Who uses Vue, and for what?

exstarsis

I am putting aside some money for Vue but not spending it.... yet. Not yet. But I'd love to hear about how people who use Daz Studio AND Vue use them together.

Ati

I really wanted to use Vue for scenes that were too big for Bryce to handle. So I downloaded the 30-day trial, populated a not too big area with trees, and then... crash after crash after crash.

Greymom

I first got VUE as a gift, and have now upgraded to the current version, to (someday) set up big, realistic outdoor scenes.  Vue natively supports Poser to add and pose characters within the scenes.  Unfortunately I have not had the time to set it all up yet..  Although I have not checked recently, VUE did not support DAZ Studio natively (I hope they have added this support!).   There are various ways to export static characters from DS and into VUE without the pose-in-place feature (or so I hear).

Since the featues of DAZ studio have been greatly enhanced, I am thinking that I could instead use VUE to create outdoor scenes and export them for use in DS.   How much work it would take to re-optimize the shaders is a big question - and the render time might be impractical.   The current version of VUE Infinite uses a NVIDIA GPU for calculation power for rendering (mainly for the antialiasing caculations, I think), but does not support full GPU rendering (scenes would be too big).  The VUE render engine also allows five licenses for multi-computer rendering, unlike IRAY or Poser's SUPERFLY.

I did a couple of scenes in VUE 2015 Complete when I first installed it.  Did not have any crash problems.

So, I am also very interested to hear about other folks experiences.   I have made a major investment in the software and hardware, so I will have to use it, RL permitting  : )

thd777

I have been using Vue since version 4 (around 2004 I think) and currently use Vue 2016 infinite which is currently the latest version with a new version scheduled for early 2018. Most of the images in my gallery (see signature) are done in Vue even though the latest ones are most DAZ studio Iraq. I usually export form DS as .obj and then import into Vue and set up my material there. I have a tutorial floating around about the export/import work flow I use. If you are interested I can dig it up. 

It is a great program for all kind of stuff, especially out environments. In my experience it is very stable and I can only remember a handful of crashes in over ten years. However, I was always running Vue on fairly high end PCs with lots of memory, so that might be part of my experience.  

Ciao

TD

exstarsis

I've used the demo and PLE a bit and didn't have too many crashes, but I did find using it properly pretty opaque until I started going through this tutorial class on YouTube. I too am thinking of using it to create things for use in Daz Studio, although possibly less 'models' and more 'backdrops'. I love how Vue handles atmospheres. If I COULD use Daz characters easily I would... but having never used Daz models outside of Studio it isn't something that occurs to me offhand.

exstarsis

I love the Vue stuff in your gallery, THD777. A lot of it has that atmosphere I love so much.

Greymom

thd777:   I  would be very interested in your tutorial!

exstarsis

I would too, thd777. It looks like you're doing exactly the kind of stuff I'd like to do and my initial experiments in importing from Daz Studio were kind of lackluster.

thd777

@dreamfarmer   @Greymom

Sure. Here they are as PDF attachments. They are from 2010 and 2012 if I recall correctly. So therer are some differences in the interfaces of Vue and DS, but the workflow and procedures still apply and work. I am still using them myself. If you have any questions feel free to ask or send me a pm.

Ciao

TD

 

Artini

Great tutorials, thd777. I have not adjusted the functions in Vue by myself, yet. What a great way to improve the materials in Vue.

 

 

JVRenderer

You should check out geekatplay.com. It has a boatload of vue tuts

TomDowd

I've used various versions of Vue for many years (currently running 2016 Complete.) For years it was my primary renderer, where I'd build elements in DAZ or Poser and export into Vue mainly because of the amount of lighting control that you have in Vue. Since iRay I hadn't used it as much but with the advanced in Vue's own Path Tracer renderer over the last few releases I need to experiment again. 

I've also used it to rebuild the textures and orgaization of some OBJ format files that I've picked up over the years that would import all wonky into DAZ. Vue doesn't have a UV mapper but it hasn't seemed to matter. It also seems to handle large, complex files better than DAZ. I'm working on a large complex castle exterir scene that I may just rebuild in Vue to see if I can since DAZ chokes on it.

