TUTORIALS | Creating a scene in Vue

VUE

ON THE WEB

Moving mountains

The tutorial les are in

the Stop Press section of
www.3dworldmag.com

E-on software agship landscape-generating application has just received an update, which makes it the
BY ETHAN SUMMERS
perfect choice if you want to build vast naturalistic vistas from real-world data

ot so long ago, complex 3D landscapes were

and radiosity routines, without reducing your computer to a pile of

most often accomplished via matte painting

slow-moving mush. Vue contains expandible tree and vegetation

or camera projection. But recent signicant

libraries and has an impressive import function for objects from

advances in rendering technology, coupled

other programs, complete with micro-polygon displacement, texture

with ever more powerful hardware, have allowed for

mapping and, in some cases, full animation. Vue can also import

another method creating fully detailed landscapes on

animated Poser gures to populate your scenes.

a vast scale. Large-scale 3D environments do not replace

FACTFILE
FOR
Vue 6 Innite

With its fast displacement engine, Vue is well placed to

existing methods but rather combine with them to add

collaborate with programs like ZBrush and Mudbox. Theres also

exibility. One example of this is the ability to have

a special edition called xStream, developed for seamless integration

completely free camera movement within a very complex

with most other 3D programs.

terrain or to make quick lighting changes in a nished

In this tutorial we will work through the creation of a basic

DIFFICULTY
Beginner

matte painting.

TIME TAKEN
Two hours

There are a handful of programs designed to deal with the

alternative workow, we have included a section on how to utilise

scene sizes we are speaking of. The best known include Terragen

satellite data in Vue to create landforms. Also included in the Stop

2, Massive and Softimage XSI, while those coming up fast include

Press section of the 3D World website is an additional le, which

ZBrush. In this tutorial we will look at Vue Innite 6, a benchmark

includes detailed volumetric clouds.

ON THE WEB
Full-size screenshots
Project support les
Finished renders
ALSO REQUIRED
Photoshop or other
image editor

scene, touching on some of the new features in this version. For an

program for creating complex environments without having to wade

through masses of conguration options.
Vue 6 Innite is a powerful terrain creation and rendering

Ethan Summers is a multi-disciplinary CG artist with

18 years of experience. He is also a ne artist working

program, capable of handling scenes containing tens of billions of

in abstract painting and sculpted art cars

polygons, thousands of objects and complex global illumination

www.ethansummers.com

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Creating a scene in Vue | TUTORIALS

STAGE ONE | Setting up the scene

To start, create a terrain by clicking on the Procedural

Terrain icon (1). Then position the camera using the
real-time preview window and the navigation buttons
(2). Cameras (3), as well as any object, can be selected and
manipulated in any of the work windows as well as in the
Object menu (4).

01

Pressing F5 will bring up a catalogue of atmosphere

and cloud presets from which to start a scene. For
this tutorial you can use any of the newly added
Spectral Light Models (we chose Bisbee under Spectral
Sunshine) and hit the OK button.

02

EXPERT TIP

Right-click the procedural terrain and select Edit to

open up the Terrain Editor. Deselect the Zero Edges
toggle (1) and then you can experiment with the
Paint Tools (2) to alter the shape of the terrain. The Erode (3)
and Effects (4) tabs will similarly provide tools for altering the
form of the terrain.

03

The right resolution

When using any of the terrain edit
tools, make sure that they operate
on the terrain resolution this is, in
essence, a map on top of the
underlying procedural function. Since
the terrain resolution is limited and
the procedural resolution is innite,
creating many paint, erode and effects
edits will tend to wash away the detail
in your procedural textures, which is
the opposite of what we require for a
naturalistic nish. In general, its best
to try to capture as much of the
landform as possible through the
procedural function, and rely less on
painting tools.

The Proc tab opens tools for selecting, scaling and

ltering the procedural function. Double-clicking on
the Function icon (1) will bring up a window of terrain
presets (2), which contains a wide variety sufcient for many
purposes. The procedural can be scaled with the scale slider
(3) below, and nally ltered (4) by altitude through the lter
control (left-click for presets, right-click to edit).

04

Pressing [F4] brings up the Atmosphere Editor.

Under the Sky, Fog and Haze tab, play with the
Aerial Perspective setting to scale the density of
atmosphere in your scene. Depending on the size of your
landform, this setting can vary by signicant amounts.

