Attached Link: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Products/vue5/

Those of you that have received an IM about the interactive magazine's new contest (themed "chivalry") will notice a number of prizes. 1st is Vue 4. 4th place is DAZ Bryce 5. Now obviously, being the Bryce zealot that I am, I kinda got annoyed. And so I went to look into Vue 4. Turns out v5 is on store shelves right now. And frankly, it's a whole lot better than Bryce is at the moment, and arguably better than 5.5. Here's why:

Global Illumination and EasyGI
Capture the subtelty of natural light using Vue 5's all new Global Illumination engine!
And with EasyGIsingle slider quality setting, no need to worry about bucket sizes or other obscure parameters: you get the perfect blend of quality vs. render speed - each time!

Global Radiosity
Vue 5 proudly exhibits the first radiosity engine that will actually render infinite outdoor scenes in a finite amount of time! Although optimized for this type of outdoor rendering, Vue 5's radiosity engine can also produce very pleasing indoor renders.

HDRI and Image Based Lighting
Map any picture to the background or use High Dynamic Range Images to illuminate your Vue scenes. Ensure perfect blending with real photographic backgrounds!

Procedural Terrains
Create non-polygonal procedural terrains with infinite detail, enlarge them to the horizon or fine tune their shape using the standard Solid3D terrain modeling tools!

Advanced Atmospheric Engine
Combine Vue's advanced volumetric atmosphere system with the brand new Global Illumination engines! Setup Image Based Lighting with just one click!

Compatible With Vue Professional Plant Technology
Grow breathtakingly realistic 3D plants and trees and select from the 50+ plant presets to populate your scenes! Use new plant species created with Vue Professional's Plant Editor!

New Material and Function Editors, Parametric Mapping
Use the Basic or the Advanced Material Editor, create incredibly complex procedural shaders using the all new SmartGraph Function Editor, and accurately fit textures onto objects using the new parametric mapping mode!

Metablobs Organic Modeling
Use the brand new Metablob engine to melt Vue primitives (spheres, cubes...) together and create amazing organic models with seamlessly blending materials! Preview the final Metablob geometry in the OpenGL views!

3D Text Editor
Create amazing video titling effects thanks to the all new interactive 3D Text Editor. Design your own extrusion and beveling profiles and easily apply custom materials!

Pre-Animated Mesh and Poser Support
Load pre-animated Vue meshes, combine them with Vue's internal animation engine and instantly add life to your projects (you can also still import static Poser 4&5 content)!

Integrated Post-Processing and Camera Switching
Apply post-processing effects (gamma, color correction...) internally and benefit from the full 96 bit color resolution instead of working on the usual 24 bit images. Animate post-processing effects and switch cameras during animations!

Advanced OpenGL Engine
Preview scenes in real-time with textures, plants, atmospheres, planets, Boolean operations, Metablobs... Reap the benefits of hardware acceleration or use default software implementation and wireframe modes for maximum compatibility!

Maximum Compatibility
Vue 5 implements fault protection technologies that monitor your system's activity and intercept potential memory allocation failures to minimize any risks of losing data.
The optional compatibility mode will minimize any potential incompatibilities with particular setups.
Numerous Interface Improvements
Vue 5 features hundreds of minor interface improvements such as a new convenient Image browser, improved multi-tasking, per-object material browsing, global numeric resizing, improved handling of missing texture maps, new "superior" rendering preset, pressure sensitive terrain editing, etc.
Compatible with Mover 5
Vue 5 Esprit is compatible with Mover 5. Mover 5 lets you import fully animated Poser 4/5 characters, combine them with Vue's own animation engine and render the resulting animation accross a network of up to 5 computers. Interaction with animated Poser characters has been greatly accelerated.

Now what does this mean. Obviously a number of these things are going to be present in Bryce 6 as well -afaik anyway: GI, HDRI, and possibly Radiosity. The procedural texture editor looks logical and easier to use, although basing itself on the same general ideas as Bryce's. Procedural terrains, on the other hand, are a huge plus

Metablobs are a different type of metaballs, although having ALL primitives with this option is a major plus. The text-maker thing is okay, although not terribly useful or groundbreaking. The tree lab and even the presets themselves are miles away from Bryce's.

All in all Vue 5 is where Bryce 5 should have been (read: metaballs and tree lab) if Corel would have bothered. If DAZ comes out with a GOOD product as opposed to a craptastic Pumeco-ish one then the playing field might be equalized. It is quite clear though where DAZ has looked for its inspiration when outlining the updates it plans for Bryce 6. Give Bryce a solid non-boolean modelling capability and a comparable Poser import-export niche and it might eventually do better.

Drac

Message edited on: 10/19/2004 08:34