Attached Link: http://www.ericsmit.com/video/rendering-tests-a.zip

As you all know I'm not very excited with the upcoming POSER animation import for VUE 4. I don't think that VUE's rendering engine is adequate for rendering animations. POSER 4 users will only loose time by rendering their animations in VUE 4. When I say "loose time", I really mean it. The animation rendering quality is not better and you can multiply the rendering time by 10. As I'm an honest guy, I did 2 tests with my 3D softwares : VUE 4.06, POSER 4 pro pack and Cinema 4D XL 7.3. The first test is a rotating cube and the second a camera rotating around a poser character (imported directly in C4DXL 7 and VUE 4 whitout doing any material editing). You can download these tests at the link above (6 Mb zip file). It's a Quiktime movie. All the details are included with it. These are not "true" comparative tests. It's impossible to reproduce exactly the same light set-up, and the rendering engines are totally different. The motion are not totally identical. Sorry, I was a bit lazy.... Anyway, these tests can only give you an idea of what to expect from these softwares. One of the most important part of these tests is the rendering time... watch carefully all the animations, and make your conclusions ! The first test was an easy job for the 3 softwares. I only did it to show you that VUE 4 can produce very good animations with simple shapes. In fact, VUE 4 was the only one that could render the bump map correctly (although it's slightly off axis). But it needed too much time : more than 10 minutes instead of 3 minutes for C4DXL7 and 4 minutes for POSER4. The second test is much more interesting : VUE 4 needed 1 HOUR 30 MINUTES to render the animation ! POSER 4 did the job in 15 minutes, while the incredible C4DXL7 in only 7 minutes. And the VUE animation is whitout any doubts the worse ! The only one that could be used for compositing and editing is the C4DXL7 animation (but that's not a surprise...) You should know that I worked more on the lighting of the VUE 4 animation than for the other softwares... And, in theory, I used better rendering quality settings in VUE 4 than in C4DXL7. 1 hour 30 minutes is definitely too long. For an animation in NTSC format (640x480 pixels / 30 frames per seconds) with trees, terrains, clouds and volumetric light be ready for 30 minutes of rendering for each frame (even with a fast processor). A 10 minutes animation would take 540 000 minutes to render. That's 375 days, more than a year ! And, I'm not sure that you would be pleased with the results.... If you want to render still images of static POSER scenes in a "natural" environment, then VUE 4 is surely the perfect tool. But for animations... :) Eric

Oh wow, that is quite the comprehensive movie. I had fun watching it even though I know nothing about animation :) After viewing this, however, I agree that the Vue rendering engine needs to be upgraded for adequate animations.

This brings up an interesting question. What does e-on see for the future of Vue. I always took Vue as a great single image program that could use a little work in the non landscape areas, with a bit of animation abilities as well. This direction makes it sound like they are trying to increase the animation side.

I wonder if such a low cost product should spread themselves too thin. A program like this can't and in all honesty shouldn't be good at everything. Needs to remain focused in one or the other (still vs. animation)

Perhaps they should consider making two products:

1. Vue D'Esprit: Same product with less emphasis on animation and more on render quality for still images.
2. Vue D'Montant:(should be Sight of Soaring if babel fish is correct) This would be an animation focused packages that is designed for animation.

Just seems like maybe it is best not to spread themselves too thin and give everybody want they want. Animation people won't be happy with this, and still image people won't be happy with changes that does not help their still shots. Just a thought. :)

Oh and thanks for taking the time to do these tests! :)

Yes, there are much better tools for the inherent tediousness of animations. While the continual updates of Vue are great, the resultant instability, the chance that you'll crash before long renders finish makes other packages the only way to go if you're creating things for clients and have deadlines.

Maybe E-on could do what Maxon did and get Cebas to program a rendering engine for them. That way we would have IBL (Image Based Lighting), Radiosity and Adaptive Antialiasing... Only joking, I would settle for an increase in speed, and better rendering of blur and soft shadow effects ;o) Thanks for the test Eric...great work! Cheers

Good work!!
This is a perfect example if how merely tinkering
with an aged render engine and adding features
is not always a good thing
when MAXON decided to give my program
Cinema 4DXl radiosity, they hired Cebas a known post effects
company to write a whole new superfast raytracer for them
and resulted in the fastest high quality raytracer in the planet!!
Look what Corel did to my poor friends in the bryce community
by just piling on some premium effects to an eight year old
render engine they have consigned bryce users to renders times thatare best measured in days and weeks!! instead of hours
for a single frame high quality still.

