Hey, why not, right? I know it's rather early to be thinking about Vue 5. Most of us are still trying to figure out Vue 4! But, here we go...let's begin the Vue 5 Wish List. This could also serve to teach us, as well, when "X" suggests, "blah blah blah", and "Y" says, "Well, blah blah blah is already in the material editor..." Ok, maybe not. Hey, maybe we get lucky and something we suggest ends up in a pre-5 patch to 4. :/ Sooooo, I'll start it, jut because I can. ;) 1) Solid Growth planets with editable color production functions, and settings for how they interact with the atmosphere. I realize that the way they are now makes sense. They're designed to look like planets would, which means that when seen from earth, they're seen through the atmosphere. But the atmosphere just has too overbearing of an effect on them, and there are very limited circumstances under which they can be used as it is now. Black skies with no fog/haze show tham off very well. There is no way that I have found to make them look good in a daylight scene. Sooo that's mine. Let's here yours'. :)

I will wait a good while before linking to this thread in the announcements box, but eventually it wil be there...maybe in about January, I think sounds good. For now, bookmark it. :)

Here is what I have so far, some are improvements, some are big additions, and some are obviously dreams (hmmm... radiosity :)), but since it is a 'wish' list... - Monitoring of rendering progress (message such as 'rendering line 10 of 600', graphic cursor of current rendered line, would be more interesting than a moving estimate of the remaining time) - Better control of the scatter/duplication tool - Improved openGL support (had to disable on a geforce2 for better performance ?!!!) - Radiosity, area lights (turn an object/material into a light source), even just a flat, square area light would be a good start to simulate radiosity. - Network rendering - Measurement units, better control of 'grid' appearance - Light 'scattering', rainbow/prism effect - Better rendering of volumetric material applied to primitives (ex: clouds made of spheres) - Translucent materials (think white marble, skin) - Improve default anti-aliasing (still too grainy in 'final' setting)

-"Paint materials onto terrains" function in the terrain editor. -Road generator -River generator -Special "blend areas" where two terrains or planes with different materials come into contact. -How about, "reads Poser BUM files" ;)

Oh and... -REAL 3D CLOUDS! -SMT (- weather effects...rain, snow, lighting...would be nice as well) -SMT

Uh...make that "Lightning" not "Lighting" -SMT

Well, I'm glad that I jumped into this discussion at this juncture to point out what you guys had missed.. :) How about something to make realistic waves on the beach, huh?? That's what this program really needs.. :)

trueSpace had a wish list for their new version. Users were free to make suggestions. From that list, Caligari picked a number of features that they could reasonably implement. The resulting list was submitted to tS users to vote on. Quite a number of features from this were implemented in their version 5. Everybody profited. Maybe E-On could be approached with this idea.

Don't worry Kurka, e-on is very sensitive to the wishes and suggestions of Vue's users. They listened to us before and I don't see any reason why they wouldn't in the future :). Laurie

For translucent materials, turn down transparency to the desired level and make the object single-sided. :) I would also love paint materials onto terrains...or just the ability to paint divisions on a terrain in the editor whereby each division could receive a different material in the scene. The ability to twist objects. A genuine twist. The ability to taper objects. The ability to warp objects. The ability to curve objects. Vegetation...new plants, new trees, flowering bushes. Conifers! Douglas fir, white pine, blue spruce! Locus. Oak. Birch. Hedges. What E-on has provided is wonderful, wonderful, but I want more, more!! Another twenty or so new trees and plants would keep me calmer for about a year, I think. And let's have another vegetation bundle available. I don't understand needing to pay $5 for shipping per veggie on a downloaded product!

Oh, that is most definitely the idea here. A little premature, yes, but this will hopefully create alot of replies and suggestions before it's run its' course. And I will remind everyone from time to time too. ;) When I/WE think it's about time, I'll make an orderly list of it all, and send it on to E-on. They don't communicate much here, but they are quite aware of us, and they do see what we're saying. To that effect, I hope they understand the spirit of this, and don't Vue (pun intended) it as a "gripe" list. In the end, software developers definitely do themselves well when they answer the wishes and expectations of their customers, and E-on Software is most definitely one of those companies who listens to what their customers are saying. :)

