Hey all! Noob here. I've been watching Terragen, actually for years now. I'm a long-time Vue user and an active member over at Cornucopia3D. 3D is the youngest of my A/V pursuits; started with Bryce - didn't take to it - then tried Vue and loved it... for a while that is. I still use Vue routinely but I have complaints that I'm sure any of you fellow Vuers know well. First and foremost is stability, or rather the lack there of. The second thing (or group of things) which is getting worse is E-on's attitude and pricing.
So, I'm now more seriously considering a replacement for Vue, long term. I've just downloaded the free trial of T2 to check it out. If it looks and works well, I'll definitely buy. But regardless I just wanted to see what any of you might have to say regarding pros, cons, whatever, for a Vue INF user switching to T2.
Thanks a bunch for your time and comments.
Cheers! 8)
P.S. Kudos to the planetside's tech team for choosing SMF for the forum board. Great move.
Welcome to the forums!
You already gave some pros like stability, attitude and pricing. TG2 used to have stability issues as well but that has improved greatly in the past year, further the attitude and pricing are very good :) The staff is very small, very busy and very willing to help, but they aren't always capable of direct help/support.
No worries, because as you may have seen here already (don't know) you'll find many users here willing to help each other.
These forums offer a lot of resources and knowledge from first-hour TG(2) hobbyists to guys from the industry.
I virtually don't have any experience with Vue, but from the things I hear a con of TG is the lack of control for placing things like clouds and objects.
The latter I can verify. TG2 lacks display of wires and therefore it can be quite difficult to place objects or handle them.
Same is for clouds, there is no direct control of placement.
However, there are ways of increasing that control to a very good level.
Rendertimes have been discussed endlessly and I don't dare to say anything about it.
I'd say just give it a go and don't let the learning-curve push you back if that gives you troubles.
Good luck!
Martin
Hi Martin, thanks for the welcome!
Appreciate the comments. Vue actually isn't very easy for precise placement either, but it sounds as if TG2 may be even less so. No worries. Every program has its pitfalls, but in addition usually some workarounds.
Learning curve in general isn't a problem. I'm just busy enough that I don't want to waste my time on deadends. I'm happy to and enjoy learning a program if it's one that I want to learn and has a good chance of fitting within my workflow.
I don't really see the small staff as a problem. I prefer to learn as I go, and like you said there's lots of help in these forums. Besides, when I can and when appropriate, I like to support the "small guys" in this business. Firms like Media Chance, Ulead (when they were small), and perhaps now Planetside, just to name a few. I think true innovation is found with these folks.
Thanks for the tips and advice.
Regards
Hi, a warm welcome from me as well :-)
To add to Martin's words, I always found it a practical approach in learning TG2 to try and sort of reproduce an image that someone else did before. Usually, in these forums, if you'd ask "how can I go about doing this or that, what the other guy did in his render", you mostly get loads of tips and explanations. From these, you get quickly into how things work in TG2, and it won't be for long that you know enough to create your own scenes.
I personally find Terragen very logical and hence easy to comprehend. I hope with our help you will have a similar experience.
Regards,
Frank
Quote from: Shackleton on May 03, 2009, 01:26:23 PM
First and foremost is stability, or rather the lack there of. The second thing (or group of things) which is getting worse is E-on's attitude and pricing.
I'm hearing this more and more on different forums, especially regarding the pricing structure for vue. They seem to be pushing their existing customer base away from their product with such extreme pricing. Of course the stability problems don't help either.
Welcome to the world of TG2 BTW, it's lot of fun and there are plenty of experienced guys here who can help you if you get stuck, in fact two have already posted in this thread ;D
I also have Vue 6 Infinite. I also have been watching Terragen for over a year now...
1. Object placement is extremely difficult with T2
2. The Scene preview is painfully SLOW in T2 and render times extremely high
3. The user interface in T2 is better and more intuitive than Vue
4. T2 is lower priced
I have had T2 for only a few days so far so these are initial impressions and maybe the full release of the Deep w/Animation version will be faster. (I hope!)
