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Vue 6 Infinite and Vue 6 xStream

Create, animate, and render 3D environments

vueVue 6 Infinite is designed for creating, animating, and rendering natural 3D environments. Vue 6 xStream offers the same functionality as Infinite but is used inside a host application, such as Maya, 3ds Max, LightWave 3D, and CINEMA 4D. Originally, I was going to review xStream with Autodesk Maya but at the time of this writing, xStream didn’t support Maya 8.5 (the xStream update was still in beta but should be released by the time you read this).

After launching Vue 6 for the first time, it indicated that my ATI FireGL 3400 video card wasn’t supported. E-on software told me that I should discard the warning and use hardware OpenGL (according to e-on, they rarely update their list of supported cards). So if you’re not sure if your video card will be supported, contact e-on first.

Constructing a scene was easy with Vue 6. You begin by choosing an Atmosphere (the dialog gives you info about the position of the sun, color of light, shape and size of the clouds, etc.). Once you’ve made your choice, the result is displayed in the Camera Control Center render preview on the right side of the working area.

When creating objects, if they’re moved below the ground plane, they’re obscured. Modifying the camera direction is easy, using a combination of keyboard controls, mouse buttons, and dragging. After rendering a scene you can access several controls after the fact, such as exposure, natural film response, lens flare, color correction, gamma correction, and more.

Vue 6 offers a number of excellent features and allows you to create complex, natural-appearing scenes quickly. But Maya 8.5 would crash or hang every time I attempted to use xStream, despite downloading the latest patch. Another issue was that Poser imports included abnormal resource depletion and conversion errors.— Nathan Segal

PRICE: $695–835; xStream: $895–1,035
FROM: e-on software, Inc.
PHONE: 866-341-4366
WEB: www.www.e-onsoftware.com
FOR: Mac and Windows
RATING: 3

LAYERS VERDICT
HOT Create complex natural scenes; spectral and metaclouds
NOT Maya 8.5 support; video card info

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