I new to Vue and am approaching it as a matte painter. I been hearing alot of great stuff from what ILM is doing with it.

If you don't mind I have a couple quick questions about Vue and terrains.

1. Does Vue do DEM maps (satelite maps) or use pictures for displacement? (I mean super accurate displacements)

I did a test of a color photo....(turned B&W)...(and inverted)....and threw it in Vue....didnt look like anything like the photo (full of noise)

One of the great features for Z-brush is the ability to bring in an image and inflate it like a peice of bread. I did a job where we painted a giant ground plane (Nine 4K maps) of a battle feild....complete with craters, tread marks, etc.....we brought the giant plane into Z-brush and "inflated" it like a peice of bread from the color map...the detail compared to the photos were imensly acurate....(it was actually a form of photogrametry)....

Can Vue do something like this? I think the procedurals are great....I am even exploring Geocontrol (I love there errosion patterns)....BUT in the movie biz you tend to get a photo and are told "give me that!".....

So you can see why custumized "Image based" terraines are a very important question for me.

2. If so...what picture formats and how hi-rez do they have to be? Are they color satelite maps or B&W?  DO they have to be 16 bit?

...also does anyone use geocontrol2 to get better procedural terraines?

really appreciate your help