MDK 1.0 for Vue

[AP]

Now if only terragen 2 could do stuff like this.

http://www.quadspinner.com/mdk.aspx

[Tangled-Universe]

Don't let the presentation etc. fool you

This is exactly the same as what NWDA does.
It's a package with "materials" which basically is the same as packing up a bunch of clipfiles where each clipfile simulates a type of rock etc.

[AP]

Don't let the presentation etc. fool you

This is exactly the same as what NWDA does.
It's a package with "materials" which basically is the same as packing up a bunch of clipfiles where each clipfile simulates a type of rock etc.

I am the least easily fooled. I am just not fully convinced that terragen can do certain shapes that vue can for good reason to. What i want to see are those certain types of rocks that seems to be rather unique within Vue. Hyperblobs, more noise flavours and Hyper-terrains seem to be what is missing. I do think we can get close but as many years as i have been using terragen i have yet to see certain shapes of land features by any user. If certain effects can be done with fake stone shaders then what about a possible challenge. I think it is a serious lack of fractal noises that terragen is most importantly missing here in the equation. For example, a dot shader that can carve out holes in stones, a stretched displaced noise that can be tilted at any angle of degree to a stone, a crack noise without having to futz with the voronoi shaders. These things should be more easily possible.

[Tangled-Universe]

The biggest difference between Vue and TG is the UI and user-friendly-ness.

All what you describe can be done in TG, but TG is designed in a completely different way.
It's far more flexible, but therefore also less straight-forward and more difficult to get the exact effect you're trying to achieve.

Vue allows for easier control and such to make it a bit easier, the hyperblobs and hyperterrains you mention for instance, but in the end it still comes to the same thing for Dax (Quadspinner's founder and producer) to get these hyper-things look great: like in TG he also has to layer dozens of shaders and functions to get the final effect he's aiming for.
Admittedly, TG2 lacks more noise-flavours.

It's all the same, only in a different visual package and presentation.

To convince you a bit more, if necessary:

I think it is a serious lack of fractal noises that terragen is most importantly missing here in the equation. For example, a dot shader that can carve out holes in stones, a stretched displaced noise that can be tilted at any angle of degree to a stone, a crack noise without having to futz with the voronoi shaders. These things should be more easily possible.

A "dot shader" is easy to make. High contrast powerfractal with small scales and enough negative offsets create a dot-like pattern. Use negative displacement and you get small carves/holes.

You can stretch noise in the tweak noise tab of a powerfractal.
Also, you can rotate noise with the transform shader.

Vue's cracked noise IS a voronoi shader, only with a different name and like I mentioned before easier to use since you won't be troubled with the "ehhrr...do I need a 'get position' or 'get position in texture'??". That's the only difference between Vue and TG2. It looks better, more user-friendly and easier to handle, but under the hood exactly the same things go on.

So yes, I agree with you that it should be easier, but TG2 is certainly capable of doing that.

[dandelO]

I agree with Martin. Packaging and presentation speaks for a lot of what Vue gives you out-of-the-box. Many things that are labelled in Vue as a certain thing(especially recently) are pretty much ideas which seem to have been lifted straight out of TG's box and renamed, just have a look at the 'new' cloud parameters that E-on have recently introduced. One of the only things lacking from TG that is included in Vue is their Solid Growth plant generation system, which can create geometric variations on a per-object basis. Otherwise, Terragen is just as capable, if not even more so than Vue at nearly everything.
Metablobs and the likes are, pretty much, an on-the-fly version of TG's superior displacement system applied to an object primitive base.

Also, notice the extreme difference in real displacement based render times between the two programs. I'd far rather wait a little while on TG doing what it's best at, than waiting an 'eon' for Vue to attempt to do the same thing(which it just can't).

Vue does have a really quite nice atmosphere and lighting system but, on the surface of the default setup, nothing more than TG has. It's only that TG doesn't have the built-in preset browser, which is actually really just all of the work done for you.

Each to their own, though. I own both Vue and TG, and I know which one I'd rather use to get the job done, exactly the way I tell it to.

[Jack]

exactly their is nothing special about this except for some fancy images

[AP]

exactly their is nothing special about this except for some fancy images

Well, sense everyone is confident that terragen can do all of what can be done with the MDK, then what about a challenge for proof of concept? Heck, a new kit could be sold at NWDA as well. I would do it myself but sense using terragen 2 the day it was made public i tried doing similar landforms but nowhere close as what Dax did. Why not put Dax's work to the test and prove this guy is not the only game in town?

