Some folks seem to have unrealistic views on what apps can do.
No need to have a war over this :) but folk had better go use other apps, and realize their problems.

Vue's not perfect, far from it, but it's, to me, by far the best compromise and most importantly: the one that's got the least painful, stupid, idiotic, horribly designed UI !!! :crying:

Gah!!! Go try other apps, bar Bryce, PaintShopPro and Rhino,  most of 'em, IMHO,  have horrible interfaces, and that does matter for an artistic tool

Do you like using brushes or pencils  that are too thick, spikey etc? Of course not. Then why is it, many apps have a totally un-artistically, un-friendly UI? They are like technobabble from StarTrek Next Generation, lol.

I've got Zbrush, awesome app, but the interface is deeply retarded and confusing :/
Compare it to Mudbox, it's night and day different.
Alas I bought Zbrush while ago (and thus got v3 free) and not up to buying Mudbox for good while (and Mudbox has a licensing system that I find ridiculous).

I have Lightwave, it's the least painful of the major 3D apps (though I haven't tried Maya, but couldn't afford it anyway!).
I just don't have time to learn Lightwave AND Vue, and make art, live etc....
Lightwave is also more realistically priced for us nornal but dedicated hobby arists...but it's got problems too . (v9.5 is looking good)

  Vue's object/material Library system borrowed heavily from Bryce is fantastic and is best I've seen for enjoyable use, by the way.
   I don't care if some twit thinks it's "simple! childish!" comapred to "MegaApp_001"..it works and is simple obvious and does it's job well.
  This is the 21st centruy for goodness sake, WTH should we have to put up with silly low quality or complex library systems, or not even giving you free starter material libraries...cough

I've got XSI Foundation, bought it at same time as Lightwave, found I preffered Lightwave (long story and yes, bank owned my ass :p. My apps are legit...I have no life, bar D&D, to spend money on,anyway, hehe)

If all you want to do is produce surrealistic, alien, beautiful landscapes, go enjoy Terragen and Mojoworld :) I'd love Mojoworld for that IF someone fixed it's lousy UI for materials and terrains...I'm an artist, not a particle physics PHd!!!

Terragen2, go read forums on the problems with it. I'm sure when finished, if they can fix render time problems, it could be very good. But, will it be as good an all round tool as Vue? Fantastic landscapes...but then what..? T2 seems to be aiming for a more all-round tool, rather than merely a landscaperenderer, it seems?

I can import Poser directly into Vue, have huge library of items...changing over to a new app would be a big PIA.

3DMAX...rictus grin...bloatedly over expensive and needs a lot of extra plugins bought for it if you want top notch function...so for us real people, forget it. That IMHO is crazy, no app, that is not custom made or unusable by a single person, should ever be outside the pocket of a hobbyist, for a lot of reasons.
It's just a piece of software, not the "Shroud of Turin"! ;)
(Used 3DMax in college, awesome for animations, but note rest of the woes).

I can render photorealistic Rhino models in Maxwell renderer...but it's not a scene builder, it's material system is very weird to get used to. So it rocks for showcasing a model, or if you have lot of time/effort to spend it cna make photorealistic scenes, but you are not going to find it near as easy as working in Vue.
(One reason I bought Maxwell was because it was supposed to have a Vue plugin..which has never happened, sigh)

etc etc.
So, all in all...Vue is fine, really, for me! :) A faster renderer (especially for faster/cheap animations)...particle system...more stability few other things and I'd be happy as Larry.

Go try other apps...and realize why Vue is a nice, comfortable home to be with ;)

Go try other apps, most apps now offer either good demos or Personal Learning Editions. Try them out. Then look at Vue...

