by admin on December 6, 2009
A nice feature of Vue is the possibility to add dispersion effects for materials with a non-zero refraction index. Dispersion is the result of the fact that the refraction index of a material is dependent on the wavelength of the light.
We all know this effect from a prism where white light is dispersed into rainbow colors, but also the sparkling of diamonds is caused by dispersion.
In real life, what is usually called white light is a continuos spectrum of all wavelengths depending on the properties of the emitter. This is called black body radiation in physics. The perceived color varies with the temperature of the radiation and the properties of the sensor. Bright sunlight appears white to us and corresponds to a temperature of about 5500 K.
Now you might think that the “spectral” atmosphere settings of Vue will reflect the physical properties of sunlight. But if you create a scen with a prism, you will notice that white light (and all other colors) in Vue is treated as a mixture of red, green and blue light, as represented by the RGB values you can set in the options dialog for the light source. So in a way, the “spectral” name for atmosheric effects is a bit misleading.
The type of the light source does not matter for this effect. A spotlight acts the same as the sun or a point light. Thes types only differ in the way shadows are created. The special feature of the sunlight only is that it influences the sky and cloud colors, but the calculations for these effects also rely on the RGB values instead of a black body spectrum.
For most purposes, this “fake dispersion” does not really do any harm, as the spectrum usually is squeezed together so much that the RGB nature of the light can’t be detected. But if you want to do closeup renders of optical effects, you will hit the limit of realism that can be achieved with Vue.
by admin on November 26, 2009
This is a followup to my comparison of Vue lighting models for an outdoor scene. Because lighting for indoor scenes is much different from outdoors, I am covering this topic in a dedicated post.
I set up a simple indoor scene, just an empty box with a few geometric primitives in one corner. Walls and floor are flat white, the ceiling is blue. Just as in the outdoor series, I made two variations of the scene. Again, all renders were made at a 640 x 480 resoulution on “Final” render level
1. Closed Box With a Single Point Light
Closed Box - Standard Model
Closed Box - Radiosity Without Boost
Closed Box - Radiosity boost 4.0
For a closed box, Global Ambience, Ambient Occlusion and Global Illumination models are useless because they involve the influence of the sky on the objects.
You can easily see that Global Radiosity is a must for indoor renders. It is also advisable to make use of the boost slider as the results will look even more convincing.
2. Box with Indirect Sunlight Through a Window
Indirect Sunlight - Standard Model
Indirect Sunlight - Global Ambience
Indirect Sunlight - Ambient Occlusion
Indirect Sunlight - Global Illumination
Indirect Sunlight - Radiosity Without Boost
Indirect Sunlight - Radiosity Boost 4.0
The first noteworthy result is that Global Illumination works far worse here than Ambient Occlusion although it is supposed to be superior. And it beomes very obvious that even with Global Radiosity Vue has significant problems handling tricky light situations like this one. Even with a 4.0 boost setting there are obvious light leaks around some edges. I also played around a bit with the advanced indirect lighting and photon map settings within the render options dialog, but was not able to get much better results.
For lighting situations like this one, Vue is significantly inferior to unbiased renderers like LuxRender or Yafaray.
If you want to test render settings for this scene, here is the scene file as download:
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download: Indoor Test Scene (318.34KB)
added: 28/11/2009
clicks: 343
description: Indoor scene for testing lighting models
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But beware, the user settings are set to extreme values, so the render time will be long, if you don’t change the settings.
by admin on November 23, 2009
Luminous materials are a great addition to Vue. With these you not only can create interesting night time scenes but also useful microstock-worthy pictures.
I just told you that white is the favorite microstock color. But black has its uses as well. Bright colors just look bettter on a blackground, and by using luminosity you can further enhance this effect.
While white backround pictures appeal more to the general mainstream media, the combination of luminous colors with black leans more toward technological and youthful topics.
Creating luminous materials in Vue is so easy that you don’t really need a screenshot. Just open the advanced material editor and select the effects tab on the far right. Setting the “Luminosity slider to a non-zero value turns on the effect. Just play around to see what looks good. Also the combination of luminosity and glow can give interesting results.
As an example I included the green glass material from the first picture as a free download.
