Hi everyone, I'd like to know if it's possible to make a scene in Vue d'Esprit (with all the trees, rocks, etc, etc) paste it in Lightwave (5.6 to 7) and render the all scene from Lightwave without loosing texture mapping, bump, transparence and Z-buffer ? Is the program easy to use ? Thanks by advance, Jean-Paul.

Well, you can't export any trees or rocks from any version of Vue, for one thing, but you CAN export terrains. Vue will "fake" the materials and save them as texture maps and bump maps and allow you to export them along with the terrain object in several image file formats. Lightwave uses Targa, right? Vue can do that, but again, that's all Vue will export , is the terrains. E-on also makes a plugin for Lightwave, called Ozone, which allows for the creation of Vue atmospheres within the Lightwave program itself.

Attached Link: http://www.cgfocus.com/ArticleDetails.cfm?ArticleID=104

Hi Jean-Paul, I suggest you have a look at my Vue 4 review, I talk about the LightWave integration: http://www.cgfocus.com/ArticleDetails.cfm?ArticleID=104 Vue will export terrains but the polygon count is monstrous and the image maps are not that great...Terragen is a lot better in compositing with LightWave. Right now I am testing Bryce 5 and I just finished the review of World Builder and like I said a few times the best CG landscape software would be a mix of Terragen, Vue 4, Bryce 5 and World Builder (sorry I didn't try out WCS yet). I love Vue 4 but if you have LW7 you don't need Ozone at all since SkyTracer has a lot of neat new features and along with LW's radiosity and baking/HDRI it will allow you to make impressive scenes. :) Hope it helps, Vue 4 is a great software for the price. Cheers!

Thanks to Mike and Jean-Franis for your responses. It's exactely what I wanted to know. About WCS, I've that software (v2.2), it's a great one but the plug for Lightwave is not that good and it's not possible to keep exactelly a scene of WCS in Lightwave (5.6) throw the camera view ! Cheers, Jean-Paul.

Attached Link: http://www.cgfocus.com

I will experiment with the composition of vegetation on a LightWave scene later this week to see which package offers the best possibilities...there will probably be an article on this along with a tutorial. Oh! if you are looking for a good CG landscape software you might want to check out on my site around tomorrow, you won't regret it but I can't say more for now...we don't want to give away the surprise do we?! ;+) Cheers!