Vue Esprit Infinite

Ok I have been looking closely at the demo reels for this product - Vue Esprit Infinte and Studio Pro with other plugins.

They seem very impressive, yet the demo is so limited it makes making a decision on the product very hard.

I want to be able to intergrate Poser/Vue/3d Studio Max stuff and render out my own movies - making some short stories to begin with.

Can anyone with extended experience please tell me - does the full product integrate with Poser and Max well? I know I can import poser models (and with motion I can bring in animations but I am really talking Pro Studio or Infinte versions here). Max cameras, and lights and scenes?

I wonder also does the content which comes with Vue Esprit really allow me to create natural scenes which look like the demo reels - which are nothing short of awesome. If not do I have to generate or buy in the extra content?

Do I need a beast of a PC to render decent scenes at descent render times?

What are your general experiences and feelings about the product line?

Any experienced advice would be great

Thanks,

IPete2.

Yes. It's raytracer, so...



Interface / GUI is bit ankward to use, sort of Bryce / Poserlike... lot's of pretty buttons but the logic behind them is sometimes not so obvious... but hey, it's frenchy software so don't expect "let's do it the proven way" :)

My Esprit has crashed few times but that's nothing amazing I guess today when we're talking about this complex software.

Although I have Poser6 + Mover too I have so far only imported still Poser models (with no animation) and that has worked well at least.

Is it better than Carrara 5.1 Pro ? One of this two i would
like to buy.

I have zero Carrara experience, but the impression I get from the product page is that Carrara is better all around tool, maybe. Vue can't be used for modeling stuff, like characters etc. It's good at rendering beautiful nature scenes with easy to use vegetation but I have never thought of building anything inside it (expect terrains of course) - I use object import for bringing in models made elsewhere with tools that are meant for modeling. Also animation inside Vue is largely limited to fly-bys (which are easy to do) and maybe some procedural tree swinging in the wind.

I classifyi both Vue and Carrara (+Poser, Bryce and Truespace) "nice thingys to fiddle with and experiment" but for real pro 3D work use you need either MAX, XSI, Maya or Lightwave.

Thanks Mustang,

I guess I knew that Max (which I have at version 5.1) was better - but the attraction is my 3d skills are very average - it would take me a very long time to create the kinds of scenery I have seen in the Infinite demo - I have no content as yet to put into a max scene to make it look that good, I have little idea about how to go about creating it - I do have time though and I would like to know a lot more.

I guess I just want to run before I can stand! sigh! Vue seemed an easy option if it was that good.

Is the content which comes with Vue any good for creating those lush natural environments?

IPete2.

Me too - that's why I bought Vue :) Modeling dense forests and such has been (and still is) hard to do even with MAX, XSI, Maya or Lightwave.



Sure, what you see in Eon's Vue 5 Esprit section can be done with it. You get same amount of species as in Infinite, but can't edit & save them (create new ones). But even if you create 5 palm trees in Vue 5Esprit they are all slightly different - not clones of each other.

Ultra-realistic SolidGrowth vegetation:

Esprit: 52 species
Infinite: 52 editable species

Ah thanks for clearing that up - that is a subtle but important difference, especially as a prospective buyer.

I looked through the Vue 6 showreel last night (and posted about it) without doubt it is an even more impressive piece of software now, opening up some very interesting creative capabilities to none 3d artists.

I shall contninue to consider this app as a purchase at some stage.

IPete2.

For short movies, I've always found Lightwave to fit most needs really well, and I'd add terragen to make things easier. I'd maybe not go for Vue, but only for all the reasons you've already identified for yourself.

Max has always been a bit awkward when it comes to working with any other software, it marches to it's own drums, and sadly this often finds it out of step with a large portion of the world that lives outside it's walled garden.

Having said all that, I'm more of a stills/photo fake sort of bod so I'm not a movie specialist, but I have, so far, often collaborated with those who are.

Needs plenty of spec on your hardware, and if you want to be any good, learn to build that yourself, lose your friends and family, quite possibly your job, and then, after the first ten years it's not quite so tricky! ;O) At which point people still expect you to work at all hours and for free, but go "ooh" and "ahh" a bit sometimes wheh they see and like what you got up to for them!! ;O)

Greener grass really! ;O)

Lol @ Polygon, yeah I'm familiar with the all hours bit (even though I work for myself).

I am trying to get better at 3D - I really would like to be a digital artist professionally, but that's a long way off.

The Vue thing has me excited because it allows me to explore creative stuff on a fast rack, but that of course means, less control, not original content, and such.

Vue 6 is looking pretty awesome and with things like motion tracking video content, spectral atmospheres, godrays, animated Poser content, 3DS Max content etc etc I would presumably be able to create stuff which otherwise be too difficult.

IPete2.

Actually I think the biggest asset I had when I started out is still the greatest one I have today; and that is patience with myself while I learn about what can often be very complex subtleties. (and even more subtle complexities!)