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download: Luminous Green Glass (7.89KB)
added: 23/11/2009
clicks: 342
description: Transparent green material with luminosity turned on
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by admin on November 22, 2009
In the atmosphere editor of Vue you can choose among five different lighting models. They differ in how the effects of indirect lighting is calculated. I will compare the effects of these models on a sample scene. But first here is what each mode does:
- Standard Model
A uniform ambient light of pre-defined color is adde to the scene. You can choose how much will come from the sky and how much will come from all directions. Horizontal surfaces will be brightened more by light from the sky
- Global Ambience
This takes into account the color variations of the sky. A surface facing a blue part of the sky will receive a little blue light, surfaces facing clouds will receive white or grey light.
- Ambient Occlusion
Every point in the sky acts like a tiny light source. An point on an object receives a bit of shadow if another object is occluding the path to the sky. Only objects within a pre-defined range will cast these shadows. If the path is free, the point receives light from the sky.
- Global Illumination
This is basically the same as ambient occlusion, but there is no range limit. So all objects influence each other.
- Global Radiosity
Instead of calculating shadows as in the AO and GI models, the radiosity models asumes that any obect that recieves light will reemit a bit of it according to its physical properties. This light affects the surrounding objects. This is done recursively. Vue includes an option to “optimize for outdoor rendering”. This effectively cuts down the number of indirect contributions because usually in outdoor scenes this effect is less relevant.
Comparision of the Lighting Models
To compare the different lighting models I used a simple nature scene with a basic grassland terrain and an ecosytem of red maple trees. I used two different atmospheres for the test: “Default” for a clear sky and “Glasgow” for bad weather. No other settings were changed. The images are 640×480 renders on “Final” setting with Vue 8 Complete.
Default Atmosphere – Clear Sky
Standard Model
Global Ambience
Ambient Occlusion
Global Illumination
Global Radiosity with outdoor optimization
Global Radiosity without outdoor optimization
The standard model is easily recognised by its uniformly bright coloration. In GA the shadows within the leaves of the background trees are very dark. They lighten up with AO and even more with GI which is unusal according to the manual. GR is almost as bright as the standard model, but the coloring of the leaves is much better differentiated. Optimized GR is a bit darker than standard GR
“Glasgow” Atmosphere – Bad Weather
Standard Model
Global Ambience
Ambient Occlusion
Global Illumination
Global Radiosity with outdoor optimization
Global Radiosity without outdoor optimization
The results here are slightly different than with the default atmosphere. Global Illumination is now noticeably darker than Ambient Occlusion and outdoor optimization for radiosity results in a significantly brighter picture.
Conclusion
The standard model should only be used if render times would get too long otherwise. All other models give significantly better results. Where there is no sunlight, Global Illumination will darken the picture as compared to Ambient Occlusion, with much sunlight it seems to brighten the shadows more than AO. Global Ambience is a good and reasonably fast alternative for scenes without much direct light. Global Radiosity works best in all atmospheres, but I would recommend it only for detailled scenes where objects are close to each other. I don’t think that vast open landscapes will profit much from radiosity. Regarding the difference beween the two radiosity variants, I think it is up to personal taste which version looks nicer. I couldn’t honesttly say that I would prefer one over the other.
For a comparison of lighting models for indoor scenes look here.
by admin on November 20, 2009
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.
by admin on November 16, 2009
Vue comes with a sample scene called “Product Showcase”. This is just a simple basic scene with a white floor and a white sky with a Ferrari racing car. e-on Software included this scene to provide you with a generic setting where you can do sample render of objects or plants that you created in order to sell them or give them away.
Of course you can also use this sample scene to render anything you want if you need a white background.
Floor reflections
The writing is a standard text object. I chose “Eurostile Bold” with rounded bevel and 2.5 extrusion. The floor is slightly reflective, but the reflections look better if the reflectivity is increased a bit. The floor material is transparent with the “Turn reflective with angle” option checked. This is used to simulate some kind of milky glass. Here is the trick: Increasing the “Global transparency” value will increase reflectivity. This is something not very obvious for those not familiar with the physical laws of reflection and refraction.
Text Material
First, the surface of the text object will get a slight shinyness:
The coloring is done with the formula editor inside the material editor. What makes the coloring special is that there is a gradual color change across the whole object. For this to work, you need the AdvancedGraph module or a version of Vue where it is included. To bring up the function editor, choose the “Color & Alpha” tab, right klick on the “Color production” preview and select “Edit Function”
The x value of the “Position on Picture” input node is used to select a color from the default rainbow color map. This colors each pixel of the object according to its x coordnate on the final picture. The multiplier is used to squeeze the gradient a little because there is a bit of margin left and right of text object. Here I used a value of 1.17 for the multiplier.
