e-on Vue 7 Infinite in Software

Vue 7 also allows you to bring your project to life as an animation. The biggest danger with computer-generated scenes is that they look too good, which is why e-on has added support for motion blur on wind-blown trees and for loose tracking and linking; slight lags and overshoots that seem far more human and natural. In addition, you can add hesitations and approximations to the movement of your objects using new dynamic nodes in Vue's graph-based function view.

Other improvements to graph-based handling include the ability to group nodes as MetaNodes and choose which properties to expose - very useful for getting on top of complex functions and the secret behind Vue 7's new handling of water. Most powerfully you can have the property of one object in a scene to affected by any other. This so-called Scene-Graph handling can be used for anything from controlling the distribution of rocks based on the roughness of the underlying terrain to some extraordinary special effects, such as simulating the effect of an asteroid impact.

When objects, atmosphere and animation are finished you're ready to render and this is where you'll see the biggest difference in Vue 7 Infinite. New options to enhance realism include improved support for camera aberrations such as lens distortions and for depth of field and new anti-aliasing strategies. The biggest difference, however, is to speed. General render speed is up by an average of 20% and even higher for complex multi-billion polygon scenes thanks to new 'bucket rendering'.

The biggest gains of all are seen when using the new radiosity engine with renders between four and six times quicker, while the ability to re-use indirect lighting calculations slashes times further. It's not just a question of improved productivity either. Previously, most users would be reluctant to switch on such processor-intensive lighting models but with Vue 7 Infinite better output quality options can be chosen more often.

Vue 7 Infinite isn't a seminal release and sorely lacks a must-have modelling feature to capture the imagination (though the more expensive Vue 7 xStream does). There are minor improvements across the board, however, and more major advances in the two most important factors of all: output speed and quality make it worth considering.

Author: Tom Arah