Last night, E-on software has officially released the professional versions of Vue 11! As usual, Vue 11 Infinite and xStream are the first versions that are shipping; artist versions such as Complete, Studio, Esprit and Pioneer will follow soon.

Since I’ve had the chance to get my hands on the Pre-release version of Vue 11 Infinite, I’ve already had some time (not too much, since work comes first ) to explore the exciting new features and test the software’s openGL and rendering capacity with some pretty large scenes.

So far, I can tell that after 10.5, Vue 11 is another giant step forward! Let’s see why.

Maybe the biggest addition to Vue 11 is the long-desired particle system. From now on, we can add particles as EcoSystem instances to just about any kind of object (the emitter), and control their speed, direction, collision properties and duration of life, 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.

This in-depth particle system is supposed to work fine together with the Effectors – special objects that will influence the EcoParticles in the scene. So, animated rain, snow, waterfalls, explosions, fire, smoke, tornadoes, falling leaves, swarm of insects and many more is achievable with these interesting new features ….especially if you’re patient enough to understand the physics of particles, which is pretty confusing. ….even for me, who took advanced physics class in high school (without particles, though…and it was long-long ago…) . Before scaring anyone, I’m sure there are going to be several tutorials covering particles available soon; it’s worth checking out Vue-related sites and forums these days. Plus if you’ve worked with particles in other applications, it’s easier to understand the system.

Some test animations with particles have already been shared online. Michel has published this one:

If you search for Vue 11 particles on YouTube or Vimeo, you may find even more!

Automatic Weather Effects, alias Rain and Snow features are also based on the particle system. They enable you to add rain or snowfall to the scene, in the atmosphere editor. You can control several things such as rain/snow drop size and speed, strength, wind direction and falling angle, turbulence and the amount of motion blur. Rain and snow work well in still images as well as in animations. These test renders were made by me:

Snow

Rain

…and this is how animated snow looks like; released by E-on software:

Other interesting new features are (from E-on’s newsletter):

- EcoPainter Improvements: The EcoSystem Painter is completely redesigned to allow even more control and flexibility. You 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. EcoSystem Instance Selection is now also available in xStream for 3ds Max, Cinema4D and Softimage.

- Customizable EcoPainter Brushes: Each EcoPainter brush now has its own dialog that displays all of the parameters that can be adjusted. If you 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 has been merged with the EcoPainter. This way, you can use the select function to define the instances to work with, directly in the EcoSystem Painter dialog.

- EcoSystem Fast Population: 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.

- 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. – I can verify this. Just as an example, I was building a scene in 10.5 and I wanted to compare the preview render times. A full-screen preview in 10.5 took 14,3 minutes, while in 11 it took only 3 minutes! Of course I chose to render the scene in 11. At 1920*1080 it was rendered in 8,5 hours. In the scene I used only static plants, and the atmosphere quality was set to +8.

- Illumination Caching: This technology lets you 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 speeds up the rendering process of an animation. I can tell more about this feature when our current animation projects at the studio are done.

A detailed product description for Vue 11 Infinite and xStream is available at e-onsoftware.com. The description showcases some of my renders too, which I’m very happy for.

As Vue 11 is “hitting the shelves”, it’s time to add a new gallery to the site, dedicated to my renders made in Vue 11 Infinite. You can view the gallery here.

I’m looking forward to hearing your first impressions on Vue 11!

If you are a 3D artist, perhaps you already know 3D Art Direct magazine, which focuses mainly on showcasing 3D Fantasy and SciFi art and artists. In their latest issue you can find an interview with Clint Hawkins, the CEO of YURdigital, one of our partners in 3D content sales.

In this in-depth interview, Clint shares interesting information about YURdigital and their approach to digital art and content. In this chapter, Clint dedicated two pages to showcase our business D&D Creations. We feel honored and grateful. And what makes me even happier? The editor chose my picture Another Hidden Civilization for the two-page showcase, and for the cover image as well!

Clicking on the image takes you to the post at 3D Art Direct’s website

The scene had to be re-rendered in 7755*3300px resolution, which is my new record! Still, with the right settings it took no longer than 14 hours on my PC.

The digital version of 3D Art Direct is available for free; you just need to sign up at their website. The printed copy will be out soon, for about $7.