Quote - > Quote - Mazak,

what set is that you used in that image, if I may ask? :)
Maybe one I have, perhaps...(tons of DAZ stuff I've not used yet, lol)

Awesoem render time!

@Silverblade I ziped the atmosphere for you. Camera angle for the picture was 30 degrees.

Mazak

Oh that's heck of a kind of ya mate, thanks! :)

Thanks for the pictures! 

So metanodes are just a bunch of function nodes grouped together or are they something more ?

Basically, metanodes are a group of nodes. Metanodes can be saved and loaded, as a file. The parameters of the internal nodes of a metanode can be "published" to be accessible from the outside of a metanode. You get a lot of power in a single box.

Here's quicky I did tonight playing around with the new Vue 7 Infinite. Man, does it render FAST!

One of the not so talked about things about the new Vue are the two new fractals: Grainy and Terrain. Grainy helps keep 'sharp' details, as in the oblisks below which use the Grainy fractal. I expect to see more Teragen like materials created using the Grainy fractal.

Also, check out the killer clouds in this render!

 Looks great Chipp and the clouds are simply amazing!. Could someone please render DOF. I was asking for improved DOF and also improved rendering of shadows. If someone could post an image with render times that would be great!

Also anyone know of any new features to the animation end of things?

Was hoping for more ways to edit & shape terrains. Hmmm.

Overall it looks good, but not sure it's worth the $400 upgrade price.

Thanks

Mazak

Mazak

Mazak

Well, I'm about to find out if all that money was worth it.  The DHL man just had my signature for a package from France....

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Thanks Mazak; it's a pity that the fast render will cost quality (in the glass balls scene); the Sponza scene looks awesome to me.

Anyone else fence sitting trying to decide if the upgrade features are worth the cost?

I'm interested in the render speed differences, but more importantly in the new use features liek the ecosystem painting, and the the water foam stuff. if I can see things I couldn;t do with V6I, I might be more impressed, but I haven't really seen anything yet I can;t currently do.

I've got the money, but eon just hasn't justified the cost to me yet.

Attached Link: http://www.geekatplay.com/vue7.php

Mazak

I kinda went through some of those yesterday.. still haven't digested all of it though.

I remember stonemason talking about the engine they use for farcry.. and being able to do caves n such.. wonder if the new ecosystem painter will help doing things like that?

Quite strange that E-On did not correct the texture problem for the roofs of the Sponza church in the demo scenes :-)

I re-rendered the benchmark scene I used in my Vue benchmark (spacecraft over landscape) in 9'39" in Vue 7 instead of 36'22" in Vue 6.6.
I rendered the scene straight after importing, but there are slight differences between the Vue 7 and Vue 6 renders:

• Vue 7 has more detailed clouds
• the antialiasing is different. More accurate and finer.

(click to view full-size image)

Also, Vue 7 renders images with a 1 pixel offset from the top :-)

Thanks for posting so many renders Mazak, they are giving us a good idea of the differences between Vue 6 and 7.

The only feature that even slightly impresses me is the more realistic clouds. Haven't seen any really good ocean scenes yet so this might look good, but so far I can't justify the cost to upgrade.

Might have to wait until the .5 upgrade whenever that is.

• Did they fix the DOF?
• Any new animation tools?

Quote - Anyone else fence sitting trying to decide if the upgrade features are worth the cost?

I'm interested in the render speed differences, but more importantly in the new use features liek the ecosystem painting, and the the water foam stuff. if I can see things I couldn;t do with V6I, I might be more impressed, but I haven't really seen anything yet I can;t currently do.

I've got the money, but eon just hasn't justified the cost to me yet.

I can't upgrade, I'd have to buy it full out, but I'm damn sure interested. Interested in Vue 7 Xstream, that is, just waiting to see the results of the LightWave  Xstream plugin.
If that's not working right or people are having too many problems with it, I'm not interested. On its own, I'm not interested. Combined with LW, it would be amazing.

BTW, first tree I loaded was the Cherry and I can't believe they STILL haven't fixed the hooking point on installed content trees!!!!!!  Gotta go fix all of those now :b_upset:

I need to try the new spectral 2 clouds more - so far I'm not impressed with the results I've seen and my render times don't seem to have improved but I've not really done too much yet.  I like now that saving renders defaults to 'Pictures' folder in the Vue 7 folder in Documents rather than 'My Picutres'

Now to check out the new 'water toys' 