Terragen really needs macro nodes for this stuff.

[Jack]

Well look at nwda's gallery and the images here?
you must not have looked very far

the only reason his terrains look nice is because he uses world machine which you can use with terragen as well
If you like Vue so much why are you here?!

[dandelO]

Well, it's not a competition, or a 'with us or against us' situation, Jack.
Each program does what it does, it's not really fair to say 'why are you here?'
There are things that just can't be done in TG, for now, that Vue does very well, repeating reflections, for one.
Try and reflect something behind the camera FOV in TG and you'll see nothing. Also, try to reflect some already cast reflections on a secondary reflector, the degradation in quality is terrible due to rendering speed optimizations in TG.
Each to their own, in my opinion, and I think it's healthy to have such discussions, a lot of things can be worked out through it. That said, it is certainly much easier to do a lot of things in Vue, simply because it's already done for you.

[Jack]

Yeah but people forget this is Terragens official forum not some cg hobbyist site
People need to show a little respect to the Matt and the team here, and
stop keep on posting this vue junk, The PS team are doing the best they can with the resourses they have be thankful of what they have achieved so far If eon software had a team of Matts and jo's imagine how that software would be

[AP]

Well look at nwda's gallery and the images here?
you must not have looked very far

the only reason his terrains look nice is because he uses world machine which you can use with terragen as well
If you like Vue so much why are you here?!

I have been looking sense the beginning and they have some very nice stuff. What i would like to see is what can be possible with terragen in terms of what has been done in vue with those material types. Until then i have doubts and reasonably so. Believe me i tried adding all sorts of effects for fake stone shaders but could not get anywhere near to those certain effects. Perhaps i am just missing the obvious. Who knows? In terms of the MDK, these effects do not need world machine as they are shader/material systems only.

I never said i liked Vue. When did i say this?

[AP]

Yeah but people forget this is Terragens official forum not some cg hobbyist site
People need to show a little respect to the Matt and the team here, and
stop keep on posting this vue junk, The PS team are doing the best they can with the resourses they have be thankful of what they have achieved so far If eon software had a team of Matts and jo's imagine how that software would be

This is an open discussion so any outside subject matter can be spoken of here with all due respect. As long as it is not anything that can be offensive in nature.

I have plenty of respect to fairclough. For one primary programmer he has done a good job for what terragen is.

My curiosity to explore what current terragen can do is what brought this matter to attention, nothing more. I am not a fan of either software. I am merely curious about certain capabilities.

[Tangled-Universe]

I never said i liked Vue. When did i say this?

Well, if you ever did say that, so what...?

I think your answer has been pretty much answered already.
Vue and TG2 are very much alike, but their development followed completely different paths:

Vue's development initially focused on visual output style with lots of fancy lighting systems (not necessarily realistic or accurate to nature) and post-effects and a UI reasonably similar to common 3D packages (viewport, object-handlers etc.)
Further the exchangeability between Vue and other 3D-packages was established to ensure quick adoptation by (semi-)professionals.
In the mean-time they tried to stuff Vue with as much as shader-functions and gadgets as possible, without caring if it would actually work (in a stable way).
Their business-model allowed for a bigger development team by selling far more expensive products and letting people pay for updates which only contained fixes.
All in all, they didn't do it the cleanest way, but it absolutely worked out. They only have an unstable product (it still crashes a lot) which still isn't able to what it should really do: rendering vast landscapes.

TG2's development, like we all know, is a bit more easy going First a base engine was created with the most basic functions/features and stability was a high priority.
The planet-wide displacement/rendering system is still unsurpassed/unbeatable by Vue, so is the cloud/atmosphere system which is more accurate/natural looking.

At this point Vue's catching up with TG2 and TG2 is sort of catching up with Vue, but I'm pretty sure Matt doesn't have the same intentions as E-on.
Like Martin said the last couple of updates contain straight rip-offs from TG2's features like the strata-filter and cloud-functions.
The simple proof of this lies in 1) exact same way of working 2) exact same visual output (strata) 3) most important, they even didn't care trying to think about different naming inside these functions, it's truly a shameless 1:1 copy from TG2.
With the upcoming new animation-module and other features TG2 will be more suitable for (semi-)professionals and we'll see how it goes from there.
There's a big difference between TG2 and Vue in daily life/use, but under the hood the same principles apply since it all works with polygons, displacements etc. etc.
One resorts to similar methods, only quality of implementation makes the difference.