BradCarsten

does Vue come with nature packs, (trees, grass, rocks etc) or do you just buy the software and then have to buy everything after that like Daz Studio?

daveso

bradrg said:

does Vue come with nature packs, (trees, grass, rocks etc) or do you just buy the software and then have to buy everything after that like Daz Studio?

it comes with a few ... I have 27 trees included, plus alien plants, grasses, a couple of flowers ... there are rocks, etc .. and objects . planets, etc etc ..but there are tons that you can buy. The included are probably good for most..plus you can import from other programs, obj etc.. and if you buy ecosystem, you can populate forests, plains, etc etc. 

So here on DAZ are all those great flowers, rocks, trees, from RDNA ... and they have been selling for cheap. import and use those. 

daveso

also .. if you pick a tree and use it more than once, it changes each time .... if you look at the 3 trees, each is a bit different. i put screenshot of 1st page of trees ... if you look at the top of that panel, you can see choices of more stuff. 

Greymom

thd777 said:

@dreamfarmer   @Greymom

Sure. Here they are as PDF attachments. They are from 2010 and 2012 if I recall correctly. So therer are some differences in the interfaces of Vue and DS, but the workflow and procedures still apply and work. I am still using them myself. If you have any questions feel free to ask or send me a pm.

Ciao

TD

 

Many thanks!   This is very helpful!

 

thd777 said:

 

 

Paula Sanders

I do all my rendering in Vue. While I have Vue Infinite 2016, I prefer version 2015. I do many scenes around people and do a lot indoors. I love the way I can control my atmosphere and I use lights extensively. I bring a lot of models in from DAZ, both people and things. I mainly change bump and highlights although I do change many other settings. You can see the renders on my website although I do post work on all of them. That is intentional when I setup the initial scene. Http://www.perpetualvisions.com ;

 

kyoto kid

...I have Poser 8 and Pro 2012, haven't used them much since Genesis2 as DSON can be a real pain in the bum sometimes (not even sure if it supports G3).  As I understand (at least from what I last heard) the posing routine in Vue can be pretty resource intensive.

Also this pretty much would mean going back to Gen 4 based characters and so much for the main characters of my story (who are both teens) as I'm back to using clothing converters that tend to be hit or miss (particularly for more petite and younger characters).

Not sure how Vue would handle either type of weight mapping that Daz uses when it comes to posing either and there would be no morphing.  Hence the only alternative is to prepose characters in Daz and import them as textured .objs (similar to what has to be done in Bryce).  Besides making sure that the pose doesn't cause the character ot "float" above or have a foot buried in the ground, my other concern how does this affect the polyconut with regards to hair which is usually transmapped in Daz/Poser?

I do like Vue's lighting system (also played with the trial version and PLE), and it is definitely ahead of either Bryce or Carrara when it comes to ecosystem design (it even simulates wind effects with the Zephyr plugin).  In some ways it felt like I was playing with photographic elements as rendered scenes looked so "real" (long before Iray or even LuxRender). 

The base price to get the best functionality is Vue Studio at 399$, If you are looking at high quality animation, then the Kronos plugin is necessary (an extra 99$). The one nice aspect is Vue is modular.

One point to note Vue all versions from Frontier to Complete will only use up to 8 cores total (including hyperthreads) for rendering. So if you have that 8 core Ryzen or 16 core Threadripper you will only be able to use half the capacity of the former and one quarter of the latter.  Only the more expensive Vue Infinite will use more cores/threads.  Daz will use as many cores as you have for both Iray CPU rendering and 3DL (I believe up to 24 or 32 total).

artd3D

"Hence the only alternative is to prepose characters in Daz and import them as textured .objs (similar to what has to be done in Bryce).  Besides making sure that the pose doesn't cause the character ot "float" above or have a foot buried in the ground"

If you export your Daz characters in collada format you will get all textures, you get all of the bone structure and can pose the character in Vue, and you can import your character with animations created in Daz Studio. Just make sure to set the preset in your collada export to generic collada. Exporting in collada format does make your character have a mirror finish when opened in vue. You just have to turn the reflection down for each texture to get rid of this.

Vue also has a drop to ground feature so there is no floating or sinking of the feet.

Vue also has or had a product called skinvue, which allowed you to customize the skin to give an almost photoreal look. You can even add wet drips and drops to the skin. I have not gotten skinvue to work in Vue 2016 yet, though it works very well in earlier versions.