My list of most important upgrades in Vue 7 xStream

1. External dependetcy - function editor node, now objects can directly interact
2. Meta node - simmular to ICE in XSI, can create prebuild complex functions and easy reuse them, or share.
3. Water controls, displacment and other options
4. New Volumetric material 2, use for new clouds.
5. Infinity terrains
6. Camera intesepation control, camera animation
7. World units control
8. New support for openGL
9. New render engine
10. Render cows now can moo as service
11. xStream integration, manipulating Vue objects from hosted application and access other settings directly
    12.Recording macros
12. Object graphs
13. Recycle inderect lighting in rendering, save a lot time
14. Ecosystem, painter more flexible, can paint from any view on any serfice
15. xStream and Infinity come with lots plants, save a lot $$ if you purchasing them from cornucopia
16. Fixed lots bugs, that still be in Vue 6.
17. Space navigator is now supported
18. Updated list for integration application
19. xStream no more need license for each render, one license support all render (Maya, Max,XSI ...etc)
20. Better support for poser files
21. New nodes in function editor

and more

we are recording tutorials to cover all new additions and changes, so far we have 8 done and more coming out very soon. www.geekatplay.com/vue7.php
Let me know if you want to see any specific option or addition.

Spectral 2 meta Clouds? - I didn't realize there were such a thing......The meta clouds to me looked the same as before - what button/area have I missed?

So far from what I have seen I like, but do I have $400 for an upgrade? I think $300 might have been more reasonable, since I also have VUE 5. Guess I will have to dream for a while

dlk, you can find the Metaclouds still under the old button. But the difference is in the material editor. You can select on the "Lighting & Effects" tab which type of cloud material you would like to use- either "Cloud object (v1.0)" or "Cloud object (v2.0)", which is the new Spectral 2 type of clouds with sharpness.

Thanks Daniel1705!  I would have never thought to look at that tab for that option. Thanks again :)

No problem :)

Yeah I think with the global economy th eway it is, and everyone tight on cash, the upgrade price is a bit hard for many to swallow.

I know I've left on upgrades in the past, but this time I'm just kickin back, chilling, looking at how much I really use V6I, and wondering if I'll REALLY get the upgrade price value from it.

The upgrade cost is more then half what I can spend to get a quad core PC, and that money might be better used to do that, rather then just upgrade one program.

I am going to get Complete, I just can't afford Vue 7 Inf, and to be honest, the "new" features aren't really that impressive to me. Not like the must go out and buy factor of Vue 6 Infinite anyway.

And I have confirmed with E-on that I can still use Vue 6 Inf and 7 Complete, so will probably do anything that I cant do in 7 Comp in 6 Inf and then send to 7 for render.

Jon

A few minutes ago I had one of this WOW moments. I rendered one of Chipp Walters Interior Pack scenes. The render need 4 hours 30 minutes. But I used to low anti-aliasing setting. I was really pissed with the result. But then I remember the re-use indirect lighting button. I ticked that button and changed to higher AA setting. I had first AA 4x8 85%; I changed to AA 8x20 95%. Then I render the scene again in only 55 minutes!!! WOW that was a great moment. :laugh:

Mazak

 Mazak,

Yes, I, too found out the same thing. Here are my comments as I rendered:

Holy CRAP! OMG, this rendering took only 29 seconds in Final mode on a Core 2 Dual Core. What's going on here? Is Vue 7 actually ripping the fabric of space and time? Of course, it's not 'all the way there' yet, like my Vue 6 ones which took hours and hours....but, it's a start
Notice, there's not any 'splotchiness' shown. Impressive.

This one rendered again in Final mode, with Atmosphere Quality Mode bumped to 2.0 from -1 And it took only 8'39" Adjusted the lighting a bit.

Well, here's the final render, and I have to say...just WOW! I really can't believe the quality and the speed. This rendered in UNDER 25 MINUTES on my dual core desktop. It came out of Vue exactly as you see here. No post Photoshop anything. My other renders needed to be rendered 2X then post processed with Neat Image to kill noise artifacts, and still they took 10 or so hours for 1024 width (this one is 800). Sheesh. Great stuff e-on!

OK, I hate to be a show-off here, but GEEZ. Holy smokes.

I saved my scene file (using the "reuse indirect lighting" button checked) and then decided to render it overnight at 1600 pixels wide resolution. This typically takes a bunch of time and I thought it might make a nice Vue7 picture. So, I hit the render button and in just about the time it takes to type this message.. SNAP! THE DAMN THING IS DONE!

What the heck is going on? What pact did e-on make with the devil to make this happen? Cripes. It took 4 minutes and 44 seconds to render. I think I'm going to faint....

www.gadgetplugins.com/chippstuff/recRoomv7tst.jpg

That said, there are some artifacts shown-- still, quite impressive for 44 seconds.

Not to mention being able to 'walk around the room' and take snapshots, which ACTUALLY RENDER FASTER THAN A POLAROID! (the first one in under a minute and half).

(Note: there seems to be some splotchiness with the couch against the wall in the second image...That's because THAT PART OF THE SCENE was out of the picture in the first render when the radiosity calcs were originally done.)