well now i'm gonna yell. STAY ON TOPIC WOULDYAS!? :P :) 1: for vue to save tifs (or psds if that isnt too much to ask) with alpha/z channels IN the channels, not as separate files. you know, instead of picture.tif and picture_a.tif, you can have picture.tif with the alpha channel IN it. 1a: to auto load tif alpha channels as the trans map for texture-based materials. (ie: to load the colour channels in the colour tab and the alpha channel in the trans tab.) the alpha plane does something like this doesnt it? maybe i can use that to build materials... 2: um... i'm sure i had something but i cant think of it now. the waves sound good, and the new scatter/replicate and measurements are good... and twisting and stuff.... yep, all good. (dunno about the pointer thingy and the 'rendering line whatever outta whatnot' thing, i have no use for that, myself. :) )

oh i know what it was! REAL 2: better terrain editing stuff. like... offset. so i can move the center of the terrain to the side, or to one corner. making the terrain bits go to/past the edges (every time i press the mounds button, the terrain shrinks towards the center). painting/unpainting effects like the stones and what nots. controlling effect densities and intensities (ie: pine tree fx only in a certain area or at a certain height, and intensity of .5 of a click.) some cool 2d fx for the terrain map, like geofrac has. twirling and making waves and stuff. solid mode for symmetrical terrains, so when i clip, there's not a big hole through the center. clipping high as well as low. overlapping high/low to clip out a center portion of the map. or multi clip sections. and clipping to 'mask' effect areas. (okay, this is based on how bryce works. well, if it's good...!) oh! rotation of the terrain pic, so you can get different angles on those erosion things, make the dunes face like diagonal and such, and get cracks that go the other direction.

"rotation of the terrain pic"... Can't you do that already by pressing and dragging with the right mouse button? Or am I misunderstanding what you want?

Damn! What insight! Yes, bloodsong, that's exactly the type of stuff we need for Vue-- more control over the terrains! While I have to admit to being slightly confused by some of your suggestions (I've gotten used to it, LOL), I would lay my life down for some SERIOUS control over the terrain editor. well, I'm not about to die for Vue, but you get the idea. :) Like, knowing which way is pointing North, for example....

heyas; you can rotate the terrain in the view, to look at it from a different angle, but you can't rotate like the 'image' that makes up the terrain. for example, on the fx tab, there's these cracks -- they all go vertical to the picture. if you rotate the terrain to look at it sideways, the cracks still go the same direction relative to the terrain they always have. ie: you can't get them to go at right angles to the way they always go. (or 45 degrees or anything.) or, if you do dunes, you know they go in one direction. no matter which way you turn the landscape, all the dunes go along the same lines. and/or when you hit the wind erosion -- the wind always comes from the left. you can't blow wind from the right.

I'd like to see the camera default to the last used orientation when you open Vue. I know you can set up a file the way you want it and open that file when you want to start Vue, but it would be easier if it just stayed where you want it. 225deg. for the roll just isn't very convenient. Rich

Absolutely Rich! It'd be excellent if the camera would face due north as a default. We can angle it as needed later for each particular scene. Bloodsong, your 1a, doesn't that work now in v.4? I haven't tried it myself, but I've sure been hearing about Vue using alphas from TIFs. What am I missing?

1. "Volumetric Plane" for sky and ground just like Bryce 5. 2) Vue generated vegetation and terrain be able to be exported as 3ds, obj, etc.. 3) Ability to customize the GUI. 4) Improvement to existing volumetric lighting effect like ray beams through clouds. 5) A feature for the camera to see half surface half underwater. 6) Able to "minimize" screen or access to the program menu while Vue is rendering.

The "render to file" should be FASTER than "render to screen", not slower! Make better use of ALL available ram before writing to the drive.

Definitely export of 3D-generated trees and such... Will push Vue also in the hands of people with expensive software (that can afford $200 on a "tree plug-in" as it would be much cheaper then some other plugins) and get some more appreciation around there... I really would like to some more control over modelling (the drag & rotate is only the bare minimum...).

