I know.....I'm asking the traitorous question. But the more I look into it, the more I'm thinking of giving Vue Infinite a try. Since I mostly create foliage filled landscape scenes, often import Poser figures and do love having more options with lighting and volumetrics, I'm curious as to what those of you who have this application think. Especially if you use MacOSX (I have 10.3.9). Don't get me wrong - I love Bryce. I'm just getting frustrated with it's development and in the near future, I'll have to upgrade to Tiger which I've read B5 or B5.5 don't work too well on. I still have B5 btw.

Regardless, I'll DL the trial version to see how it runs on my my machine. I'm dang close to the processor specs (e-on recommends at least 1.25ghz and I have 1.5). But since it's expensive (even with the sidegrade price I can get owning Vue 4 even though I've never used it), so thought I'd ask. I purchased Vue 4 back when they had that $99 special for owners of Bryce. But it has problems running on OSX so I never got into it.

I'm hoping some here a) won't tar and feather me for asking and b) can give me their honest assessment of how they think Vue Infinite compares to Bryce 5.

Many thanks for any info you can provide.

Moi! Both programmes have their own strengths and weaknesses. Bryce IMO has a better rendering thingy than Vue but I hate Bryce trees. I love Vue's solid growth vegetation - always have. The newest gadget - the Eco System is to me a wonderful asset as I can vegetate a whole forest in a few seconds. However, the biggest downfall that Vue has for me is crashing. Some say it's a memory leak - I don't know. I tried using it on my laptop which has a newer and bigger processor than my PC but smaller ram (512) and after loading 1 terrain and populating it with an ecosystem I got an out of memory message. On my current PC I have 2.7 ghz processor with 1mb ram. I can get a lot of content into a scene before I get the out of memory error message, unless I include Poser content - that really messes things up. I wouldn't be without either programme :-) Gill

I dunno..have Vue 3, used twice, aside from the Zoom function locking up, no particular worries..;) I know that Vue's more spendy..

"give me their honest assessment of how they think Vue Infinite compares to Bryce 5" Well, come on...Vue 5 Infinite is where Bryce could/would be if Corel had been caring parents over the past years. We all have to be honest and see that. Vue 5 Infinite is $600, yet Bryce 5.5 is only $100, which still puts Bryce in the "best bang for your buck" catagory. But yeah, Vue 5 Infinite can produce some cool stuff, it better for that price. ;o) Definitely try out a demo, we should ALWAYS stretch ourselves in ALL ways in art. AS

I'm a dabbler, so can't really post a proper opinion. But... I have Bryce 3.3 (no tree lab), Vue5i and Poser 6. For images which don't need much vegetation (interiors, for example), I can use either. Both work well, but Vue seems to need a bit more setting up than Bryce does. But then I'm still learning Vue (and Bryce, if it comes to that). I also have a reasonably fast machine and 2 gig of memory (which helps a lot). At present, I find Vue gives much more realistic (outdoor) images (especially as I get better at using the Vue function editor) than Bryce and Vue can import Poser scenes much more easily. However, Bryce seems to be much quicker and easier to use for simple scenes, and is a lot cheaper. And it's easier (for me) to edit scenes in Bryce than in Vue. Vue is slow (due to the way it updates the 4-panel views). I'm gradually getting to know Vue and liking it more and more as I get used to it. But it does need a beefy machine to work well. But I still use Bryce. In general, I'd go with the highest version of Vue that you can afford, dropping back into Bryce for simpler scenes. (No tar/feather brush applied!) Cheers, Diolma

Hey all, I really appreciate the answers. It's tempting, but will have to save up if I do decide to go for it as I believe the best option for me would be Vue Infinite. I agree, the more tools an artist can have in their aresenol, the better. Sometimes I'd like to clobber Corel for letting Bryce gather dust for so long. What a waste but it does appear that DAZ is trying to re-develop Bryce. I just might need something sooner to develop the scenes I have in my head bone. But I will keep an eye on Bryce's progress and continue using it. You can count on it.

Thanks again and cheers back to all who took the time to give me your opinions and/or experience with both appys. :)

Thunder storm arrived out of nowehere - reply later :)

PS: I also managed to import a P6 image (which used a lot of reflection, a couple of point lights, ray-traced shadows, and some transparency and choked on them) into Vue and after a little faffing about got it to render reasonably.. (can't show pic, might offend the TOS). It wasn't quick, but Vue did it.. I'd been trying to get a render of that pic since I first set it up in P5... Still not happy with it tho.. (Can't get the correct POV in Vue). Cheers, Diolma

Attached Link: http://dmytry.pandromeda.com/mojoworld/volumetrics.html

Those MJW cloud+ocean renders are the coolest, really amazing realism. Watch out for Terragen 2.0 also, its going to kick the butts of most of the landscaping programs after it finally comes out... AS

Dan, although I think MJW creates some kick ass images, they aren't inline with what I create. But thanks for the suggestion as others here may be interested. ;)

AS - I agree. Terragen has come light years from where it was only a few short years ago. Version 2 definitely bears watching but again, I don't think I can wait that long if it's going to be awhile. If that is the case, I'd wait on Bryce 6. As it is, I'm not looking forward to having to begin all over again with a new landscape proggy. It's taken years to build my Bryce library let alone learn all it can do. I'm still learning all the things Bryce can do and hope the new discoveries never end. ;)

[beginneth essay]

I've recently been playing with V5i and its been an interesting learning experience.

