This back-and-forth methodology doesn’t really break the flow of working in your host application but is an additional step and understanding what Vue renders compared to what the host application renders is a must.
Hands down, the best feature of xStream is the ability to “paint” entire ecosystems into your host application’s 3D environment in real time (3ds Max and C4D only). A Vue ecosystem is a collection of plants and objects that the user specifies from the Vue library of objects. And, if you have a tablet, your abilities are even more significant thanks to pressure sensitive technology. The user has a choice to simultaneously paint a mix of the objects or only individually selected objects in a continuous flow or on a click-by-click instance. This provides tremendous control over the rapid placement, mixing and scaling of plants in your scene. Additionally, once established, ecosystems can be edit further still. A special thanks to Vue’s Matt Reveccie for clarifying to this thick headed author how to edit ecosystems in. In cases where the ecosystem is painted globally instead via a specific Vue shader, choosing Edit => Paint Ecosystem reactivates the ecosystem tool allowing for additions, removal and adjustments to already painted objects.
The cool part about Vue xStream is that in the course of making your scene, even if it has hundreds or thousands of plants, your file size remains relatively small. This is because Vue uses a process where it “instantiates” or puts proxies of the objects in your scene. Instead of loading in actual geometry, it’s merely loading instances of a source object.
