Hi,
I was thinking about doing a comparison between Terragen 2 and Vue 8 xStream. I just upgraded my Vue 7.5 to 8. It won't get to detailed but, it will give you a good idea how, in my opinion, the two compare.
Frankly I know which product I prefer but, I thought I would share my thoughts about the overall easy of use and work-flow. Also, how the programs use system resources.
I won't do this comparison unless the members of the Planetside Forum are interested. I will determine this by how many members respond to this thread.
Let me know.
Marc
Very interested indeed. I doubt I would change over as I'd have to learn everything from scratch but I'd be interested nonetheless :)
Richard
at least, Vue users can come in here to read what we write ;)
but we, not Vue users, can't go to their forum to read what they write :)
really interested !!!
It's certainly worth hearing what you think, if only to give us ideas to torture Matt, Jo and Oshyan with :D
I don't think that i ever would buy from them . I don't like their business practice . But i am following most of the 3D software on the net .
This is the long way to say " yes i am curious what you think about Vue " :)
Kadri.
Quote from: Seth on January 14, 2010, 02:40:53 PM
at least, Vue users can come in here to read what we write ;)
but we, not Vue users, can't go to their forum to read what they write :)
I can. My username there is 'Terragen 2'! :D (probably get deleted now... :))
Quote from: dandelO on January 14, 2010, 05:22:31 PM
Quote from: Seth on January 14, 2010, 02:40:53 PM
at least, Vue users can come in here to read what we write ;)
but we, not Vue users, can't go to their forum to read what they write :)
I can. My username there is 'Terragen 2'! :D (probably get deleted now... :))
You sneaky troll !
LOL ;D
Kadri.
Quote from: Seth on January 14, 2010, 02:40:53 PM
at least, Vue users can come in here to read what we write ;)
but we, not Vue users, can't go to their forum to read what they write :)
Says a lot when a company is not confidant enough to let people see their forums until after they have parted with their cash. Probably don't want potential customers to see all the bitching regarding the high costs and the stability of the software.
MGebhart, i'd like to hear your thoughts, there are plenty of things in vue i'd love to see in Terragen.
Comparison might be interesting, as long as bang for buck is taken into account, as Vue 8 xStream will set you back £1,100 +
John
It would be interesting. I downloaded Vue Pioneer, but have not even installed it. From the two times I tried it before, I am not likely to like it in this version either.
A good idea as long as we keep away from all that snarkyness. I have Vue 8 studio and prefer TG2 but I have not really made an effort with Vue so would be interested in an unbiased informed opinion.
Yes, a comparison would be really interesting. Maybe a very similar scene done with the two apps with similar quality settings. I'm curious about the render times.
But Schmeerlap is right. The price of course has to be taken into account too
first thing that terragen 2 wins in is support just read this forum topic for a small taster of how bad vue' support is
http://forums.cgarchitect.com/39100-anyone-out-there-use-max-vue-8-xstream.html (http://forums.cgarchitect.com/39100-anyone-out-there-use-max-vue-8-xstream.html)
That is really bizarre. Hundreds of dollars for support? I thought Dell was expensive!
Thanks to Planetside for being a great bunch of guys! We don't let you know how much you and your programs are appreciated enough.
Quote from: njeneb on January 15, 2010, 01:45:45 AM
That is really bizarre. Hundreds of dollars for support? I thought Dell was expensive!
Thanks to Planetside for being a great bunch of guys! We don't let you know how much you and your programs are appreciated enough.
Not just Planetside the nwda guys and all the other terrasperts everyone here helps each other out and we share different ideas and tips to help improve our skills. Forums have a tendency over time to become abit clicky but ps forums is very welcoming to newbies and beginners its just brilliant^^ this must be one of the best software support forums in the world and its thanks not only to the amazing planetside guys but to everyone here who keeps this forum rolling^^ i wouldn't be half the artist I am Now If not for the great tips ideas crits and encouragement of the Planetside community you guys rock!
Indeed! Even if Vue would be much better, I wouldn't abandon this close-knit Terragen family.
Amen to that, Dune.
Maec
I'd certainly be interested. We've constantly been fleaced by Eon over the years, and the latest fiasco of having to buy brand new render cows for the farm from 7.5 to 8, even when the 7.5 ones didn't work has pretty much been the straw that broke the camel's back. We're now playing with the combination of TG and V-ray scatter, which we're still ironing out the workflow, but seems way more stable.
I wouldn't move to Vue either, but comparing the apps would be a nice inspiration. When TG was new, it was really great, but when it came to vegetation, I always envied Vue users.
Look at TG images now!
