It looks like you're getting too close for the terrain engine. Think about using a procedural terrain, which has almost infinite resolution, at least for the close-up parts.

"I just took a look at the Syntheyes user manual and it CAN export to Vue (albeit with some difficulty)." Oh yeah it can be done with any of the matchmoving programs - with difficulty ;) Its usually a matter of exporting camera data to Lightwave or Maya or something first, then using that to synchronize camera movements.

Rather than risk matchmoving slow pans by hand, I would render a scene wider than I need it, then pan that scene after it's finished, using AE to scan across the larger static image. As for the initial rendering/modelling, any of the big names will do this satisfactorily, its purely a matter of preference and familiarity. Some renderers might be slower, but overall if you're familiar with the package you will get the total job done quicker just because you know the rest of it so well. Also, don't forget for most static shots you'll only need to render out one image rather than one per frame.

I have had it working. There's not much in the way of documentation so its a matter of finding out for yourself. Open Vue, start/open project. Open LW. Load scene into LW. Use plugin, the camera movement should appear in Vue. Both applications need to be open. 2 things to note: To finish the plugin, use the Esc key. LW will only export the number of frames that you've set in render options. This is usually defaulted to 60.

Then you have no need for matchmoving software, and your job is about 300% easier :D

Message edited on: 01/07/2006 19:03

Unless you will be using locked-off camera angles (and by the sounds of it you're not) then you will be needing another application to juggle camera movements about. None of the camera matchmoving applications offers Vue scenes as an export option, you will need to have Lightwave or Maya or somesuch and use one of the plugins to transfer camera moves from there. If you're very, VERY lucky, you MIGHT find that the demo version of Lightwave might suffice. Say matchmove in PFHoe, export to LW scene, open the scene in LW Demo and use the plugin to synchronise cameras. You never know ;)

Tiny wrote: "I can not render the whole landscape in one go because the angles will be wrong at the edges."

Did you know that you can render the "top" view pane? Perhaps you can cobble together a solution from that. Use the little camera icon in the top-right of the "top" pane, and it will render. It won't render to window, render to disc or even render in single-pane view mode, but you can resize it to occupy most of the screen.

"I disagree. This is not every multi app 3d artist dream at all. Why use high end 3d apps with wanna be 3d apps?" And just how does a wanna-be 3D app become a high-end 3D app? By improvement and application evolution. Hehe, sounds like Purplecloud has some axe to grind :D Myself, I will wait & see how well it works before judging it.

BTW, I don't wish to detract from the product's release news, any news is good news on this front :) It certainly looks like every multi-app 3D artist's dream, it certainly will be mine if & when the LW version is released. The price is a little steep, but not insurmountable.

Well, that's what it looks like. It may be a miscommunication though, after all xStream is a standalone plugin, but acts differently if you have a full V5I license. Maybe another of those differences is the number of free nodes available. On the other hand, it may be in sympathy with the rendernode license details of the applications so far supported I.E. Maya and 3DS Max. As I only have Lightwave (which has an unlimited rendernode license agreement) I don't know.

Q: "Can I use a single xStream license for network rendering?" A: "You need to purchase a separate license for each render node." Ouch :D as good as it looks, this is going to pinch a bit. Won't bother me, I mostly use one machine anyway, but I know that plenty of people have small render farm type setups. I have a small render farm myself, 4 machines at maximum, but I hardly ever actually make use of it as a farm. Vue5I has a built in capability for 5 nodes, I guess they decided to remove this small leeway.

Try downloading the LW Dystopia city blocks. I think there are some free ones (I got some anyway, they prompted me to buy the rest). I think if you ditch the bump maps in Vue they look reasonable.

Yep that last post is the way to do it. It's not too much trouble, and seems to work pretty well.

Might be worth letting E-ons bug hunters about this, although not technically a bug it is a pain to have to do this. The standard mapping could be changed from Automatic to Faces for object import in a future patch.