Here's the list of features that are touted in WorldBuilder3: 1 Import existing landscape data or create your landscape precisely as you envision. 2 Hundreds of ready to use animatable 3D models of plants, skies, rivers and more. 3 3D Plant editor with user-friendly interface. 4 3D Plants, Sky and Rocks variators - the revolutionary way to create complex scenes! 5 Dynamic communication technology to work together with 3DS MAX, 3DS VIZ. 6 Import of Poser models with animation. Read more about Poser import here. 7 Import/export and compositing utilities for LightWave 5.x and 6.x. 8 Import/export and compositing utilities for Maya NT. 9 Wind wizards make animating 3D plants, clouds, and surf easy. 10 The only high-quality rendering engine capable of rendering large landscapes with thousand of animated 3D plants and grass. 11 Support for network rendering I like 2, 6, 9, and 10 the best. Let's add 'em to Vue 5!

I believe "real" animation capabilities would be nice for some people, but it would be too much and turn Vue into a difficult application. It is easy now and should stay that way. If the 3D-export would be better, you could do animation with other tools. Anyway, animation with frames that take an hour to render are going to take very very long!

• Possibility to convert a primitive into another one with the same parameters (same size, same material, same position). For example, turn a point light into a quadratic point light. - Extended control of 'scattering' function. Wouldn't it be nice to easily scatter trees along a road ? along a curved path (river) ? how about scattering rocks in concentric circles (staurn rings anyone) ? Some present functions would help.

staurn = saturn obviously :)

• Something else that could be done very easily : mark the x,y,z axis on the preview area for materials and bump functions. I can never tell how the preview will react if I apply a rotation of 20 degrees around 'x' or 'y' to a material.

1. Better DEM support and most importantly a better preview! 2) Adjustable OpenGL views quality. 3) Export terrains to LW 7 (or support the LWO2)! 4) Tweak the timeline/animation. 5) Radiosity and radiosity!! :) Cheers!

Oh!! I forgot!! 6) Better DOF/blur.

Hi everyone... here's my 2 bits worth: 1. Water waves that are shaped around the contours of a terrain (like waterworks plugin for Terragen) 2. And speaking of plug-ins, why not build plug-in capability for Vue too as this will help add greater functionality for the product, while promoting Vue big time! 3. I agree with bloodsong about rotating the terrain as this gives more flexibility in the application of fx, erosion etc to different angles and directions. 4. Provide tools to create primitive type height objects on terrain to create pyramids, domes, steps etc... like a gradient tool. 5. Improve OpenGL support - I have a ASUS GeForce MX400 with 32MB and don't see much difference in performance! 6. Someone mentioned roads and rivers! That's all for the moment!

Here comes my wishlist. 1. More realistic clouds (Clouds are darker at the center or where they are more massive and PUFFY CLOUDS THANKS) 2. Clouds cast shadows on ground (Like in Terragen) 3. and the splashing waves sound good. 4. More plants and vegetations to be enclosed with the software. :)

• 'beveled' primitives (with smooth edges) - more default materials from the start (fabric, wood, metals/rust, dirt, landscapes). The current default set of materials is often disappointing for newbies until they realize they can save materials from other scenes. - better materials/skies/objects libraries management (copy/move material to other folder for example).

heyas; i'll add on to that: better file management overall. sometimes i need to see the date/time of a file i'm opening (especially when im going back and forth between two versions of saves). i also need to be able to see the scene /material/object preview, the date/time, AND be able to delete these from within the browser. that'd be nice.

• better volumetric clouds and volumetric materials like in Bryce 4 and 5 !!! This kind of stuff in Bryce is even better than in the expensive progs like Lightwave. Would be cool if this would be possible in Vue too.

Hmmm...where can we see these volumetrics in Bryce 5 because I am quite skeptical that it's better than LightWave's HyperVoxels...this feature alone costs the same as Bryce. :) Cheers!

Ok ! Take some pritives in Bryce and give them a volumetric material. This produces the most realistic cloud-look in my opinion. The hypervoxel look is good as well but it has still something artifical. It is too tight... more like thick smoke. I have at least not seen any cloud material render from lightwave that would be more realistic than the bryce volumetric cloud look. (However Bryce is ultra slow and has problems with volumetric materials used together with grouped objects-.....but...nevermind...)

I don't have Bryce 5. :) You can do any kind of clouds in HyperVoxels, from light fog to full volumetric fluffy clouds...it does take a lot of time to achieve and render but it is definately possible. If you are refering to the HV presets then yes, they suck. :) Cheers!

