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The interface in Vue 6 is broken into 4 panes. Three of
these show the top, front, and side view of your scene while
the fourth shows the view from the active camera. You can
easily maximize one of the four view by simply double-clicking
on the top border for the particular view. This interface is a
great aid in maintaining your perspective when working in 3
dimensions in Vue.
Vue 6's Interface - Click for a Larger
Image
Designing a scene in Vue 6 is accomplished using either the
menus or the toolbar buttons along the left and top edge of
the interface. The Object Toolbar (on the left side of the
interface) provides buttons for adding objects to your scene.
Many of these buttons are expandable and serve multiple
purposes.
Vue 6 Pro Studio comes with a plethora of objects that you
can add. You can add water, cloud layers, primitives, plants,
rocks, mountains, numerous light types, and even planets for
space scenes or spectacular atmospheric views. If you can't
find the type of object you want within the Vue 6 software,
you can purchase objects from the Cornucopia 3D online store
right within the Vue 6 interface. Plants are affordable, but
they include DRM which is a little concerning for future
usability.
Vue 6 includes a vast array of plants that
you can use in your scenes.
Cornucopia 3D is an online store available
right within the Vue 6 interface.
Materials in Vue 6 are realistic although the selection can
sometimes feel limited. However, that's not really a
limitation because the material editor in Vue 6 is
approachable by a user of any level. This is due, in part, to
the fact that the material editor opens in a simplified mode
by default. Advanced features are hidden in this mode so that
users can edit materials without feeling overwhelmed by
complex properties. However, a click of a button shows the
advanced interface where you can tweak all of a material's
properties to your heart's content.
This is a great way to present the material editor, not
only because it's more approachable, but also because it
greatly diminishes the chance that you'll unintentionally
change a property.
The Vue 6 Material Editor
One of the greatest new features in Vue 6 is the EcoSystem
module. (The module is included in the version we reviewed and
available for a modest charge for Vue 6 Esprit.) The EcoSystem
module makes it easy to add many instances of objects (such as
trees, rocks, grass, etc.) to a scene from within the material
editor. You can combine object types (for example, you can
include numerous tree types) and add an almost infinite number
of objects to a scene without a noticeable performance
decrease. Vue 6 doesn't just create copies of a single object.
Instead, it uses a patented technology called SolidGrowth that
creates an infinite variety of the object you are adding. You
can choose among many options when adding EcoSystem objects,
including constraining to particular altitudes, slopes, etc.
The powerful EcoSystem module is a
wonderful feature.
While the EcoSystem module is a great feature, it does have
some limitations in Vue 6 Pro Studio. For example, you can't limit EcoSystem
populations to specific areas within a scene. Instead, you
have to control EcoSystem populations using application of
textures. This isn't really a problem, but we'd love to be
able to select an area and apply EcoSystem growth to that area
such as what is possible with applications such as
WorldBuilder. Another
limitation of EcoSystem populations in the Pro Studio version is that you cannot select
and edit a single instance of an EcoSystem population. If you
generate a population of trees and you want to move a
particular tree, you can't because EcoSystem objects aren't
true Vue objects that can be edited directly. Note that all of
these limitations are completely removed in the Vue 6 Infinite
and Vue 6 xStreme editions. In fact, EcoSystem is vastly
beefed up in these high end editions.
There are several other modules included in Vue 6 Pro
Studio. The Botanica module adds the ability to manipulate
every aspect of plants, the LightTune module adds substantial
features to light editing, DeepAccess makes managing a scene
with a large number of objects much easier and more powerful,
and HyperVue allows you to create a render farm using multiple
computers. Each of these modules is available separately for
users of Vue Esprit.
Rendering in Vue 6 is as flexible and powerful as the rest
of the package. You can render a selected region of the scene
(incredibly handy during position or lighting tweaks) or you
can render your scene in the camera window or to a new window.
Rendering options are plenty so that you can balance quality
against render times. If you've defined animation in your
scene, you can render to any one of a number of video formats
as well.
Vue 6's radiosity solutions are computed extremely quickly.
However, rendering can be slow on high-quality settings. This
slowness isn't due to an application problem. It's primarily
due to the fact that Vue 6 scenes are usually extremely
complex in nature. In our tests, Vue 6 efficiently used all
processors on a multi-processor computer for rendering. If you
really need to speed up your renders (such as when rendering
animations), HyperVue is the way to go as long as you've got
some spare computers lying around. (Computers can be PC or
Mac.)
We did notice a minor compatibility issue on two Vista
machines. When starting Vue 6 Pro Studio for the first time
after rebooting, Vue 6 would crash. Restarting it would
resolve the problem and we were then able to use the
application without any issues for hours. However, this issue
is worth mentioning and will hopefully be fixed in future
updates.
There are several editions of Vue 6 available, and one of
them is sure to fit your budget. We reviewed the Pro Studio
edition because it has the best balance of features vs.
expense in our opinion (although professional 3D designers may
require features in the upper-tier versions), but you can
judge for yourself using
e-on Software's comparison chart. Prices range from $89 to
$895 for full versions.
Even users with limited artistic talent can be good results
out of Vue 6. The application does a great job of layering
features so that new users can use it immediately without
feeling overwhelmed and grow into the more advanced features
with experience. The new features in Vue 6 make it a
must-upgrade for anyone with a previous version, and if you've
never used Vue before, now is a great time to give it a try.
You won't be disappointed!
Highly recommended.
A Vue render that we created for this
review.
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