Does it import poser 4 very easy? Does it have better water textures? Does is do waves and waterfalls? Is the sky lab like Bryce 4 (fog, haze, tons of sky options, rainbows, sun and moon positions? What makes this better than Bryce 4? Is it worth the money to buy Vue 3 if I have Bryce 4? What enhancements does it offer? Thanks!

This question seem to be ever going on from the KPT/Poser Onelist and even a Vue Onelist just started with 30+ members overnite. There is no all program in one. Bryce 4 is good so is Vue and all the programs that were created for graphics. Ask what are you doing with Bryce 4 and that what you want to buy Vue for? What is the output or end product you want from a program that you feel its worth spending money on? To answer your question, I would use a combination of Bryce, Vue, Terragen and a paint program with plenty of filters and plugins. Take a look at http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=4481&Start=1&Sectionid=3&MostWanted=Yes 97% Vue and can do without that 3%. I certainly would like to see Bryce do this :) Bill

Bill, I like to do outdoors type pictures, I really want to know what the difference is between Bryce and Vue 3? Does Vue render faster, as well as the above questions. Thanks, Dave

From what I've seen of Bryce (I don't own the program, so I can't speak from the experience that comes with use) it doesn't do as good a job as Vue does on plants and trees. I don't know what abilities it has as far as skies, etc. are concerned, but I know that Vue has the ability to make gorgeous skies, terrains, etc. There are settings for haze, fog, clouds and the like. It's all a matter of personal taste, IMO. I really don't see any reason why the two programs can't be used in concert instead of in competition. Kate

Kate, I'm not trying to make competition between the two, I'm just wanting to know what one can do over the other. I'd like to get Vue 3, but does it offer enough difference than Bryce 4 to justify the $200 cost? Thanks

Hi Dave, Kates is right. Vue beats Bryce BIG time in vegetation especially their "growth engine". Take drive, download the demo...version 2 I think and gauge for yourself like what Kate said.."personal taste. Have you try "Terragen"...I just luv using their "water". Every program wanabe wannabe the other and better but that's far from now but not impossible. As to your question of speed, there is no fix answer as far as I know. It depends on your hardware configuration to your skill in use of the software besides the rendering engine. It hard to compare rendering speed as to which is faster unless both have exactly the same things except different product name..example, my image is just seen..bryce do not have the vegetation for a start. Anyway, take my words, you never regret you buy Vue'd Esprit 3. I am waitng for Terragen full version 1 (version o.8 is gonna be out this moth). Its a FOC program..try it and try all and you have a better feel. I still like my Bryce but use little. Bill

Hi Dave, I don't own Bryce yet, but I have played around with it a bit. I think Bryce may have a more comprehensive sky generator. Moons and Suns in Vue take more work. On the other hand, Vue plants are "grown" individually. If you want a 3 armed cactus or a 1 armed cactus, just keep hitting the tree button till you get one you like. Same with all the other plants. Why not check out the Vue 2 demo? It doesn't have all the features of Vue 3, but you can get a basic idea. Hope this helps. Gail

Unfortunately the VUE 2 Demo lacks VUE's strongest feature: plants. It only comes with the dead tree. SO you kind of have to guess at what actual VUE would be like. Judging from the pictures I see posted here VUE renders to me look much better at both indoor and out. That's just my opinion. Though I have noticed some problems with 'staring at the sun' pictures. Currently I don't own either app. Having just spent a good deal of money on a PC upgrade it will be a little while before I buy in as well. I would suggest looking through art galleries and letting that tell you if VUE has something in it you haven't been able to do with Bryce.

