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***R6 NOW AVAILABLE***
Key New Features in VUE 2016 R6:
Vastly improved display speed and UI responsiveness New mouse-centered and advanced target-centered scene navigation modes Several improvements on MetaCloud technology Up to 6x faster EcoSystem cache generation 10% faster rendering of very large EcoSystem populations EcoSystem populations with native instances in 3dsMax, Maya and Cinema4D VUE xStream now supports LightWave 2018 And a lot more
VUE xStream offers professional CG artists a complete toolset for creating, rendering and exporting exceptionally rich and realistic natural environments in 3ds Max, Maya, LightWave, Cinema 4D and Softimage.
Access all the power of the world's leading 3D Digital Nature solution directly from within your favorite application. Create and edit beautifully detailed natural environments using your application's standard manipulators.
Render everything together inside 3ds Max, Maya, LightWave, Cinema 4D or Softimage, with full interaction between VUE and native elements, including 2-way mutual shadow casting, reflection, refraction and GI.
VUE xStream 2016 works with:
VUE xStream provides a unique, unmatched solution for creating and integrating high quality natural scenery into any professional production pipeline, from architectural visualization to broadcast and film.
NEW IN v2016
VUE xStream 2016 now lets you export almost every single assets of your scenes: Plants, Rocks, Terrains, EcoSystem populations and even full scenes, in a wide variety of file formats, such as FBX, Alembic, 3ds, Collada and more.
As every software imports assets differently, VUE xStream 2016 includes many custom tailored export presets depending on where you're exporting to, e.g to 3ds Max, Maya, Unity, Cinema4D and more. Of course you can also fine tune your exports settings to your specific needs.
EcoSystem and Full Scene ExportEcoSystem populations can now be exported as FBX and Alembic. You can set VUE to export all texture maps to a sepearate folder, to re-texture your assets in your host application with ease.
Exported scenes in Alembic or FBX include all EcoSystem populations, FBX also allows exporting the sky as a cube map.
Export PreviewVUE xStream 2016 allows you to preview your exports (in OpenGL) to check how your geometry/materials will look like in your target application, without leaving the VUE interface. A precious time saver!
You can preview only selected assets or the full scene at once.
xStream Convert Tool - Render With Any RendererWith the Conversion tool in VUE xStream 2016, VUE scenes can be rendered with any non-natively supported renderer such as RenderMan, Arnold, Octane, VRayRT, etc.
VUE xStream 2016 enables you to convert your entire scenes to native assets*. This process bakes the entire scene and converts all EcoSystem instances to the appropriate native format. You can then freely share your scenes, and render them with any renderer, without requiring VUE xStream 2016 to be installed.
This is particularly useful when you don't render with any of the natively supported renderers, or want to use an outsourced renderfarm that does not currently support VUE xStream 2016.
Any VUE asset that was converted can be reverted to its VUE original form at any time.
Other Import and Export Improvements:
HeightField Terrain Technology - More flexible and a lot more Powerful!With VUE xStream 2016, we're introducing a brand new terrain modeling technology, more flexible and a lot more powerful, called 'Heightfield Terrains'.
This new technology allows you to add terrain effects that were previously impossible to achieve, such as Hydrological and Thermal Simulations!
Similar to procedural terrains, Heightfield Terrains are based on a function graph, but baked on a fixed-resolution grid. This will give you more flexibility and add more realism to your terrains. Heightfield Terrains are also significantly faster to render!
Heighfield terrains are manually sculptable and parameters can be animated - e.g. to simulate a terrain erosion over time for instance!
And finally, you can easily set up your graph outputs to drive your material presence, directly from within the Terrain Editor interface.
The Heightfield Terrains technology comes with its set of new dedicated nodes and presets, like 9 different Erosion presets and Slope, Convexity, Blur or Terrace nodes.
New Layout Nodes also let you design a terrain's 'layout' (most prominent features) using hand-drawn elements like Splines, elements from the scene, or simple shapes (circles, rectangles, rounded rectangles).
Hybrid GPU/CPU Interactive Path TracerGPU rendering comes to VUE with the new Path Tracer renderer. This renderer naturally and automatically simulates real-life lighting, and automatically calculates many effects that have to be specifically set with other methods, such as depth of field, caustics, ambient occlusion, and indirect lighting.
Path tracing in VUE xStream 2016 is available as an interactive rendering quality in the viewports, as well as an offline rendering engine.
PlantFactory Preset VariationsPlantFactory 2015 introduced the concept of Presets. PlantFactory 2016 now introduces the concept of Preset Variations.
Preset Variations allow you to immediately include subtle differences to your plant (change the number of buds on a blooming flower, or its petal colors for instance).
This new feature allows you to easily add variety to create realistic environments with one single plant species!
Within VUE xStream 2016, you directly get access to the PlantFactory species presets and variations within the Plant Browser, the Plant Editor and within your EcoSystem population list.
So, at every step of your scene creation process, you are able to select the species you want, the preset you want and the variations you want!
Multiple Global EcoSystems and EcoPainter ImprovementsVUE xStream 2016 now allows you to populate your scenes with multiple Global EcoSystems layers (i.e. not linked to any underlying material). You can save your Global EcoSystem populations as EcoPainter brushes, and re-use them at any time, in any scene!
VUE xStream 2016 ships with 12 EcoPainter brushes to get you started. Populations in your EcoSystem brushes can also be used in any standard EcoSystem material!
VUE xStream 2016 includes 20 EcoPainter effector brushes, including a new Rotate effector to dynamically alter the placement of your EcoSystem populations.
Memory Saving TechnologiesYou can now optimize memory consumption by using baked (static or dynamic) versions of PlantFactory species for your EcoSystem populations, or by converting any referenced assets in your scenes to EcoSystem Instances.
Customizable Workspace
VUE xStream 2016 lets you reorganize the layout of the interface even further to better suite your workflow:
Other Interface and Workflow Improvements
VUE is a 64 bit application, designed for the Windows 64 bits XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 1 and Intel Mac OS X platforms. Like all 3D packages, it is highly demanding in terms of computer power. Although the application is totally multi-threaded to ensure the smoothest possible response, you have to realize that there is a lot going on when you work in VUE.
Please note that using VUE on a system carrying the below specification may result in slow response time and longer render times!
Please read further on for recommended minimal specification for an optimal VUE experience.
Recommended System Specs
Supported Video Boards
VUE xStream 216 includes an automatic configuration tool that will set all OpenGL options just after install, for optimized previewing on your video board / driver.
Any reasonably recent video board (typically less than 3 years old) with at least 1GB of dedicated VRAM and up-to-date drivers should allow you to get the most out of VUE's OpenGL engine.
If you run into any OpenGL issues, try disabling background draw and antialiasing in the Options panel. Worst case scenario: you can always run VUE in software OpenGL mode.