BradCarsten

 

daveso said:

also .. if you pick a tree and use it more than once, it changes each time .... if you look at the 3 trees, each is a bit different. i put screenshot of 1st page of trees ... if you look at the top of that panel, you can see choices of more stuff. 

 

Thanks for the reply and screenshots. Much appreciated

Artini

I keep forgetting about importing Collada format files into Vue and getting fully rigged characters transferred that way.

Below is an example of importing character from Unity into Vue using Collada file format.

I still do not know, how to fix materials in vue - any tips.

This is, how the character looks like, right after the import into Vue:

After posing, my poor adjustments of materials and relight in Vue:

This is, how it looks like in Unity

RobotHeadArt

I believe there is a 360 panoramic camera you could use to render an HDRI in Vue and then use the HDRI in DAZ Studio to bring the environment/background in without having to export and resetup your DAZ characters and props.

kenmo

Currently using Vue Complete 2016. Have been using it since Vue Esprit 4.0. Love Vue. It is my primary renderer for scenes using DAZ characters when I want to create a large scene...

artd3D

You can render and save a 360 degree hdri image in Vue, but I have not yet had good luck with them in Daz. The colors seemed washed out and too bright in Daz, and I have been to lazy to experiment with finding a solution. I have upgraded for years from Vue 11 Esprit to Vue Esprit 2016, which is the minimum you need to work with Daz characters. ($199.00). I use Vue 11 to set up most of my scenes, as I have the export module, ecosystem, eco painter, light tune,skinvue, and Botanica modules in Vue 11. I save the scene in Vue 11 and then open in Vue 2016 for further refinement. Which saves me a lot of money in adding modules.

If you sign up for the Vue newsletter they often have sales of a buy one, get another module at a good price.

If you go to http://www.geekatplay.com/vue-tutorials.php, they have a lot of great tutorials for Vue, Hexagon and a lot of other programs, a lot of them are free.

There are also a lot of freebies on Cornucopia3d.com.

 

 

artd3D

Artini, It looks like your reflections are set to high, try turning that down on each texture.

TomDowd

I think it may have pulled over either a color map or bump map and assigned it to transparency. Give that a look in the materials editor. In the Advanced Material Editor also check the Ambient and Luminous values.

Artini

The reflections was set to 0%, but I have found in Translucency tab, that lowering Average depth helps,

so I will keep refining that. Anyhow it is amazing, how easily it is to transfer to Vue characters with bones and rigging.

Material settings and rig in Vue:

Artini

It looks like, it will be a lot of fun, importing different characters into Vue

and playing with its material settings.

Below is another example - Mouse Dragon.

Martial

I use Vue from version 2 and now Vue infinite 2016

I use it for nature environnment and for his ecosystem

Generallly i have best results exporting from DAZStudio with collada format (objets and scene) than obj format

I  don't use the full potential of the soft 

Thanks Tdh77 for your tutorial about the power of layes in Vue

DisabledAmericanVeteran

Paula Sanders said:

I do all my rendering in Vue. While I have Vue Infinite 2016, I prefer version 2015. I do many scenes around people and do a lot indoors. I love the way I can control my atmosphere and I use lights extensively. I bring a lot of models in from DAZ, both people and things. I mainly change bump and highlights although I do change many other settings. You can see the renders on my website although I do post work on all of them. That is intentional when I setup the initial scene. Http://www.perpetualvisions.com ;

Paula? do you still use Vue? 

AllenArt

arthurgarcia said:

Paula Sanders said:

I do all my rendering in Vue. While I have Vue Infinite 2016, I prefer version 2015. I do many scenes around people and do a lot indoors. I love the way I can control my atmosphere and I use lights extensively. I bring a lot of models in from DAZ, both people and things. I mainly change bump and highlights although I do change many other settings. You can see the renders on my website although I do post work on all of them. That is intentional when I setup the initial scene. Http://www.perpetualvisions.com ;

Paula? do you still use Vue? 

I used to use it too. Started with version 2 and absolutely loved it. Used it for all my images and used Poser to bring people and animals into it. These days tho, images made with Terragen look more realistic to me than those made with Vue. **shrug**