The means by which our ideas are envisioned digitally and the processes by which to do so are numerous and varied, depending on the person or group making the visage. There are so many tools out in the market that attempt to offer different ways to do everything that could possibly be done wrapped up in a singular package. Modeling, texturing, rigging, lighting, dynamics, and animation, to name a few, are not only common but expected in almost every popular 3D software package in use. But there is at least one circumstance in which most 3D programs, on their own strength, lack the underlying computational structure to produce stably— a densely lush, realistic natural environment.
Building a scene starts with making changes first in the terrain and atmosphere editors before applying materials.
The sole purpose of E-on Software's Vue 9 Infinite is to provide a means to create believable natural environments in a program that is focused and easy to understand. From beautiful, sprawling vistas to a small, intimate canopied grove, Vue 9's technology is built to handle the burden of large amounts of generated natural assets. Couple that with a clean interface and intuitive workflow that users can take advantage of in Vue 9 and you will be surprised at how painless it is to create a scene that can impress.
Clipping areas based on altitude gives artists a vertically global field to make sculpting deformations.
Ease of Use
Vue 9 Infinite is a continuation of the efforts of E-on Software to give artists the ability to easily create large, believable environments with computer tech that is available on the market today. The workflow for composing an environment is straight-forward in its execution, but the devil's in the details as you tweak the various controls for each respective part of your environment.
The initial construct of the scene begins by either first specifying a template for atmospheric conditions or a base terrain to begin molding. After these adjustments are made in their respective editors, the user can set to the task of applying additional terrain to create a particular formation or fill in vast space. Materials, plant-life, and rock formations are assigned to the various landforms in order to populate your scene. Then all that remains is to fine-tune their properties to achieve a satisfactory result.
Much of Vue 9's functionality and workflow is broken up in this succinct cycle of establishing forms and materials then modifying them in an editor leaving the real effort to remain solely in gaining familiarity with the settings. Since the workflow has remained moderately unchanged, reading through our previous articles can give insight into feature sets that were previously instituted and have since become integral in the success of the software.
The new Rocky Mountain Fractal allows for terrain to reflect this type of mountain.
New Features
In this new version of Vue, there is a great number of wonderful new improvements that are meant to advance the objectives of this software under the common technical restraints of its user base. To that end, one of the most important technologies, if not the most important, within Vue 9 Infinite is the EcoSystem, which allows for dynamic germination of the environment on a staggering scale. With EcoSystem 4, the generation of dynamic populations has been optimized to be done with less memory and better rendering. New flicker reduction algorithms reduce the flickering artifacts that are produced when rendering animated shots. And for animated ecosystems, the population densities grow smoothly over the passage of time where new instances can be weaved in and out of the environment effortlessly.
The Terrain tech has added some great enhancements to its properties. Terrain mesh that has been stretched unduly in relation to its surrounding polygons can now be optimized with the new retopology feature. With a cleaner redistribution of the polygons within the mesh, materials and assets will be dispensed naturally over the deformation. Definitely helpful to conform the ground after using terrain brushes such as the new Smear brush which gives the impression of pushing terrain around as if you were smudging paint on a canvas. This brush, as well as the many other terrain brushes already in previous use, can also be reconfigured and saved to create your own custom brush sets for a private library of tools with your personal touch.
In order to have even further control in how the terrain is transformed, the Terrain Editor gives its users a means of constraining the influence of its assortment of effectors. Sculpting and painting masks aid the user in designating areas that can or cannot be sculpted or have materials painted on to. Freezing a layer completely prevents you from accidentally altering a particular material on the terrain. If you like the terrain that you have, but want to add to the landform, Extend Terrain Canvas adds more terrain without altering the original. Lastly, the new Rocky Mountain Fractals produces ranges that are fully adjustable and capable of driving materials for unique looks.
Primitive shapes can be combined and converted to hyperblob formations that can be export displacement maps.
The new HyperBlob Technology within Vue 9 is used to create super detailed rock shapes and formations by combining hypertextures and metablobs. Vast variations of rock and stone shapes are created using metablobs, and the HyperBlob tech converts it to polygon meshes upon rendering to later be used in displacement maps. A maximum level of subdivisions can be set so that Vue can optimize the intermediate stages for render time. Any hypertextures that are left over from the object will be shaved off in the process.
In the older versions of Vue Infinite, fine-tuning the lighting meant making a change then rendering a scene every time to see its results. With Vue 9 Infinite's Relighting technology, the intensity and color of the lights in the scene can be adjusted in real time. Lights in your scene can be turned off and on giving artists room to modify how much of a contribution the Sun has to the overall scene. Amazingly enough, lighting attributes like sub-surface scattering, caustics, lens flares, global illumination, etc. all have the same ability to be iterated on with instant results.
