Quote - An artist can make do with the hardware they have.  Great stuff was created way before there was 64-bit.  If one thinks 64-bit will make their gallery look better, they are mistaken.  It will just allow more of their mistakes and lazy bad habits to creep into their scenes.  More does not mean better.

Hear hear! Let's have superfast machines so that predictable and mediocre scenes can be turned out at higher speed...!

Quote - To fully realize Vue requires the latest NVidia GPU's, a quad core or an i7, 12 gigs RAM or more which is about 1 year old tech in off the shelf machines.

I don't know where you live, but I want to move there. Where I am, off the shelf machines don't come anywhere near to meeting such specs. That's why I have been configuring my own setup in order to get going again with Vue (8) - a system which is just about what you suggest (only 4GB less RAM) and will set me back 1800 euros (ie., 2500 dollars). I don't think so...

#11

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2063735

In the linked thread I made a visual comparison of the effects of GI, GR, and associated render times. In my experience GI works miracles for any form of architecture, but also for plants etc. It brings out heaps of detail in shadowed areas, and lots of nuance in the shadows themselves. It takes away the flat look that non-GI renders have. The effect is particularly noticeable in scenes with no direct sunlight. My recent gallery post "Mountain stronghold" looked absolutely hideous in non-GI preview renders, but turned almost photorealistic after GI was switched on. The added benefit of GR is less clear to me. In fact, in the attached link I think the GI image looks better than the GR. Both take a lot more time than non-GI, but IMHO the result is worth the wait.

Cermit, that is an interesting (and I would add, daring) comparison you are making, with these gallery links...Interestingly, though I agree that your three "excellents" all achieve far greater realism through clearly much more expert use of Vue than the three you label "kitsch", I also find that there is more artistic originality in the latter three pics than in the former. Great as the "excellent" landscapes look, they also have this generalized, technical, and rather anonymous "yet another really great landscape render" look. The three "kitsch" artists on the other hand, it seems to me, at least tried to do something different. That is not to say these pics are necessarily to my taste, and yes, technically they could obviously have been a lot better, but still. Again a matter of taste, it seems: what do you like to see Vue used for? To me, the effort to create a landscape that is indistinguishable from a photograph in any travel agency brochure seems somewhat self-defeating - a bit like people who spend months mastering a complex 3d modeling app, and then spend months more to create a photorealistic render of their mobile phone. I say, just take a picture of it and be done with it! - But that's just my opinion.

I'm a regular visitor of the SketchUp forum, and would love it if this Vue forum could be a little more like that: pros and amateurs discussing topics together and with mutual respect; a genial atmosphere, and constructive criticism where necessary. Lots and lots of tip-sharing. No rating systems and other such nonsense, obviously. As regards R'osity Vue gallery posts, most of it is a matter of taste, it seems to me. Somebody may post an image he or she finds absolutely perfect, and somebody else may still think its totally awful. Monet is generally considered a fantastic artist, yet I don't care the least bit for his work... On the other hand, though colouring, lighting, choice of subject etc. may be matters of taste, there are still such things as bad texturing, poor composition and at times just general sloppiness. Vue offers a terrific toolset that allows anyone who is prepared to really spend some time with the software (and the manual) to do these things well.

Imagine, you are quite right, obviously. There is no point in cultivated negativity - but IMHO there is just a little point in endless posts of the type "I got mine today!", "Mine is still preparing for shipment", "Can't wait till it arrives", etc. Personally, I found the level of hysteria over what is, exactly, just a tool, pretty absurd and at times quite irritating. Part of this has to do, I fear, with the fact that there are yet so many images in the gallery from which it is clear that people at times have barely mastered the essentials of material editing, decent lighting, or composition, in which case ecosystems etc. easily become the emperors new clothes... For myself, I decided not to buy anything from e-on for a while simply because I disagree with their European pricing policies. Maybe the day will come along when I get an idea for an image for which I desperately need the ecosystem, or some other V5I feature, and at that point I`ll probably put my high principles ;-) aside and buy it. But maybe some people indeed ARE jealous; not everybody is fortunate enough to just be able to spend 400 or 600 dollars at a whim. Imagine what visiting the Vue forum must feel like for those people, these days. I actually saw somebody offer some of his own software for sale so that he could buy Infinite...