I cant imagine a one man one computer operation
trying to render a short film with those outrageous rendertimes

Hello all, Im glad to see our press release has generated some interest. However you are passing judgement on something (our new development) which isnt available yet. Why dont you wait and see what comes out of our development first? best regards, Lynn Fredricks e-on software

What press release? Sorry - even though I like vue, there's nothing to bring me back to the site unless I'm sent an email - which never happens like other apps that're on top of their customer base .. I was only speaking of what I have now, and that's inadequate - but I'm ready to be impressed -)

Hi Lynn,

I can understand that you want to avoid any bad publicity for your upcoming product. But
in fact what we complain about here doesn't even concerns the not yet available POSER animation import, but the "outrageous" rendering time of the currently available VUE 4.06.

these are not "judgements"... I tested the rendering time and quality of 3 animation softwares and the others gave opinions about it...

By now, and I'm sure that you already know it, doing an animation with VUE 4.06 is nearly impossible. Even for a 1 minutes video clip in NTSC video format, we're already talking about weeks of rendering. And the resulting image quality doesn't justify the "extra" rendering time. Most of the VUE users are hobbyists : they can't afford high-end workstations and they can't accept weeks of rendering for a 1 minute video clip.

I didn't read anything in the press release about modifications of VUE's rendering engine. So let us be sceptical... but if something is in development to improve it, it's a great news !
If the rendering engine remains the same, it's a fair opinion to say that POSER & VUE users won't be satisfied with this new import "plug-in", don't you think ? I don't see why we would import a POSER animation in a software that is not adapted for rendering animations...

:) Eric

By the way, opinions about upcoming features are the most common messages in any "user" forums. Type "POSER 5" in Renderosity search engine, you'll see what I mean... We can't just "wait and see" (it often means "buy and see when it's too late" !).

I have an idea as well. I've been thinking about where E-on might be headed, and it occurred to me that there isn't much left for them to do that sets the "high end" stuff apart from Vue (I use that term rather loosely, and not with the intent to criticize Vue, which I'm thinking about buying right now). One of those things is dynamics; I'd love to be able to use Vue to render trees blowing in the wind. Another is integration with other software... just imagine what one could do if Ozone could import an entire Vue scene, including foliage with wind dynamics, right into LightWave, and then use the Ozone renderer combined with the LightWave renderer and animation tools -- which means that it would also allow the use of Messiah animations integrated right into Vue scenes. Rendertime, schmendertime... if it takes too long I'll just throw another Athlon at it. They're cheap enough nowadays :) Network rendering would make that a lot easier though! BTW -- Maxon didn't hire Cebas. They licensed a product that Cebas was already working on. It has also been released as a 3DStudioMAX plugin called FinalRender. I doubt that it would be feasible for E-on to use their renderer with their price point, but it doesn't seem to me that it would be worthwhile. Think about it -- Cebas' renderer is a general-purpose raytracer with a photon mapper. E-on's is an optimized environment engine. I challenge you to create as realistic an environment with just Cinema. It's quite possible, but you'll probably find it to be quite a bit more difficult, and when you're done, not significantly faster, if at all.

***"I challenge you to create as realistic an environment with just Cinema."***

Lightwave and cinema both have very
Good landscape ability
( the attached pic is all cinema4DXl)
and now that we have the propack to bring in
realistc humans to integrate with our Dynamics
and particle systems ,animated grass and wind
blowing trees, we have ZERO need for intergration
with VUE

*"Rendertime, schmendertime... if it takes too long
I'll just throw another Athlon at it. They're cheap enough nowadays :)Network rendering would make that a lot easier though!"

Thats a good solution for you but
many vue artists dont have the $Means$ to" throw" another athlon
at a render job at a whim and dont own networked render farms.
so E-ON had Better deal with the rendertime issue

Great imagery... I've had far better luck with LightWave than with Cinema in that regard, but I just find it easier to create good environments in Vue using the demo at least... mainly because of foliage and the fact that the volumetric renderers in landscape packages tend to be a lot faster than in general purpose renderers. Of course, the tradeoff is that the environment optimized renderers aren't as flexible. BTW, that's what the smiley was for, I was kidding around. (I do that a lot. :)

I agree our seat of lightwave produces better outdoor scenery
that our seat of cinema
and of course Hypervoxels RULE!!!!!!!

Thalaxis said: "Maxon didn't hire Cebas. They licensed a product that Cebas was already working on. It has also been released as a 3DStudioMAX plugin called FinalRender." Where did you get that info from? Final Render is quite a different beast compared to Cinema's renderer. If I'm not mistaken Final Render includes support for HDRI and SSS. For the life of me I can't find them options within my Cinema 4D XL options ;o) Cheers

FinalRenderT Stage-0 is a bit more evolved than what Maxon got, but they are based on the same libraries. It's just that more development went into FinalRender after Maxon released XL7 and before Cebas released FinalRender.

I agree Wolf -- HyperVoxels is amazing... especially if you combine it with DarkTree, and if you use it as a light source you can really slow your renders down ;) Oddly enough, though I think Cinema has the more intuitive UI, I find LightWave to be easier to work with in general.

I like cinema but honestly,
if the propack animation hosting plugin for
Lightwave on the mac ever actually
worked....

