It is perfectly usable on OS X, but there are more random crashes on OS X than Windows 7.

I can't comment on how easy it is to test on OS X versus Windows 7, as I don't know anything about the testing process.

Your GPU is slightly more powerful than mine, but with less VRAM (I have 1GB).

My experience is that it is much more stable on Windows 7 than on OS X. BUT, I should point out that my MBP has an AMD Radeon 6750M, whereas my Windows 7 (now Windows 8) setup has an NVidia GTX675M, and many users say that Vue works much better with NVidia GPUs.

Having said that I would definitely jump at the offer. There have been many many improvements in the recent releases.

I can't comment on poser 2012 as I don't have it.

Rendering times for animation when you are using GI/GR are much faster, maybe as much as 3 times faster due to the way the rendering reuses lighting.

For anyone rendering animations this is worth a lot of money!

I would also just buy Complete if you can afford it. Spend the time creating stuff rather than worrying which modules to buy. It will also mean you can follow just about any tutorial, as Infinite and XStream only differ in that they have additional functionality for integrating with other 3D apps.

Before you start a scene try and think what a realistic scale would be and then go from their.

Remember that the number of instances increase with the area dimension, a 10 x 10 km terrain will have one hundred times more instances than a 1 x 1 km terrain.

If you have Complete you can restrict EcoSystems by putting them in Splines which provides a very useful way of controlling the number of instances and hence computer resources required.

Quote - If we assume that in the old way a value of 1.000 = 100% then we were able to give values >100%.  Also, if we change a value of 1 plant, the other values remained the same.

The problem is that I don't think that in previous versions of Vue a presence value of 1.000 = 100%.

I think that a presence value of 1.000 expressed in percent would be 1.000 divided by the sum of the presence values of the objects being populated then multipled by 100.

So in your Vue 9 example a presence value of 1.000 would be 1.000 / (2.8 + 6.5 + 0.8), which is 9.90%.

If you take the Summer Cherry tree presnece value of 2.8 and multiply it by 9.90% you get 27.72% which rounded up is what Vue 11 displays as the proportion expressed as a percentage.

Quote - This s/shot shows that Vue9 eco material and also saved and loaded into Vue11.   Here, the values are shown as percentages and if I (for instance) change the value of the Summer Cherry to 25% the Fall Cherry automatically changes to 67%.  However, the Long Grass remains at 8%.  If I further change the value of the Fall Cherry to 61%, the value of the Long Grass increases to 14% and the Summer Cherry remains static at 25%.

Changing the value of the Long Grass affects the Fall Cherry above it.

This is what I was referring to in my previous post as an issue with Vue 11.

When you change the value of the Summer Cherry both the Fall Cherry and the Long Grass should automatically change.

In previous versions of Vue the application calculated the proportions by dividing the presence value of each plant by the sum of the presence values of all plants and then used this to assign instances. Increasing the presence of a plant decreased the proportions of the others automatically whilst retaining their relative proportions.

The new system is identical.

It does however look like there is an issue in Vue 11 where when you change the proportion of one instance the applicaiton does not always maintain the relative proportions of the others.

I am a bit surprised  that this wasn't picked up in the testing of the new version...

The behaviour in Vue 11 is no different to what it was in Vue 10.5 and earlier. The only thing that has changed is that the proportions are now expressed as percentages instead of as numbers.

Jonj1611 try the following, open the previous version of Vue that you have installed prior to Vue 11. Create a terrain, edit the material, create an ecosystem layer, add two plants, Summer Cherry and Fir Tree, set each Presence value to 1, hit populate, note the number of instances, change the presence value of each plant to 2, hit populate, the number of instances doesn't change.

In Vue 11 the percentages are simply a way of expressing the proportions of the different rocks, plants, or objects that will be populated.

The Density controls how many instances you get.

Unless you have the parameter "Avoid Overlapping Instances" set to checked the coverage may well exceed 100% at high values of the Density parameter.

To my way of thinking in a scene with trees and ferns the ferns, being ground cover, would be better placed on a separate layer.

Using percentages to talk about actual number of trees being placed doesn't make any sense, as it is not possible to say what the maximum number of trees would actually be! You could talk about percentage coverage, and that could clearly be much higher than 100% either for a single species or for a number of species in agregate.