I find that Vue has one diffence (I'm an ex-user of Bryce): when I see a picture made with Bryce, I'm sure at 90 % that it is a Bryce picture : when I see certain vue picture that's not true : the possibilities of vue are larger than Bryce, because textures are better and object import too. (And animation, try simple animation with blur and see) But I think the problem is : what do we do with the softs? Most Bryce users do what other Bryce users have done already (it has always been a Metacreation problem). In contrary Vue users are exploring possibilities for now and if you go to the vue gallery of this site or on e-on gallery/ picture of the day, or on artomania, you'll understand what I mean. To finish with that mail, I'll say that one soft doesn't make all. My picture personnaly are made with 3 softs (sometimes 4) : cinema 4D, Vue d'Esprit, Paint shop Pro, and sometimes Poser 3. So why not take the better of Bryce and the better of Vue to get better pictures? Bye, Xav

I've been using Vue since version 2 first came out. Here are it's strong points: 1. Very easy interface - You can make great pictures in only a couple of hours. 2. Well written manual - good, practial tutorials 3. Fast, powerful rendering engine - Much faster than Bryce on all systems, soft shadows, blur, excellent anti-aliasing 4. Ability to import texture mapped 3DS, LWO, and OBJ files - Gives you access to thousands of free online props, works well with Poser (definitely better than Bryce) 5. Native Vegetation generation - More than 20 different types of vegetation can be created by Vue. Native vegetation renders much faster than imported vegetation in bryce. Outside of the above and the fact the color in Vue pictures just seems to look better, Vue and bryce are similar. Vue is the cheaper of the two. Hope this helps

It's too bad the demo only has one tree....I didn't remember that. They should put one of the leafy ones in too, you can get right in among the leaves and they look good, unlike a lot of imported ones. I tried the Bryce demo and the Vue demo about the same time last summer. With Vue, I had a nice pic inside of an hour. Bryce was inscrutable to me.....ok, I'm lazy, but I don't wanna spend weeks just learning what arcane little icon does what, I'd rather learn how to make pics. So I bought Vue. The material editor is simple to use for basics, but there are tons of options that I have no idea what they do, so there is room to experiment and learn. I actually didn't care so much about the plants at first, I just bought the extra ones this month. And the nicest thing is, E-on is still small enough to really care about their users. I send files to them that make my system crash and they reply, they put out patches very quickly to adress issues. That means quite a bit to me actually. Hope this helps. Gail

For me the chance at getting those plants is the main reason I plan to buy Vue. I have a tropical fantasy world I want to illustrate and the plants will make things so much more nicer. I agree with the person who said they could spot a Bryce render 90% of the time. To me all the bryce pics I see posted look too dark and tonally-muted. Like you were looking at everything through sunglasses. The Vue pics have so much life in them it amazes me. It's hard to put words to it. You just have to compare galleries. I can't wait to get this app. It drives me nuts that I lack it.

Ive tried the Vue demo, and while it does have its fine points, Ill wait to see who picks up and puts out Bryce 5. Not knocking Vue, from what Ive seen it is a great program, But I cant justify forking over another couple of hundred dollars for a program that does do alot of stuff similar to the program I already own.

And that, FastTraxx, is the whole issue in a nutshell. You already have Bryce and are familiar with its operation and are, from what I read in your post, quite happy with its capabilities. There's no reason why you should buy Vue unless you want to. I, on the other hand, do not have Bryce, and when I was shopping around for a rendering application, I found that Vue was more to my liking and offered more in the areas that my work involved. So, I bought it. Both programs have their good and bad points, and in the long run it all boils down to personal needs when it comes to buying ANY software. It's the same with any application, I think. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Take MAX vs TrueSpace vs Rhino, etc. I settled on TrueSpace. For me, it was less confusing than Rhino and much more within my price range than MAX (I'm sorry, but I refuse to pay more for a software application than I paid for my computer). All three are absolutely fine programs and all three do a great job. The only time someone should be trying to choose between programs, I think, is when they are actually LOOKING for something to use, not when they already have something that works just fine for what they need. Ya know? Kate

Kate - You have Truespace? You know, We're getting way too many things in common! :-) SMT

Well, I sort of have TrueSpace. I've had v2 for a while, but I can't find one of the disks so I can't re-install it, but then I went ahead an ordered an upgrade to 3 (yeah, I know, 4.somethingorother is out now...what can I say, hubby is a cheapskate at times grin) but it hasn't arrived yet. Any day now, I'm sure. Anyhoo...I'll eventually get caught up with you, Dude...and then...hehehe...look out!! KateTheEvil