Either program will give you stunning terrains with the proper tweaking...good luck!
Bernard
Thanks guys ;)
@Frank: Good thoughts there. I was planning to just initally try replicating my own Vue work in TG, and see how it goes! Either way, the best way to learn is jump in and swim (...or sink).
@Reck: I too think that E-on is turning off their existing user base with the increasing prices (plus other things). Not exactly a winning equation, but what do I know, lol.
@Bernard: The slow preview and renders is something that I have previously heard about TG. (And something that I'm not super excited about). But as you'd know, render times in Vue can vary hugely depending on settings and scene textures, light, & ecos. As it is, I have a nice network render setup and have become accustomed to 30, 60, and 100hr render times; so I don't expect to be thrown too much with TG.
Cheers
Render optimization in TG2 is still an art form that everyone is learning. I think with ideal optimization, TG2 render time are quite reasonable when you consider quality against other applications. Of course most often you do not have "ideal" optimization of settings, so render times tend to be longer, or quality lower than you might like.
The biggest thing to avoid is simply turning up all settings, hoping to achieve "maximum quality". TG2 provides a lot of control over the rendering process which allows for fine tuning settings for best performance and quality in a given scene, but with this control comes the need for good awareness of what each setting does. When in doubt, remember that the defaults have been chosen with good reason.
There are quite a lot of good discussion threads about detail settings here. I made an introductory post on another site quite a while ago that remains relevant: http://www.terragen.org/index.php?topic=3386.0
and a recent related discussion here: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6156.0
- Oshyan
Thanks, Oshyan.
I understand what you are getting at, and really it is the same with Vue. Jacking all the render settings way up won't necessarily result in the highest quality (or rather, most attractive), but it can certainly result in near infinite render times. Vue's defaults are not always particularly helpful (I'm glad to hear that, from your comments, TG may have something better), and custom setting profiles chosen for certain scene contents were ultimately the way to go.
Thanks for taking the time to post and for providing those links. Should be quite helpful.
Cheers
I have made just a few attempts with TG2, but I think that preview renders with appropriately low parameters and a non-huge render size are currently roughly in the same league with Vue w.r.t. time.
The main difference is that with Vue you can build an image (or better a doodle ;)) in 20 minutes; you cannot do that with TG2 (as you cannot do that also with Carrara e.g.). No program beats Vue scene development speed.
Bye!!!
P.S.: I think that this thread is sending shivers along E-On management and marketing spines...
something that people often forget about placing in TG - you can rightclick in the preview window and choose "Copy coordinates" and then just paste these coordinates into the transform section of your object.
So its probably not so easy if you go the "visual" route, but you have some tools to do it fast and easy.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on May 03, 2009, 01:51:54 PMTG2 used to have stability issues as well but that has improved greatly in the past year...
While it's clear what you meant to most regulars, it might be slightly misleading to anyone new to Terragen. :P
Just to clarify: A year ago (a month ago, even) TG2 was unreleased and in heavy development -
naturally there'd be stability issues. But the final released version is overall very stable.
Planetside's attitude to stability can also be seen with their forerunner product, Terragen Classic, which was also very stable. Any stability issues after a new release were quickly patched (days, perhaps a week or two at most) - The same attitude persists with TG2, thus far.
Right, CA can have his hat back now. :D
-------------------------------
@ ShackletonI'm not a Vue user, but one issue which I notice differentiates TG and Vue and hasn't been mentioned, is development pace.
It's taken a long time for Terragen to get to where it is. As noone (except perhaps a privileged few??) knows the internal health of Planetside it's hard to say whether they will pick up the pace. Essentially, for development pace to increase TG needs a few more hands; or the developers need to be working on this full time, if they're not already (it's hard to imagine that they are or were - thin air doesn't put food in bellies?). But this is all speculation fuelled only by what is know publicly - there's possibly a lot that isn't known that may change this outlook, but left dangling,
we I speculate.