There is an issue, which I have reported to e-on Software, where if you are using a RenderCow and the render destination is set to render to screen the render does not have any EcoSystem instances rendered in the section of the render rendered by the RenderCow.

If the render destination is set to Render off-screen the resulting render renders correctly.

That aside, I would say that it is no less stable than 10.5...

Thanks,

I finally managed to download and install the release version early this evening.

The manual has been updated since the Preview version and contains more information on page 218.

It appears to be as simple as checking the "Re-use indirect lighting" checkbox. We shall see!

Looks like it's not going to be on the 12th!

Generally if I was a software company I probably wouldn't do a release or a pre release on a Friday for obvious reasons.

Use a 3D app with a particle system!

I never delete the previous version until I am convinced the new version is stable enough for use.

On OS X each installation seems to be independent.

I've just started using Vue 10.5 on Windows 7, so will find out in November(?) what happens when I install a new version.

e-on Software should fix this kind of thing in testing. It's not very professional! It shouldn't be necessary to hack the Windows registry...

LMB Click the Render Animation button on the Timeline (menu command Animation > Animation Render Options), in the Animation Render Options screen in the Channel Files section LMB Click Browse on the Color line to open the file dialog, in the Save file dialog change the format to PNG.

Repeat the steps in the Animation Render Options screen for Alpha and Depth render outputs.

Out of interest why do you want to use PNG as opposed to say OpenEXR?

I would rule out the 690 the AMD Radeon 7970 6GB OC special edition versions for two reasons, firstly very few people will use these card, so it won't be used to test software making you more likely to experience issues with it, secondly they are poor value for money. AMD and NVidia will presumably update their FirePro and Quadro series GPUs sometime in the next year, save the money in case it is a must have update!

The compute functions in NVidia consumer cards are intentionally crippled, they want you to buy a Quadro!

Vue 10.5 does not use the GPU for rendering, with the possible exception of some use for Anti-aliasing. Vue also does not do computations on the GPU in the current release, it only uses OpenGL for the viewport display, so the CUDA OpenCL arguments are irrelevent for Vue. You don't say what other 3D applications you are using, or plan to use, so that may be a factor to consider.

You are probably aware that e-on software have a list of suggested GPUs, you can find this here:

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_10.5_infinite/?page=15

For cards not on this list you should ask e-on software directly.

Regarding the use of GPU processing in Adobe CS6, the information you quote is not quite correct. For AMD cards Adobe CS6 uses OpenCL, for NVidia cards CUDA, there is a very short list of functions where GPU processing is only available on CUDA not on OpenCL. See this link for details.

http://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2012/05/opencl-and-premiere-pro-cs6.html

Personnally, as OpenCL is an open standard, and CUDA is proprietary to NVidia, I would prefer to see OpenCL implementations over CUDA.

For people who spend most or all of their time working with a single applicaiton like Maya, or Houdini, it makes sense to research the best GPU for the app and invest money there rather than in higher performance CPUs. However, for users that are working accross many different applications it may make sense to spend more of the budget on the CPU, which will benefit all applicaitons rather than the GPU, which may only benefit specific apps.

Finally, I find the whole GPU thing is very complex and not at all transparent. You usually can pick sets of benchmarks that favour whatever card you want to favour! I would rather invest money in CPU, where it is easy to see what you are getting, than GPU where you may or may not see any improvements in performance.

The VueSync plugin is part of the Vue Infinite install, as supplied by e-on Software, it is NOT an "older" plug-in. It is not, to my knowledge, included in the Vue PLE installation.

Assuming you are using Vue 10 PLE, look in the Vue 10 Reference Manual in the section "SYNCHRONIZING CAMERAS AND LIGHTS" from page 546 onwards.

Workflow to integrate CINEMA 4D and Vue would be as follows:

Export Vue Terrain in CINEMA 4D format.

Open the C4D file generated by Vue in C4D.

Animate camera in C4D.

Use VueSync plugin to export camera to Vue.

If you have the render cameras in C4D and Vue synced then you can render the Vue scene in Vue, the C4D scene in C4D and put the results together in a Compositing application such as After Effects.

The only limitation is that you can't export infinite terrains or extracts from infinite terrains from Vue. If you are also evaluating Planetside Terragen you may be interested to know that it is possible to export a segment from any terrain from Terragen.

I hope this helps.