It may sound silly, but it's always a challenge for me seeing Vue images and then figuring out how this can be done in TG.
Thanks to this wonderful community and of course to the makers!!! Everyone is learning from others helping to mature this fantastic piece of software.
So, Marc, did you detect enough interest to decide you? Are you still working on it? ;)
I'd like to see it too, as a user of Vuew 6 Esprit plus a few modules :)
And I think everyone here rocks too *group huggles*
I enjoy this forum also. There is a wonderful group of people here.
I do not envy Vue. I have used it and find it to be too intrusive. Like trying to write something in Microsoft Word, word does not allow things to be done your way. It has to be the Microsoft way. Vue seems to be this way also.
Yesterday I started the Terragen 2 vs Vue 8 xStream document. It will take some time to finish. I need to determine what areas I need to address and which to ignore. It will by no means be the end all discussion document but, I promise an unbiased and accurate comparison.
The document will be in PDF format and in color.
Marc
I look forward to it. Thanks for doing this, Marc.
DandelO is heading deep into ememy territory, on a mission :D :D :D :D :D
Quote from: dandelO on January 14, 2010, 05:22:31 PM
Quote from: Seth on January 14, 2010, 02:40:53 PM
at least, Vue users can come in here to read what we write ;)
but we, not Vue users, can't go to their forum to read what they write :)
I can. My username there is 'Terragen 2'! :D (probably get deleted now... :))
i tried a Vue PLE once, did'nt really like it that much, only used it for a few days and switched back to TG2
I'm quite interested in seeing the results, but it's imperative that it is done fairly as much as possible and that the methodology is not only sound, but fully disclosed. How much have you used each application? Do you have a similar level of experience with each? Will you consult with experts from each app perhaps? It might be a good idea.
I'm glad to see someone undertaking this and applaud your efforts in all areas thus far (particularly object creation!). Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. :)
- Oshyan
Well, just to let you know, I did not forget this undertaking. However, it makes it very difficult when Vue keeps crashing while doing very basic tasks. It's driving me nuts.
I'll keep you posted as to my progress.
Marc
watch asilefx introduction to vue 8 lol the poor bloke cant even do basic tasks without it freezing or a bug appearing his workflow was totally ruined by it
Just to throw out a few thoughts on this subjects....
I'm a big believer in specialty programs verses "all-in-one, Swiss Army Knife" programs like Vue. I like using a modeling program for objects (I use Lightwave Modeler but hardly touch Layout) a terrain generation program (Worldmachine2 is my choice) and a rendering/environment program (Terragen2).
Of course TG2 is not the choice for interior archvis renderings or rendering a car model -- there are many more suitable programs for this. But for and outdoor environment render, TG2 seems to be the best, especially considering the price.
I own and have used Vue Infinite 6, but found stability problems and a high cost of staying "up-to-date." Plus it seemed almost all the extras or addin content was for sale. I hated running Vue and clicking on a texture and in the menus and finding it had to be purchased. Tg2 offers a lot of free content and no "surprises". It does what it says.
Well judging by what I read from the Vue forum at Renderosity I would'nt buy Vue. Its a lovely render but if I buy a piece of software I expect it to work.
Thats not too much to ask
I'm new to terragen but I suspct a lot can be done with this.
I open up TG2 and I feel like I'm on a barren planet. That can be an inspiration in its self
Vue worse than TG2:
1) costs more and has neck breaking rate of new releases which adds new features without fixing bugs;
2) on some systems is much more buggy up to the point of being un-usable;
3) long standing bugs are unfixed or called "features";
4) Vue community is haunted by a few absolutely obnoxious people which blast you as soon as you dare to whisper the b-word (bugs...) while TG2 community is great (e.g. comparing with other programs or discussing bugs is not regarded as heresy and handled accordingly, with matches...).
Vue better than TG2:
1) has native support for Poser content (...yes, those naked ladi... sorry, bunch of bits) while TG2 can only see it as OBJ import and like it or not (I do NOT like it) Poser content world is large;
2) Vue is more a click-and-render solution than TG2 (TG2 throws into your face the whole rendering nodes network while you see it in parts in Vue and Vue has a more natural object positioning scheme).
3) Version 8 added subnetworks to nodes so you can package a network into a single node, allowing for a successive refinement analysis of a network.
I do not consider the laughable "modeling" capabilities of Vue a plus (me too follows the the-appropriate-tool-per-job philosophy), but some people do like swiss army knife programs (which do all, nothing of it well). Stick to the current philosophy.
For what I have seen, TG2 rendering speed is now roughly on pair with Vue one (especially when trying to kill the noise in atmospheres and clouds).