I would be %100 Lightwave :-)

Eric (wow, lots of messages between your message and mine!), Don't mistake me when it comes to comments about features. We appreciate getting that kind of feedback because it helps us deliver what our customers want. But your initial message involved your concerns about rendering concerns involving Poser and Vue, and right on the heels of our announcement, so I think you can appreciate my response. All I ask is that you wait and see what our solution is. best regards, Lynn Fredricks e-on software

Do you have a faster render engine or not.??

thats the only "Solution" that will interest animators

OK ! I'll wait and see... :) Eric

This is what makes E-on such a good company, employee interaction...try getting that with Corel ;o) All I do ask Lynn, is that render quality is not sacrificed any more, for the sake of speed...just as it was for the Version 4 release when modifications where made (especially to the Ultra setting). Cheers

thats the only "Solution" that will interest animators There it is in a nutshell. With such fine tools as C4 already existent (and the number of people who actually animate finite), I kind of wish Vue would just add to what I see its neatest feature: growing trees and plants. Add more trees (where you don't have to juggle serial# and stuff for extras) and add weighted variables (gravity/wind/season), and vue can be the single-scene maker that everyone will want.

That would make it essentially an easier to use version of World Builder... and also lower-priced.

How about Ozone and Solid Growth plugins for Cinema...now that's a great idea! ;oD How about it Lynn, how about it? I remember Nicholas mentioning something in the Renderosity mag about porting some of Vue's unique features. Cheers

Great info from all and a major insight for me. I have been trying to do a 30 second animation in Vue for the past 6 weeks. All my efforts have ended up in the recycle bin with me wondering what I don't understand about animation in Vue. It is all becoming quite clear now. I believe Vue is a great program but if I could purchase it as a plugin for Lightwave I would do it immediately. Happy rendering!

Well, Ozone's about half way there. I'd be willing to get both that and Vue if Ozone would allow me to import entire Vue scenes into LightWave, especially if it brought Solid Growth with it.

"How about Ozone and Solid Growth plugins for Cinema...now that's a great idea!" OH yes Martin, it would be fantastic !!!

I'm sure that Cinema 4D, Lightwave and StudioMAX users will love a "VUE" plug-in. I would buy it directly (Lynn, I hope that you're still listening...).

:) Eric

Its an interesting idea. By the way, you all did see the PR about Ozone 2 shipping at Siggraph, right? Im not sure how feasible a Vue plug-in would be. A lot of the magic with SolidGrowth is happening in the renderer. Something to keep in mind as well -- Vue 4 doesnt try to compete with products like Cinema4D. C4D is a great product and its clear that Maxon is pushing it towards becoming a MAX and Lightwave competitor. But there are also a lot of folks out there that love Vue 4 because its priced right and has exactly the features they need. Vue 4 is priced about the same as the lowest priced offering from Maxon. Regarding the other plug-in opportunities (such as Ozone for XXX), if you think it would be a popular product, send in your suggestions! If we hear from a lot of people that there is a demand for Ozone for C4D, it could happen. best regards, Lynn Fredricks e-on software

If I may ask, what is e-ons vision for the future of Vue? In say 5 years, do you want it to be half animation half still image renderer, or one or the other? Just curious of how you see your product down the line. :)

Lynn, Well, I would really like an OZONE plug-in for C4D. I have a free Skyshader but it's not as good as VUE's atmosphere editor. I'm definitely sure that a lot of C4D users (and Studio MAX users) would be interested in this plug-in. There are not many C4D users in this VUE forum, so it's better to ask this question in the C4D forum. As VUE4 was included in "special offer" C4DXL7 version, many people already know about it. "there are also a lot of folks out there that love Vue 4 because its priced right and has exactly the features they need" Of course Lynn ! I love it also. It's one of the most cost-effective 3D software available for still images. Without it my gallery at Renderosity would be quite empty ! And it's indeed a totally different software than Lightwave, C4D & the rest. That's exactly why think that pushing the "animation" features forwards it's not the best idea. :) Eric

Lynn, I did indeed see the PR about Ozone2. That was what prompted me to suggest bringing SolidGrowth into LightWave; my thinking was that if E-on could bring their rendering algorithms into LW, then it might be possible for them to bring the rest with it. Of course, not knowing what's under the hood meant that it was mostly optimism on my part :) It's just that my view of the ideal complement to LW or Cinema would be to be able to use a landscape tool to create landscapes completey with foliage and ideally also wind dynamics, but use the animation and surfacing tools in LightWave. For an example of what I'm describing, look at the lightWave communication plugin that comes with World Builder to integrate with MAX. I'd be content with a plugin that would allow me to import a scene built witn Vue into LightWave, and still get the benefits of the Vue atmospheric algorithms and SolidGrowth. For the Cinema fans here: I'm just using LightWave as an example, and being too lazy to use more than one :)