That said, Vue may amass all the new features is cares, but devoid of stability and poor support, quickly deem themselves useless, I guess. So on the one hand you've got an app with lots of marketing bucks previewing new features what seems every six months, but they probably won't work like you'd expect. And on the other, there's a solid app that may lack on features but still produces great results, is quite cheap, has great support bla bla...
I'd say at TG's price you cant loose (even if you still continue with Vue). Plus, if enough people think like this then maybe Planetside will acquire the kind of revenue need to pick up the development rate.
Quote from: Walli on May 04, 2009, 05:42:15 AM
something that people often forget about placing in TG - you can rightclick in the preview window and choose "Copy coordinates" and then just paste these coordinates into the transform section of your object.
lol I never know that and i've been using this software for a long time. Maybe the problem isn't that people forget its that this sort of functionality isn't exposed easy enough for people to find.
This feature has been introduced with the final. So you haven't missed it for too long. Should make you feel better ;)
Quote from: Oshyan on May 04, 2009, 01:04:26 AM
TG2 provides a lot of control over the rendering process which allows for fine tuning settings for best performance and quality in a given scene,
but with this control comes the need for good awareness of what each setting does.
- Oshyan
What TG2 really needs is a decent manual. You can buy libraries of books on Vue but the help for TG2 is slim to say the least.
Oshyan is correct that a good awareness of what each setting does is necessary but, at the moment (and for the last several years)
there has been little to inform the paying public of how to acquire this knowledge short of trial and error.
The info is ususally in the form of:-
"
Interossiter Trembler Setting - this slider affects the effect of the scale of the Interossiter Trembler function ...."
Yes, thank you, but what does it do..!
Just my opinion,
V
PS - It may be my first post here but this doesn't mean I haven't been using TG2 and TG for several years.......
Quote from: latego on May 04, 2009, 05:20:21 AM
The main difference is that with Vue you can build an image (or better a doodle ;)) in 20 minutes; you cannot do that with TG2 (as you cannot do that also with Carrara e.g.).
mmmmh...
with some practice and using some tgc, you can ;)
I certainly understand your feelings Vulthoorn.
From time to time I'm thinking about writing a massive tutorial for TG2, but I just don't have enough time for that and therefore it would take months. Also, however I do have a decent knowledge of TG2 there are some things which I can't clearly explain in words and there are also some technical aspects and concepts I don't fully understand/well enough. It would then only cost me and the staff time to correct these mistakes.
However, a couple of basic video-tutorials might be interesting to do. Showing workflow etc.
I'll think about it and discuss it with others.
Martin
My two cents on this as a TG2 and Vue user. Please feel free to correct anyone if I'm saying nonsense.
TG2 cons:
- Animation controls virtually non existent and the app gets very crashy when you play too much with camera keyframes. If you're thinking of TG2 for animation, better wait a few months (or years) and see how it develops.
- Doesn't "talk" well with other apps. The importing of scenes, objects, mats, camera paths, etc. varies between bare-bones and non-existent. Prepare for a lot of trial-and-error. In this respect, Vue is much, much better integrated with other mainstream 3D apps.
- Object handling is poor due to the fact that no wireframe can be seen in the viewport, only a bounding box. This makes working with very large number of objects impossible in practice. In addition, trying to import and render entire 3D scenes (I'm talking a couple of million polys) has always crashed Tg2 for me before, though I must admit I haven't tried again with the latest version.
- Tg2 is very bare-bone. No presets for anything. All your skies, atmos, clouds, materials have to be created from scratch. There's no quick way of putting a scene together.
- No breeze or wind function for populations.
- Can be pretty crashy too (tho not worse than Vue) and the latest version has seen the return of the annoying "black poly" bug I thought was gone for good a long time ago. This one can be a nightmare when rendering animations.
TG2 pros:
- Yes, render times can be huge, but so can be Vue's (sometimes stupidly so). I actually never rendered an animation to the end in Vue because of this, whereas I've rendered some anims in Tg2 (mind you, never with water or a camera standing too close to the ground).
