E-On has announced updates to Vue, its landscape creation and rendering software, and PlantFactory, its botanical modelling tool.
In this release, Vue sees improved displacement that renders faster, uses less memory and generates better results. Three Displacement modes are now available: Dynamic Subdivision which lends itself to terrains, Uniform for low to medium resolution objects. and No Subdivision for already detailed meshes that have already sufficient detail for displacement. Alongside this feature are new mesh baking options and improvements to shadow terminator handling for smoother transitions between light and shade. The renderer also gains Nvidia OptiX and Intel Open Source Image Denoisers for the Path Tracer to speed up renders and get better results in fewer samples.
Vue’s real-world terrain import tools now allow the user to import satellite maps from the sentinel-2 or from USGS online repositories in the maximum available resolution. This include height information and textures which can be combined with procedural functions to improve the final result. Also in this release is the ability to morph between metaclouds to create animations that affect that shape as well as the shading, colour and modulation functions. In addition to these features, the latest update adds 350 new content items as well as a host of other smaller improvements and fixes.
As well as the new denoisers and displacement features, the new version of Plantfactory also includes several new features including a new viewport that’s fully PBR compliant. The viewport is now more responsive and now features indirect lighting in addition to the direct sunlight by introducing a customizable sky model that casts ambient light into the scene. The release also features some early release features in the shape of support for Arnold and V-ray Next in 3DS Max and Maya. This means that a PlantFactory asset loaded using the integration plugin into these applications should automatically generate the appropriate materials.
Find out more on the E-On website
