Vue 7 is shipping

The day has finaly come when vue7 is hitting the streets running in full speed.
No need to say much else then vue7 being a nice improvement over vue6 in terms of render quality, render speed and stability and alot of other core improvements.

Ecosystems has hit generation 3, spectral clouds has reach generation 2 and scenes can be viewed as graphs, terrains now accepts 16bit and ecopaint has reached even higher levels then seen in vue6.

Vue7

Vue commercial movie usage during 2008

E.on has announced that vue was used amongst others in the following 2008 movies.

Indiana Jones And the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Ilm artist Yanick Dusseault which is the Digital Matte Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic had this to say.

"Creating entire vistas was a first in my playbook and that's just been wonderful. Vue was my only option and it turned out to be the best option!"



©LucasFilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved. Photo Credits: Industrial Light & Magic, Used Under Permission.

Kung Fu Panda

The following is an excerpt from an online Interview from Markus Manninen, VFX Supervisor on KungFu Panda, made by CGSociety. Republished under Dreamworks exclusive permission

"A lot of our large locations went through a process where the world was created roughly in Vue by our matte painting lead Scott Brisbane. Then the renders out of that were painted on by our matte painters to define the finished detail and push the look and lighting further. The final matte paintings were then projected back on geometry by our matte painting compositors and rendered on the farm. […]

The matte paintings on our film were the most advanced and the most shots that we'd done to date. Even larger than some of the live action films that depend heavily on them. I was truly inspired by their work. The Production Designer and I had planned to rely heavily on matte painting on the film, and we were extatic when the process worked out so well."

And Skycrawlers, a movie by Polygon Pictures.

Vue7 drawing closer

E.on´s going to show off vue7 @ siggraph so in other words, one can expect vue7 to hit the streets before or around christmas, unless it´s alot more stable in it´s current form then vue6 was at the same during it´s development.

www

Official pressrelease

Spiderwick chronicles making use of vue

Did you know that ilm once again (quite common recent years) used vue in one of their movies, this particular case was spiderwich, the chronicles.



Even the official trailer shows off some vue loving, fancy a read from one of the ilm artists, it might not be that exciting and it´s realy more an advert but still there´s a recent article about vue and ilm and spiderwick the chronicles

E.on talks to ilm about vue

Vue christmas special

Christmas time is just around the corner, chimneys are starting to warm up, and your stockings are ready to hang in front of the fireplace.

We know sometimes it's hard to think of the best gift for your loved ones (or even for yourself!); that's why we want to help you find that perfect present by bringing you our "Christmas Special"!

Starting today, until January 1st, 2008, you can get 25% off of all Products for Artist (Easel, Esprit, Pro Studio and all modules)!


A few pricing examples:

Vue 6 Easel: was $89, now only $66.75. You save $22.25!
Vue 6 Esprit: was $199, now only $149.25. You save $49.75!
Vue 6 Pro Studio: was $399, now only $299.25. You save $99.75!


This offer applies to boxed AND downloadable products. It applies to full versions and also to all upgrades and sidegrades up to Vue 6 Pro Studio.
Extra modules for Vue 6 Esprit are also discounted!

A big copy and paste from e.ons official vue christmas newsletter, but vue is a breakthrough app when it comes to landscape and scenery, it´s gone from a enthusiast, artist application to a industry standard in just a few generations and grows better and better with each new iteration while still managing to keep that ease of use, great app and the artist versions are more affordable then ever so give it a try, or download the free of charge ple for v6i or v6xstream.

Vue, render settings pdf

A comprehensive pdf focusing on what´s good and bad about vue´s render settings and how to improve or fintume them to fit your prefered render better.

Vure render settings pdf

It´s well worth the read if you´re serious about your vue usage but as always, keep in mind that nothing beats first hand knowledge, do your own thing and make your own findings, but this is an excellent walk through to get you started on understanding the basics of vue rendering.

Poser has been sold

E.frontier has sold of poser, manga and anime studio to smith micro software Inc.

pressrelease by poserpro

From a personal standpoint, well i dont care, i dont like or enjoy Poser, but depending on what Smith micro do with the app it could affect vue since vue has a phenomenal integration with poser going for it and alot of people make excellent use of both apps, just as a ton of architechts make excellent use of sketchup and vue.

