Real World Computing

Vue xStream

This all sounds marvellous: just use Vue Infinite to create your scene, then export it in a universal format such as 3ds and load it into a dedicated modeller as a ready-to-go stage set. Vue Infinite even supports the automatic synchronisation of cameras and lights with 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Maya, LightWave and Softimage XSI.

Unfortunately, it isn't quite that simple. Remember that each scene might be composed of millions of polygons, and if you try to load those into your modeller it will quickly grind to a halt. And what about materials? Vue Infinite can bake procedural materials down into texture maps, but how much memory is it going to take to enable a realistic fly-through of a procedurally generated terrain? And what about the all-important atmosphere? Vue Infinite can render a sky dome, but that will inevitably look crude alongside your modeller's native spectral handling of atmospheric light.

Vue Infinite's export capabilities are great for certain purposes like roughing out ideas or to add the odd tree, but if your 3D modeller could cope with the demands of naturalistic 3D scene handling it would have offered its own... It looks as though the only feasible workflow runs the other way, by importing your models into your Vue scene and rendering them there. That's certainly an option, particularly if you're happy producing fly-throughs or working with animated meshes or Poser for figure animation. But it's by no means ideal, as while Vue is great at scene-setting, for high-end work you really need all the power of a dedicated modeller focused on the action.

e-on even offers an answer to this dilemma: for just $200 more, Vue 6 xStream (at $899) adds no new creative tools, but facilitates an extraordinary degree of integration. You can run xStream in standalone mode (when it's Vue Infinite in all but name), but you can also run it as an extension to each of today's leading high-end modellers. From within such apps, you can directly call xStream's Atmosphere Browser to select a sky for your natively hosted scene, then the Atmosphere Editor to customise its properties and set animation parameters.

This is impressive enough and, if all you want is access to Vue's atmosphere handling, e-on provides the Ozone 3 plug-in ($199) for the same group of modelling apps. But more powerful still is the ability to open any Vue xStream scene, including massively complex EcoSystem-based ones, directly within your favourite modeller: if you need to alter the scene, call up the xStream interface and when you save the changes they're reflected in the original. Hit Render and your host will render its objects while Vue xStream renders its objects, both supporting mutual shadow casting, transparency and reflection to produce a seamlessly blended result.

It still isn't a perfect solution, since it doesn't yet support imported Poser figures (this might change with the soon-to-be-released Poser Pro). Moreover, no third-party solution can ever be absolutely integrated: for example, you can't apply non-photorealistic artistic rendering to your Vue scene. It's most important when pushing the envelope this way to look out for (and accept) the odd rough edge, although the recent free 6.5 update seems to have ironed out most of the bugs that held back release 6. But despite these caveats, when everything does work smoothly xStream is quite extraordinary. Programs such as 3ds Max and Cinema 4D are hardly short of creative power, but xStream brilliantly takes them into entirely new creative territory.

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