As mentioned earlier, Vue 7.5 now provides an easier way to create believable planets that hang in space or the backdrops of your terrain-bound point-of-view. There are now 3 types of infinite procedural terrains that you can choose from depending on what requirements need to be met. Spherical terrains are best for planets that are mid-range, like a camera close to a ground level looking at a planet in the atmosphere, while planetary terrains are ideal for creating planets in space.
Besides populating planets procedurally, you can also place new objects or vegetation manually using the new spherical abstraction gizmos available in Vue 7.5. For example, if you need to place a few trees in specific areas, you can change the view of terrain from spherical to flat and move the tree along a flat surface. When you are finished, turn spherical display back on and view it on the planet. If you still need to tweak the placement, you can move it with the gizmos and it will slide at the angle of the surface. So for whichever method you use, Vue 7.5 makes it easy to make changes.
The material editor has also received some new enhanced features to speed up the workflow. Aside from sculpting the terrains, you can define how materials are distributed by painting it on the surface you’re molding. From there, you can either paint in the effects yourself or have Vue apply it for you based on how it’s painted. And finally, you can import in material distribution maps to use or modify to your liking on your terrain.
Densely populated plant life can be procedurally generated off into the distance.
A couple of exciting enhancements have been added to the generation of ecosystems. Dynamic Ecosystem Population makes it possible for you to create a dense, lush environment that extends beyond the horizon. The camera will only render what instances of the vegetation it can see in order to maximize processor use on your system. These dynamic ecosystems can also be animated over time by altering distribution settings and tying them to a period of time and corresponding elements in the function editor such as density and scale. All of these allow you to literally make your environments come to life before your eyes.
Another feature that is meant to help speed up production without sacrificing quality of your work is the camera mapping operation. In large scenes in which highly detailed geometry is displayed throughout your piece, you can single out elements, mostly in the background, that do not change position or angle when the camera does its’ movements. The highly detailed geometry can then be mapped and projected on to simpler geometry so that the majority of your processor power focuses more on important objects that change in the scene. This may take a bit of time to set-up and understand, but in the end will free you up to move quickly through your work.
Vue 7.5 makes it easy for you to move and orient individual objects on a spherical surface.