Now what i hope happens with this deal is that smith micro takes poser and it´s fellow apps to a hole new level and improves even further on the integration with vue while at the same time vue strenghten it´s integration with daz studio.

If for nothing else the simple fact that we dont know what a company like smith micro will do with a for them completely new type of apps, ruin it completely or realy embrace it and evolve it.

Vue6.grid modeler + video tutorial

Chipps working hard on a new module for vue6, a pretty smooth and easy to use gridmodeler.

Now, what one should keep in mind is that vue is a terrain and landscape application which lets you create atmospheres,terrain and plants, it´s great at what it does and probably the most userfriendly app i´ve ever used while still managing to be very powerful at what it does and as can be seen in this video tutorial vue has a very powerful and complex editor, however it´s entirely possible to model in vue aswell.

Vue isnt a modeler and shoudnt be used as one, but for simple and especialy architechture driven stuff vue works real well, the vue userbase have seen such modules as vuetools previously been released and now is the time for the gridmodeler.

video tutorial

Vue timeline, past,present,future

Time sure moves fast and vue is now 15 years old!

1992: The first lines of code are written. Vue is born.
1994: Vue d'Esprit 1 is ready, but not for prime time. To generate your image, you need to tweak configuration files manually!
1995: The first public version of Vue is released: Vue d'Esprit 1.2. With an interface!
1997: Vue d'Esprit 2 hits the streets. It's the first full retail Vue product.
1999: Vue d'Esprit 3 is released. On top of many improvements, Vue 3 adds a fourth dimension: animation.
2001: A space odyssey! Vue d'Esprit 4 rolls out, and welcomes Mac users. In 2002, Steve Jobs himself presents Vue 4 during his Apple Expo Keynote.
2003: Vue drops the "d'" and enters the professional market, with Vue 4 Professional.
2004: Vue is now in its 5th generation, and the professional line is renamed as "Infinite"!
2005: 3 more versions of Vue 5 are released: Easel, Pro Studio and xStream (for 3DS Max and Maya).
2006: Vue 5 Infinite helps ILM generate environments for their blockbuster film Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (3rd place all time box office). Vue 6 Infinite and xStream are pre-released.
2007: The complete Vue 6 line is released, adding LightWave, Cinema4D and XSI users to the Vue 6 xStream crowd.
2008 + : Who knows? Well... we do... ;-)

Well, if you look at the timeline, one can expect a vue7 pre release during summer/fall 2008 at it´s earliest, but that´s of course pure speculation and nothing else :)

geek@play, vue tutorials

A pretty resource heavy site with small but still good tutorials and some neat tips even for seasoned vue users, well worth a trip if you´re a proud owner of vue.

vue tutorials

vue6, back to school sale

yep, thats right, e.on software, the makers of vue is offering a 50% discount on vue6 esprit Monday September 17th to Sunday September 23rd, which means you´ll get to pick up v6esprit for just 99 us% during this time period.

A great way to get into the vue product family and affordable upgrades to more feature packed versions of vue.

With that said tho, vue 6 esprit is a realy, realy nice landscape and scenery application.

Vue. Stereo imaging script

Mark has released a free of charge stereo imaging script for v6i users.
If you have any 3d glasses you´ll know what´s the deal with it, if not the script will allow you to easily render stereoscopic "3d" images of your 3d stills and animations.

Not hard to do without a script either, but this handy little thing do make it even easier.

Mark´s stereo script for vue 6 infinite

vue. tutorials by altuit

A few selected tutorials by altuit, covering your favourite landscape and scenery application vue.

The´ll cover how to make roads on your precious terrains and how to modell with vue, solidgrowth and seavue are two other segments that they´ll cover with their video tutorials.

Altuit, vue video tutorials

ufo caught on video

and finaly a ufo video with no blurry images either.

But that´s not so strange since it´s a creative vue user that´s setup and done a ufo video of his own, quite a nice one aswell and it has aparently caused a stir on youtube getting alot of hits and producing both sceptics and believers.