Bye!!!
Quote from: latego on March 23, 2010, 06:26:29 AM
Vue worse than TG2:
1) costs more and has neck breaking rate of new releases which adds new features without fixing bugs;
2) on some systems is much more buggy up to the point of being un-usable;
3) long standing bugs are unfixed or called "features";
4) Vue community is haunted by a few absolutely obnoxious people which blast you as soon as you dare to whisper the b-word (bugs...) while TG2 community is great (e.g. comparing with other programs or discussing bugs is not regarded as heresy and handled accordingly, with matches...).
Vue better than TG2:
1) has native support for Poser content (...yes, those naked ladi... sorry, bunch of bits) while TG2 can only see it as OBJ import and like it or not (I do NOT like it) Poser content world is large;
2) Vue is more a click-and-render solution than TG2 (TG2 throws into your face the whole rendering nodes network while you see it in parts in Vue and Vue has a more natural object positioning scheme).
3) Version 8 added subnetworks to nodes so you can package a network into a single node, allowing for a successive refinement analysis of a network.
I do not consider the laughable "modeling" capabilities of Vue a plus (me too follows the the-appropriate-tool-per-job philosophy), but some people do like swiss army knife programs (which do all, nothing of it well). Stick to the current philosophy.
For what I have seen, TG2 rendering speed is now roughly on pair with Vue one (especially when trying to kill the noise in atmospheres and clouds).
Bye!!!
Nice post Latego, thanks.
I disagree slightly with you regarding the capability of packing a node-network inside a node and with the rendertimes.
You can make a network inside a node already, but unfortunately not within every node (yet?) and it's also not really self-explanatory.
I think that in the majority of cases TG2 might be even faster. I often see vue work posted at DA etc. and not rarely I see stupendous rendertimes for simple things.
Admittedly, in some cases Vue is way faster, but in my experience I see that less than seeing Vue being slower.
My "idea" is that Vue's renderer is faster than TG2 until a certain quality threshold.
You can render fair looking renders pretty easy and fast, but when you increase the settings for especially lighting and atmosphere then I see Vue really gets in trouble and becomes very slow (and crash prone).
Getting TG like crisp and clear renders is short of impossible with Vue and it is not strange that every now and then a post in the official Vue forum appears where people are wondering "how do I get Terragen like crispy renders?".
I remember Darthmagus (was a TG'er as well for a long period) making some nice canyon images with Vue and I criticised that it looked fantastic (displacements etc.) but that the detail and crispyness was really lacking. It was blurry/fuzzy looking. He replied that he rendered it at the best settings possible (at that time, Vue 7 I reckon), which tells me quite much.
Yet up to date I still haven't seen a crisp clear photographic Vue render.
This is all based on what I've read and seen of course, I have no experience with Vue (PLE) at all.
Martin
There was a funny reaction to my post earlier: My colleague was actually contacted by Eon and asked "what the disaster was" with Vue 8 installation after they had read this thread. A bit of too and throwing via e-mail, and they finally admitted that the serial numbers for the render cows had been miss generated, which to their credit, they've now sorted out.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on March 23, 2010, 07:30:12 AM
Nice post Latego, thanks.
I disagree slightly with you regarding the capability of packing a node-network inside a node and with the rendertimes.
You can make a network inside a node already, but unfortunately not within every node (yet?) and it's also not really self-explanatory.
I think that in the majority of cases TG2 might be even faster. I often see vue work posted at DA etc. and not rarely I see stupendous rendertimes for simple things.
Admittedly, in some cases Vue is way faster, but in my experience I see that less than seeing Vue being slower.
My "idea" is that Vue's renderer is faster than TG2 until a certain quality threshold.
You can render fair looking renders pretty easy and fast, but when you increase the settings for especially lighting and atmosphere then I see Vue really gets in trouble and becomes very slow (and crash prone).
Getting TG like crisp and clear renders is short of impossible with Vue and it is not strange that every now and then a post in the official Vue forum appears where people are wondering "how do I get Terragen like crispy renders?".
I remember Darthmagus (was a TG'er as well for a long period) making some nice canyon images with Vue and I criticised that it looked fantastic (displacements etc.) but that the detail and crispyness was really lacking. It was blurry/fuzzy looking. He replied that he rendered it at the best settings possible (at that time, Vue 7 I reckon), which tells me quite much.
Yet up to date I still haven't seen a crisp clear photographic Vue render.
This is all based on what I've read and seen of course, I have no experience with Vue (PLE) at all.
