Vue user considering T2 - thoughts?

Started by Shackleton, May 03, 2009, 01:26:23 PM

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reck

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.

niphredil

#31
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

Shackleton

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
All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.
JRR Tolkien

KonaDog

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.

Oshyan

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

latego

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) ;-)

Shackleton

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?

All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.
JRR Tolkien

JimB

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
Some bits and bobs
The Galileo Fallacy, 'Argumentum ad Galileus':
"They laughed at Galileo. They're laughing at me. Therefore I am the next Galileo."

Nope. Galileo was right for the simpler reason that he was right.

latego

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!

reck

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?

Shackleton

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".
All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.
JRR Tolkien

pfrancke

#41
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.

Shackleton

<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).
All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.
JRR Tolkien