I just installed the upgrade from Vue 7 to Vue 8. One of the first things I had a a look at is the new planet feature. Now it is possible to have true planets with spherical terrains and their own atmosphere. In the previous versions there was only the workaround to simulate a planet by using a sphere primitve.
The feature is hidden in the main options dialog. Here you can select if your scene should be spherical or not. If you don’t select “planetary terrains” though, the spherical view will only be simulated. Otherwise you can zoom out and see your planet in its full glory.
The above render is the result of my first quick go. As always in Vue, tweaking parameters will result in even better pictures. But as this is a new feature, it takes some time to fully master it, so I decided to let you know about my first impressions right now.
I have noticed two things that could have been solved in a better way:
- You are forced to use a spectral atmosphere. I fully understand that a realistic rendering of a planet can only be done with a spectral atmosphere. But I was also hoping for the possibility to create unrealstic toon-like planets. It would have been better that artists could choose the degree of realism that they wish to inlcude in their works.
- To create the geography of your planet you are more or less forced into the use of an infinite procedural terrain. This means very high polygon counts and render breaks with “Building procedual terrain…” that are pretty usless most of the time because the camera is usually placed in a satellite orbit altitude where the planet surface basically looks like a map anyway. This becomes very noticeable at higher resolutions.
But still the planet feature is a great addition to Vue and will create a host of new opportunities for great pictures.
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