e-on software, the leader in Digital Nature solutions today announced the immediate availability of the tenth generation of its Vue line of products for CG Professionals.
Press Release from e-on Software
November 03, 2011. Beaverton, Oregon: e-on software, the leader in Digital Nature solutions today announced the immediate availability of the tenth generation of its Vue line of products for CG Professionals.
“Vue 10 represents a significant milestone in our continuous delivery of leading-edge Digital Nature technologies”, said Nicholas Phelps, President of e-on Software. “High-resolution rocks, physical water and spline-driven effects together with faster rendering and advanced render stacking are some examples of the many new technologies in Vue 10.”
In order to ensure a smooth transition, and to avoid order processing congestion, e-on software also announced that it will release the rest of the Vue 10 product line – Pioneer & Theme-packs, Frontier, Esprit, Studio and Complete – mid November 2011.
Vue 10 xStream – The Integrated Solution:Vue 10 xStream, e-on’s flagship solution, offers CG professionals the premiere solution for creating exceptionally rich and realistic Digital Nature environments, fully immersed within Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, and Softimage, Maxon Cinema 4D or Newtek LightWave. All Vue tools are fully integrated in the host application as menus and toolbars and directly accessible from within the host interface, providing immediate access to the most advanced 3D environment creation technologies.
Vue 10 Infinite – The Standalone Solution:Vue 10 Infinite offers CG professionals the premiere solution for creating exceptionally rich and realistic Digital Nature environments in a stand-alone package. Vue 10 Infinite is the ideal tool for multimedia and entertainment professionals, architects and graphics designers.
Next Generation FeaturesAmong other significant advances, this new release introduces a number of major enhancements such as spline and road tools, a new rock technology, streamlined terrain editing, a physical water shading engine along with significant improvements in overall rendering performance and artistic control.
Capitalizing on breakthrough technologies introduced in previous versions, Vue 10 adds a number of new and extended features such as:• Spline and Road Tools: Vue 10 includes a comprehensive spline toolkit that can be used for EcoSystems, terrain effects, building roads or creating objects. An automatic path-finding algorithm can also be used to build realistic roads at the surface of terrains. Watch the new spline tools in action!
• Dynamic Rocks: Vue 10 features a library of dynamic rock templates that can be used to instantly create single rocks, groups of rocks, or use them in EcoSystems. Each time the user creates a rock from a template, a new and unique variation will be generated.
• Physical Transparency and Water Shaders: Physical transparency adds absorption and scattering parameters to allow for realistic light absorption in glass or in a body of water. Ocean waves now accurately affect incident light to produce realistic underwater caustics.
• Render Comparison: The new render display dialog now lets the user stack and compare previous renders. Users can overlay and compare 2 renders (including multi-pass layers) and use HDR difference tools for in depth analysis. Lightweight render clones can be created to test various postprocessing effects, without altering the original render.
• EcoSystem Phase and Lean-out Control: Vue 10 lets the user individually control the phase (animation offset) of animated elements inside EcoSystem populations for creating more natural animations. Phase is totally user-controllable on a per instance basis, using the function graph. Watch EcoSystem Phasing in action! EcoSystem Lean-out ControlEcoSystem instances lean out towards zones of lower density.
• Terrain Editing Improvements: Users can now precisely preview the active zones when painting with a brush that has Environment Constraints applied. Watch this feature in action! A new Custom 3D terrain brush is added to the brush collection. Mask rotation can also be enabled/disabled when painting in the terrain editor. Material painting in the terrain editor is markedly improved. A new Strata3D node is added for the creation of realistic canyon walls and stratified rock formations. And much more!
• Edge-based Anti-Aliasing: A new edge-based anti-aliasing algorithm is added to complement the previous color-based anti-aliasing strategy. Both AA settings can be configured independently.
• Improved Depth of Field and Motion Blur.
• Up to 30% Faster Rendering Speed*: Significant internal optimizations made to Vue 10’s rendering engine will result in dramatically accelerated rendering.
• And much more: new "Main View Defined" Aspect Ratio, Multiple Camera Aspect Ratio Variation, Improved Render Area, Texture Projection Node, Mixed Materials Alpha Channel, Collada Morph Targets...
• Plus all the new features introduced in Vue 9.5 such as GPU Anti-Aliasing, FastHybrid Depth of Field, Atmosphere Relighting, Localized Cloud Layers, Advanced Cloud Control, Interactive Texture Placement, Custom Star Maps and more.
More details on the new features are available on the e-on software website, at: www.e-onsoftware.com/infinite and www.e-onsoftware.com/xstream.
* Compared to the same render settings in Vue 9.5
Pricing and AvailabilityStandard Retail Price:Vue 10 xStream retails for $1,790 (with one year maintenance), and upgrades from Vue 9 xStream starting at $395. Vue 9 Infinite retails for $1,190 (with one year maintenance), with upgrades from Vue 9 Infinite starting at $295. Upgrades from Vue 8 Infinite and Vue 8 xStream are also available (see full product pricelist at http://www.e-onsoftware.com/pricelist for details).
Annual subscriptions for Educational licenses of Vue xStream and Infinite are available respectively for $149 and $99 per seat and per year. Upgrades to Vue 10 are free for owners of active educational licenses.
Following the terms of the complimentary 30 day maintenance included with each new purchase, customers who purchased Vue 9.5 xStream or Vue 9.5 Infinite after October 02, 2011 will automatically receive their upgrade to Vue 10 at no charge.
Yearly maintenance plans are available for both products. More information on e-on software’s maintenance plans can be found at: www.e-onsoftware.com/maintenance.
Availability:Vue 10 xStream and Vue 10 Infinite are available in English for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, and on Mac OSX 10.5+ (Mac Intel only) for both 32 and 64 bit.
Vue 10 xStream is compatible with the following renderers:• 3ds Max 2008 to 2012: MentalRay (integrated and MR satellites), V-Ray• Maya 2008 to 2012: MentalRay (integrated and MR satellites), V-Ray, Maya Software• Softimage | XSI 7 to 2012: MentalRay (integrated and MR satellites)• Cinema 4D R11.0 to R13: native renderer• LightWave 9.3 to 10: native renderer
Other renderers are under consideration.
Personal Learning Editions:E-on software will be releasing a Personal Learning Edition of Vue 10 Infinite and xStream later in the year.
About e-on softwareE-on software is the leading developer of solutions for the creation, animation, rendering and integration of natural 3D environments. Offering a wide array of Digital Nature products and applications, e-on software provides solutions adapted to every project and budget. E-on software products are used worldwide by the film, television, architecture, game, science, educational and entertainment industries.
E-on software products were used in feature films such as "Avatar", "Clash of The Titans", "The Wolf Man", "2012", "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus", "GI Joe – The Rise of The Cobra", "The Proposal", "Land Of The Lost", "Terminator 4, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", "Indiana Jones 4", "Monster Vs Aliens", "Australia", "The Spiderwick Chronicles", "KungFu Panda", "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" and TV series such as "Battlestar Gallactica", "Stargate Atlantis" and more. Read more on these stories in e-on software's Spotlights section: www.e-onsoftware.com/spotlight.
E-on software was founded on the premise that powerful graphics tools should never get in the way of the designer’s creativity. By investing significant resources into research and development, e-on software is able to deliver cutting-edge, user friendly technologies that produce stunning Digital Nature scenery.
E-on software is based in Beaverton, Oregon with a European office in Paris, France. Visit their website at http://www.e-onsoftware.com.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
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