Now, I know this is a weird idea, but how about this one: A kind of limited meta-ball system that fills up crevacess and riverbeds on terrains and then fuses into an object to simulate rivers. The metaball distribution could be set via a kind of viscosity-setting. I am still working on the theory, but it should work as long as only one terrain is used. But it does require rigid- and soft-body dynamics... Another think that would be nice, would be automatic distribution of plants, either by painting plant areas on the terrain or by height. Both options together would be preferable. A third idea was the lightdome that was described in an earlier posting on the forum. One thin Vue needs for sure, is an enhanced version of drop to terrain/floor, that automatically tries to place the object along the surface of the object, not only at the height-level of a certain point inside the object. Something like a conforming-drop-to-terrain. That's all for the moment, Joerg

1. better scatter function (ability to draw a scatter area and it have automaticly scatter only within the area and drop on to the underlying terrain) 2. Better file management (something like a history function) - I normally have multiple versions of a file with essentially the same geometries and textures. This wastes a lot of disk space 3. More solid growth items 4. Built in tree/plant maker 5. export capability 6. better open gl support (my open gl doesnt work dont know if it is Vue or Non-vue) 7. Better Volumetric clouds 8. Something like a grass/fur function for an area or object (it can get tiresome pasting in a bunch of the solid growth grasses but a better scatter function would help) -- <>

Would like to see more ability of object modelling in Vue5. Also introducing of object transformers (bending, deformations,....)

That reminds me of my "primitive desires"! :) Primitive polyhedrons would be at the top of my list. I think the most ideal manner of adding them would be to permit an Editing of primitives (the way we can currently Edit the torus) for selecting how many sides to give an object, say from 3 to 60. ("Sixty" may be higher than the top-end Vue currently uses, but I'll refer to it for convenience.) Primitives that could get this treatment: sphere -- 8 (octahedron) to 60 (full sphere) cylinder -- 3 (triangle) to 60 (full circle) pyramid -- 3 (tetrahedron) to 60 (cone) A cone could be created by using a pyramid at the top-end setting, so the cone object itself could be removed, or it could be retained as a shortcut. A cube would remain a cube, and a plane would remain a plane...but maybe a torus could be Edited for number of sides on a cross-section. In other words, the torus would still be a circular object (the doughnut), but in the other direction it could be polygonal, with a selection of how many sides to give it. If you consider shapes as basic as a typical pencil shaft or a tool nut, it's easy to see where polyhedrons would come in very handy. To create a nut now at minimum would require a cylinder -- with six cubes and a cylinder subtracted from it -- to achieve the nut's hexagonal slab shape with a hole in the center. Total: eight objects. With the Editing factor suggested here, building a nut would take one cylinder Edited to be 6-sided, plus a cylinder subtracted from the center. Total: two objects. Less objects means less polygons means less "bulk" in a scene; faster rendering time or more room for adding other objects. I'd also like to see a couple other features added to primitive Editing, if it would be possible. 1 - to be able to Taper an object (shrink or enlarge one end while the other end remains stable) 2 - to be able to Twist an object (rotate one end while the other end remains stationary) 3 - to be able to add some degree of roundness/beveling to the edges of an object, perhaps with a variable selection of how much "roundness" to apply to it.

Attached Link: http://membres.tripod.fr/chess3d/

My post got lost... I'll try again. I did hit reply BTW.

I got the primitives if somebody has got server space. Ya have to use your own server space and I don't have any that I can use for unrelated to my sites content. I need a place to store them so I can post a link here for there download. Then I can post a link to them here.
Well sure ya can edit them but I know it's not the same thing.

My Wish List:

Hello? Can we please edit the planets? One of my biggest beefs with Bryce was the moon. At least we got planets here but we can't edit them. I don't live in this part of the Milkyway, my planets are different than yours!

Galaxy and nebula support just like the planets work now and make so you can actually edit them.

Better stars. Vue 4 is a improvement over 3 but they still are not good enough.

More and more trees & plants..... And throw in a few more for fun.

Multi replace duplicate objects. Like say I got a 100 cones all over my environment then decide I want Mushrooms instead.

I should be able to select mushroom and duplicate it replacing all the cones at the same size orientation and height all over the scene. That's what computers can do best why not use it. Imagine how fast you could make new objects that way ! Something like the way the texture viewer works. You can globally work on any texture regardless where
it being used. Like spread the duplicate to that group of objects. Or say I balance a ball on the cone I should be able to duplicate the ball all over the scene with the same
orientation to the cones.
See I'm thinking create a light then get it to duplicate itself all over the scene with the same orientation to the object as the original has.