Nice user made promotion for vue, that´s for sure, nice job to whomever did it.
And if we think of it, aint it cool and pretty impressive that people can create videos that look as real as this all by themselves in todays world without big budgets and tons of pc´s, just know how, skills and the right tools.

sketchup.free for all

Well it´s been out for a very long time now, but it´s still worth mentioning since it´s such an excellent application and of course completely free of charge.

The reason i havent touched upon it yet is simply that im one of the pro users so i never had a reason to check out the free version, but i ended up installing it for fun on our new laptop, if for nothing else to finaly check it out since i dont expect to do much real 3d work on this laptop, the intent behind the purchase was after all browsing,email,writing doc´s and mobility for my gf, not to mention a kids free home rig, not getting one more work and or gaming computer in the household :).

Anyway, sketchup is an excellent application, it´s easy to use and very intuitive.
It´s getting used more and more in higher end educations and studios which means it´s worth spending time getting familiar with and it simply put makes it fun and efficient doing houses.

Another reason to mention it is of course that it works real good with vue, and regardless of you comming from the architechture side of things or the landscape part, getting both apps is a smart move and they fit right in with each other.

The one thing to be aware of is the slightly steeper requirements if you´re using vista, might make it a non option to use sketchup on your laptop, it´s a non issue for desktops tho in my humble opinion.

Official website

and the

Official blogg

vue.How to create wet sand a a foamy beach line

Well, there´s a thousand and one solutions to that question, because as easy vue is to use it´s also just as equaly powerful and complex, however this tutorial by david burdick, the creator of skinvue,is an excellent, and i mean excellent tutorial, it´s to the point, it get´s the job done and in a splendid looking way and it´s easy to understand.

beach shore tutorial in vue 6

linking to david´s showcase image showing you what to expect out of his tutorial.

siggraph07. and e.on

Hot on the heels of the siggraph vue 6.5 unveiling e.on decided to release the public 6.5 build, it´s what´s called an interim update and it´s free of charge for every vue6 user.

The v6i, 6.5 release gives us even better and more natural looking atmospheres to play with, or atleast it give´s us even better tools to play with, creating our own atmospheres, so no guaranteed results as with anything creative :) heck, the create art button is still not there, but anyway, this is a realy nice update and it also fixes some issues that´s been around in previous v6 updates.

But the main thing is the improvements made to the atmosphere editor and how lights affects cloudlayers.

doing a small qoute.

New features in 6.5:

- Create skies with as many overlapping spectral cloud layers as you like for complex and unbelievably realistic cloudscapes!
- Revolutionary new cloud lighting technology that lets local lights affect spectral atmospheres and clouds!
- Create true-to-life thunder storms, search lights or illuminated fly through clouds.
- Render spectral atmosphere animations significantly faster thanks to the optimized spectral atmosphere anti-flickering technology!

Download the v6i, 6.5 update here

vue. at siggraph, 6.5 in the works

i usualy dont post vue related news that isnt publicly available, but this is already spreading so vue 6.5 will be showcased on siggraph and will feature even more and better atmosphere features, the interim .5 upgrade is free of charge for all v6i users.

media creation. ozone 3.0 ple edition

ozone 3.0 ple is on it´s way and it will feature the hyper real atmosphere´s from v6i straight inside max,maya,lightwave,c4d and xsi.

Ozone 3.0 will feature all the atmoshpere technologies that e.on supplies to the world with it´s industry leading v6infinite and Xstream apps, inlcuding spectral atmospheres.

vue. ple and general stuff

Decided to post about the vue6.ple edition, a completely free of charge version, featuring the latest incarnation of vue, so for anyone into 3d, scenery, landscape creation, art and movies and mattepainting, just go ahead and download vue6 ple, it´s not a time limited or feature nerfed demo, it´s a fully functioning personal learning edition and as is common when it comes to ple´s it´s free of charge.

Vue is as of today used not just for arch viz projects and by artists and landscape designers it´s used in mainstream movie´s and a common piece in ilm´s pipeline, web and ad firms make good use of it aswell because it´s simple to get into but with plenty of depth and tons of quality features.

Another reason im doing a post about it now is that the v6 ple edition now supports xsi aswell.

vue6 ple