Product Review: Page (1) of 2 - 08/07/09

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e-on`s Vue 7.5 Xstream Vue hooks directly into your 3D application giving you Vue controls within your software By Jon Carroll

One thing still challenging to 3D animators and visual effects artists is the creation of realistic landscapes and integrating objects created in their animation software into those environments. There have been over time several different pieces of 3D software that were specifically intended for the creation of 3D environments, and they have used various means to incorporate their landscapes into the rendered images.

Previous methods for doing this may have involved any of the following: simple compositing of the scene; importing your objects into the landscape renderer (which often meant they did not render the same, since they were in a different renderer); and Z-buffer based compositing within the renderer of your primary animation software.

Vue, in its Xstream version, handles that differently. It hooks directly into your 3D software giving you Vue controls within your software, enabling you to animate and texture the objects of your chosen 3D application normally.

Mosque rendered in Vray, landscape and trees rendered in Vue 7.

Vue Material Editor opened within LightWave 9.6

Vue Material Editor opened in Cinema4D R11. You can see the Vue landscape behind the Cinema4D object.

Since you are working directly within the interface of your 3D application, you can use all of its normal animation and rendering tools without having to use quirky or strange export tools that may not accurately recreate your scenes. You can adjust materials for Vue objects within the interface of your 3D application by calling up the Vue Materials Editor, as seen above. Vue's editors for objects (specifically, generated landscapes) and atmospheres will also open directly within your animation software, greatly speeding up adapting your workflow to include Vue.

Vue Material Editor

The Vue Function Editor

Material Editor editing the plant distribution within an ecosystem.

 

Pictured above is several views of the Vue Materials Editor. Within the editor, you have the capability to edit the shading of any object- the landscape, bark and leaves on plants and rocks-- within Vue's Function Editor, which gives you an extensive node-based shading system with access to certain parameters that are decidedly landscape-oriented. Plant placement in Vue is handled as a type of Material called an Ecosystem, and the plants can either be places dynamically, and the landscape populated with plants at render time; or a static population can be generated, which has the advantage of placing the plants specifically within the scene and making them visible in 3D previews. 

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