05

STAGE TWO | Ecosystems and clouds

Vue 6 has two new cloud types Spectral Volumetrics

and Meta Clouds. To access Spectral Clouds, switch to
the Cloud tab in the Atmosphere Editor. In the demo
le, select the Low Clouds and change the Height setting to
2km. This will thicken the cloud banks.

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Another set of variables can be accessed by doubleclicking the Cloud Texture swatch (1). This brings up
a Material Editor with some cloud-specic variables.
Scaling detail (2) is most important for designing clouds.
Finally, if you want to get lost in the clouds, right-click on the
Density Production swatch (3), then change the cloud shape
by creating a custom node network.

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Next, experiment with Altitude, Detail, Scale and

Cover settings individually to see their effects. You
will nd that achieving a specic look involves lots of
back-and-forth tuning across variables. Move slowly and make
full-sized renders if possible. With clouds, little changes can
translate into big differences.

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TUTORIALS | Creating a scene in Vue

STAGE TWO (Continued) | Ecosystems and clouds

EXPERT TIP

Ecosystem overload

Vue 6s new Meta clouds allow for sculpting very

specic cloud shapes by piecing together cloud meta
blobs. Mercifully, they work well with Spectral Clouds.
Right-click on the Meta Cloud icon to access a menu of cloud
types. For realism, its best to mix cloud types and textures
within a single Meta Cloud model: see the included Meta Cloud
le for a hands-on example.

09

For complex environments where

more than several ecosystem
distributions are needed, its best to
make copies of the terrain object,
apply an invisible material to these
and use them as the basis for separate
ecosystem populations. Alternatively,
rendering for duplicate landforms can
be turned off by right-clicking on the
terrain model and selecting Hide
From Render. For large landscapes,
greyscale maps can be used to control
ecosystem distribution: in the
Ecosystem Density tab, tick Variable
Density, right-click Edit Function to
access the Function Editor.

The interface for creating ecosystems is articulated

through the Material Editor. There are tabs for loading
plants and objects (1), controlling Density (2), Scaling
(3) and Color (4). The nal tab for Environment (5) has controls
for distributing ecosystems according to characteristics such
as altitude and slope. In general, populate with lower densities
and larger sizes (for speed), then tune your ecosystem.

10

EXPERT TIP

Eco-friendly painting
One thing to note with the Ecosystems
tool is that the painted objects it
produces are not tied to the objects
they are painted on. This means that
if you need a moving ecosystem, you
must use the older method through
the Material Editor. Finally, when
working with large ecosystems, you
can switch the ecosystem display to
Wireframe Box. The controls to do this
are located in the Paint Ecosystem
window and in the Ecosystem Texture
window. Another way to increase
performance is to change the view
displays to Wireframe Box mode,
except for the camera view.

Ecosystems can be usefully nested within each other

for example, if we want a single material to dene
low-land and high-altitude vegetation. Simply convert
an Ecosystem Material into a Mixed Material (1), then convert
Material 2 (2) into another ecosystem. This process can be
carried on for several layers without problems.

11

The Plant Editor in Vue offers only a limited amount

of freedom. Still, within the choices it offers, much
can be achieved by changing the texture maps and
playing around with the few variables the editor provides.
Plants that are part of ecosystems can be edited by switching
to the Library View in the Object Menu.

13

One trick new to Vue 6 is the facility to apply a subtle

displacement map to the Leaf subsets. This has the
effect of breaking the articially at look that leaf
plates have when viewed from the side. Only use this for
close-up objects, though: displacements can use a lot of RAM.

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To create the foliage, we used the new Paint

Ecosystems tool in Vue 6. Vue uses its own Solid
Growth vegetation, which is easy on your system
resources and looks pretty good. Models from other programs
can also be imported then resaved as a Vue VOB format for use
as paint objects.

12

Vue comes with a handful of presets that will serve

most purposes. For animated scenes, its usually best
to stick with Broadcast or Superior settings. If you
experience ickering in your render, try the Superior setting
or up the anti-aliasing to 10 (low) and 25 (high).

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Creating a scene in Vue | TUTORIALS

STAGE THREE | Digital Elevation Maps

Even though digital terrain modelling tools are good,

nothing matches the subtlety of real landforms.
Digital Elevation Maps (DEMs) are a way of capturing
3D landscape data as 16-bit greyscale images. Fortunately,
much of this data for Earth is in the public domain. This section
shows how to acquire DEMS from the web, convert them in
Photoshop and use it within Vue 6 to generate terrains.