Martin
Making a sharp render in Vue is a question of going in an awful lot of apparently unrelated places and modifying parameters and, even then, TG2 renders are sharper (something I couldn't make Vue fanboys accept is that you can always smooth a render in post production but you cannot realistically sharpen it, so a sharp render is more versatile than a fuzzy one).
About networks: I admit my almost complete ignorance with TG2. I am just toying with the free edition, waiting to see whether I can learn to use Blender: if this will be the case, I will be able to kiss goodby to some buys and free the money to spend on TG2. If you can already create blocks of nodes, well its OK.
About speed: I was talking about the low/medium quality renders you do for development. The final render is another thing (I cannot test those times with the free edition). For sure, if you raise atmosphere quality in Vue you'd better have a render farm ;D (often, during tutorials, you see people admitting to lower significanlty atmosphere quality in order to speed up renders). To put things in perspective, once I read the suggestion to use lowish quality settings, render at double size, downsample and then use Noise Ninja to clean up...
Bye!!!
Hmmm, it's tough to say that Vue is slower or faster than TG2. It's very possible to generate high quality renders with quite ambitious render settings that still render reasonably fast. The question is what features you use in your scene. For example, high quality render settings for the atmosphere drastically increase render times for clouds that are created with a fractal noise. However, if you replace the fractal node with a simple noise node the sky renders pretty fast even on high settings, and often you won't even notice much of a difference in the clouds.
Areas where Vue renders very fast with very good quality:
- Standard heightfields, even high-res ones like 4096x4096
- Ecosystems with SolidGrowth Vue Plants; of course a very dense grassy hill takes longer than a hill with trees, but in general Ecosystems are very fast
- Volumetric materials
- Cloud layers without too complicated node networks
Areas where Vue is practically unusable due to its render times:
-Displacement mapping, first and foremost. Although e-on claim to have improved displacement in Vue 8 a lot (which they did, in fact) Vue's displacement engine is a mess, both quality- and memorywise. Displace a 512x512 heightfield terrain with a semi-complex function and the rendertime just explodes. Displace a 1024x1204 terrain and your PC freezes because the application becomes insanely memory hungry. Displace a procedural terrain, and the rendertimes rocket into the sky, but the application won't crash somehow. Oh, and by the way: I have 8 GB of DDR3 Ram, and I can't get it to work without an OoM message appearing (if I'm lucky)
- Large Ecosystems with X-Frog plants or objects with a similar complexity. Vue doesn't crash, but rendering a forest made out of X-Frog plants takes forever. To be fair, though, Vue's plants work very, very well for covering a large amount of land, and using some X-Frog plants for close-ups is not a problem.
- Clouds with complex functions. Don't even think about animating them without a render farm.
Other things like water and procedural terrains take quite long to render, but again it's a matter of the functions that are used and I wouldn't necessarily say that TG2 or similar applications render those things faster or slower. Having played with TG2 for the last three months extensively (and I am still not confident enough to show any of my experiments :-\) I think Vue 8 and TG2 are quite on par with Vue having a slight advantage in vegetation rendering speed and TG2 obviously having a huge one regarding displacement.
As for the render engines I agree that you will never get the crispyness of TG2 renders with Vue's render engine, no matter what you do. Vue 8 has gotten better with that, but the overall look and feel is still different to TG. However, for my tastes I find TG2's engine a little too sharp to be a photo, and Vue's a little too soft to convey enough realism in some cases. A mixture between Vue's softness and Terragen's sharpness would be great.
Quote from: wetbanana on January 15, 2010, 01:24:57 AM
first thing that terragen 2 wins in is support just read this forum topic for a small taster of how bad vue' support is
http://forums.cgarchitect.com/39100-anyone-out-there-use-max-vue-8-xstream.html (http://forums.cgarchitect.com/39100-anyone-out-there-use-max-vue-8-xstream.html)
I have started attending more regularly a (primarily Lightwave) users group called Houston 3D that coordinates via meetups.com. There were about six in attendance at the last social Wednesday night. All of the others are much more experienced in the industry than I. In discussing Vue, the opinions matched the sentimant expressed above and it was stated that E-on used to be a good company in support. But something happened when they decided to go after Hollywood and their user base has suffered a great deal because of it. I want to add that, Newtek (the makers of Lightwave), like planetside, also has excellent rapport with their user base and tech support has always been free. I think that LW and TG2 should have a good future together. But I suppose that Britain is physically closer to Germany (and C4D) than it is to Texas (and LW) :(
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on March 23, 2010, 07:30:12 AM
Getting TG like crisp and clear renders is short of impossible with Vue and it is not strange that every now and then a post in the official Vue forum appears where people are wondering "how do I get Terragen like crispy renders?".
