Vue 7 - Digital Nature

Yes it's true! I have finally made the upgrade from Vue 6 Pro Studio, to Vue 7 Infinite, and that, along with me having a much better laptop to work on, means I now have much less restrictions on what I can do when it comes to making 3D landscapes

This one is pure Vue work here, not a shred of Photoshop postwork asides from my signature so yeah, there are flaws that I could have fixed in PS as I normally would have, but here I just wanted to show people what can be done in this program alone

So I'll outline the main features that would be of interest to anyone who may consider getting the program, keep in mind that it IS mainly oriented to natural scenery, and not really a "general 3D modelling" program, but your own models can always be imported into it

Terrains and landscape
The popular choice for an effective 3D landscaping program is </i>Terragen</i> and while Terragen still has an advantage on terrain-creating with more realistic methods of erosion, Vue makes up for it by allowing you to have several terrains rather than one solid "world" - so different parts of the landscape be sized, rotated and textured differently, here 5 terrains are used, one for the mountain, two for each of the rocky hills, another for the flat grassy area below those hills, and the last used on the foreground river bank!

Vegetation and rocks
The key feature that seperates Vue from Terragen is probably it's random tree and rock systems. Rather than importing a tree or rock model and having to duplicate that thousands of times, Vue's Solidgrowth technology will let you pick a tree of your choice, and use it as many times as you want without two ever being identical, it "grows" plants as individuals, just like in nature. Rocks also are created this way. If you have a camera and Photoshop, you can even take leaf photo's, make textures from them and create your own trees too, which once saved, will also behave in the same way (I've made around 60 custom plants that no-one else would have so far)

Ecosystems
Tired of having to place heaps of objects one-by-one in a 3D scene, only to start having to put up with severe lagging once you get past a few dozen? then Ecosystems will allow you to instantly "populate" your scene with thousands, even millions of your choice plants, rocks, or imported objects in an instant! furthermore, you can even adjust how often each object appears relative to others (say you are making a desert, you'd have much more rocks and much less trees and shrubs) as well as restraining them to certain degrees of "steepness" on the landscape so they naturally occur more densely packed on flat grounds than on steep cliffsides. You can even "paint" objects onto the scene if you are picky, creating paths of trees or rocks that might follow alongside a river for instance.

Clouds, lighting and Atmosphere
These are what evokes the "mood" of a 3D scene most of all, the weather and lighting conditions. Vue lets you play God as you control cloud-cover from a fine clear sky to an oncoming rainstorm. 3D clouds with actual volume were added in Vue 6 and further refined in Vue 7, so you can even move the viewpoint up above the clouds for a sky-high shot, or just appreciate their realistic beauty from the ground. rays of sunlight referred to as "Godrays" that pierce through the clouds on those dramatic days can also be achieved.
Moving the Sun-light will change the time of the day in an instant, making it low on the horizon will cause the sky and clouds to be come more orange/pink, and this level of change can be adjusted to make the colours as dramatic or subtle as you like through the Atmosphere Editor. A range of lighting methods can be chosen, from the basic ones that render fast, or at the expense of a longer render time, you can use Global Radiosity the simulates the behaviour of light interacting with a scene in a breathtakingly realistic way. This scene had GR used in it too.
All Atmosphere types have fog and haze that can be thickened or thinned to your liking. So objects far away will seem to fade off into the fog and haze adding serious depth to the image!

Just add water
Water in Vue is created on an infinite plane, so it seems to just go off on the horizon as far as you can see, which is great for open oceans. But in any case, water is optional and its level can be as deep or shallow as you want. Easily adjust how rough or calm you want the water to be, as well as how much sea-foam appears around objects like beaches, rocks, cliffsides, or even large ships if your'e lucky enough to get your hands on a model of those.

Materials and the Function Editor
Imagine trying to create that snow-capped mountain in the background there in a general 3D program, you would probably spend hours making an image-map to go on it in Photoshop in an attempt to just get the snow land where it's supposed to. In Vue, you can "mix" different textures according to the altitude, slope and orientation. Atitude means one of the materials will only appear at either high, or low areas (here, the snow is set for high altitude, rock for low) Slope will only make certain textures appear on steep or flat surfaces (here, snow is set to collect on flat surfaces, rock for steep) and Orientation means one of the textures will be biased to face a certain direction (snow here collects on the east side of the mountain where the afternoon sun wouldn't melt it much) or like Moss on a tree trunk - it faces in one direction and mixing by orientation can acheive that effect with a trunk material and a moss material.
The function editor is fairly complex, but it allows you to use filters to make realistic materials without having to use any memory-hungry image-maps either. Such textures are called "procedural materials" and create a natural pattern that dosn't repeat over and over again like image-based textures, and they usually render faster too!

Import your own 3D models
Models that you worked hard on in a general 3D program (like Maya, 3DsMax, Cinema 4D, Blender etc) may look good, but the final render may lack an impressive scene to show them off in. Why not show off that car of yours in a forest pathway like on the commercials, capable with Vue's amazing vegetation? why not use Vue's ecosystem on your Building models to instantly create a sprawling city without having to place each building one-by-one? Vue isn't just for landscapes alone, but you can use its landscaping powers to make a nice scene to show off your own models in for a dynamic and artistic final render!

Man, I've written an essay on this program alone! and that still dosn't do it justice, anyone who'se serious about 3D art should at least consider it, here's the official page [link]

COPRIGHT NOTICE: I retain the rights to all my work here. Please do not use or edit my artworks in any way or on any site.