- Every Tg2 scene is a whole planet, not just a little patch of land as in Vue. This allows you to work on truly epic scenes and (if Tg2 plays ball) truly epic animations. This for me is a big plus, especially considering that Vue generally chokes on its own infinite procedural landscapes (which are not really infinite). A nice by-product of this is that you can create any number of extra planets in Tg2, and these are real planets, not sprites as in Vue's planets (which are completely pathetic in my view).
- But for me the slam-dunk argument really is Tg2's incomparably superior displacement and atmospheric quality. If you want to obtain really high quality landscapes in Vue, you need to apply lots of colour and bump maps on pretty rough-looking landscapes. No need for this in Tg2, which easily gives you centimetre-level procedural displacement. A huge difference between the two apps is the fact that Tg2 displaces its landscapes not just on the y axis (upwards, downwards) as Vue does, but also laterally. This is a pretty massive advantage as far as I'm concerned and it gives you the possibility to create truly stunning overhangs and reliefs procedurally and across an entire planet while you would have to fake it in Vue by importing third-party 3D objects. This also means that in Vue, any near-vertical landscape tends to become flat. The closer you get to vertical, the flatter the shape. That's what happens when you cannot create lateral displacement (or displace along normals). This means you can't actually create realistic out-of-the-box landscapes in Vue without faking things with textures.
- The same point (realism and just sheer beauty) applies to Tg2's atmospheres and clouds, which I think are miles better.
- Tg2 is cheap!
One big difference between the two (but not necessary a downside either way) is that you have less control over the shape of your scene in TG2. By this I mean you often position your camera in Vue first then compose your scene around it, only modelling the bits of landscapes you need. In Tg2 the workflow is different. You first model your world then walk around looking for the best perspective angle. At least that's how I do it (and I haven't used the painting tool much yet, which should give a lot more control).
QuoteI personally find Terragen very logical and hence easy to comprehend. I hope with our help you will have a similar experience.
I have to agree with Frank here. TG is by far the most logical terrain/rendering application out there, in my eyes. In Vue, you are basically working to 'fit the scene to the eye', not the real world. This is not to say that you can't do the same with TG(or vice-versa with Vue), just, it's completely...
logical is the only word that fits. :)
You tell TG to make a specific thing, to a specific scale and it just does it, in Vue, you are dragging and dropping mountains, stretching terrain resolutions, etc. to fit into your frame. TG, for me at least, is far easier to manipulate
correctly. I don't even think that TG's render times are that bad, once you learn how to optimize your settings you can get some fantastic results, and cheaply in terms of computer power.
Plus, everything I've done in TG over the last year has been with a little dual-core pentium and 1gb RAM. I've never had(or let ;)) a render longer than, say, 12 hours, max. I had a single core before with 512mb RAM up until about a year ago, even then I could always find a way to optimize things and keep times down. Just
don't crank it is the best advice. There are tons of ways to cheat TG into making wonders.
Stick with us! ;)
QuoteTg2 is very bare-bone. No presets for anything. All your skies, atmos, clouds, materials have to be created from scratch. There's no quick way of putting a scene together.
This is
exactly why I like TG2 better. You do it
your way, not to a preset layout ;)
That isn't to say that I don't think a preset library wouldn't be functional/beneficial for a lot of users, I've made a start on my own free library already...
15 preset scenes, so far, well labelled and laid out for ease of use/navigation.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=4922.0
QuoteJust don't crank it is the best advice. There are tons of ways to cheat TG into making wonders.
dandelO: well said :)
More than writing a tutorial, TG needs something like GeekAtPlay.com video tutorials.
E.g., I have learned a lot (and quickly) about Hexagon modeling using E-Z (on DAZ.com) and garymiller (on GeekAtPlay.com) tutorials; much much faster (and more effective) than reading a written tutorial.
Actually, there are quite a lot of people who are starting to think (and say) that the future of training are video tutorials, not written material or class attendance.
An ideal option would be high quality videos on YouTube.
Bye!!!
