I've changed the contents of the Second Set of these models to add a small item or two. So, I've also changed the PDF description as well. Here is the updated download link for the revised Description of the models in Set 2 - Ancient Persian Harbor collection.

Models In Set 2

Good!  Thank you very much for letting me know.

Apologies. So, you cannot download them, but you can read them?  Please reply so that I learn the problem. I'll try to fix it.

According to Dropbox, the setting for these files enable you to download them. Can you look around a little more for a small download icon for one of these docs? Please let me know if you are still unable to download. I'll find a way to provide these to you directly.

GREAT!   Thank you very much!

By the way, Shawn, Gaea Version 2 is out now in early beta, but it has a long way to go before it is complete and useable. You did well in not waiting for it.

Yes, the rendering engine, while updated as wabe says, is not equivalent to one of the stand-alone rendering engines that cost more than $500.00 USD. But, that is to be expected. BUT, it sure is nice to be able to paint landscapes with plants again, to make stones and rocks, and make decent water for lakes, harbors and oceans. In most of the big-name software that I use (Maya and MAX), we can create clones of plant models and then "scatter" them to populate landscapes. But, these processes are nowhere nearly as good as Vue, and there usually is no mechanism for creating random variations in those clones. And, silly as this sounds, I need a lot of rocks and stones in my work. Now, I have a decent rock generator again. Finally, I need to be able to create better water than in this river harbor scene (draft quality rendered here in Maverick Render). So, short of requiring Realflow or Houdini, I'll be able to create more realistic eddies, ripples and direction changes in the water current around my boats.

I'm liking this and I'm grateful to have a current copy of Vue.

This is great news. I'll start offering new products for Vue as well. 

Just incidentally, I started working on a large project that will fit into Vue well. This is a new part of my Ancient Persians sets that focuses on the Harbor for the major river the historical city lies along. (Mostly this is an excuse to make a bunch of models of very old-style dhows and fellucas, something I've wanted to do for a long time.) Was going to vend all this at Artstation Marketplace, when it is finished in a month or so. But now, I'll offer portions of this bunch here at Rendo in Vue file format as well. Not trying to flog this to potential buyers. But I am looking forward to setting this up in Vue, with its ability to make great landforms and water.  Here's a link to the very early work-in-progress stage. 

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YB3VmX

Just to note, there are a lot of items in this set, so I'll be breaking it up into a two or three packages. So far, I have six detailed (historically accurate) ships in various stages of development, and eight background people, plus the buildings and cargo and docks. I'll investigate the possibility of animating the people in Vue, as they are already rigged in Maya and capable of a lot of animation. If anyone has anything special they want created for this project, please let me know. I'll try to pick out stuff for the first package that makes at least a basic scene.

A very big THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

Wonderful!  Works Well!

Also, another dumb question from a dumb newbie. How can I save out or export a prop that I've made and made the materials for (into a shader), so that I don't have to retexture this thing whenever I want to use the prop again?

So, ... what did you decide to do?

Shawn, for you, and for anyone else who might be interested in Gaea, here is an invite to the Gaea Discord Forum.  This link will expire 7 days from now.

https://discord.gg/DNKDm3te

The thing to look at first, probably is the "Artwork" thread.

If you want to make many diverse kinds of scenes, plein air-type outdoor/landscape scenes, indoor scenes, cityscapes in close view, architecture, etc.  ... purchasing a current Vue subscription probably is your best, most economical bet. 

But if your primary interest is in landscapes (plein air), then you'll probably want Gaea (by Quadspinner). You can easily add plants to this, plus volumetric clouds and HDRI lighting. Plus, "lakes, plants and skies". The Gaea renderer is "reasonable" and there is an extremely active, wordlwide forum of users posting at every hour of the day. People do make some planetary images, but these are more rare for this software. But, most people I know who are into plein air scenes, couple Gaea with a modern, stand-alone rendering engine. Export the landscapes and water bodies out of Gaea and import them into some good rendering engine. Add trees and plants from almost any source, add people, buildings, load in a good unclipped HDRI fro Polyhaven, perhaps. Maybe some volumetric clouds from almost any source, and compose the scene in the rendering engine. "This Is The Way."  (or, at least, this is the way most of us do things now days.)

