Can someone give me a quick run-down on the features of Vue d'Esprit? I have looked at the site, see the features..I just want an explanation from some users. What exactly is SolidGrowth...can the plants actually/realistically be animated as growing(ie. flower petal opening, vine growing)? How good is the rendering engine, from what I have seen, the images seem to be pixelated, can someone direct me to some high-quality Vue image sites? Thanks Nick

Ok I looked at the gallery on the E-ON site very impressed, these are all rendered in program? Still like some explanation from users. Thanks Nick

"What exactly is SolidGrowth...can the plants actually/realistically be animated as growing(ie. flower petal opening, vine growing)?" I am not into animation and not sure if this can be done, but I think so as there is example of animated morphing in the Vue manual. Guess it takes some figuring out as how to do it. "SolidGrowth" is very unique from E-on, it just that for each same vegetation type you plant in your scene layout, it has slight variation or shall I say, different for each similiar vegetation. For more examples of Vue images, do visit the Vue gallery and you do find Vue does a very good job for its price. Btw, not sure what you meant by high-quality Vue image...it be clearer if you can link us to an example. Bill

heyas; 'solid growth' is the name of the vue vegetation generation tool. it does not grow vegetation, it just creates vegetation types with variations (as tesign said). i dunno what morphing thin in the vue manual you mean, tesign... not the frog to stone thing? but no, i would say that animating a tree to grow, or a flower to sprout and bud, would not be possible. or, should i say, not without a lot of work and trickery. :)

Hee! x2...bloodsong...you're right..."not without a lot of work and trickery"...scale the trunk while the leave is remove from small to big...put in some leave a bit at a time..all these frame by frame and Voila!....you find yourself watching it in an asylum...LOL! Okay Nick!..this is not what SolidGrowth is for but previously explained. Vue is not cut fo it but you can try Xfrog3 V3.21 (sorry OT here). Bill

I think I will get it:) Thank you for your quick replies, more opinions would be great. Nick

Well... Vue isn't LightWave or 3DS Max, but then again it's not several thousand dollars, either... personally I think Vue is miles above Bryce though, but it does have its' quirks, though nothing too bad. I still have yet to try animating in Vue, so I couldn't be of any help there...sorry. I think that, besides the Solid Growth, Vue's next most powerful features are the procedural materials, and the functions-- there seems to be literally no limit to what can be done with both combined, ESPECIALLY when you combine hand-made bitmaps with the materials...... ...and of course Vue does all the "standard" stuff-- transparencies, ambience, blah blah blah....but it doesn't do volumetrics like Bryce does. Nevertheless, for as powerful as Vue 3 is, I hear that Vue 4 will be even better, due out either in Spring or Summer... It woul;d take a really long time to list all the cool things about Vue though... :)

Attached Link: http://www.multimania.com/arte/whatisvue.html

Things I love about Vue d'Esprit: + Vue does both landscapes and interiors with equal ease. + The interface is informative and incredibly intuitive. You'll be making pictures within minutes of installation. + The render engine is very fast compared to similar programs. Transparency and reflections slow it down some, of course, but even with them, it's still fast. Most of my images are rendered in less than a hour. + I haven't used the animation utilities, but I like that they're there if I ever want them. Objects, cameras and materials can be animated. + The scene hierarchy is set up with layers, sort of like viewing a written outline. Very easy to work with, and all the information is visible at a glance. + Materials -- generally overall, I love how materials work in Vue. There are so many options! + The terrain editor is the best I've ever worked with. Again, it's very intuitive and simple to work with. It also has a lot of "bonus" features. + Lighting -- the default lighting isn't the best if you want to achieve a photorealistic effect, but once again, the options for adjustment are numerous, and you can easily achieve almost any kind of lighting you want to use. + Vue imports all of my favorite formats and a few others besides. + A good set of primitive objects, and super-simple Boolean operations. + Vegetation, vegetation, vegetation!! :D SolidGrowth lets you build an entire forest without every tree being identical and without overloading on polygons. The SolidGrowth trees and plants are also a lot of fun to play with. With a simple change of material or proportions, each tree or plant can become an entirely new species, so a single SolidGrowth object is akin to having a large selection of vegetation models without needing a dozen different models. :) Varian

Talking about plants, PlantStudio 2 beta 3 was released on feb 21st, it has now additional 3 exports:Lightwave LWO, Wavefront OBJ and VRML. Improvements to 3DS ? , DXF and POV formats as well. In the PS beta 2 version I had to go through 3D Explor before Vue would accept the 3DS format, in the beta 3 the 3DS is read by VUE but the plant is messed up in a big way , it does show up OK in 3D Explor. The LWO and OBJ exports are imported fine in Vue.

I absolutely agree with Varian. I don't know 1 person who bought and did not love Vue from the first moment on. :-)Guitta