Just got this memo from Eon;

"Vue empowers ILM's production pipeline

"With Vue in our toolkit, we can push our work to the next level of organic environments!" (Susumu Yukuhiro, Digital Matte Supervisor at ILM)

It is with great pleasure that we announced on Monday, February 27th that

ILM (makers of "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith", "War of the Worlds", "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"...) have integrated Vue in their production pipeline.

"The VUE product enables us the flexibility to create more realistic virtual environments digitally where historically we relied on more traditional miniature techniques". (Cliff Plummer, CTO at LucasFilm)"

Think I'm upgrading my Vue......=)

Message edited on: 03/03/2006 23:07

Message edited on: 03/03/2006 23:08

Yeah, I read about that a few days ago. Congrats for Vue. Although...will they actually render anything with Vue? Or, just create their terrains with it and export? No project with the help of Vue has been announced yet. Maybe something with jets flying above mountains. But, hey, its still a cool placement to get, no matter how it will be used in the ilm "pipeline". AS

Yeah, I saw the announcement in the Vue forum. This bodes well for even more rapid development of Vue. They have some really talented coders at ILM. Pretty soon Vue scenes will be able to be fully integrated with Maya and other major apps.

@danamo "soon Vue scenes will be able to be fully integrated with Maya and other major apps.".........Like Bryce!! LOL

Attached Link: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/xstream/

Message edited on: 03/04/2006 04:34

Thanks Flak, quite right! What I meant to say was "Vue scenes will be able to be fully integrated with Maya and other major apps"...and not crash!;-) I'm sure that the extra research will make Vue more stable. It will have to be in order to be used in an effective professional pipeline.

@Marc, don't I wish mate,lol! I hate to admit it, but Vue has surpassed Bryce as far as capabilities. Just imagine how easy it would be for Flak to summon vast hordes of the undead using the "Ecosystem" in Vue Infinite. The ability to use instances would make it a doddle for him to achieve in a very short time what could take him weeks in Bryce.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not speaking ill of Bryce, but I'm just being objective. I'll continue to use Bryce, and upgrade as long as they make it. Bryce was my "first love" and it's become my Zen pixel-garden, and one of the best playgrounds for my creative thoughts. I am very familiar with it from long use, but I still don't feel I've mastered it.
I might also end up using Vue, but the interface is not as intuitive to me as Bryce's. If I want to sketch a quick 3D idea Bryce will probably always be my first choice.

I actually have Vue Infinite - came as a freebie tack on with LightWave. The ecosystems are nice, but I haven't really gotten into it yet - there's a few bryce things that I use a lot that aren't in Vue, and I'm baulking at the retexturing and retweaking job that would be needed to make all those figures Vue-able lol.

The thing is, I can do things so quickly in bryce because I'm so familiar with it, whereas my familiarity with V5i is pretty limited and almost non-existant.

Message edited on: 03/04/2006 06:42

I'd just written a whopping reply to Dan and nothing appeared!!!!! now i can remember what I flippin said :( I totally agreed with Dan though!

Nothing against Vue really,..............but I've tried running it on a dual 3.2Ghz Xeon machine with 2 Gb's of DDR ram and it still crashes every couple of hours (when building a scene) and once you render(Vue5 I) it's God awful slow, even though it's multi-threading. More power to ILM for using a lower-end app in their production pipeline,......of course they're running hundreds of workstations. (edited for spelling)

Message edited on: 03/04/2006 09:26

Yep,great for Vue,but I too still like simplicity of Bryce(cant go wrong with price of it either). Looking through one of bryces .dll files I saw a Bryce6 folder, hope they get 6 out soon. Maybe ILM will change their mind and switch(ok maybe not). :-)

Yeah, I got that memo the other day also. Sigh, makes me wonder where Bryce would have been right now if only its caretakers would have nursed it along. Well, more power to Vue.

I've got Vue 3 (whadday want for a magazine CD, anyways?..;) It has some good points, but I had problems getting zoom to turn on and off (something that's not a big deal in Bryce), and I can add mat after mat in Bryce, I don't see as many for Vue..hey Bryce is my Craftsman kit..so what if there's better tools out there, go with what ya know..;)

I use a variety of graphics software; I dont get too hung up on what one package can do versus what the one I am using cant do. I have used Bryce since V3 (It moves!) I also use V5I both have there own strengths and weaknesses, I admit the mass vegetation feature is cool for large scenes but for most scenes placement by hand to express detail is better for the overall result. I have seen some great images from various artists that use both software packages and can only say that this doesnt happen by accident you need to have talent and patience to accomplish art. It doesnt matter what tool you use to get results, it takes time and vision.