Vue is not the fastest, bestest etc etc. It's just damn good for it's price, ability and enjoyable ease of use.
:)

Hey, silverblade, let it all out! :biggrin:

I haven't tried all the apps you mention so I can only compare from what I've heard.
I've briefly tried demos of ZBrush & Mudbox. The UI of ZBrush was definitely made by someone who doesn't understand the importance of an intuitive interface. I was impressed with Mudbox.
I also had a brief look at Max, but I could tell I would need to spend alot of time with this app to get used to it. I used to use Bryce years ago & loved it until I found Vue.
You're right, Vue isn't perfect, but for the price it's one of the best there is. It has good Poser import, great interior & exterior scene possibilities. You can make pretty much any type of render you can think of, I can't think of another app that can do this for the price.
If I was to give advice to a total newbie who wanted to get into 3D I would recommend Vue. It might be a bit daunting at first, but once you get used to it the UI is a doddle, easy on the eye & easy to use. Why some apps insist on a crazy interface is beyond me.
But I know, you do get used to them after a while.
I have Hex 2 now. I just need to find the time away from Vue to give it a go!

I think you summed it up best when you said Vue is the best compromise. I really think it is.

Well I too have tried a bunch of 3D apps and had varied reactions to them.

I started by looking at the big well known pro apps. I tried 3DS MAX and Maya demos. I learn to use 3DS MAX, at least the basic stuff, and I managed to make some basic items. But I quickly found out that when it came to anything organic, like people, animals, creatures, that didn't involve cubes and spheres, I sucked at it, and MAX didn't make it easy for me to make stuff look good.

So I took a brief look at ZBrush, and had the same reaction you guys had: the interface is horrible. So since I really wanted to get into character and organic scenes, and building the scenes was what really passionated me, not learning character modeling, I bought Poser. It seemed daunting at first, but the features it has are impressive.

I took a quick detour with Quidam early after it came out. That's another Poser like app that focuses more on brush modeling than posing. Unfortunately it never got very high off the ground and its community is still very tiny to this day, so I went back to Poser.

I've always been against using plain image backgrounds for my scenes, because you end up with huge composition problems, with different lightings, no or fake shadows, different color tones, etc. So to build my environments I got Bryce 5.5 for free. It did some nice stuff for a free program, but it has the worse interface I have ever seen. I hated its interface every minute that I had to use it.

Then a few months ago I checked out Vue and decided to get it for my environments. I simply love it. It gives so much more realistic results than Bryce did, and its interface is a million times better. It's integration to Poser is also awesome, and the only issue I have with it is the fact that it's rather prone to crashes on my system.

So that was my trip through the 3D apps world. What will the future hold, I don't know. I'm still fairly new to Vue and have a lot to learn still. I'd like to go back to a modeling app at some point, but the only one I know is 3DS MAX and its obvious problem is the ridiculous price. I may not have to decide soon, as Vue's boolean modeling should be enough for now, but I may eventually give in and check out Carrara, Hexagon, C4D or Mudbox for creating props.

just whistles and cheers Silverblade on

The overall toolbox one needs is:

1. a terrain generator;
2. a procedural texture generator;
3. a mesh modeler (even only to modify other people meshes);
4. a renderer;
5. an image processing app for postwork.

Even if Vue as most of these functionalities, obviously specialized apps are better.

As terrain generator, get WorldMachine and/or GeoControl. If you stay away from higher end configurations, which are only usefull to game developers, the price tag is reasonable with functionality which vastly outperform Vue terrain editing.

I still have to find a good and appropriately priced procedural texture generation program (though this is not a high priority because I haven't reached the limit of Vue materials engine).

For mesh modeling , the app I feel very well with is Hexagon. After having tried Blender (an app for masochists, developed by sadists) and being disappointed by Wings3D, AC3D and Silo, I settled with Hex. It has a truckload of tools, a very intuitive and consistent workflow, does everything I need for modeling and costs even less than Silo. I also recommend everybody to try Google Sketchup with the LWO exporter for overall "sketches" and initial mesh modeling for architectural subjects.

To convert meshes to OBJ format and fixing "borderline" OBJs, you cannot find anything better than PoseRay.