Wow, too much to reply to! Seriously though, it's very helpful to read through these conversations.
Quote from: MooseThat said, Vue may amass all the new features is cares, but devoid of stability and poor support, quickly deem themselves useless, I guess. So on the one hand you've got an app with lots of marketing bucks previewing new features what seems every six months, but they probably won't work like you'd expect. And on the other, there's a solid app that may lack on features but still produces great results, is quite cheap, has great support bla bla...
You're right that Vue is on a rapid development pace, but that has actually been one of my complaints about it. Hands down I will take stability and quality over new or flashy features, everytime. I just wish instead of constantly redoing this, adding that, marketing up to gazoo... E-on would put the necessary attention on the existing version and refine it properly. <sigh>
Like I said earlier, I'm still using Vue and do expect to for a while. But it is possible, even likely, that I will not upgrade again. I am anticipating using T2 along side Vue to see how it does, then if it works out and I like it, it may replace Vue. We'll see. There are definitely some nice aspects to Vue.
Regarding tutorials and such: I have too noticed that video tutorials are gaining popularity. I for one don't really like them, and much prefer to read a printed manual if I need to (perhaps I'm old school!). There other thing is that for those with medium or low band net service, video media is a pain. And in my case, my computer lab/network is issolated and has no internet access. I guess what I'm saying is that there still is a place for a variety of teaching methods or materials. Not everyone does or can learn via the same way.
I have used Vue5 Inf through Vue7 Inf and the program offers far more ways to control an environment. From a technical standpoint, Vue should be superior to TG in every way. I personally have not had stability issues with Vue but I do have issues with making animations. AA settings have not been reliably worked out to date and each new scene is always a long work around to get it right - read: Allot of lost time. E-On needs to get the existing features solid for animation before bolting more features on - I am not upgrading to 7.5.
E-Ons forums are a complaint fest, offer few resources and of little help. The programs developers are probably holed away in some dark cave somewhere - unwilling or unable to respond to user queries. E-Ons business model is seriously mucked up. It appears there's more an interest in the quantity of sales than the quality of features. "Thanks for Buying...now good luck with it." For the price of the 7.5 upgrade - you can get a solid working version of Tg2.
Tg2 isn't as in depth as Vue, but its easier to get into and the community here is positive and helpful.
Quote from: richcz3 on May 04, 2009, 02:26:35 PM
Tg2 isn't as in depth as Vue, but its easier to get into and the community here is positive and helpful.
And that's a reputation we're proud of!! 8) ;D
Quote from: richcz3 on May 04, 2009, 02:26:35 PM
E-Ons forums are a complaint fest, offer few resources and of little help.
Is it possible to view the E-on forum without having purchased vue?
Quote from: latego on May 04, 2009, 12:27:13 PM
Actually, there are quite a lot of people who are starting to think (and say) that the future of training are video tutorials, not written material or class attendance.
An ideal option would be high quality videos on YouTube.
I think that the ideal is is combining both written and visual, in combination with an example scene to play around with.
Like I've done with the "Intersect underlying" tutorial here: http://nwda.webnode.com/news/intersect-underlying-explained-videos-/
It's likely that we produce for tutorials like that - some with more, some with less video, some with a screencam while I or someone else works in the UI, so people can see how certain things get done.
Regards,
Frank
The complete User Guide ("manual") is coming soon, so that should help. The Node Reference updates will follow shortly after (with some input from the development side on certain more complex or obscure settings).
As an addition to the User Guide, I also hope to write a more focused tutorial on using TG2 in production, which quite a few studios have done very successfully (see this video for example: http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/tg2/MARS_terragenscenes_unexpected.mp4 - 720p 30MB and thanks to Unexpected for the footage!).
While I agree that basic trial and error will yield some frustration in trying to sync your TG2 scene with external elements, there are solid existing workflows that are possible with most major applications. Note however that this addition to the documentation is not even started yet, so it will take a bit before it's available. When it is, though, I expect it to be very useful.
