Vue 8 soon to be released
E-On Software announced today the next version of Vue with interesting new features, along with a new product lineup.
Vue 8 new features
As previousely demoed at the Siggraph 2009, Vue 8 proposes the following features:
- 3d terrain sculpting that enables to create overhangs and caves.
- Terrain editor with a complete scene preview. This is particularly useful when creating terrain features close to objects or when using infinite terrains.
- Local edition of terrains. This enables you to edit small areas of infinite terrains (close to the camera) while leaving the others intact.
- New functions to generate terrains with stratas
- New handling of displacements.
- Vue 8 can import normal maps
- Displacements can be limited to the horizontal or vertical axis
- Bumps can be applied on top of displacements
- New spectral atmospheres with a better handling of blooming areas
- Import of rigged meshes in various formats including exports of 3dsMax
- More efficient OpenGL previews, faster with imported meshes
Availability and product lineup
Vue 8 should be available in early November. However, customers who are under maintenance contracts have already received a pre-relese version of Vue 8 Infinite or XStream.
The Vue product lineup changes slightly with this new release. There are now three distinct product categories:
- Professional: Vue Infinite and XStream
- 3d Artist: Vue Esprit, Vue Studio and Vue Complete
- 3d enthusiast: Vue Pioneer, T-Packs and Vue Frontier (a newcomer optimized for Poser imports)
Despite what the above illustration suggests, the whole range is no longer available in boxes, but only as DVD slim cases or download versions.
More information about this release, with excellent images from Dax Pandhi and other talented beta testers are available on the E-On Software website.
