e-on software, a 3D digital nature technology vendor, has released Vue 11 xStream and Vue 11 Infinite, its newest digital nature solutions for CG professionals.
Vue xStream, e-on’s flagship solution, offers CG professionals the premiere solution for creating rich and realistic digital nature environments, fully immersed within Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, and Softimage, Maxon Cinema 4D or Newtek LightWave. All Vue tools are fully integrated in the host application as menus and toolbars and directly accessible from within the host interface, providing immediate access to the most advanced 3D environment creation technologies.
Vue Infinite offers CG professionals the same solution in a stand-alone package.
Key features of Vue 11 include faster rendering, illumination caching, terrain and EcoPainter improvements, 360° population, interactive EcoSystem population, as well as EcoParticles, e-on software's revolutionary approach to particles:
- EcoParticles: This new technology is ideal for the creation of animated rain, snow, waterfalls, explosions, fire, smoke, tornadoes, falling leaves, swarm of insects and more. Any object can be set as a particle source (emitter).
- EcoParticles as EcoSystems: EcoParticles are added to any material like a regular EcoSystem material layer. But with EcoParticles, users get in depth control over the way the particles will evolve over time. Users can define the speed, direction, collision properties and duration of life of the particles, as well as subject them to external influences. On top of these new physical settings, all of the classic EcoSystem configuration parameters are used for particle instance population.
- EcoParticles Effectors: Effectors are special objects that will influence the EcoParticles in the scene. Effects like tornadoes, jittering, attraction, etc. are easily created this way.
- Automatic Weather Effects - Rain and Snow: These new atmospheric effects enable artists to create anything from gentle spring rain to a tropical storm, a gentle falling snow to a blizzard, with just a few simple clicks. The heaviness, shape, drop size, speed and falling angle of the precipitation is user controllable. Motion blur can be added if desired too. Weather Effects are available for all types of atmospheres.
- EcoPainter Improvements: The EcoSystem Painter is completely redesigned to allow even more control and flexibility. Users can now create their own brushes using a combination of effectors. For instance, brushes that will resize and align instances at the same time. There are a number of new brush effects to boot, including the ability to lean or rotate instances, raise or lower them, move them around, etc.
- Customizable EcoPainter Brushes: Like the brushes in the Terrain Editor, each EcoPainter brush now has its own dialog that displays all of the parameters that can be adjusted. If users want to display a specific brush parameter directly in the main EcoPainter dialog, they can do so with a click on the corresponding Publish icon. The EcoSystem Selection function is now part of the EcoPainter. This way, users can use the select function to define the instances to work with, directly in the EcoSystem Painter dialog. EcoSystem Instance Selection is now also available in xStream for 3ds Max, Cinema4D and Softimage.
- EcoSystem Fast Population: Thanks to a special population mode, Vue can now refresh the EcoSystem population interactively, without the need of any re-population action
- EcoSystem 360° Population: Vue can now automatically populate EcoSystems from all directions including below objects. This feature works on any kind of object from basic spheres to complex geometry such as rocks, cars, houses... and all applicable EcoSystem settings are supported.
- Up to 30 Percent Faster Rendering Speed: Significant internal optimizations made to Vue 11’s rendering engine will result in dramatically accelerated rendering especially on very dense EcoSystem scenes.
- Illumination Caching: This technology lets the user re-use GI information over the course of an entire animation thus eliminating the need to re-render the GI pre-pass for every frame. This will dramatically reduce the rendering times of Architectural animations, for instance.
Vue 11 xStream retails for $1,995 (with one-year maintenance), and upgrades from Vue 10 xStream starting at $439. Vue 11 Infinite retails for $1,495 (with one-year maintenance), with upgrades from Vue 10.x Infinite starting at $359. Upgrades from Vue 9.x Infinite and Vue 9.x xStream are also available (see full product pricelist at http://www.e-onsoftware.com/pricelist for details).