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Joined: May 31, 2002 Posts: 409 Location: Flower pot Down Under
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2002 11:09 pm Post subject:
I was asked to write some tutorials for Vue by the members of my Vue Forum.
With Special Thanks to the generosity of a wonderful artist and friend Ravnheart, who has generously offered to host them, I can share the tutorials with our community.
Thanks, SR! There just aren't enough tutes and such for Vue, IMHO. Part of that might just be because it's fairly easy to learn, but it's always good to see new Vue tutes and free stuff around.
Just out of curiosity, since you are a Vue user (and teacher!) have you ever had serious problems with getting volumetrics to work? I've had no luck creating snow, rain or volumetric smoke/clouds by applying volumetric materials to cylinders or spheres, and was wondering if I was the only one who had that prob.
AF _________________ "It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste."
Joined: May 31, 2002 Posts: 409 Location: Flower pot Down Under
Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2003 7:44 pm Post subject:
Heya Argo,
I haven't had any real problems with volumetrics. I don't use them a lot (personal choice) ~ I had a few work arounds that I used (still do) to achieve the effects.
What version of Vue 4 do you have?
What effect are you trying to achieve?
What procedures have you tried to-date?
Were any of them close or closer to the effect you wanted?
Can you give me any visual samples (sml pic or link to pics) that show me the results of the things you have tried?
I am sure we can nut something out for you
~SR
"I'm not a complete idiot. Some parts are missing" _________________ Due to recent cutbacks,the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off"
Happy New Year's, Rose. And WB. ;] _________________ "I'd add a legitimate comment here, but that would mean reading everything, which I have no patience for." - Slynky
Joined: May 31, 2002 Posts: 409 Location: Flower pot Down Under
Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2003 6:38 am Post subject:
I personally prefer Vue, in almost every respect. For me it has a far more user frindly interface and the learning curve is constant with no intense peaks.
Yes to all of the above regarding the animation ability
~SR _________________ Due to recent cutbacks,the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off"
Joined: May 31, 2002 Posts: 409 Location: Flower pot Down Under
Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2003 6:39 am Post subject:
I personally prefer Vue, in almost every respect. For me it has a far more user friendly interface and the learning curve is constant with no intense peaks.
Yes to all of the above regarding the animation ability
~SR _________________ Due to recent cutbacks,the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off"
Well, SR, having originally used Bryce, I was a little more used to just applying volumetric mats to spheres and having them show up.
I use 4.0 (upg'd to 4.1 recently), and was having all sorts of probs with snow and rain effects using Vue's standard snow and rain mats that they suggest putting on cylinders. What I found from the helpful folks at R'osity was that often the rain and snow need slight tweaking of their luminosity (depending on light) to be seen easily.
An example of what I've made since finding that out is here, so you can see I've discovered how to use them:
http://www.darkeragepress.com/art/Argo-SnowII.jpg
Now that I've done that, I wonder if the same holds true for 'volumetric' mats (Material Library, under Volumetric. Case in point, some of the special effects, like creating wisps of smoke from a gun and radio waves for a superpowered effect around someone's fist. I can't get those to be visible by placing them on a sphere or the like to suggest superpower FX or the like... should I jump up the luminosity on those to see if they work, as well, or will they only work in Very Large areas? _________________ "It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste."
It's worth it, hudas, especially if you use Poser. And thanks for the compliment! Since you asked, and I've used both, let me give you some pro's/cons of both programs.
Bryce: (Bryce 5 reviewed, although I had Bryce 4)
+ A bit more easy to understand terrain generation system
+ Single view system that works pretty well (for people more used to Poser 4's single view system)
+ Excellent support, as far as onboard user manual, online tutorials, books (Real World Bryce 4 by Kitchens and Gavenda is utterly indispensible, even if you have Bryce 5) and-- ESPECIALLY-- downloadable and purchasable materials, skies and objects. You can find great materials and really good FX all over the place for Bryce.
+ Highly customizable material and Deep Texture Editor.
+ Multiple file support for import, multiple image format for export, including Photoshop PSD format, multiple image size presets and total customizability of rendered image size.
+ Intuitive and pretty powerful sky (and in Bryce 5, tree) labs.
+ Fairly good selection of starting materials.
+ Easily accessible mask mode for creation of b/w mask renders for creating selections within image editors.
+ 'plop' and 'spraycan' render to see if certain areas will render well without rendering entire picture.
- Skies and trees don't tend to look as realistic as Vue
- Selection of certain meshes is sometimes difficult
- Import of Poser characters must be done manually by export in Poser to .obj, meaning manual selection and applying of materials and transmaps. In addition, problems seem to arise with subdivided maps and pre-grouped objects in Poser, IE Sturk's awesome superhero and Rattler mats.