Featurewise, V5i has a few very nice things - mainly ecosystems and the lighting are the things I've looked at so far. Out of the box plants are pretty good too. You should go and have a look at garyandcatherine's more recent gallery posts where they are using V5i for sorts of images that I think are similar in style/content to some of your work to get a good "relevant to you" sort of feel for it.

People often say that Vue's renderer is faster - but I think this is mainly due to the Vue renderer having a pile of quality options whereas bryces renderer is just full raytracer all the time (hence slow as). What this means is that if you have a simple scene that doesn't need full raytracing to render, then in Vue you can choose a render option that won't use as much raytracing, and hence it renders quite fast. However, once you try and smooth out those soft shadows so they're no longer grainy as hell, then you need to really dial up those Vue settings and so it slows down a lot (whether its as slow or slower than bryce for the same output image quality, I'm not sure, but it sure slows down an aweful lot with the quality sliders being pushed up a bit).

Lighting - being able to click a single button to get some form of GI is really nice.

Vue's poser integration thing... Now that bryce 5.5 has DS integrated (err.... more or less), the poser compatibility thing is more even between the two than it was (but you're on a mac, so that may remove the 5.5 from the discussion), unless you're doing animations, in which case V5i wins. Since you've got P6, that probably tilts that more in favour of V5i as well. Vue's main interface window (the one where you are building your sceen) seems a fair bit slower than bryce to update/respond - i.e. when Vue is in a single view (not the quad view it can do) with the same wire mesh appearance of the same object, bryce sure seems much quicker to update the view. V5i crashes far more often than bryce 5 on my system (2GB ram 3.2GHz HT P4). In the last three months of heavy bryce usage, I've had maybe 1 crash. V5i has been installed/uninstalled about 6 times in that same period and has had maybe 20 crashes while being used a lot less. The things where V5i has gone awry in my case has been in the simple basics (i.e. simple scene renders, importing large but not overly complex non-textured models...) - probably what some people have said about B5.5. I haven't yet tried a big scene in V5i to really put it under the hammer though - whether these crashes are a result of me doing things wrong or what, I'm not sure. To be fair though, E-on are working on the stability and bugs that inhabit V5i pretty diligently (they are up to patch 9 now in about 10-11 months since release I think) and it seems a lot more stable than what it was (though, every so often new issues seem to arise with a new update patch).

There's also a few other things I've run into in Vue that have sort of made me sit back and go "Uh-oh", though these are more than likely just because the programs do things differently and I'm not used to the Vue way.

Example Uh-oh - tried to render 4000x3000pixel image (bryce does this size render pretty easily on my system) to screen of a low-poly ecosystem on a 256x256 terrain and got a warning saying this would require 1.6GB(!!!) of ram to perform the render in and I should use render to disk as I don't have enough system resources (no funky illuminations either). Went for the render to disk option and it said that you can't use a pile of Vue's render effects when you render to disk and said I'd have to disable them all (I wasn't using any render effects anyway so this wasn't an issue, but if I was trying to make a big image with funky effects enabled....). This is what I'd call an "uh oh" moment - non fatal, but strange nonetheless.

In the end, I'm glad I have V5i and I'm looking forward to using some of those impressive looking features though bryce (mainly 5) is still, at the moment, my main beast of burden due to its relative stability and the familiarity that I have with it.

[endeth essay]

Message edited on: 02/14/2006 21:21

Yegods Flak - what a novel of information! =-O But I tip me hat to you all the same because those are the things I need to know. Hope the thunderstorm has passed safely, btw. ;) What you said about having options on where you want to use raytracing sounds similar to what Poser 6 allows. I'm actually enjoying this feature as well as IBL and AO lighting - features Bryce does not have. Although I freely admit getting a handle on AO's shadow oddities has nearly made me bald in the process, lol. But I'm fascinated by lighting so this type of play not only intrigues me, but is a heck of a blast as well. Thank Yahvo P6 has an area render feature now much like Bryce's plop render. It saves bucket loads of time. Believe it or not, I've never used Bryce's render to disk feature although I keep meaning to give it a try. Color me nuts, but I'm one of those who tends to sit enthralled watching each pixel render at a time. Unless it's a two day or longer render. One must sleep after all.... Vue Infinite does intrigue me. And I think I read you can export objects with this version which may be useful with other apps. But you've given me a ton to chew on so again, thank you Flak - I do appreciate your taking the time to write out your thoughts and experiences using Vue as compared to Bryce. :)