As renderer... well Vue! About TG2 there is the need of a clarification. On Terragen forum forums.planetside.co.uk/ it has been clearly stated a few times by TG2 developers that Terragen 2 is NOT going to be a all-out renderer like Vue; e.g, OBJ import is limited to 16 materials and they are NOT going to fix the thing. TG2 developers have written that TG2 place is to render backgrounds and possibly export some kind of shadow information to use in other renderers (in which assemble the whole scene). I think that at the end TG2 real raison-d'etre will be being a superb atmospheric engine with which create skyboxes for HDRI renders.

For 2D I have to use GIMP because I cannot justify to myself the cost of Photoshop.

Obviously there are better and more powerful programs, but unless 3D is your job, it does not make sense to think about 3DStudio or Maya or Houdini with Fryrender or some other beasts as backend.

Bye!!!

P.S.: the key is to try apps and find the ones you are confortable with, whatever they are, and at a reasonable price. Your mileage WILL vary!

I have also tried many 3d apps over the years (since 1996) and finally used only a few ones.

I have played around with Max, Lightwave, Rhino, and the more modest RayDream 3D (an ancestor of Carrara), Carrara and C4D. Did not stay for long with any of these apps.
I have tried the demo of Zbrush. The interface of this app is just insane. Could not do anlything with it even when following tutorials (which were mostly designed for V2).

But finally, like alexcoppo,I have reduced my toolbox to a specialized tools: 

• Model making: Amapi, and now Hexagon.
• UV mapping & 3d painting. Currently using UVMapper and Photoshop but considering Bodypaint 3d (have version 1.0, but could not get used to it)
• 3d character creation: Poser (never tried Quidam)
• Seamless bitmap texture making: Metasynth
• Bump map texture making: Crazy Bump
• Landscape making: Geocontrol 2
• 3d landscape and rendering: Bryce and Vue
• Planning to get Depth of Field Pro for DOF post production

That's a lot, but no single app can do all this correctly.

I would add to what Siverblade said that Vue borrowed a lot from Bryce at the beginning, but it has gone far further on most of its features. It only lacks a few things on which Bryce still shines: fluidity of scene display and top notch antialiasing.

I to believe that ALOT of apps fail at Vues side.Namely every other landscaping app out there,but i must dsagree with you about Lightwave as i feel Cinema has a vastly superior interface in the ways of simplicity.I really wish people would stop with the "Betcha cant do this" threads for damn sure though.

It's all a matter of how comfortable you feel in an app, and well how much money you're willing to spend. For example I'd love to get Vue 6 Infinite. The key features I'd really like are Ecosystem painting and Wind. But for me it's just out of the question to spend $500 just to add these features. Hexagon however is nicely priced and a lot of people are happy with it so I may check it and get back into modeling.

The one thing that has always impressed me about Vue from the start, is that the product was designed from the "Outside-In" versus the "Inside-Out" meaning that the GUI and Useability is a primary design consideration.  A novice can learn Vue in a couple of hours - and an expert can learn it in a few minutes.  Compare this to other apps out there like Z-Brush which has to be one of the most poorly designed graphics apps ever created.   

err. . . I actually kind of like ZBrush - ok the interface is a bit weird but once you get the hang of it it's pretty cool.  Makes nice morphs too.

Oh and Silverblade - Tell it like it is! don't go holding back on us mind :)

dburdick: I'm going to disagree about ZBrush. I don't think it's poorly designed, just different to the usual interface we see (and so is Vue for that matter, just less so!). With practice it becomes very slick to use, more so than the endless dialog boxes and managers you see in some apps. Just IMHO, of course.

I don't feel comfortable with the way Vue does textures....at all.

TerraGen seems to produce textures that seemingly never run out of ...uh...detail.
But in Vue some textures have to be cloaked out with plants or darker lighting.

Vue probably has the nicest flow you can get but when TG2 gets real multicore support i will swap!

One of the things that bugs me about a lot of 3d apps is that they attract developers who think they need to reinvent the GUI, drafting or worse both.  Then someone learns to work with app X and comes across an app that doesn't reinvent the wheel and complain about it having a none standard interface.  Give me three views and a 3d view and I'm half way to figuring your app out.