I think it is an understandable reaction of Infinite buyers to want to experiment with the new features. I do see a real risk though of Vue artwork going the same way as Hollywood blockbusters: not making what inspiration or vision dictates, but just making the most spectacular the computer can do. Just as in the movies, special effects alone will never be enough. Pictures such as now appear in the gallery are usually just overcrowded with detail; even the master of minimalism, Kenwas, hasnt been able to resist the impulse to strew the courtyard of his recent "Neuschwanstein" with Poser people... But I do hope and trust that in time well see truly artistic and tasteful use of this undeniably powerful feature. Probably in the end we will have some very good, some pretty awful, and much in-between work made with V5I, just as I`m sure we'll continue to have very good (and very bad, and much in-between) work made with earlier versions of Vue.

"If they had worked on improving clouds and particle effects, there would still be people complain Vue is not a good modeler" Of course, Agiel, and don't get me wrong - I think Vue is great software, in fact, I think at what it does it is probably the best there is, overall. What you want to see improved depends very much on what you use it for. Personally, I use Vue only as a means to create believable renders of architectural designs. From that viewpoint, all manner of animation gizmo's as well as an ecosystem are really not that interesting. On the other hand, the addition of GI and GR were, which is why I didn't hesitate for a second to upgrade to V5. No doubt some very interesting things can be done with Ecosystem, and I look forward to seeing truly creative use of it, that is: it being used in function of a bigger idea rather than as an end in itself, which merely results in the barrage of "look what ecosystem can do" images that is now flooding the gallery.

"E-on has graduated to the big time with this thing. These guys are serious and the big boys had better watch their backs." I don't think so. E-on has mainly shown to aim for spectacular crowdpleasing gimmicks rather than improvements to the core of their app. Sure, you can create thousands of trees - but they are still thousands of not particularly good-looking trees. Sure, you can create dazzling cityscapes - but they will still be sitting under skies full of unrealistically flat clouds. And while you can create billions of polygons in 30 seconds, you still have to deal with that clumsy material editor where it takes half an hour to get a simple texture mapped and sized correctly. Those are the things e-on really needs to take care of; if they do so in Vue 6 I'll find that much more interesting than Infinite, which basically boils down to the ecosystem.

Nope... still not impressed enough to spend that amount of money. I like the Agiel image though, nice look; - but then again, that can be done in any vector program in the time it takes to set up and render the Vue thing, (at least, if you're a little adept at old fashioned drawing). OK- I'll stop raining on your parade - it's just that this Infinite hype seems so utterly silly.

After all the hype and the drooling a gallery full of truly stunning artwork is the least I expect! I do hope Vue artists and artwork won`t go the same way as the Hollywood film industry did, discarding artistic vision in favour of the tricks the computer can do...

Ozone basically gives you the atmosphere editor from Vue, but inside the C4D environment. Unless there have been significant improvements to the atmosphere editor for Infinite, which as far as I know isn't the case (in fact, as far as I know it is exactly the same as in Vue5E), there wouldn't be much difference quality-wise. Ozone does allow you to tweak setting inside C4D and check their effect on your scene. If you stick to Infinite, you will have to switch back and forth between the two apps, and probably need to reimport a skydome several times to get things right.

"The Gi/GR functionality is great if you will be doing a lot of indoor scenes or using Poser figures. If you are basically doing landscapes, those lighting features aren't all that important" Actually, the GI and GR in Vue don't work all that good for interior scenes, but are optimized for outdoor use. They enhance detail in shadowed areas that appear as a single flat color in V4, which works wonders for architecture and vegetation, among other things.

When you buy a plant set you can indicate your format of preference (apart from Xfrogs native format), and nowadays the dropdown list does include vob. But I agree, Moonflower, that $149,- is not exactly cheap: and as long as you don't own XFrog, you will get identical specimens every time. On the other hand, these are really great looking plants - much, much better than those that Vue generates!

I would get V5E simply because it produces much better renders than V4 thanks to global illumination and radisioty. If you want to get similar functionality as V4Pro you will however need to buy some add-on modules as well. But in my opinion the GI/GR provides a far greater quality boost to your work than the plant editor, the light editor, etc.