- Oshyan
Quote from: reck on May 04, 2009, 03:13:14 PMIs it possible to view the E-on forum without having purchased vue?
Uh, I
believe it is. Not positive, but I think all that is required is that you register an account (like many forums/communities), but no Vue serial is required to do that. It is a restricted area however, so you do have to login to see and/or post. This is my understanding anyway. I have always much preferred the Corn3D community and spend very little time at E-on's forums.
Quote from: Oshyan on May 04, 2009, 11:38:06 PM
... there are solid existing workflows that are possible with most major applications. Note however that this addition to the documentation is not even started yet, so it will take a bit before it's available. When it is, though, I expect it to be very useful.
- Oshyan
I'd be very much interested in this. I'm coming from Vue and so far I love TG2 but Vue seriously makes things easy with their pretty decent camera matching and g-buffer features. I look forward to this documentation!
Quote from: Shackleton on May 05, 2009, 12:50:29 AM
Quote from: reck on May 04, 2009, 03:13:14 PMIs it possible to view the E-on forum without having purchased vue?
Uh, I believe it is. Not positive, but I think all that is required is that you register an account (like many forums/communities), but no Vue serial is required to do that. It is a restricted area however, so you do have to login to see and/or post. This is my understanding anyway. I have always much preferred the Corn3D community and spend very little time at E-on's forums.
OK thanks Shackleton, i'll take a look over there I think. I wasn't sure if they had "locked" their forums to existing customers so potential customers couldn't see all the negative posts being posted.
Hi all,
I'm a Vue user since version 4 Pro. Vue is the best example of a bunch of, sometimes, great ideas (ecosystems and functions material to name the first 2) never fully developed in terms of stability.
I've used it in some productions and it is quite good at creating landscapes fast. Stability, however, is a big problem and good settings for a nice render are very difficult to discover. It seems always to render something not fully realistic. The support of the developers is limited and the forums are quite unusables.
TG2 have some great features:
- displacement like no other
- wonderful atmosphere system
- a general sense of high quality of the results and a great scale of the scenes
There are some problems in the placement/manipulation department and in the animation features but the point it has reached is full of great promises for the future.
For me the 2 little/great softwares out there are modo and TG2....bye!
fabio
Quote from: reck on May 05, 2009, 03:47:11 AM...I wasn't sure if they had "locked" their forums to existing customers so potential customers couldn't see all the negative posts being posted.
LOL, not an entirely unreasonable question. ;D
Quote from: fabio...The support of the developers is limited and the forums are quite unusables.
While I agree the E-on forums are not the most helpful place in the world, I have found the C3D forums to be friendly and quite helpful for the most part. In my opinion, of course.
Cheers
Hey folks... I've used both Vue and TG2 for a while: more TG2 lately than previously.
Things I personally like about TG2: the level of control, planetary scale, results if you're willing to work to understand what's going on.
Things I don't like: lack of a 64-bit native binary (on Windows, anyway, and please correct me if this is not true) -- all my other 3D apps offer a 64-bit native version, and (except for TG2) those are the only executables I run any more (using Vista Ultimate x64 with 12 gigs of memory). As others have mentioned, some of the explanations of what functions do is... weak. If a shader has two tab panels, each panel having four tabs, and each tab having six or more inputs, figuring out what values are reasonable and interesting is an adventure. Sometimes the journey is the reward, but sometimes the journey takes too long.
Vue has arguably better support for import of non-native formats; I like the ecosystem painting capability.
Vue has a lot of issues. As I use TG2 more, I'll probably get a better sense of when I'd pick one over the other.
It's great to see all this discussion in here, a friendly exchange of thoughts and opinions between users of different software applications. It's a rarity on the 'net in my experience!
I've tried to check out the Vue forums before, but from what I recall most - if not all - of it is restricted to owners of the software, so you have to have a serial # registered with them to get in. I'm not a Vue owner (for obvious reasons ;D) so I've never been able to see inside over there.
