Most of my wishes come from comparisons to World Builder, which I think is overpriced and has an inferior renderer to Vue4. * Area definition, including the ability to define a separate material for an area and constrain the scatter/replicate function to an area. It would be nice to be able to 'draw' a lake or wooded area directly in the scene designer and tweak its properties directly. * True 3D grass for covering a terrain (not replicating and scattering the 'patch of grass'). This looks really good in WB (IMHO). You can obviously get close with procedural textures, but the difference gets clearer the tighter your shot is to a grassy area. Considering packages like Poser and Carrara are coming out with support for 'fur' and other similar strand-based textures, this should be part of a landscape generator these days. * A wind model that can consitently influence plant models, waves, clouds, etc. Very key to realism when you move from stills to animation. * Weather effects like snow, rain, animated fog (would be great if influenced by a wind system). This could be real unique feature if done well, because it doesn't exist in any other package, save for plug-ins for After Effects and high-end 3D modelers. * Improve water and wave dynamics and their interaction with other objects. Real collision detection between objects and water surfaces, resulting in dynamic ripples, foam, wakes, etc. would be another feature that would put them solidly out in front of other packages. * I like the other suggestions above about better light management and a more robust object management scheme. I probably haven't done detailed enough work to encounter these issues yet :-) * In general, I'd like to see them concentrate on landscape generation and animation issues, rather than beefing up model libraries and modeling functions. I like the fact that there's a lot of flexibility in the package, but at least IMO, its not intended to be a competitor with Animation Master, Cinema 4D, etc, but with World Builder and Bryce.

Having had a chance to think about this topic for a while, and having gotten spanked for trying to start a new thread about it, I guess I'll post my thoughts here.

It seems to me a feature that would be most easily implemented and most artistically relevant, would be the addition of a material paintbrush to the terrain editor. Were already using brushes to sculpt and deform terrains, so it should it shouldnt be that difficult to brush on material assignments.

Think about how Vue currently handles terrains with multiple materials. Vue uses the material Mix function. This has the following problems:

1. Its very difficult to balance the individual materials using the Mixing proportions function.
2. The results of Influence of altitude and Influence of slope are unpredictable, can change if the terrain is resized or repositioned.
3. Theres no way using the mix function to lock a particular material to a particular point on a terrain.
4. If you have more than two material you have to stack mixed materials on top of each other creating new mixed materials. All this only serves to compound the difficulties.

Just think what could be done if Vue had a material paintbrush in the terrain editor. Take a Mountain terrain for example. Using simple, non-mixed materials, you could:

1. Paint a grassy meadow at the base of the mountain
2. Paint dirt further up the mountain
3. Paint rock on cliffs and peaks
4. Paint a snow field on one small face of the mountain
5. Paint a little stream running down a gully
6. Paint a pathway running through the grassy meadow
7. Paint a trail running up the mountainside
8. Etc.

The material assignments would be locked to the surface of the terrain and so would be unaffected by resizing the terrain or re-scaling the individual materials.

From a purely artistic point I can think of no function that could be added to Vue that would give you greater control over the final appearance of your picture than this.

If I had one and ONLY one function that would be added to Vue 5, a Materials Paintbrush would be it.

-SMT

I've been stewing on a wishlist for awhile. So here is my current Vue 5 wishlist:

1. An Undo Manager. This would be the ability to undo and redo multiple events. A Manager so that the user could open an Undo Manager dialog and choose a point-in-time to restore. Also, the user could also allocate resources (RAM) the Undo Manager.

2. Automatic terrain mapping for pictures. A picture mapped to a terrain using Automatic mapping and a scale of one would cover the top of terrain perfectly. When Automatic mapping is chosen, the user would be able to disregard the picture dimensions and terrain dimensions. Other mapping modes should produce differing results.

3. A blur control for the 'turn reflective with angle' on the transparency tab.

4. Introduce a parameter-based solid-growth plant making ability. Each plants default parameters could be adjusted and managed for customized plant-growth.