This is just a fairly simple demonstration what a powerful tool the combination of the function editor with the material editor can be.
Download the Rainbow Material
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download: Rainbow Material for Vue (6.56KB)
added: 16/11/2009
clicks: 231
description: Colors an object according to its x coordinate on the final picture
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by admin on November 16, 2009
This is not meant to be a full-fledged review but more a quick look at the features this amazing piece of software has to offer. I will write a multi-part review soon but I have not upgraded yet to Version 8 which has just been released. And I will certainly want to have a thorough look at it before.
What Vue Is And What it Isn’t
Vue from e-on Software is a complete software solution for creating 3D renders of virtual worlds. It was designed in particular for the creation of photorealistic landscapes but can also be used to render any other kind of 3D scenes. It also supports animation.
It contains a basic modeler with primitive shapes and boolean operations. You can do a lot with this, but Vue is not a tool for modeling complex objects like airplanes or animals. But it allows you to import any 3D object you wish into your scenes.
Where Vue truly excels is landscape design. And this includes not only terrain but also plants. Fractal mountains, oceans, forests, deserts, you name it. A powerful atmosphere editor lets you create the appropriate sky for your scene.
It comes with a fairly good raytracing engine that is tweakable in many ways. But it should be noted that the rendering engine it is not a physically correct implementation like for example LuxRender.
Modular Concept
Vue is distributed in several versions with varying degrees of complexity. The basic functionality is included in the free version Vue Pioneer. Rendering size is limited and a logo is placed on the pictures, but you can already do quite a lot with it.
For advanced functionalities, 12 modules are supplied that can be bought separately according to your needs. There are several “in-between” verions that include a limited number of modules. The full Vue Complete ($599) obviously comes with all modules. There are also professional verisons called Vue infinite and Vue xStream that offer corporate workflow enhancements and integration into existing 3D production environments.
If you should decide to upgrade from the free Vue Pioneer, I stronlgy recommend that you buy the low end version Vue Esprit ($199) first. Just stacking modules on top of your Vue Pioneer will result in licensing problems with purchased 3D content. I could have saved some money by having known this before…
Basic Features
- Modeling with primitive shapes and boolean operations
- Fractal terrains
- Atmosphere editor for skies, sunlight and clouds
- Import of proprietary 3D objects
- Plants that differ from instance to instance called Solid Growth
- Powerful material editor
- Additional light sources
- Basic animation capability
Additional Modules
- 3DImport: Import of all major 3D object types including Poser and Daz3D figures
- RenderUp: Unlimited resolution for renders, control over all rendering parameters
These two modules are included in the Vue Esprit version
- HyperVue: Parallel rendering on up to 5 network computers
- DeepAccess: Better object and material handling for complex scenes, batch editing
- LightTune: Advanced lighting control, assign specific lights to specific objects
- Botanica: Customize Solid Growth plants, derive new species from existing ones
- EcoSystem: Populate terrains and any other objects with plants or any other objects, very powerful!
- EcoPainter: Paint with Ecosystems on any terrain or object with the mouse or a graphic tablet
- 3D Exporter: Export scenes or parts from scenes into many formats
- KronosFX: Advanced animation control, support for HD animations
- AdvancedGraph: Very powerful graphical function editor for materials and many other aspects
- Zephyr: Advanced wind control
Cornucopia3D
Cornucopia3D is both a community for Vue artists and a shop for Vue related stuff like models, plants or materials. It is officially supported by e-on Software and it is the only place where you can buy the additional modules. You need a free Cornucopia3D account to register your software (and you need to registerVue in order to run it)
Apart from the fact that for using Vue you are required to have an account there, it is entirely remommendable to have a look around at Cornucopia3D. You can buy lots of interesting stuff, often for low prices, and the forums are a good source of information. There is also a very nice gallery where you can see what can be done with Vue.
Is it Worth the Money?
Apart form the free Vue Pioneer, Vue is not cheap. I suggest to give Vue Pioneer a thorough try and look in the Cornucopia3D gallery what can be done with the more advanced vesions. For me it is worth every penny, but it’s always a matter of personal prefence. In my opinion, there currently is no better software to design 3d landscapes. And Vue is flexible enough to be used as standard renderer for many other purposes as well.
