Cool, thanks Mike! I guess I was hoping to take the current leaf map and just modify it, but I'm not sure that this is possible. Thanks!! -Brian

Sorry to hear about the crash Mike, it totally stinks! Good luck getting everything up and running... we'll miss ya. Let us know if we can help you out! -Brian

Cool -- that's some good info. The crane model at dedicated digital is real nice, pretty much what I'm looking for. Anyone get the animal kingdom CD? How easy are the models to use in Vue? I'm assuming they aren't poseable, but I'd imagine they have texture maps et. al. ... Thanks again! -Brian

fantastic scene! I love the composition and lighting. The only thing that you may want to try to adjust is the floor - it seems a tad bright in the ambient settings, perhaps. I know you don't want to darken it too much, but it's the only thing that seems a little bright to me... otherwise really amazing. -Brian

Awesome stuff! Thanks! -Brian

Wow -- good responses, it's nice to see a "they are all tools" type stances. I am a long time Bryce user, I've had lonewolf design up for several years now (lonewolf.tierranet.com). I love Bryce. I recently purchased Vue 4. As for Bryce, I can definetly agree that the metals are better, and can add: wood. There is just more presets to choose from. I think Bryce has a much larger user base than Vue. So just comparing web galleries may not be too accurate. Check out Eon's image of the day gallery -- I think many of them are very photo realistic. As for indoor scenes, hmmm, not sure if I agree with it being easier in Bryce, but that may just be preference. I think Vue 4 and Bryce 5 are huge counterparts. I love doing abstract work in Bryce and it would probably be easier in there. The terrain editor is a bit better, too. But Vue's interface, as a graphic designer, hands down is better than Bryce. To constantly have to switch views in Bryce drives me mad. Vue also has poser imports, which is a big plus for me. The lighting, in my opinion, seems more realistic, and I like the lens flare editors, planets, etc. Vegetation is closer in this release, I like that with Bryce, you can have much more control via the Tree Lab. However, I think I still prefer the vegetation in Vue for the robustness it offers. If I need a really specific tree to match my scene, I will Tree Pro and import it, whether it be Bryce or Vue. If you've mastered Bryce's DTE than Vue will seem a little more limited. If you've always been baffled by it, you'll probably enjoy Vue's approach -- it may not be as powerful, but because of the way it works I find that I can get better results (meaning less random) by fiddling in Vue than I did with Bryce. But that's because I haven't mastered the DTE. As for atmospheres. Hmmm ... tough one. Neither can do stars very well. I'd have to give the point to Vue -- I like Bryce's interface, and I know it better, but the unlimited cloud layers in Vue, with additional planets, makes it pull out ahead IMO. I think the tools compliment one another well. To be honest, I see Vue taking over as my favorite tool in the collection soon. But this is just my opinion... -Brian

Hi Bloodsong; There was a thread on this below somewhere recently; but essentially, you'd want approximately 250 to 300 DPI. So if you have say 11x17, at 300 dots per inch, that would be 3300x5100. Saved as a bitmap (no compression), I'd guess about 40 megs, but I may be off on that (just a guess). It's so high because monitors, in contrast, are much lower on the resultion, typically 72 or 96 DPI. -Brian

Should I just email support@e-onsoftware.com? Or is there someone else you'd recommend? Thanks! Brian

Here's another one, when clicking Edit Material: VUE4 caused an invalid page fault in module at 0000:086cce0c. Registers: EAX=0898d654 CS=0187 EIP=086cce0c EFLGS=00010202 EBX=007160d0 SS=018f ESP=00dcf630 EBP=00dcf6a0 ECX=00dcf694 DS=018f ESI=00000070 FS=29af EDX=0000001f ES=018f EDI=01067010 GS=0000 Bytes at CS:EIP: 00 00 00 00 07 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 60 b0 6c 08 Stack dump: 01067010 01067010 00ca06e0 866c0000 168f00dc 00c004b1 00010900 00000000 865e29a7 00000204 4def8644 00000000 00000004 00040000 16af2d8c bff714d9