A vast array of incredibly detailed trees and plants is available on Artstation Marketplace, typically for about $2.00 USD per two trees (take a look at Moonik Office offerings for example), and you can get volumetric clouds there also.   Almost any modern stand-alone rendering engine will work - personally, I like Maverick Render. Almost any modern rendering engine supports "cloning" for plant duplication, and "scattering" - also for plant duplication.  And for "skies" and "planets" you want a rendering engine that supports volumetric objects. But most of the modern PBR engines do support volumetric files. And you'll want one that is good with HDRI lighting.

Alternatively, If you want to make cityscapes, basic architecture, interiors with active people, then you might want to try learning Unreal or Blender. The rendering engines in those apps improve all the time. But landscapes are not their forte. In fact, its a little difficult to get decent landscapes in those apps currently.

The current version of Vue is pretty good, but the reason it kind of fell out of favor is that it lagged way behind in adopting modern PBR materials, HDRI lighting, volumetric objects, and it is pretty insistent on keeping its own plant-building engine.  Meanwhile, Speedtree came along and took over the plant-making world for awhile, and then Autodesk Max and Maya added plant-making features and plant plug-ins. And some other plant-engines came into being. Plus, while this was happening, almost all the rendering engines developed cloning and scattering capabilities - kind of stealing the thunder from Vue.  Of course, "quadspinner" had broken away, got some good partners and started slowly developing Gaea, which is no doubt the very king of landscape generators. Produces far superior landscapes to anything in Vue and pretty much has killed off the other specialized terrain engines. But, Vue is now much more current in these things, so it has kind-of caught up.

So, I do this kind of work when I want to recreate, and I use Maverick Render as my main tool. I use Gaea, Speedtree and my primary model-building tool is Maya. If I don't make the plants myself, I get them from "Everyplant" (our old primary plant-maker from C3D days), or from Artstation Marketplace. Maverick Render is the center of things, but there are some things you need to know about it. First, it only works on Intel machines, and it only works with nVidia RTX video cards. It is entirely a GPU-based rendering engine. The reason I put up with these limitations, and that I built my current machine around it is because it is the most modern rendering engine on the planet. It has massive lighting facilities - excellent, excellent, excellent HDRI features at the core, topped by world-class studio lighting features. Plus, it directly incorporates Substance Designer archive files, which means you can adjust materials right within the rendering engine. And, it is damn fast. Maverick Render really is intended for professional product visualization, especially jewelry and cosmetics, but I have no great difficulty with landscapes.  The GPU-based rendering engines are indeed fast, but the more objects you have in a scene, the more they slow down. So, often for my landscapes, the rendering speed is basically the same as my older CPU-based rendering engines (Maxwell Render, for example).  What I'm trying to say is that consider the choice of rendering engine carefully.

So, any of these rendering engines that use cloning and scattering allow you to place multiple versions of plants all over your landscape, but cloning is hand placement, and scattering is kind of "procedural placement". Neither of these is "painting" as in Vue.  I think the trade-off is that we can use much more realistic plants in close-up and middle distance. But nothing is as easy as Vue's "painting" technology, which is why you still might prefer Vue, in the end.

So, something I might recommend is that you start by taking a good look at Gaea. I think you can get a free trial copy to play around with. Look at their instructional videos, and maybe sign up for the Discord forum to see what people are doing with it.  Even if you end up with a subscription to current Vue, you might want to have Gaea.

After that, you might have a decision point - current Vue, or pop for a good, modern rendering engine if you don't already have one.(At this point, I suppose I conclude that you will have to make a big path choice between the easier, simpler Vue or ... the more difficult..."The Way.")

I haven't mentioned Houdini here, although this is an option as well. Houdini has a good rendering engine currently is Houdini 2.0 is about to come out - which will be a big, major release. People do landscapes in Houdini, and trees, plants, and of course, water. Houdini has become a decent general-purpose model-builder as well. I hate being tied down in one single app (with the exception of Maya), so I don't favor this. But you might like it - its worth checking out.

OK, thank you for the reply.  I'll post some as soon as I finish my current project.

I checked my collection of plants I made earlier for Vue, and that are in both *.fbx and *.obj file formats. I have five red rhododendron shrubs, three white rhododendron shrubs and two purple (sort of purplish pink flowers) rhododendron shrubs. I have a bunch of both red and white azalea plants of many sizes, and these I can create all day long. (and, alternatively, make some for potted plant versions.) And, finally, I have one decent azalea bonsai.

Are these what you are looking for?

I can make some (actually quite a lot of...) azelas, but can only provide them in *.obj and *.fbx file format. (Am not a Poser or Daz person - Just Maya.) Would these do for your needs?