I've never tried Vue but I'm thinking of purchasing Pro Studio.  I like creating landscape images but have always been limited using Bryce and even Carrara in making vast vegetation.  I like the ecosystems concept.  Also I need DECENT volume clouds that don't take weeks to render (Bryce).  I have a Phonom quad core processor and 4Gb RAM so I should have the horse power to do complex stills.  Carrara uses all 4 cores at 100% and renders pretty quickly.  Bryce... I've noticed only marginal improvement over my old Athlon 3000+  That's sad I know.  I think it's time to move forward with the technology already.

Specific interests concerning the differences between PS & Infinite:

1. What are the practical differences between Ecosystems 1 and 2?
2. For any of you that have owned Pro Studio and upgraded to infinite, what did you feel was lacking in PS?
3. Has the multi-pass rendering option been invaluable to anybody and why?  I tend to use mask render a lot in Bryce (great feature) especially when rendering figures and using SFX.
4. I use Daz Studio - how well does Vue handle the imports?

In your opinion, since money IS an object, is getting the lesser package a good idea and possibly upgrading later?  This is a hobby at this point, though I'll likely be doing our album cover, etc.

Thanks for your input.
-Kurt

I'm sure you'll like Vue. :-)

I don't have the answers to most of your questions, but here are some:

• Volumetric clouds are fairly fast to render in Vue but it depends. Some are slower than others. Just for your comparison, the clouds in my latest image "long after midnight" render in a few minutes.

• Vue does use all 4 cores. I had 2 cores before, I now have 4 and the render speed increased almost proportionally.

• As far as I know, Ecosystems 2 has two very important features that I couldn't do without. One is painting ecosystems. That is soooo powerful. The other is multi-layered ecosystems. That is very important in many situations.

• In more than 220 images, I never used multi-pass rendering, I never felt that need.

• Vue doesn't integrate DS directly (unlike Poser, which it does). I guess that you can interface Vue and DS through OBJ export/import but I never tried it.

Finally, I'd propose that you download a PLE version. Those are learning editions and you can try for yourself before you buy.

Again, about volumetric clouds (or "spectral" clouds, Vue has two categories of volumetric clouds). Just a warning: some of these clouds are really slooooow to render. I'm talking of hours, not days, anyway. It really depends a lot on the noise function that you use to create them.

Those clouds in that image are the so called "metaclouds", that you can manipulate individually. There are other types of clouds, which are more random and can cover all the sky, editable together with the whole atmosphere but with less control over specific locations where you want them to be.

Just a note: Vue Pro uses up to 2 cores, Infinite as many as you have.

Ah, that I didn't know (I have Infinite). Well, for me that would be a strong enough reason to spend the extra money. :-)

" 4) I use Daz Studio - how well does Vue handle the imports?"

Use the Write Material Library and Collect Maps when you export from DAZ Studio and it will import into Vue  just fine.

Coldrake

well i used bryce for years and was always unhappy with it for the reason you mentioned
i bought the bullett and bought infinte and am very happy!! been messing around with it and gonna post something soon i do have my last cd cover uploaded and it was done in bryce but i'm thinking of redoing it in vue

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1677127

I could not live without all the extra features in Infinite over Pro.  But, if money is a big factor, get Pro Studio, then upgrade later.  You don't loose money, since the cost of buying Pro and then the upgrade to Infinite is not more then the cost of buying Infinite.  Sometimes it's easier to get to the level you want in small jumps rather than one big payment...