I'm a long-time Bryce user (have had and used Bryce since Bryce 2) but I'm very interested in Vue - the plant generator and the skies alone are enough to make me consider this programme. Unfortunately, I've blown this month's software budget :( so it's going to have to wait awhile. Then, expect a deluge of questions of a "how the hell do I do this?" nature Paul

And we'll be right here to either answer those questions or find out the answers with you. :) Kate

As a friend of mine once said "the best [software program] is the one you already know how to use" If you cut your 3d-teeth on Bryce & followed every upgrade and know all the tricks then Bryce might be more comfortable to you. I myself had a demo of Bryce and got totally lost among the little spheres & arcane icons & hidden controls. I like software to have an intuitive interface. I want to be able to look at a control & know what it is & how it works. I also use TrueSpace4 altho I learned 3D modeling on an ancient DOS version of 3D Studio. But TS4 is cheaper and non-modular (i.e. you don't have to open separate screens for different things) It just "feels" right to me. I guess the best advice is just to try the demos, do a comparison. My personal opinion is that unless you already know your way around in Bryce you'll prefer Vue d'Esprit. For me it's more intuitive, easier to use, and more flexible than what I've seen of Bryce. As for output... Well, it's the artist, not the medium. An oil painting and a watercolor of the same landscape won't look the same. The artist merely adapts his style of rendering things to fit the medium. To me, Bryce & Vue are two different ways of getting the same thing done.

Does Vue do Mask renders?

Yes, I believe it might. When I go to export my rendered image there's an option there for "save color picture" "save alpha mask" and "save depth map" I have no idea what the alpha mask and depth map are, but Vue does export them. Kate

The alpha channel is an additional "color" channel (like the Red, Green, and Blue color channels) that's used for transparency effects instead of color information. I had to look up the depth map thing in the manual :) but basically it holds Z-buffer data (how far "into the screen" the pixel is)

Hello Tartan, Kate and headhunter - Someone asked a similiar question in the Vue Onelist. He can do this easily in Bryce...Mapping a bmp image to a plane where the background of the plane has an alpha channel, for this matter to be use as a transparency map. For the matter, I have 'doodle' up an image as an example and found something interesting. As I can't attached an image here in "reply"...please see the image illustration under heading "Mask Render" but Vue simply call it "Picture in scene" :) Bill

This thread is kind of old, and I don't know if anyone's listening any more...but if you are... As headhunter said, the Z-buffer indicates how deep into the scene each pixel is. This is useful for external depth-of-field programs, like Defocus Dei from MooTools (http://www.mootools.com/plugins/us/defocus/index.htm) Although Vue can do its own depth-of-field processing, Defocus Dei can do some additional things like modifying hue or color saturaton based on depth. There is a convoluted way to generate depth maps (Z-buffers) with Poser, but it is a lot of work. It is nice that Vue easily generates them. lynn

Actually I just asked this very question a few days ago. If there was any external programs that took advantage on the Z Channel Vue generates. Thanks, I shall try it out. I even searched on Google but this never showed up.

Gee, Igrant's right... This thread is ancient! I'd forgotten about the topic. This Defocus thing sounds interesting. I may have to look it up. BTW, I still have Vue 3 but I think I saw that the newest version of Vue has import/export for Poser PZ3s. Anyone have the latest Vue D'Esprit?

LOL!...mannn!!!...you all makes me feel two years younger :) I now can hop with one leg as I use two almost two years ago ;-) How time files.

I just got Vue 4, and it seems to import PZ3s just fine. They display kind of funny until you render them...almost like a bunch of points or short lines. This may be how polygonal meshes look in Vue...I'm just learning it, so I'm not sure. The lights and cameras don't seem to come in with the PZ3, but that's fine with me...Vue offers much better lighting options than Poser. lynn

Good for you :) You will love Vue 4.