I suspect that this is related to getting rid of the plant flicker problem that a lot of Vue users have been reporting. They probably are turning up the anti-aliasing inside Vue in an attempt to make up for the shortcomings of their flawed line-of-sight visibility tests. As a result, though, crispiness is lost and the image becomes fuzzy (but at least the plants are usually there when they should be). Said another way, they put in a bandaid fix that has negative side effects. When you are using procedural and fractal techniques in combination with pseudo random numbers for generating populations of variable instances of a model, it can be very difficult to determine whether an object (and its parts) should be visible or not. Obviously, E-On needs to go through their implementation with a fine-toothed comb. With their heavy-handed push by management, I think the badly needed design and code walk-throughs are not being done.
Some comments:
1) having atrocious problems with xStream is the norm (I have never saw anybody reporting xStream to be as reliable as Infinite);
2) the flicker problem: as far as I have read, people have ghastly problems when creating animations due to flicker and I did not read any real solution to this;
2a) somewhat related, I have read several people complaining about dynamically populated ecosystems: when the camera moves, items use to pop in/out abruptly with obvious fallout on the rendering;
3) E-on does not seem to give any interest in real fixes to bugs: they pile hacks upon hacks, update more often than not break existing functionalities (tell tale sign of dastardly hacks). Needless to write, fanboys either pretend not experience these bugs or that they are actually features (seems a joke, word of honor, it is not). I am sure that E-on developers would like to really fix things (piling hacks create obscene code) but the management sees it otherwise.
Dear TG2 developers, do consider merging with some 3D outfit around, to have more development resources and commercial clout: E-On is really pissing off most of its users.
Bye!!!
One thing I have too say about TG2 is it rarely crashes when you render even at high specs. Now try saying that about 3ds max!
OK. I've hit the end of my rope.
I updated to the latest version of Vue 8 and it still crashes. I did a complete uninstall and the clean install. Same issues.
When I import one of my trees as an obj into Vue it take upwards of 3 minutes then I get a runtime error and boom, CRASH.
Terragen loads the same obj in seconds with no problem.
Still having crashes in Vue doing simple scenes when trying to create similar rendering for comparisons.
Folks, it's just not worth the time, effort and insanity.
eon should be ashamed.
Marc
Ahh, but did you use your "one time only priority support ticket"?
Just like most software companies they place the blame somewhere else and say "Reinstall or Format C".
Pigs.
Marc
Quote from: MGebhart on March 31, 2010, 06:20:41 PM
Just like most software companies they place the blame somewhere else and say "Reinstall or Format C".
Pigs.
Marc
Most users don't know there PC's very well (i am not talking about you of course MGebhart ) .
Many bad user have trojans ,malvare , virus etc. on there PC .
But i hate this "Reinstall or Format C" attitude . Some times maybe it helps ...
But i try to avoid it so much i can . I have here in my house 2 PC' s that have 7 years old Windows XP's installed without any problems ...
Yep, your right.
I started using pcs when a 40mb hard drive was massive and it impressed people if you had 2mb of ram.
My current pc is pristine and runs great. It seems Vue has a problem with it not 3DS MAX, MODO, ZBRUSH, ADOBE Suite and all the high-end software I run. Go figure.
Marc
Quote from: MGebhart on March 31, 2010, 07:17:05 PM
Yep, your right.
I started using pcs when a 40mb hard drive was massive and it impressed people if you had 2mb of ram.
My current pc is pristine and runs great. It seems Vue has a problem with it not 3DS MAX, MODO, ZBRUSH, ADOBE Suite and all the high-end software I run. Go figure.
Marc
Not a good sign for eon ...
A shame to see you had to give up. I am really very interested in fair and direct comparison. Honestly I hate to win by a technicality, but we'll take it. ;)
That being said I hope to find a way to continue this work myself at some point. Perhaps the PLE will suffice...
- Oshyan
Quote from: Kadri on March 31, 2010, 11:39:22 PM
Quote from: MGebhart on March 31, 2010, 07:17:05 PM
Yep, your right.
I started using pcs when a 40mb hard drive was massive and it impressed people if you had 2mb of ram.
My current pc is pristine and runs great. It seems Vue has a problem with it not 3DS MAX, MODO, ZBRUSH, ADOBE Suite and all the high-end software I run. Go figure.
Marc
Not a good sign for eon ...
If you go to CGSociety forums you will see many people complaining about Vue integration with other programs. As I wrote before, xStream makes Infinite look rock solid ;D in comparison.
;D