Smaller lights. You can't make them smaller than 1 right now and that is still to big. Glow can't work everywhere.

Pluggins support in case they forget something.

Northern Lights. Lightning that looks like Lightning.

More speed !

Scum textures that stick only to the spot where the water meets the land. That should already be in the options in the material editor. Blend texture 2 at boundaries of objects
and planes.

Random Material generator support for exploring new ideas.

Random tree / plant grower. Like throw some seeds around, water and see what sprouts !

Any window full size ! Why do I have to create a camera in the main view for this now?

Dockable/ undockable windows for tools and object lists.

More and better support for editing objects. Like Meta balls.

Oh the thing I suggested for vue 4 that never got included.

You should be able to render a environment say at 1280 X 1024 then say add a boat out in the lake and draw a box around the boat and render just that part on a 1280 X 1024 screen. The way it works now is that it will make the box full screen. But if it used the same scale just think of the possibilities. You could create monster environments and just Photoshop them together rather than trying to have billions of polygons on your desktop all at once.

Oh almost forgot. No ground when you delete it ! I want to make a plane scene with clouds below and above. No ground. If I delete the ground and make a cloud plane there it should look like the one above don't you think? You have to use Chrome ground to get that effect right now.

Smaller Lights. 1 is just is not small enough sometimes and glow doesen't work everywhere.

Did I say more plants & trees?

Who is sending these ideas in to e-on anyway? Or are we just wishing that they will actually come here and read them?

Oh One more I forgot:

Can we please use a different key for the hiding the dialog box? Most programs unfortunatly use the space bar. How about we use one of the other 101 keys? It's a bug anyway, if the vue window is not in focus it should not hide the box when I press the space bar. Have you ever tried to type a message when rendering? The info keeps vanishing reappearing every time you hit the space bar and it should be uneffected.

Oh and just incase there counting. I also like to see what everyone else wants. I think the same way but it's already been suggested. Ya got my vote !

Something I would like to see in upcoming vue releases is the ability to Lock on a object, or multiple objects, like in 3d max. and also Object ID's, like in max, which would help a ton in complex scenes organization, controling plants and that sort. The layer organization tool is awsome but object id's would take it one step further.
Also it needs a larger primitive object archive to work with, which need modifiers you can use such as taper, extrude, at least we would be a little less limited on the modeling part, so everything you need that is not in vue has to be imported.

9 Wind wizards make animating 3D plants, clouds, and surf easy. 10 The only high-quality rendering engine capable of rendering large landscapes with thousand of animated 3D plants and grass. Definately! I love these in WorldBuilder! :) Cheers!

Definitely, import of models with animation or better 3D-export capability.

Well I'm just a newbie demo user, but anyway: 1. Some toggle to reorient the side/front/top view to be relative to the current camera, or back the way it is now. Make positioning stuff easier on the brain. 2. Additional drop functions - normal drop, move way up and drop down (in 1 click), "drop" roots up to a cavern ceiling. 3. Multiple undo!!! 4. All those animation improvements (wind simulations, poser import) sound good. 5. A separate preview render button in the main camera window with its own settings. MightyPete - you can maximize the side/top/front views - just click the little box thing and choose maximize :). - n8

2. Additional drop functions - normal drop, move way up and drop down (in 1 click), "drop" roots up to a cavern ceiling. Nate, choose top, side or front views and have your object selected. Then use the up/down arrow keys to move the object in specific steps. For smaller steps, hold Shift while nudging the arrow key. :)

Just remembered this one...I'd like the Recent Files list to include any recent file I opened and played with, not just the newly saved ones. :)

Re: drop I didn't know about the Shift+arrows to nudge - I should've tried that. I guess I don't really need that - besides it's fun throwing things up in the air and then dropping them :) Multiple Undo though - really would like that one. - n8

Charles, 1. you can scale an object numerically using the controls at the upper right of the screen. Just select the middle tab (marked with "measuring sticks"), then the upright box of the side icons (marked "size"). 2. you can set the material scale using the controls at the upper right of the screen. Immediately below the image of the material, there is a setting marked "Scale." This setting can also be reached through the Material Summary panel. 3. multi-undo/redo sounds great. :)