Inverse Kinematics has been added to Vue 9 so that rigged models can be posed. Collada IK information is imported automatically and the MaxToVue exporter supports the swivel angle and swivel target features from 3ds Max.
One of the many ways that Vue 9 Infinite ensures the user against an accidental loss of progress is the Auto saving and Snapshot features. Auto saves take place silently in the background without slowing down your system. The backup files that are auto saved can also be accessed at any time with the Revert feature just in case you want to jump back to a previous state that you may not have saved out yourself. The intervals for having the auto-save make these back-up files can be set by the user, but for convenience, Snapshots give users the ability to make a backup at any moment while working so they can jump back to that point at any time.
In order to have better compatibility with other popular software packages, Vue 9 gives the option of Catmull-Clark and Loop Subdivision. The level of subdivision can be set for real-time display and render time making it advantageous when exporting to mainstream programs like 3ds Max, Zbrush, or Mudbox.
Painting masks can protect areas of your terrain while you sculpt or add materials to certain spots.
Imported content with high-fidelity textures can tax your system when unregulated. With the improved texture management, texture resolution can be kept under control to make room for other resources that need your memory. Within the World Browser, textures can be resized non-destructively, restored to their original dimension, viewed externally, and give indication of any textures that are missing or disconnected. Having another way of keeping your resources in check is a great benefit for people with less than robust system.
E-on Software has rewritten Vue 9 Infinite from scratch for the Macintosh operating system. Written in Native Cocoa, Vue 9 takes advantage of the 64-bit capabilities of the Mac OS making a performance boost 3 times what the 32-bit versions can output.
Performance
Vue Infinite's intent is to be a tool that can generate huge environments that look authentic but not overtax your system. The challenge in this is that creating so many instances can really bog down your memory and make it difficult to make continual iterations. Vue 9 technology like EcoSystem 4 and Interactive Network Rendering help to optimize the calculations and split the load if other renderers are available.
That is not to say that you don't have to have a good machine to run it on, but for artists that normally crunch huge amounts of data with other 3D programs will experience less slow down.
For people with a less than robust workstation, there are simple steps and options to implement to manage the memory overhead. Separating objects and materials on to different layers gives artists the ability to focus memory on only what is visible in the viewport. Instance display can be regulated from full resolution to billboard placeholder. Constraining the amount of generated assets and terrain objects to only what's necessary really takes the load off of what needs to be rendered. When it comes time to render, the dial can be turned to 11 to kick out a high-quality image. Strategies like this and more will streamline production considerably and great tutorials like the ones found at Quadspinner by trainer Dax Pandhi offer an inexpensive alternative to get more out of your creative experience.
When polygon meshes get stretched, retopologizing the terrain can help to clean up the pulled regions.
Value
Vue Infinite is not only the premier commercial natural environment program, it is also the only one. Staying true to its purpose, it offers robust functionality without being overladen with unnecessary filler features. This makes Vue 9 Infinite a very attractive program for anyone needing an inexpensive way of creating environments that are not readily filmable. Even for the hobbyist who just wants a great tool to create impressive vistas, having a low learning curve makes using Vue a welcome experience. And just in case the price seems high just to try it out, E-on Software offers a free PLE version that gives users a chance to learn how it works before committing.
Final Comments The Vue Infinite series continues to make great improvements with each version to offer more realistic results while optimizing your scene. Vue 9 Infinite's many updates are extremely beneficial to getting the most out of your computer and more control over developing the environment. If you are an artist that wants the freedom to learn how to build whatever you want, the only drawback to having Vue as the only 3D software is that it's focused solely on generating natural environments. But for the visualist, such as a matte painter for a film, having just the right tool for the job is indispensable. And if the job is making beautiful landscapes, Vue 9 Infinite is the best place to start.
Ease
of Use
10.0
Depth
of Options
9.0
Performance
8.5
Value
vs. Cost
8.5
Overall Score
9.0
Michael Muwanguzi is a graphic artist and web designer currently living in Los Angeles, CA. Apart from working on print ads, web-related advertising, and 3D design work, he is currently working on new film production work and is designing a 3D adventure game from scratch.
The means by which our ideas are envisioned digitally and the processes by which to do so are numerous and varied, depending on the person or group making the visage. There are so many tools out in the market that attempt to offer different ways to do everything that could possibly be done wrapped up in a singular package. Modeling, texturing, rigging, lighting, dynamics, and animation, to name a few, are not only common but expected in almost every popular 3D software package in use. But there is at least one circumstance in which most 3D programs, on their own strength, lack the underlying computational structure to produce stably— a densely lush, realistic natural environment. 