Kona, 64 bit support is one of our next major development tasks. The preliminary work has already begun. We definitely agree that having a 64 bit version is a must.
Better documentation is on the way. We will have a fairly complete node reference available in the near future.
Another area planned for future development is better import/export support. We plan to work on newer formats like FBX or Collada, which we feel will give everyone the best "bang for their buck" since most modern applications support one or both.
Ecosystem painting can at least partially be replicated by using the Painted Shader as a Density Shader input to a Population, although I grant it's not as easy without built-in plants and whatnot.
Glad you are enjoying TG2!
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on May 06, 2009, 01:14:20 AM
It's great to see all this discussion in here, a friendly exchange of thoughts and opinions between users of different software applications. It's a rarity on the 'net in my experience!
Unfortunately, on many forums there is a us-vs-them mentality which fosters flame wars and all kind of hate. The problem is usually that either these forums are in some way connected to the software houses developing the products or, even worse, visited by third party/content developers who are usually even more rabid defenders of the "true way" than the actual developers. With this respect, I like deviantart galleries approach, in which items are subdivided by theme/technique and not by application (how many real artists you know who use just one tool or technique?)
I think that an objective analysis of other products strenghts and weaknesses is not a "lack of loyalty" but food for thoughts about the evolution of software (isn't imitation the best form of flattery?).
Also, the honest admission that something does not work or is not up to what competion offers is the first mandatory step to improve programs. Terragen used to be much slower than Vue; currently, I found that test renders with appropriately reduced quality settings are roughly on pair with Vue equivalent timings: if everybody stuck with "times are right as they are now, you e-on troll" this improvement would have never been deemed necessary to tackle. On the other hand, if you go to renderosity or cornucopia3d forums and try to say that TG clouds are more realistic than Vue ones... get ready for tar and feathers (I compared the renders of the new 7.5 with TG ones and, even in the hands of gurus... still there is something that does not tick in Vue clouds). This non-admission that a feature of Vue lacks w.r.t. to TG almost guarantees that it will not be worked upon and therefore not improved.
Bye!!!
P.S.: Vue can export terrains created by not only as meshes (like TG2) but also using PNGs/TGAs/TERs etc. Think about it (TG2 erosion engine quality is up to dedicated terrain generators standard and I would like to use it without going to the painful LWS/LWO stage) ;-)
Hmmm... <checking> Whoops.
Looks like I owe an apology to reck. You're right Oshyan, E-on does indeed restrict their forum access to users that have registered a Vue serial #. When I tested it the other day to answer reck, I didn't go far enough to confirm all levels. Sorry folks! Like I said, even being a registered user I rarely visit E-on forums anyway... so that's my excuse. :-\
I agree that this thread, though highly varried in subject, has been friendly and informative. Certainly turned into more than I anticipated, and I'm encouraged by it regarding the community here. Thanks to all (both T2 only, and Vue & T2 users) who are contributing with experiences or comments!
I'm very excited to hear that 64bit support is upcomming(ish); another potential notch in the belt for T2.
Something that I see as a con for me using T2, though admittedly I don't really know at this point, is content. Particularly plants. I like E-on's SG technology, but especially when it's matched with good plant content (usually from 3rd parties, such as Incredibly Lush) - the result is very high quality plant material sutable for closeups or huge ecosystems. Anybody have thoughts/comments about this or for plants for T2 in general? Do most of you use XFrog plants?
Quote from: latego on May 06, 2009, 06:48:36 AM
P.S.: Vue can export terrains created by not only as meshes (like TG2) but also using PNGs/TGAs/TERs etc. Think about it (TG2 erosion engine quality is up to dedicated terrain generators standard and I would like to use it without going to the painful LWS/LWO stage) ;-)
Export as a .ter (one of the options for export) and use this to convert to a TIFF: http://koti.mbnet.fi/pkl/tg/TerraConv.htm
Quote from: JimB on May 06, 2009, 07:41:47 PM
Export as a .ter (one of the options for export) and use this to convert to a TIFF: http://koti.mbnet.fi/pkl/tg/TerraConv.htm
Absolutely great! A full blown procedural terrain generator bundled with TG2!