Being a good observer will help a great deal, and having an eye for detail is a big thing too. Generally software does not have the ability to endow us with learned skill and experience. Talent is not a big thing; I don't have any but I've muddled through by looking and learning mostly. After all this time I can do a workmanlike job, which may not sound very inspiring, but believe me it brings a smile to my lips on the days when I can pull that off.

Lastly, don't go power crazy with the hardware; it needs to be robust, but not extreme. I still get by with a P4 2.8a chosen for low heat and quiet operation, so I can still think about what I'm doing, instead of being deafened by fans. 2Gb ram is good though. I waited 7 or so hours for my test frame to render last night, but it looks fine, and was well worth the wait! I was sensible enough to sleep right through the grizzly business of making it all happen! ;O)

Ian,

Thanks for those encouraging words. I have tried to improve my skillset as needed, but generally hire in someone else to do the 3d I need for professional work .

I have an Athlon 1.9+ with 768MB RAM and a GeForce 6600 (256MB) - which is adequate for my current work flow and just about satisfies my games playing - but to do Vue rendering and 3D Studio Max stuff I reckon I'll need to earn some money and then invest.

IPete2.

Something I left out earlier but which I think you could learn from - when you mentioned Vue and the demos on their site, I felt I had to go have a look in case they got something new to show:

I spotted a drop down from the menus strip that was something like showcase/gallery/examples and the sub item called "spotlights". If you look at that page they show 4 _finished_ film/tv items, and two of those projects were completed as a "result" of using Lightwave. I suspect they could have been made "inspite" of using anything with "max" in it's name. There's a very hard lesson there for you to observe! ;O)

As for your hardware I use Intel as they still, so far, tell you what speed it runs at in it's name, AMD may be right and it may not matter what the number is to the rest of the world, but it does tend to matter if you render stuff. I can get by on my second machine with 1.8 Ghz, if yours does come close to that then it may well do you a good service for this sort of work while you are learning. I don't know what speed any given AMD CPU actually runs at, but I'd imagine you will. Your GFX card is nicely over the top. The ram is not adequate. 1Gb minimum, 2Gb for comfort, 4Gb if you want to get silly about it! ;O) At it's present level it will often slow you down without you noticeing; to a greater or lesser extent depending on the OS involved.

Cheers Ian,

I know that for the professional stuff, users of 3DS Max, XSi, Maya and Lightwave can get a plugin to load everything into their fav 3d app. Then render it. I won't be able to afford that, so I shall have to be happy with their renderer, it looks sweet anyways and I mainly will animate characters speaking in Poser (using Mimic). Then move them across to Esprit for each scene.

It is gonna be a long while before I can afford Esprit and the upgrade to Poser 6 (which I want for additional features in Esprit) and a new PC with enough RAM to cope with this sort of stuff in the mean time I shall just keep an eye on their website and plan.

I have a little story which I'd like to create with these apps, and some other Poser type content, and any stuff I can manage to feed the project.

Still, nice ot have something to look forwards to!

Regards,

IPete2.

I use Vue 5 Infinite, and I can tell you that it imports Poser stuff very well. However, you'd need to animate in Poser BEFORE you import into Vue.

Vue itself seems quite versatile, but I tend to use it to output stuff into Lightwave. You lose some of the better features of Vue, but if nothing else you get to use Vue as a well-feature landscape editor.

Glenny,

Thanks for that - its all useful information, did you see Vue 6 is coming - good grief that looks blummin awesome too. With Poser 6 and Vue 6 you can adjust your animations inside Vue, I'm gonna have to upgrade Poser (£70) and then figure out how to afford Vue 6 - in the long run, that is.

The new version allows you to paint the ecosystem onto your terrain and has things like Godrays, Ventilators (local wind currents) Area Lighting (Local lighting), Spectral Atmospheres (really cool authentic looking cloudbases you can fly inside and above), it has developed into something very special I think.

I would love to export back into 3DS Max but the cost is another $400 for that plugin. Ah well I can dream for now.

IPete2.

It sounds great, but the issue I have, as a Lightwave user, is that many of the best features in Vue are only available if you render in Vue, and composite in the stuff from your 3d render of choice seperately. As a one-man show with only two CPUs at my disposal, I don't really have the time. It's much more useful to me as a way of importing textured landscapes into Lightwave. It sadly won't seem to import any of the ecosystem stuff, which looks great in Vue itself.

I'm considering getting the plugin to allow Lightwave to render Vue content directly, but I think I should probably get hold of my dream PC first, because rendertimes and memory requirements will undoubtedly skyrocket.

Yeah That's the plugin I mean - but of course a pretty powerful CPU and a lot of memory is invaluable. I will only have one cpu available for my renders, so it will take a long time for me to come up with anything decent of any length - sigh ah well - I shall just continue to dream for now. Lol.

I think the most RAM that's useable is 2GB anyway as I read somewhere it can't address any more. I may be wrong here but I seem to remember thinking that's ok I don't have 1GB never mind 2!

IPete2

Yeah, you need 64-bit Windows, Lightwave and whatever else you may be using for that.