- You'll need those tutorials and books before really expanding your horizons in Bryce, at least, in my humble opinion. It took me a few really bad tries before I could get Bryce pictures looking really good, and I never completely managed to solve some lighting difficulties I had.
- Comparatively slow Render engine, especially with heavy volumetrics or trans maps.
Vue: (Vue 4.0/4.1 reviewed)
+ Solidgrowth vegetation system offers endless variety of trees and plants within the available foliage types.
+ Decent selection of pre-made materials
+ Four-view (switchable to single view) system excellent for people used to standard 3D (3DS Max, Lightwave, etc) layout of top, front, side, perspective windows.
+ Customizable functions/filters in Material editor to better create altitude-sensitive terrains
+ Poser PZ3 import handles almost all predefined trans and material maps of Poser scenes easily.
+ Multiple file type import, terrain export to .obj (for import into Poser to set characters within), multiple image type export (Photoshop PSD a notable exception, although it does allow for all standard formats, including jpg and bmp), multiple image size presets and total customizability of rendered image size.
+ (With Mover) allows for import of Poser animation files.
+ Layered world menu that allows you to set meshes on different 'levels' for easy selection, deletion, or hiding.
+ Much more dedicated customer service staff than Corel.
+ Good levels of realism in skies and liquids.
+ Multiple light styles, from point lights to quadratic spots.
- Web support, or specifically, lack thereof. Free materials (I mean premade ones-- like Poser and Bryce, you can use standard jpegs for some materials) are hard to find outside of the few offered in R'osity and RDNA, and even puchasable mats and objects are lacking in number. Bryce had a pack of special effects at Renderosity that made superhero-style attacks, lasers, and spatial effects a joy to create. I've seen nothing close around for Vue, and for someone like me that doesn't have the time to really spend days on end creating mats, it's really discouraging. Books and tutes? Try none and few, respectively. Being in a community like this or R'osity's Vue board is a must if you have questions.
- User guide for Vue is good, but not terribly replete. Course, same holds true for Bryce.
- Material editor takes some getting used to, because of its immense customizability with filters and functions.
- Terrain editor, although much prettier than Bryce's, is a little harder to get a good handle on. It's almost easier to precreate greyscale pics and use those than try to really 'customize' terrains.
- (Not a problem I've ever seen, but heard about on boards) Stability issues, up until 4.1, put Vue as slightly less stable than Bryce.
- General layout, for those used to Poser, is not quite as 'intuitive' as Bryce. Easily learned, however, and has 'hover flags' to roll out a captionwhen you hover your pointer over a button.
My judgment? I don't do animation, I do stills, and I have to admit that after spending about three years learning and getting used to handling Bryce, Vue took a little getting used to. But since I have gotten used to it, I wouldn't trade it for anything, especially because of the ease of importing PZ3's. If any gripe about Vue really kept me held back, it was the fact that I'd spent a couple hundred on Bryce mats, and could find any material I might have needed just in the R'osity free area or marketplace. Vue just doesn't have that sort of support yet, and the once-hyped book that was due out has been pushed back. And that's really a shame, for those of us that can't model as much as we'd like. But even excluding that, I'd say if you have poser and want to do good, realistic outdoors scenes and not spend a couple dozen hours tweaking OBJ materials, pick up Vue.
(Sorry so long) _________________ "It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste."
Joined: May 31, 2002 Posts: 409 Location: Flower pot Down Under
Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2003 9:04 pm Post subject:
The key to getting any volumetric mats to work the way you envisage them to, is to play with their settings in the material editor. Play with the shadowing, the abient lights, luminosity etc. All of the functions and aspects of any material is editable.
Thank you so much for your comparison Argo )
Muchly appreciated! just one little amendment re the availability of mat support outside the program for Vue... In actual fact there is a wealth of material support for Vue. If you would like some links, sing out..I have huge amounts.
~SR _________________ Due to recent cutbacks,the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off"
Any help at finding mats for Vue would always be appreciated, SR. I've stopped by Varian's before, and seen a couple other sites, but I would be very interested in seeing what other spots you may know of! So, I guess, consider me singing! Thanks! _________________ "It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste."
argo: whoa, thanks for the comparison, I really appreciate it alot, specially for the time you've spent thinking about them! no doubt you are very well experienced with 3d, same as SacredRose and alot of people on this board... metacreations (since they started both bryce and poser) should've integrated ease of loading of 'complete frames' PZ3 files to bryce, indeed it makes a huge difference for bryce's functionality, oh well , there's vue+mover now...
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) with vue? if so can it also be animated?