5. New feature: Cubic terrain generation and edit. I would like to see the terrain editor rotate the terrate in 3D-space and adjust elevation on x, y, and z planes (point of action is perpendicular to the plane rotation. This is the same type of control that z-brush brings to object transform.

6. The ability to right-click and copy/paste material channels. I would like to be able to right-click on a material channel-tab and copy/paste the entire channel.

7. The ability to right-click and copy/paste light gels. This isn't an option on the gel pop-up menu.

8. I would like to import brushes for terrain painting. Vue could store brush presets in a folder for archiving. There are many possible brushes: roads, forrests, rivers...

9. A new light: a parallel spotlight. Great for creating realistic volume light beams.

10. An atmosphere randomize mixer. This could be fun.

11. Vue should remember file paths in each file dialog (open/save/load/import/etc.) between sessions.

12. Offer an optional DirectX view. Great for when OpenGL fails to work.

13. An Optimize function to reduce terrain polygon count during terrain generation. The user could lower the polygon count dynamically and still achieve excellent results.

Charles

WOW! Charles, what whishes! I have to ask you later when we bring up the list to vote what you mean (for several things:-)) No time yet. But I print out ALL wishes and will try to put it in an ordered list. Guitta

Mannn!!!...reading all the wishes here including those that started by Mike...this is so awsome that I'm gonna get myself a rocking chair and spoke a pipe evryday till these wishes come true. Well, if its too much for e-on to handle, at least have Vue 5 able to export WYSIWYG on Vue world into 3ds and obj format...with texture in tact of course.

Here are some of my wishes: 1. Radiosity 2. More advanced sunlight/atmospheric settings allow for things like sun light through clouds from any sun position. 3. More advanced night sky settings for things like nebulas and stars. 4. Better nighttime haze/fog settings that allow for volumetrics at night (moonlit haze, fog etc) 5. Improved volumetric rendering within non standard vue objects (like imported objects). 6. Add improved cloud layer editting tools, to include true 3d clouds with hieght as well as width. Add capability to define cloud layer coverage using a greyscale function that uses greyscale for height information. 7.Allow terrain meshes to be "frozen" so that they can be further molded in the x and y dimensions after generating terrain with height map. Perhaps a sort of airbrush that acts like a magnet on resulting object, pushing and pulling points in x,y and z axes. 8. Add a rainbow primitive or support for rainbows within volumetric atmospheres.

My wishes would be... Simple particle effects. Lattice deformers of some sort. Mover support Poser 5.(I know not directly Vue, but you know) Some sort of scripting ability. Brian

Bacth rendering of animations would be nice :) Not sure if I can wait till vue5 though :(

An option for lights: turn off specular highlights. This feature is useful for hiding the influence of fill lights.

Didn't read through all of this, so I'm not sure if someone have mentioned it before. But my biggest wish, is the possibility to merge objects into 1 object. I still end up with hundreds of primitives and objects, each time I make an object.

But Alekssander, you can group the objects and give the group of the name of the final object.

I agree with Alekssander. It would nice if Vue could convert boolean objects into a single mesh. It would cut back on the clutter, reduce polygon count, and even make boolean operations export-able.

I'm afraid I have to agree as well on this one, Guitta. A single object of 100,000 polygons renders faster than a group of 100 objects at 1000 polygons each. That's why I now go through cartwheels using Deep Exploration and Polytrans to convert every object into a single mesh before I import it. "Original 3DS object into Polytrans -> export as a Direct X single mesh -> import into Deep Exploration -> export as a 3DS single mesh -> import into Vue" Would love it if Vue just had an "import as single mesh" option. -SMT

Here is another idea for the Function Editor, a blur transformation. Right now we have Fractal layer, Turbulence, and Rotatation. With the addition of an optional Blur control (avec slider) would be a nice way to take the edge off of a function.

Gebe: ;p ..... (I'm allready using groups, but that don't realy help.) ;) Another wish, is better control with the torus.

