue Pro carried it for me.

Of course, once Vue Infinite arrives, then we'll have another consideration altogether.........

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/%7Evue/backroom/compare.html

I use Vue4 and it works fine for me, only problem is when rendering something large using Ultra setting I have to go watch a movie or something...is any later version of Vue faster?

To me Bryce has an easier (if not proprietary) interface, but Vue is vastly more powerful / option loaded which I would trade in a heartbeat to produce incredible images. Have no problems moving objects (cameras, etc) using numerical editors. Somwhat concerned about Bryce's "foster child" treatment from Metacreations, Corel and Daz. Bryce's lack of Poser animation import is a SERIOUS deficiency - soon to be fixed by DAZ hopefully? Go Vue, be confident.

wabe - in Bryce you can position the camera as an object or use the "arrow" controls. In Vue you are forced to position it as an object because the arrows are so difficult and unresponsive. In many situations using arrow controls is much easier. In Vue I find I have to: 1) Select camera in object list, 2) Go to the top view, 3) Pan and resize the top view because all I can see is the camera, not the scene, in that little window, 4) Rotate the camera, 5) Go to the side view, 6) Rotate the camera again in the vertical plane. In Bryce I have to: 1) Make one quick twiddle of the trackball with the mouse to get the same effect. I will try the constrained dragging, but in most 3D applications you hold down a key while dragging, which is simpler thanhaving to select a lock control. The area render described above is not very helpful when you can't (in V4E) change the size of the main window. If I am rendering to, say, 800x600, then I want to be able to render just part of the image at exactly that resolution. Anything else is not much use. The fact that Bryce gives one two separate ways to do just this is rather nice, and another indication about how much thought went into the way Bryce was designed.

"I will try the constrained dragging, but in most 3D applications you hold down a key while dragging, which is simpler thanhaving to select a lock control."

Same with Vue, like most apps holding control down constrains.

"Pan and resize the top view because all I can see is the camera, not the scene, in that little window"

You can turn off that behaviour in the options, it iritates me too. Message edited on: 03/03/2005 07:13

There is also a little known shortcut in Vue regarding the camera. By default, the trackball orients the camera around its own position (look up, down, left, right). If you select an object, the trackball will rotate the camera AROUND that object.

That is something I used a lot in Bryce. I know how to do it Vue, but it's impossible unless you have very few objects in the scene. Any movement of the trackball and Vue freezes for three seconds, the cursor even disappears, and then the camera lurches either too far or not far enough. With Bryce the camera smoothly follows the mouse movements even with large complex scenes. This is a major pain in using Vue.

heh, I'm one that thinks Bryce's GUI is clunky, actually one of the few programs I ever got that I HAD to read some of the manual before I could do anything with it, and the material editor is still almost entirely opaque to me. As for the panning speed, I just tried it out with Vue 5 pro studio (loaded a bunch of terrains and set them up to 2048 resolution). And strangely, only had it slow down with view modes OTHER than smooth shaded LOL (ie wireframe). So I loaded up vue d'esprit 4 and loaded a huge scene I had made with it, and yep, had to go to options to tone down the drawing and redrawing quality to smoothout the panning. I'd say the two things I prefer about Bryce are 1)that "foamy seawater" material, even though the Vue's foamy water material looks more like actual foamy seawater, I like the bubble effect in the Bryce material for OTHER purposes. And I haven't been able to match it in Vue ...yet ;-). and 2) The ability to do LOW ground fog close to the camera.

It is funny that the discussion rotates only around the user interface here. And that is something that some like and others don't - for both programs. No word about render speed - there is a good example in the Vue gallery - i think from yesterday. A comparison between Bryce and Vue. Result: The Bryce interface is smoother but Bryce is still rendering while he already postes the Vue image. :-))) Isn't it result that counts? To me it does. I will never ever forget the 3 weeks renderer i had once with Bryce. 3 weeks of a blocked computer, 3 weeks in fear that a power down could crash all these efforts.

Well when I listed the two things I preferred about Bryce, the implication was that everything else about Vue was better! The thing that really sold me was when I tried importing poser into the Vue demo, it freakin worked almost perfectly, none of that going through daz studio (and learning yet another entirely different interface - cough) and even then having issues with bump maps and such, so having to deal with Bryce's material editor (aaaaggghh) LOL But Yeah the render speed is definitely up there too ;-)

wabe, the reason why we are only debating the interface is that it is a given that Vue outperforms Bryce as soon as you have hit the render button. That's why I'm here and not in the Bryce forum. That's why I put up with the deficiencies of the Vue interface. I await Vue5I with interest ...

I wrote a long reply going through the UI design of each package but it vanished into the ether... To summarise it though. While a lot of people like Bryce's interface and don't like Vues for me its the other way round. The ultimate reason I don't use Bryce is that its interface drives me up the wall. Maybe its my background in engineering, design and CAD or having worked with high end 3d packages in the past. I found and still find Bryces interface to be over designed, wasteful of screen space and not based on standard UI design rules. So just in case anyone is reading this thread and thinks everyone doesn't like the Vue's interface but loves Bryce's it isn't the case.

wabe,
It's still rendering and I expect it to do so over the weekend (started it at work and it will definitely take a LONG time to stop rendering). Then again, I used about 100 lights in the Bryce scene (a little bit overdone ;) and as far as I can see, the Bryce result comes out slightly better than the Vue.