Mazak

Mazak, I'm using a slightly different model than you, but I'm using basic Final settings. Of course the radiosity pre-render is what kills things as far as rendertimes go.

In Vue7 there's a few new features with regard to Radiosity. The first is 'shadow smoothing.'

Shadow smoothness is a GI effect and only available when in GI or Radiosity mode. The old renderer created 'splotchy' renders, even with settings tuned. In order to get rid of the splotchies, without maxing out the photon settings (and rendertimes), the new renderer performs some sort of (gaussian) blur on the GI shadows, which creates much better renders, at the expense of a bit lighter effect. Kind of like what happens when you take a black square in a white field and apply a gaussian blur to it-- the overall image gets lighter. I'm assuming this is now controlled by the 'smoothness' setting. Too much smoothness and you kill the overall contrast in the shadow areas, too little and you're back to the splotchies.

Also now you can have "NEGATIVE" ambient. Using negative ambient settings, you can control the overall darkness of the shadow areas, and with the smoothness control you can control the contrast within the darknes.

I'm not at the computer which rendered these, but I seem to remember a Quality Boost setting of 0 in the Atmosphere Editor. No longer do you really have to max out the numbers to get the rendering quality.

Also, it appears there is a new relationship between things like the Global Radiosity Gain and the Sky Dome Gain. And whether or not you have a ground plane can affect the rendering substantially.

HTH, Chipp

Ah the shadow smoothing now I see it the first time!! Thank you for your tips. :D

Mazak

Very impressive.

Jon

Is the re-use indirect lighting in Vue 7 Complete does anyone know?

Jon

Great, Chipp, fantastic even! But reusing indirect lighting for a higher resolution render or for different camera angles can lead to artifacts, just as you showed it.  But the lighting quality is amazing with the new radiosity engine, and serves beautifully your great room.

Quote - Is the re-use indirect lighting in Vue 7 Complete does anyone know?

Jon

Course, I can't speak for Vue, but I would imagine it would be there for sure. Why wouldn't they? If you look at many of the sample scenes in Vue7 Infinite, they already have this feature checked, so they can render lighting fast out of the box. I imagine this is a good selling point which they will want to bring to the Small Studio line as well.

Furthermore, at the website, where there's a comparison of the differences between Vue 7 Infinite and Complete, there is no mention of 'reuse indirect lighting' not being included:

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_7_complete/compare.php?onlydiff=1&CompareWith14=1

For the next patch I wish e-on enable a separat pre-render  function. This is maybe possible with python.

Mazak

 One of the first things I've noticed about the new render engine, is not only how much faster it is, but also, it just 'feels' better. I'm not convinced it doesn't render better than Vue6, I think it does-- but the render settings are a bit different and take some time getting used to. The top down bucket render is something to behold, and if GI or Radiosity is checked, then it does a 'pre-render' first, which in some cases can tell you enough about your scene to exit and tweak it.

Each 'bucket' is a square which is rendered by an individual processor. The more processors, the more simultaneous 'buckets' are rendered. I had to go out and purchase a Quad-core as soon as I saw this as it's visibly clear now how 4 are better than 2!

For those of you on the fence about this upgrade, I hope you consider Vue 7 Complete, as IMO it will do much, if not all of what may be needed-- and for $99 V6-I upgrade, it's hard to go wrong :-)

While on paper, Vue 7's upgrade from 6 may seem feature small, I feel much differently about it having used it. The new OpenGL interface is very very nice. The speed and radiosity settings are so much improved. The new fractal textures are great, and the clouds are truly superb.

Overall, memory handling feels more robust. I have had some crashes editing large metablob models, but turning off the OpenGL preference for "Show Boolean and Metablob Previews" fixed the problem with no more crashing. I turned it back on after finishing the modeling part and things work great.

Plus, it appears the new versions will all have the ability to use Python scripts, so products like SkinVue, VueTools and others now have a much wider market, thus enabling developers to actuall afford to develop plugins for Vue.

Overall, I rate this release a very good one.

The new scene graphs, metanodes and custom dependencies open up many possibilities, this alone is worth the upgrade, and there is so much more. It's just not "in your face", just like ecosystems were for Vue5, and spectral atmospheres for Vue6.

Thanks

**

Sure hpe Complete comes out soon and isn't to high an upgrade price from Pro Studio!!!

Mazak

Mazak

Mazak

P.S.
Rendertime Final 41" Seconds. Preview 4" Seconds.

You always get the message when saving a preview render. In all previous versions too.

Oh ... I never saved in preview mode :woot: :laugh:

Mazak

Quote - I’m wondering if this upgrade is worth the cost.

It is if you want to get Vue 8 later.  Because there may not be an upgrade offer from Vue 6 to Vue 8.