What kind of better control, Alekssander?

as far as plants are concerned, what we really need is a programmable plant creator... What this means is, don't have more trees that are oaks, or ginko or whatever, but have a plant generator with parameters that one can input... It is easier to provide parameters for different plants than have the plants themselves... That way it's easy to get a wide variety of plants and change the existing plants so one can get more variety... The plant creator would have to be divided, one part for trees, the other for bushes and non-flowering plants.. I think it's too ambitious to have it generate flowers.. Flowers would be hard.. But trees and bushes are not as hard... Since this very likely is not going to happen, I would think that for Vue 5, Eon should include whatever plants it's trying to sell individually... I mean, that approach worked fine for earlier versions of Vue (2 & 3) but at this stage of the game the "extra plants" are a little too expensive to buy individually or as a group... Also, add some birch trees, some oak and elm trees... Different kinds of pines... Gnarly trees without leaves... anyway, that's my 2 cents... :)

Plant creators" exists already and they are quite expensive:-( From Vue's existing plants we can already create an infinity of new plants. This was my 2 cents too (LOL) Guitta

Plants wishlist (as requested) : - weeping willows - real conifers (think christmas trees) - bamboo - vines, ivy (plants growing on a plane or against a wall)

agiel, bamboo we have already in Vue 4:-)

Tradivoro,

You and I are thinking of the same thing (see post 104-#4). I put some more thought into it. Imagine this: From inside the current vegetation creation dialog, offer a custom button. Layering complexity is a good way to maintain the simplicity of a system.

From there, you could pick a plant or load a preset, adjust parameters, choose a leaf or leaves, adjust bark material(s), and save the plant as a preset.

So this must be a good idea if others are doing this already and charging alot of money for it. So much the better for Vue. Maybe after creating this module for Vue, e-on could make it a plug-in for other software?

Charles

Little vines with flowers on them......Sharen

I agree with tradivoro and sittingblue, a "parameter-based solid-growth plant generator" is the answer.

I doesn't have to be a full featured application like Greenworks' Xfrog. A simple hierarchy of editable paramatric elements would be already enough (something like treeMaker, treeGenerator or PantStudio).

I agree that "From Vue's existing plants we can already create an infinity of new plants", but what if I need a high-polygon model for close up ? Or if I want to reproduce a tree from my garden ? Loading pre-made low-polygons models with small variations is not enough. We really need a complete "plant editor" !

:) Eric

The fir tree that comes with Vue has in its description that it grows to heights of up to 60 feetnot with the version provided by Vue, it doesnt! The Vue fir tree looks to be 6 to 8 feet maximumfine for a tree farm, but not for a forest. I grew up in the mountains of northern California, USA, and evergreens are a big part of my life. Id love to see fully adult evergreens in Vue. Pine, cedar, redwood and yes, even a true adult fir. Other vegetation: Id like to see ground cover flowers and plants. Poppies, daisies, pansies, mums, clover, groups of petunias, etc. BUT MOST OF ALL: BUSHES, BUSHES, BUSHES!!! For every tree in the world, there are at least 100 bushes! One more thing: PLEASEnormalize the scale of solid growth vegetation! The grasses are not in scale with the trees which are not in scale with the ferns, etc., etc., etc. Im tired of rescaling each plant after it loads. -SMT

Okay, ;o) more accurate caustics. At the moment we only have refractive caustics...reflective caustics would be a great bonus. With reflective caustics you can shine a light onto a mirror, and then see the reflected light on the floor, wall or any other object in the scene. Cheers

Well, yes, I must have missed your earlier post Charles... :) But yes, what Charles and Eric are saying makes the best sense, although I doubt they'll come out with a complete tree editor and Eon could capitalize on this by making it as a plug in for other modelling programs... And guitta, I know what you mean that they're expensive, but the ones out in the market are just overpriced... :) Actually making the plant generator itself is not such a big deal... I think with the plant info that eon has for solid growth, they could make something that allows editing of all the parameters, branch length, trunk size, type of leaf, etc... And inasmuch as yes, we have the capability of doing it by hand now, it's a lot of work... Just getting the masks to work is a lot of work... :) Anyway, we'll probably just wind up with a Banyan tree or Baobab, like in Le Petit Prince... :)