Mike, I've done a LOT of print work, mostly with Bryce and Photoshop, but the concepts are the same. As you know the print world operates off of subtractive color space, meaning the less color there is, the brighter and closer to white it becomes. A monitor is additive, so as color is added, it becomes closer to white. Typically, additive devices use RGB color space because the gamut, or color range, is so huge. It's just about as close as you can get to the visual range. Obviously monitors use this principle very easily, because they are constructing colors using light. With printing, CMYK is most often used (Cyan, magenta, yellow, black). When you take an image and convert it to CMYK, say in Photoshop, it's often a disappointing result, but this is how it more often "used to be done." Typically, the best thing to do nowadays is send the RGB file to the printer and let it sort it out. The printer will do a better job than photoshop, in most cases, at getting better gamut ranges out of your work. However, this sometimes doesn't work. I've had a few images with extreme gamut ranges in sky -- particularly in the blue family. Because this is CMYK's weakest link, so to speak, the image after it was printed had severe banding, or obvious changes in color as opposed to smooth transitions. I've had tremendous luck with Iris prints. They are typically expensive, but gorgeous. For my own use, I have an Epson 3000 and seriously, aside from the slightly smaller print size, I can't tell the difference from the Iris unless I'm up real close. The only other thing is rendering at that resolution. The pixels that Varian gave you are totally correct, but as you know your render time will likely be absurd. If you need to resample, of course Photoshop and the like can do bicubic resampling without a problem and get good results. But I've been using Genuine Fractals, and the results are amazing... basically it allows some really amazing results... http://www.genuinefractals.com Finally, 300 DPI is a good number to start with. But it does depend on the output device, and what it's capable of. To a degree, it largly depends on the type of paper you use. Here's a nifty article on that: http://www.techcolor.com/help/linescreen.html The typical rule of thumb has always been: take the linescreen, and go from 1.5x to 2x that in DPI. So for 150 linescreen, you should think about 300 DPI. Anyway, I've babbled here long enough, just thought I'd give some feedback! -Brian

Mike, OK I played around with it a bit. For awhile, I couldn't get the effect at ALL. I must've fiddled for 30 minutes. Finally, I started playing with the mixing proportions slider -- that seemed to really make the difference. It must be a really tight "threshold" between deciding which material to use, at least with my sample terrain. Literally, the difference of 25% to 40% on the mixing proportions would cause one material to dominate almost 100%, if that makes any sense. Any chance you could email me your scene so I can play with it? I'd like to play with it in the context of your example... (brian@lonewolf.tierranet.com) Thanks for all your help, this has gotten my wheels churning! I like playing with the ballroom floor idea! Not only funny, but it really demonstrates the idea. Brian

Hey Mike, Cool! Yes, that's the effect I was looking for... how could I have missed those options? :) I'll try it out later -- thanks very much for the help! -Brian

I've been a long time Bryce'er, waiting still for my ver. 5 but I'm on top of what it can do. I've had Vue for about a week now. If I had to choose, and by all rights everyone's got an opinion, I'd probably pick Vue -- but that's at this stage at where I'm at with digital artistry in general. I like the split windows. I like seeing TOP, SIDE, etc., in one shot. Bryce has some nice advantages -- for materials, I think Bryce has a number that outdo Vue's presets. The deep texture editor in Bryce is great, but I haven't gotten that far into it yet. Bryce has network rendering now, Vue doesn't. Bryce's tree lab gives you good control over the trees you make, but overall I think Vue's vegetation implementation is better and diverse. The lighting is easier to handle in Vue, and has lens flares, motion blurs, depth of field, etc. It also will import from poser directly (no exporting from poser needed). That's huge -- there's no reason why Bryce shouldn't have had that. As for rendering quality, I've heard arguments both ways. I think Bryce has a larger user base, but I've seen some incredible Vue imagery. The thing I've liked about it so far is that there is a ton of complete scenes on the vue cd. Virtually all of the vue 4 PR images and first Vue 4 images in their gallery are on the CD, so it's easy to check 'em out. Hopefully I'll have more to say about Bryce 5 when it arrives. -Brian

I continued that render benchmark at: http://www22.brinkster.com/brycebench It's a bit slow ('cause it's a free page) but at least it's more "up with the times." -Brian

Now (again, a newcomer to vue) how'd you do the grass? Is that a simple vegetation you "grew"? Or is it a terrain? And how about the texture on it? Thanks! -Brian