I got excited when the new version of 3DS Max was announced because it sounded like an API free version was coming out for a lot less money (circa £400).  The first serious 3D tool I used was Max.  I'm no expert but I could get it to do what I wanted normally.  Now I see the API less version has gone back up to the you have to be joking range.

I do have to sympathise with small companies that price their products to keep the user base to the proffesional market.  Having to support a few hundred users who on the one hand demand support but on the other hand don't expect a programme to do the impossible has a certain logic.  I have a friend who teaches a CG course at degree level each year and each year there are one or two self declared experts at the start of the course who've used every app and know everything.  Its one of that group who fail to hand in by the deadline because their render is still trying to cope with the unoptimized textures on the over complex mesh with every render setting cranked up to the max...

Anyway Vue does what I was looking for and as long as it keeps on doing that I don't need any other landscape app.  I especially don't need an app that makes renders that don't include plants and that are too crisp or of dull, uniformly textured rock formations.

TG2 renders are far too sharp for anything approaching reality, the render engine is appallingly slow and you can only ever have 16 materials in an object - sorry but I'll stick to Vue

Quote - TG2 renders are far too sharp for anything approaching reality, the render engine is appallingly slow and you can only ever have 16 materials in an object - sorry but I'll stick to Vue

Once the dualcore ability is unleashed it will kick off ( i hope )

16 materials? -.- How many do you use =D

anything up to 150 at times, depends on the object and that limit is apparently not going to be raised. 

It's going to take more than dual core support to cut the render time down to something sensible - a complete overhaul of the render engine probably

Melikia, FrankT,
bows with a theatrical flourish ;)

Tried Mudbox vs Zbrush? shows you how Zbrush should have been, lol :p

Quote - It's going to take more than dual core support to cut the render time down to something sensible - a complete overhaul of the render engine probably

I don't expect TG2 per-core render times to get better significantly. In software, order-of-mangnitude improvements come from better data structures and/or better algoritms. TG2 is a program which has been in the making for more than 10 years (I am sure that much of TG2 code is at least based upon 0.x one) and therefore I expect that by now the innards are as good as theoretically possible. Code optimization, tweaking, fragments written in assembler and the whole enchilada of low level techniques never give more than a 2-5 speed factor boost (at a dreadful development effort cost).

All this taken into account, I don't think that a 100 hours render with corrent build will get much better than 4 hours using an optimized code on an 8-core chip (8*3 speed boost). Given that serious renders are said (at least of Planetside forum) to lay in the multi-hunderd hours range, I do not think that TG2 will be able to render a professional image in less than 1 day per computer per day. This means that a 1 minute animation (25 * 60 = 1,500 frames) won't be rendered in less than one week on a large render farm.

As I wrote before, I think that TG2 place is to create skyboxes for HDRI (in which case a 1 day per skybox time is perfectly appropriate because you do not need 100's of them and, if so, you are a professional user who can put aside a few render boxes whose task is just creating skyboxes in the background).

Bye!!

speculation is somewhat pointless.

When I played SupCom turning off one core would HALF the damned framerate lol.

Cheez TG2 is ALPHA, you don't expect major changes???

It's a professional tool I'm sure they have good reasons not having mc support yet.

You go girl, err I mean guy

Quote - You go girl, err I mean guy

checks under kilt
Yup, definately a "haggis" ! :lol:

My 2 cents, FWIW..

Preferred Modeler: SketchUp Pro -- it now even does Sub-D work with the right plugins. I'm currently doing some modeling and design in it for a west coast media client and they can't get over how fast models are poking out. The OBJ exporter in SU Pro works great, even with textures applied in SU.

Some times I jump from SU to Lightwave to do things only LW can do...like 'JITTER' vertices to create distressed geometry. I learned LW years ago and still use a 5.5 version of Modeler which works just fine for my needs (even though I have V9).

I like UV Mapper Pro for mapping, and of course Pshop for texturing. Haven't really gotten into GeoControl yet...probably will someday-- looks like a cool app.