Plants I should like to see Most importantly, more trees - European oak, ash and elm, rowan with and without berries. weeping willows and cherries. some different pines and spruces fruit trees - apples, and pears for the pear tree. Cherry with fruit. hedges - privet and laurel bush materials - brambles, gorse, nettles flowers (but only if they are realistic) roses (standard, bush and climbing) climbing plants for walls and fences - wisteria, clematis, ivy, morning glory, honeysuckle sunflowers bluebells

Among the plants... What about a pregenerated flag to set,that specifies what -season- it is? That would allow Eon to keep the Solid Growth stuff encapsulated, and allow for more color variance. We definitely need more trees; birches, willows, redwood, cypress. Maple. Blue spruce. =lots= more conifers, possibly with a resolution slider, to allow for distant trees to be as low poly as possible (distant forests anyone?). Several of the ground covers would be very nice, like heath, ground ivy, and for the real sicko's, kudzu. Can't do a proper Appalachian render without the stuff there somewhere... :P Definitely hedges like boxwood. Snapdragon. Maybe some flowering bushes. Lichens and mosses would be a wonderful addition, as well. Those tend to get forgotten as they are so small, but the abscence of them is noticed almost all the time.

A Eucalyptus tree A weeping willow some flowers like roses, or lilies, or carnations...things that will grow in fields and crops UV mapped primitives ;-)

I second the vote for a "complete" plant editor. This doesn't mean we'll need a whole lot of complex options and the like, but just a simple front-end to change - bark (colour, bumpmap, textures) - foliage (colour, density, textures, size) - spread or the like. I know you can change most of those settings by hand, but a plant editor would come in very handy. Then, some more "basic plants" to complete the offer. Those should include - conifers - oak - birch - shrubbery - vines. A shader for grass would be a nice addition, too. Apart from plants, let me reiterate a point from my posting further up the thread: Radiosity, please. Or even full global illumination. ;) Nowadays, other low-cost programs such as trueSpace and Carrera offer either or both. What's more, using a raytracing engine, both can be implemented very easily with Vue. Such an implementation wouldn't be exceptionally fast or easy to set up (lots of parameters to handle, render time would at least double, more likely quadruble), but it would be there for the freaks who want to play around with it or for those renders that simply require the extra quality. ta, -Sascha.rb

I'd like to see a faster renderer and dynamic grass zach

1. Various Roses from buds to full bloom. 2) Tropical Orchids like Golden Shaower, Vanda, Spider Orchid etc.. 3)Water lilies from bud to bloom 4) Tropical flowers like various type of Hibiscus, Frangipani, Morning Glory etc...all bud to bloom. Guess that's too much alread :)

great stuff -) ..file management - It's logical that Load Object takes me to the vob folder - With the XP file structure its a real pain that Import Object takes me to the same place, instead of the last folder I imported from. ..posing - I wish we could capture verts in camera viewport and either drag or arrow-nudge them.

Another one: - Interrupt and continue renders, at least when using render to disk. ta, -Sascha.rb

And just to make it bald faced plain: If at all possible, full support for Poser 5 PZ3 import and all the new goodies it has, like the shaders and the dynamic hair and the cloth.

Cel Shader...That's all, a simple anime/cartoon cel shader. Please:)

I want to apply fuzzy material to ALL objects, not only Vue primitive objects but plants, rocks, OBJ, 3DS, etc.

h-kana, you can do this. Just do it :-) in the material editor! Guitta

DarkSkills, I have no clue what a Cel Shader is. Can you (or somebody else) explain to me, please? Thanks, Guitta

Hi Guitta, very short, non-technical explanation: different from usual shaders which often aim at (photo-)realistic results, cell shaders produce cartoon-/comic strip-like output, i.e. images with reduced colour palettes, stark outlines and contrasts etc. Imagine creating a Vue scene, and render the image with a cell shader--you'll have a perfect background for a comic book or graphic novel. Hope this helps, -Sascha.rb

Thanks, Sascha. I understand now:-) Guitta

The ability to use imported animation files as textures and gels.