The result is what counts for sure. That's why I'm working with Vue mostly these days. It's NOT because Vue is doing it faster but because the render engine is better to me. I can render at night and I don't mind if I have to save it in the morning and then continue rendering (yes it's possible to save during a render in Bryce and then continue rendering again, so who cares how long it takes in Bryce?)

But when you try to use options that are simply not working because it's so darn slow in Vue then it irritates. Yes, I know there are work-arounds and if Eon says that this is the only way to work really well with Vue then so be it: DROP the options that are not working!

But... Why wouldn't it be possible to make Vue's interface work 100 times smoother like Bryce and still have Vue's render engine? The really slow interface is exactly what irritates most ex-Bryce users (including me) once the number of objects goes up. Change that and Bryce won't stand a chance anymore.

As it is now I see a lot of really good artists (way better than I) keeping Bryce. Simply because they work with it for a long time every day. They feel that the need for a better interface than Vue's is more important than the render engine. If needed they have tricks to come up with the same results.

It's all a matter of personal preference. I dislike Bryce's interface. I can't stand all those colored figures all over the place...ackkkkk. I've always used a Windows based interface, so that's what I feel more comfortable with. So basically ditto Impish :) Just my personal preferences.

This is getting into religious matters; namely those who worship at the Kai Kraus Temple as opposed to those who worship at the Church Of The Big Four. For what it does, Bryce is okay....but it also has not been in active development since before Vue 4 was released. That is a long time for a CG program to languish, and the world has moved on. There are significant engine features that Bryce simply is too old to have (HDRI, IBL, more than basic animation capabilities, =nothing= approaching Vue Infinite's Ecosystem, etc). It works, and does a good job. But you have to keep in mind that people in general have a real dislike of learning new things. The Bryce workflow is next to useless in Vue, and vice versa. If you are talking stills, you can get good images out of both. If animation, Vue wins the case, no question.

I await Vue5I with interest ...

So do I.

The really slow interface is exactly what irritates most ex-Bryce users

This statement contains a certain amount of irony.

No one seems to discuss "ex-Vue users".

There must be reason(s) for that..........

Not that Vue can't be improved. Of course it can. Any software package can be.

But......in the final analysis.......Vue beats Bryce.

At least for an objective observer.

Once again: V5I is going to have a forum opened for it at CGtalk. That'll never happen with Bryce.

No one seems to discuss "ex-Vue users". There must be reason(s) for that.......... Yup, Because Vue is better (and because we're in THIS forum of course ;). All I was saying is that I wished it didn't have such a slow interface. If it was fast, like Bryce then it would leave Bryce far behind on ALL aspects. I too prefer Vue's interfce EXCEPT that it is so slow

Yeah Vue Inifinite looks really nice from what I've seen of that feature set.

"Once again: V5I is going to have a forum opened for it at CGtalk. That'll never happen with Bryce. "

Heheh, I guess that now that a version of vue costs $600 it counts as a "professionally used" program lol.

Actually, it'll be interesting seeing how Vue gets treated over there - one of the big things that some cgtalk folks have against bryce is the "click a button, get a sky/tree/terrain" sort of thing (that was a big issue with their space opera challenge over there) and if that finger can be pointed at bryce (rightly or wrongly), then it should/could be pointed at Vue just as easily. I do honestly hope that its a successful forum, but it might take a few people over there to change their ideas for that to happen, unless the pricetag is the deciding factor for "street cred" over there.

So, it shall be interesting to see what happens...

Message edited on: 03/04/2005 23:23

Heheh, I guess that now that a version of vue costs $600 it counts as a "professionally used" program lol.

There you go -- that's the answer.

All that Curious Labs needs to do is to start charging $1700.00 for Poser. At that price point, Poser would be accepted as a "professional" app.

I think we'd need to market a fallout shelter if that ever happened ;)

v5i earns the pro tag due to its ability to fit in with your existing production line + of course eco system and some of the other new features also makes it alot more pro then bryce and v4/v5e but the biggest deciding factor is the way it can integrate with the production line (in my opinion of course)

You can dislike the Bryce interface on aesthetic grounds if you choose - there's no arguing about taste - but the fact remains that it is much more ergonomic than Vue's interface. A lot of thought has gone into it, which impresses you the more, the more you use it. However, you do have to learn how to exploit it to best advantage, and I think a lot of people who criticise it have never really worked out how to do that. The price for non-standardness is that familiarity comes more slowly.

quote:

DaleB wrote : those who worship at the Kai Kraus Temple as opposed to those who worship at the Church Of The Big Four

*giggles as quietly as possible while she tries to discern which temple old vue users worship at in 2005
~ kai = 3 letters = vue; or
~ church of big four= vue4?; or
~ hmmmmm multiple choice, tick all that apply = VUE~RULES~4~ME *

~beck
ps. sokay - it's safe, I'll take the pink pill now
note to self...don't take the green one so early ;-p

I don't know Bryce, but I'm really surprised that nobody even mentioned my preferred method of camera control in Vue (I gave up on the trackball immediately): Simply moving the main view window. Even with a reasonably large scene this works acceptably fluently for me and is rather accurate. For extremely precise control, I use the object controls and number entries, but to look for the right POV or using working cameras I mostly use the main view.

Just a little update. Now that it is official I can tell you that in Vue Infinite you can swap between views with the numeric keys. numeric 0 for main view, numeric 1 for... etc etc.

wabe - that sounds like such a nice feature to have :) edit - is that a default thing or customisable?

Message edited on: 03/16/2005 04:48

It is customizable :)