I've played around with ZBrush-- too time consuming. You end up in 'tweak-hell' really quick. I own both Modo and Silo3D, but neither is easy enough to use on an infrequent basis. If I were to spend all day in an app every day....I suppose Modo would be my choice for modeling. But as it is, SketchUp works great and is very easy to learn and be productive with--not to mention it's free.

Vue-Infinite is by far my fave-- as Dave mentions, it's just easy to use for newcomers. That said, there's a whole lot of power and untapped resources in the renderer and function editor. I think we're all still learning new ways of using them-- as Wabe's new 'plant effects' show!

I've already said my piece about TG2 in another thread-- needless to say, it's not near what Vue is, though it does have some nice fractal routines. I don't think you can really say it's in real commercial competition with Vue. I'm sure e-on doesn't think so. I expect they are more worried about Carrara than they are about TG2.

When I first started out it was Bryce off a cover disk and a freeware paint tool. As I learned the craft and got better, I started searching for tools that did  particular tasks. As a result I became a tool collector as well. In my collection I have every freeware and shareware modeler, paint tool and all round application that can be had out there plus dozens of little tools that do only one thing. In the commercial app category I tried Max, Lightwave, C4D,Modo, Maya and Mudbox. All have their good points but I declined to purchase. Over time, things got narrowed down and countless CDs now are boxed and in the closet.

Here's a look inside my current, and much leaner toolbox......

Main staging application:  Vue hands down. I love Vue's wide open 3d spaces to work in and the material editor is one that actually allows me to learn and get good at it.  Bryce's and some of the others were completely beyond me and still are

2d applications: Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Painter, Gimp and RealDraw Pro

Modelers: Silo, Hexagon, Zbrush, Metasequoia and Curvy 3d. For sketch modeling I have Archepilis and ShapeShop. I'm just learning Zbrush and Hexagon and Meta are the two I use most.

Texture generators:  TextureMaker (awesome), Imagesynth, Terragen, Mojoworld and Bryce.

Mesh Optimization and conversion: Accutrans mostly although Hexagon has a great decimator for hard surfaces as it leaves all edges intact. I use Blender to turn tris to quads.

Masking: Vertus FluidMask....no comparison anywhere!

Special Effects: Particle Illusion, WinImages 7

M

I agree and disagree with several points here.

Vue xStream and Infinite mostly kick butt and are far better / easier / more intuitive than any landscape generator that I've used so far. Major plus: the function generator used to create procedural textures. It is very powerful and open ended, and far superior to using texture maps (except perhaps product labels). Major minus: its rendering speed is kinda slow (compared to Renderman / mental ray) due to its aggressive super-sampling, but I'm looking to rectify this by pre-filtering textures with the aforementioned function editor.

Sorry for stepping on toes but I find Max nearly unusable and highly un-intuitive (had to use it for school, after playing with Maya for three years). I find Maya deep but approachable and very user friendly. The coolest thing about Maya is that you can strip it down to its kernal and design your own UI which requires a little scripting skill. It handles modeling, UV mapping, dynamics and many other functions that some use "utility" programs for, and its price was recently slashed again.

Used Poser for a long time but I found it too unstable and slow. Currently using Quidam; there's not as much content for it but the ability to export low poly meshes (which are then subdivided in Maya) fits nicely into my workflow.

16 materials, ha! I wish. Currently set designing the interior of a house for a short film. I don't know how many materials I need so far, but it's at least 50 and that doesn't include "hero" objects.

Photoshop is my image editor. I'm not a big fan of the Adobe interface but I think the breadth of what it can do more than makes up for it. Currently not using a displacement modeler, so I can't comment there. Currently using Renderman for image output. The UI is so-so (renders from the command line) and the names of functions aren't consistent with other apps (texture placement nodes are called "manifolds" for who knows what reason), but it's render speed (especially with motion blur), image quality and it's ability to chew away at billions of real / not instanced polys is unparalleled.

Ultimately I think whatever gets you the fastest / easiest development time is probably the one(s) to use.