Thanks a lot!
Quote from: Shackleton on May 06, 2009, 12:04:46 PM
Hmmm... <checking> Whoops.
Looks like I owe an apology to reck. You're right Oshyan, E-on does indeed restrict their forum access to users that have registered a Vue serial #. When I tested it the other day to answer reck, I didn't go far enough to confirm all levels. Sorry folks! Like I said, even being a registered user I rarely visit E-on forums anyway... so that's my excuse. :-\
hehe no problem.
The fact that a company locks their forums to people that have given them money stinks to be honest. When i'm looking into learning a bit more about a piece of software and possibly to purchase it the forums are one of the first places I go. It's there that you get a good understanding on how the software works with people that are already using it. I find this much more useful than the front page of the site that is really just a marketing page.
The forums are also a good place to ask questions and get feedback from existing users to see what's good and bad about it before making a purchase. I spent a while on the terragen forums reading up before I purchased it and it was helpful in me making that decision.
When I see that a company has locked their forums and won't allow you to look until you've handed over your money alarm bells start ringing and I have to ask myself what are they hiding?
Frankly, I agree with you; it does raise a red flag. Whether "hiding" something specifically or not, it does give one the sense that the public face/image and real world experience image may differ notably.
I think it is reasonable to allow, say, only registered users to post, or start new threads, etc. But at least the general public ought to be able to view/read the forum. My presence here is a big part of my initial evaluation of T2. If some sort of purchase was required first, you can bet I would have said, "no thank you".
Quote from: Shackleton on May 07, 2009, 12:06:28 PM
it does give one the sense that the public face/image and real world experience image may differ notably.
There are aspects to Vue that a non-Vue person (me) finds very intriguing. I took a look and quickly got confused about all the different versions (particularly the difference between "Complete" and "Infinite" -- I assume animation is the biggest difference). But as I started looking I especially noticed a lot of anger about the high price in upgrade between their current version 7.0 and the upcoming 7.5. And I could see a lot of anger about bugs not yet being fixed (particularly a $150.00 export module that seemed to not work well).
Anyway, it seems a shame that people bright enough to produce such a product are not bright enough to understand the ill will produced by perceived dishonesty or perceived greed. (perceived or real - I don't know which). Probably their bright developers are no longer running their company. Or worse, their bright developers are now running the company and no one is left that can properly throw coal into the engine.
Another thing, It seems that it is easy enough to get into that new people can quickly become dangerous to themselves and produce something that doesn't work and they don't know how to effectively get help (or other users won't help them). Resulting in a perception of problems that aren't there.
On a positive note for what they do, they do have a "personal learning edition" available that would allow someone to find out if they wish to play ball.
<sigh> I have no idea why they really came out with Complete. Animation may be the biggest difference (I'm not sure off hand), but there are many little things that are lacking compared to Infinite. The frustration with this is that with price increase in gen 7, older Infinite users like myself found it hard to justify upgrading to the same level. Paying approximately the same amount as a 5Inf -> 6Inf upgrade would get you only a 6Inf -> 7 Complete "upgrade", but in some ways it's a downgrade; and if you keep this practice up, pretty soon you'll be down to the lowest level. End result, no v.7 purchase for me.
From what I know of E-on's people, the situation leaves me confused. On one had they are creative and innovative; on paper at least, they've had some awesome ideas for Vue. But the full refinement of those ideas seems to fall short. The people I know close to or within the company are really good people, but some of the marketing and production decisions baffle me. I think some of it is desperation - sort of. So short of staff that they have trouble getting on top of bugs. Short of staff and time that they release versions before they ought. Short of funds so the release 27.3 versions of the software (which end up confusing users). The phrase shooting oneself in the foot seems apropos.
Even while I am, with interest, pursuing Terragen, I'd like to see E-on keep Vue going and have it available alongside T2, Bryce, etc, and not just leave the market to the mega programs (with prices to match).