The thunderstorm was weird - we had thunder and lighting well before the rain appeared, which is why it felt like it sprang out of nowhere and led to a flurry of frenzied unplugging. The first and only time I've used bryce's render to disk function was about 6 months ago to render out a 10000x12000 ish pixel image of a grassy field. I too like to see my pixels being created. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff I didn't mention, like Vue's export (among a pile of other things), as I just haven't used it yet. I think you can export solidgrowth Vue trees as well... think.... Vue has a form of plop render (they call it area render) but bryce's plop render is better functionally in my mind. (Also Vue doesn't have a merge scene thingy, or I couldn't find it, but I may be the only person that extensively uses that in bryce anyway so it may not be a big issue to most lol). Definitely hit the demo for it - it doesn't allow exporting or saving or larger renders than about 640x480 or somehting like that, but its a good test bed for most other things.

Hi ariannah. I found the transition to Vue Inf from bryce fairly straightforward. The material editor is very different and expect a lot of tinkering and study to get its full benefits. The rest seems to be easily grasped. Good luck!

Fuzzy, thanks for the warning about the material editor since I usually spend quite a bit of time in there. Flak - glad to read Vue also has an area render - that's a feature I use constantly.

One last question to you Vue users....do you have any recommends for the best places to go for beginners in regards to active/helpful forums and also tutorial links?

Thanks again to everyone. You've all been a great help!

the Vue forum?..sorry, cheap shot, but they'd know, and would be very generous (especially if they think they're wooing you from Bryce..;) 'nuff said..;)

LOL pakled. I will check the forum here but wondered about other sites as well. Can never get enough useful links. ;)

www.cornucopia3d.com is the Vue content store and it has a fairly helpful group of folks in their forum over there as well.

Thanks, Flak. Will do. ;)

"Went for the render to disk option and it said that you can't use a pile of Vue's render effects when you render to disk and said I'd have to disable them all"

What? What kind of b.s. is that?! You can't render images with some render effects larger than the screen size? For a $600 program that's just unbelievable.

Coldrake

Coldrake, is that with the demo copy? AS

AgentSmith, that was a quote from Flaks Post #12. Flak seemed to be talking about the full version. Coldrake

In bryce you can do a render "to screen" of an image up to 4000x4000 (even though your screen may only be 1024x768 for example) pixels, but any larger and you need to render "to disk".

Vue's renderer just seems to eat a lot of ram to render "to screen" (or it did in that example), but if you had enough ram, I imagine you could probably render to similar sizes (i.e. about 4000x4000) in Vue to the screen as you could in bryce - it just seems to take a lot more ram to do it (different renderer and all). My 2Gb of ram wasn't enough, so Vue warns you that you should consider doing it with a render "to disk" as that uses a lot less ram and thats when it spat up a dialog box saying that certain render effects can't be done in a render to disk - motion blur I think was one of them.... I'll see if I can find my screen grabs of the dialog boxes when I get home, or whether I threw them out. Its not a fatal issue, and like with a lot of bryce limitations, I'm sure there's probably someone around thats found some form of workaround.

Message edited on: 02/15/2006 21:37

I've got a few Vue links (went over to the Vue forum and asked for links when I got Vue to begin with..;) IM me if you want some.

(coldrake) Ah, okay. (Flak) "Its not a fatal issue" ?? What if you couldn't render soft shadows in Bryce when you render to disk? Sounds fatal to me, lol. But, as you say, somebody probably has a workaround. (I would hope) AS

"What if you couldn't render soft shadows in Bryce when you render to disk?"

Then my PC would be much happier and far less stressed ;) Also, I can't remember which of the render effects it can't do to disk (pretty sure it can do soft shadows... can't remember seeing that one as a no-no). Will see if I can find my screen grabs tonight.

Is bryce render to disk resumable (thats how often I make images bigger than 4000 pixels)?

Message edited on: 02/15/2006 22:27

Hey, at least Vue HAS motion blur. Bryce Render to disk, resumable? Nope. Only rendering to screen is. Yeah, I don't often render bigger renders than that, although I am going to attempt one in the near future for a poster (3' x 2', 300dpi) AS

Now that I remember, it always struck me as odd that with bryce, smaller shorter images (rendered to screen) are resumable, yet much longer bigger images (where you have to render to disk) aren't.

Lol, seems round the wrong way to me.

Message edited on: 02/15/2006 23:23

Yup.