It's an offer from Eon and Cornacopia. So far, the two catches seem to be no 3d imports, and a logo on all renders. Has anyone used this yet? How 'prominent' is the logo? Just wondering.

The logo is VERY prominent plus the resolution is very limited.

In my opinion, Pioneer is only useful for a quick look-see at Vue 7.  There are lingering issues with upgrades.

It is worth a look if you are unfamiliar with the Vue GUI, etc.

The real deal is Esprit for $129 (regular $199) which I have no hesitation to recommend.

It is a limited time offer which expires soon.

Charles

chippwalters has several images made with Pioneer in his gallery.

Anyway, since Pioneer is free and the download takes only a couple of minutes and the installation takes the same amount of time, you would be able to judge for yourself in less time than the time it took you to obtain the first answer in this thread... ;-)

well, there's that...;) It has 2 strikes already (logo, and no 3d model import), I was just wondering if it would be worth it. Thanks for the clues...;)

You can get a plug in for 3D imports. I've only tried  a couple of renders, but I've never tried Vue  before, so its a good opportunity to get the hang of it. I like it so far, but yes, the logo is very large.
Unless you have a really good PC, its going to run very slowly & drag. Its optimized for multi threading so a duo or quad core would really be much better. & on my PC with Hughes Net Satellite, it took 45 mins. to download. It says its a 300 some MB file, but it really turns out to be closer to 450 mb. I can only run this on an external drive. All cons aside, its convinced me to look into buying Espirit. If you can stand the size, its worth a look. ")

Savage_dragon, you seem to have an outdated computer and internet connection. :-) The dual cores entered the market for home use in 2005. Also, in the hard drives of modern computers with 500GB or more, a 450MB file is nothing (it's less than 0.1% of the total drive). In a normal 32Mb internet connection, these 450MB take about 2 minutes to download.

Regarding the logo, please note that it's not a watermark. It's a simple logo on the bottom right corner of the render. You can very easily crop it out in postwork. Just set your camera position in Vue in a way that the logo will appear in an area that is not interesting to you and then in post just crop it out. It's very easy.

For example, this image was rendered in Pioneer. It's one of the scenes that comes in the package. I just changed the camera position slightly, rendered and in post cropped the logo out.

The original.

Rutra.
My pc is a year old, but its a small form factor HP. Just a little bugger I picked up new for a hundred bucks. It only has a 40 gig HD. The problem is, I have no idea what a good internet connection is. Lol. I live in the high desert on top of a mountain with nothing but dirt roads. Its very peaceful, but no cable or anything fancy like that. I called the cable co in Yucca Valley, just down the mountain, & asked them if they thought they would ever come out this far. They laughed & hung up...
Anyway, I just ordered a huge work station, so that should help. Hughesnet only allows me 300 MB a day of bandwidth... TOTAL! & its like $75 a month  But its all we have out here.  Yup, I'm a dinosaur.
Thanks for the info!
Angelis

Ps... I lived on dial up til just last year... lmao!
")

 Yep, I used to own a summer cabin in the mountains of New Mexico-- and we had Hughes Net satellite internet service there as well. Really, really sucked, but as Angelis says, it's better than dialup.

BTW, I've a few tutorials for those just starting out with Pioneer. I am particularly fond of this stripped down version of Vue as it's remarkable what can be done for free!

Attached Link: Hillside with Trees - Vue7 PLE

There's yet another way of making the logo less prominent. It requires some steps and a little postwork: First, make the basic render and save the picture. Then, under the "Render" menu, pick "Select Render Area", and drag over the area covered by the logo. The logo is proportionally down-scaled! This new partial render can then be blended with the first one  in your image editor (assuming  you have one). If you do this a couple of times, selecting smaller and smaller areas, it's possible to make the logo virtually disappear. An example (with Vue 7 Infinite PLE) in the link.

• Lars

That's very clever, Lars! :-)

I missed the sale. shucks.  Hopefully, the sale will come back. 
They don't accept email, so I can't find a way to get on a notification list.

The 5.5 Bryce DAZ gave away for free doesn't throw the logo on renders.

Attached Link: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/?page=artists

Sale? Are you talking about Pioneer? That was not a sale, it's a permanent give away. See the link.