Does anybody know if the Vue Fusion plug in's will be free or are they going to charge for it?

I very much doubt that it will be free, griffin. Cheers

it will of course cost money, it doesnt even require you to have vue5 infinite for some of the things so of course its going to cost money. and further more, the "only" ones interested in such a product have 3dsmax or maya and can therefore afford to pay a premium price to be able to workinside of their main 3d application so theres no point in giving it away. then again, well know more once its released, but i woudnt hold my breath hoping it will be free :) just my opinion tho

It seems odd we haven't heard anything about what Fusion will cost. Will it be $20, or $200? And why wouldn't it be free? Vue Fusion is not really a separate program; it's an interface plug in between Maya/Lightwave/C4D and Vue 5 Infinite. You need a licensed copy of Vue 5 Infinite to use it. The Fusion plug in without V5I wouldn't do anything. I don't think this is a "of course it's going to cost something" case. Vue would go a long way toward cementing market dominance by giving this plug in away. Of course, I don't doubt any company will charge for something they think someone will pay for.

E-on isn't famous for giving away anything!!! And true, it's Fusion is aimed at the big studios, so I doudt it will be free too! Moreover, it will give the Max/Maya/C4D users the possibility to render their Vue scenery with Mental Ray or Cinema's advanced renderer, which means lots of time saving on the rendering process, because, let's face it Vue is very slow to render. So I really doubt it will be free. But I guess the demo will!

I'm hoping Fusion will cost no more than $200-250. It effectively bridges the serious animation shortcomings in Vue5 right now. As it stands the animation timeline editor is lacking in Pro level controls. Adjusting multiple pitch and bank in a camera path results in poor or even jerky transitions. There are hacks like targeting nulls, but they are not full proof.

By moving the timeline features into a pro host app, E-On is spared having to engineer these in Vue. I guess in the end getting Vues advanced features melded/welded onto a host animation application is the next best thing. A kind of best of both worlds.

From what I have seen... you won't need Vue5I in order to use Fusion. You WILL need Vue5I if you want to be able to alter any of the scenes. For instance, if your friend sends you a Vue5I scene to render via Fusion and Lightwave - which is one of the 3D apps not mentioned above - you can still render it. But... you can't change any of the Vue5I items UNLESS you have Vue5I.

At least that's how I understand it. :)

Megalodon

PS. And I'm pretty sure that it won't be free.

No, the post on Cornucopia specifically said you would need a licensed version of Vue 5 Infinite for the plug in. I guess this is what ticks me off about e-on. They have a great software product in the Vue line, but then somebody in management or marketing drops the ball. Nobody knows exactly what Fusion is or what it is capable of or what it will cost. e-on goes to Siggraph and Fusion looks like a cool product, but the design community is left wondering exactly how this product will fit in with the workflow and if it will be affordable.

You can read about Fusions features at the folloeing link
** E-Ons Fusion Features**

And it looks like you will need a seperate license of Vue 5 Inf to use it

*Requires a separate license of Vue 5 Infinite. Vue objects cannot be edited independently in Max/Maya without prior export from Vue.
Vue Fusion is expected to ship this fall. A version of Vue Fusion for LightWave and Cinema4D is currently under development.

Rich,

It DOES say that, but notice that it is only an asterisk to a point:

Edit Vue 5 Infinite environments directly from within Max or Maya (using the Vue interface*).

*Requires a separate license of Vue 5 Infinite. Vue objects cannot be edited independently in Max/Maya without prior export from Vue.

To me this suggests that Vue5I is only needed in order to edit objects/scenes. This leads me to believe that if someone e-mailed me a Vue5I scene/Fusion scene I could load it into my application (Maya, Max, C4D, LW) without having a license of Vue5I. I may be wrong, but this is what it seems to imply.

Megalodon

Well, if the Vue export works as it does now, with texture maps that have nothing in common with the original Vue materials, this is not going to work for the big studios!

Bruno, it is funny you should say that...because ever since Vue 3 I have tried "baking" the textures of terrains when exporting them and it was impossible...it seems the textures have never had any relation to their exported "version". Cheers

Vue tries to convert its procedural textures into bitmaps, but fails big time everytime, it can't even export properly the alpha map for the tree leaves!

bruno, I don't think this statement is correct. "Moreover, it will give the Max/Maya/C4D users the possibility to render their Vue scenery with Mental Ray or Cinema's advanced renderer, which means lots of time saving on the rendering process, because, let's face it Vue is very slow to render." From what I understand, the Vue parts of the scene are still rendered by Vue. There might a speed increase for the other parts of the scene, but probably not in the Vue parts.

Oops, you' re right ggriffaw, Vue parts rendered in Vue. Wishful thinking, I guess!

It looks like Fusion replaces the current synch plugin and removes the need for composite work one would normaly use after two seperate renders.

"..In one single render pass, Max or Maya elements will be rendered together with Vue elements, accurately matching shadows, reflections and illumination to deliver totally blended CG footage without requiring any additional effort..."

By using the host 3D apps interface, hopefully this will allow better animation controls of Vue cameras and objects. The more I read it the more it looks like the synch plug on steroids. If it overides Vues current animation timelines short comings, that would be a big plus.

Of course that feature list is not complete yet

"A detailed feature list will soon be available at the e-on software website."

Oddly the first beta updates of V5I of the pulled betas from July fixed the problems I'd been sending back and forth with tech support at e-on about texture maps. While using the beta I happily exported objects with texture maps made in Vue that matched the texture seen in Vue. I'm hoping the fix will be in again when the next update becomes available.

Oh, cool to hear this is just one of those bugs!

Attached Link: http://www.cornucopia3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=615

That's kinda what I thought. Thanks for clearing at least that much up war2! :) Megalodon