TG2 lacks a macro-node system and the shader-viewport like in Vue to make development of similar materials very easy and fast. That's really the biggest difference in developing shaders/materials.
And I again, I really think you had yourself fooled with Dax' rich way of describing/presenting his products
I think I know just a handful of Vue users which have the knowledge and experience to succesfully apply his products into their work.

[Oshyan]

Well said Martin. You are right on target in pointing out that there is a difference in philosophy and strategy between the two companies.

I don't think Chris is being disrespectful at all. He's just expressing his opinion and asking for demonstration satisfactory for *him* that TG is capable of things he sees demonstrated in other programs (in other words others may be satisfied by different/existing demonstrations). I think TG2 in its current state is capable of almost anything displacement and terrain-wise that Vue is, but it does tend to be more complicated and math-heavy. Vue has more of what are basically the equivalent in Terragen of e.g. the Power Fractal - noise functions and broad setting variations packaged up in a (relatively) accessible UI. These things can be built up from basic Function building blocks in TG2, but the ease of use and accessibility are better in Vue in many cases. Improving ease of use is an important goal and one which we're intending to focus even more on following release of the Animation Module.

Ultimately there are many approaches to a given problem and Terragen 2 will likely never be oriented at the same type of user as Vue, particularly the lower-level versions. But we do believe in user empowerment and that almost any user can create great art with powerful tools given information, experimentation and some perseverance. I measure our success in part by how many people truly go beyond the basics of a Poser-esque "drop some trees here and a character here and render" type of approach and really learn the system, producing genuinely unique, creative works of art and technical skill. One need only look at the many discussion threads here which have produced incredible achievements through collaborative effort, from ring worlds to wave functions to railroad tracks to procedural grass and trees, from psychedelic colored clouds to procedural cities, and on and on.

There are some real wizards using both products and although I am biased I tend to feel the TG community has a bit of a lead over the Vue community in overall capability, and I don't think this comes down to self-selection for a more technically savvy market. I have seen many people come in without a clue about functions, fractals, noise functions, maths, and all the other things that help you get the most out of TG2, and thanks to the help of this community and their own passion for learning and experimenting they have become highly capable users of Terragen. At the same time there are many who create outstanding art without needing an understanding of the inner workings, and that's good too. I am definitely very proud of the TG2 community and its capabilities.

We never want to lose sight of the reality that TG can always improve and so we welcome all feedback and constructive criticism. We use TG "in the real world" as well and see many of the same issues our users point out. We'll always be striving for sensible improvement in capabilities and ease of use.

- Oshyan

[AP]

As far as the situation of claiming to like Vue. I am not annoyed by the claim. I just don't want to have a misunderstanding.

I agree, those new Vue features do seem like direct rip-offs of Terragen's. When i first had seen that i was disappointed. It smelt fishy.

Again, i am not fooled by Dax's way of product presentation. It is the images of the rock formations that brought up my interest and then looking at the rock formations here and at NWDA so i see the differences and would love to see what Dax has done with his Vue work within Terragen 2 from others here and by me if i can even grasp that. Dax can fluff his products all he wants and i understand it is for marketing purposes but that does not impress me at all. It is the capabilities but again more curiosity then being wowed.

I agree, Terragen and Vue do very much the same functions. I never doubted that, ever.

You know a macro-node system and a shader view port would be a huge service for creating local geomorphological formations. If we could just see stone features as one example in a real time 3d viewing angle for one thing then that would speed things up and allow a user to create unique shapes and colors.

I think in the end, i do not want to spend weeks into months of frustrating tweaking just to get some halfway decent results. Life is too short. I do like to be challenged but not to be plundered into a pit of math functions and overnight headaches.

I think i may just have to be patient and wait until some new editing features come along to make the workflow more swift with the macro-node and view port ideas brought up. I will salute Planetside if they decide to add these feature.

I do thank you all for your valued time and note that i am not annoyed at all. More confused by these programs then anything as my background is illustration. Some times technology can go right over my skull.