DEMs are the product of satellite data and available

for most parts of the world. Two sites that offer
free DEM downloads to the public are http://data.
geocomm.com and http://seamless.usgs.gov. Well take
a quick walk through the seamless.usgs site to see how
its done.

First navigate to the download area by clicking

where it says View and Download Data. There
will be choices for international and US data. For
our purposes, well use the US map, as it is imaged as high
resolution throughout. (Typically, the US and Western Europe
are imaged at higher resolutions.)

Youll see a window where you can select an area

for download. In the upper left and right are zoom
controls. Once you have your area of interest,
select a region via the selection tools at the lower left of the
interface. Use the rst icon in the download box. Next, open
the Download tab on the right of the window and tick the
STRM Finished 1 arc sec box.

A summary window will open. Click Modify Data

Request: from there, change the STRM data type
to a GeoTIFF, click on Save Changes & Return to
Summary to return to the previous window. Once the GeoTIFF
is downloaded, unzip it and open it up in Photoshop.

The map is a 32-bit TIFF, which we want to change

to a 16-bit greyscale TIFF. Under Image, change the
mode to 16-bit and when the HDR window appears
select Equalize Histogram from the pull-down menu. Now
you will see the map in 16-bit greyscale. You may also some
imperfections which you can touch up with the healing brush.
Now, save your map as a 16-bit TIFF.

We use a Procedural Terrain and incorporate the

elevation map through the Function Editor to get
the best of both worlds the real-world subtlety of a
DEM map with the innite resolution of a procedural function.
Create a Procedural Terrain and, from the Terrain Editor, turn
off the Zero Edges option on the left side. Now right-click the
Spherical Function icon to open the Function Editor.

By default we will see a Fractal Node, which is

driving the elevation of the landform. Select the line
connecting to the altitude output and delete it. Now
left-click in a blank area (a red box will appear); then, from the
left menu, select an Image Map Node, which changes the red
box placeholder into an image node.

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STAGE FOUR | Working with DEMs

Take a deep breath and return to Vue. Vue has several

ways to utilise elevation data, with the least obvious
being the best option by far. Ignore the import DEM
option from the File menu and do not use the Picture option in
the Terrain Editor. These options will only inspire in you a deep
sense of melancholy.

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TUTORIALS | Creating a scene in Vue

STAGE FOUR (Continued) | Working with DEMs

Click on the Image Node, then load in your TIFF map

as a Projected Texture map. After that, change the
interpolation type to Bicubic. This step is important
in conjunction with your map being at 16-bit depth, as the
bicubic interpolation will help smooth out any stair-stepping
artifacts that might otherwise occur.

25

EXPERT TIP

This is where the fun comes in Even though

the elevation map is giving us a very convincing
landscape at a distance, close up it looks
unrealistically smooth and lumpy. To create close-up detail,
we will add more nodes and then combine them with the
elevation map.

There are many different possibilities here but, for

a start, create a couple of Fractal Nodes and then a
Blend Node underneath (see image). Open a Fractal
Node and dial the Gain (height) way down, bump up the
Roughness (high frequency detail) a little and reduce the Large
Scale (size variation) a bit. This will provide close-up detail but
will not interfere with the general form the DEM provides.

Like many 3D programs, tuning a scene to completion

can be a complex and involved process. In general,
its best to set up your basic visual relationships early
and then move in small increments to nish the job. In this
regard, having some kind of sketch or reference is helpful.
Even though the makers of Vue have taken time to streamline
the process of terrain creation, getting a specic result can

really feel like balancing a pin on top of another pin. Make it

a journey and, if you nd interesting variations along the way,
save them they can often make for great starting points
for other projects. At a more involved level, there is a vast
expanse to explore through the Function Editor, and Vues
sophisticated compositing options should allow you to build
some pretty spectacular landscapes.

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The right altitude

If you need separate noise functions
for low and high altitudes of a DEM
landform, connect a greyscale map to
the Gain of a Fractal node and a Blend
or Combine node. To create this kind of
connection, click the lightning bolt
icon next to Gain in the Fractal node to
create a Constant node. Now add
another Texture map node and switch
the connection from the Constant
node to the Texture map node, by
grabbing and dragging the top of the
connection line leading into the
Constant node. The Texture map node
then acts as a mask that drives the
intensity of the Fractal nodes Gain.

The look of a Fractal node can be signicantly

changed with different Noise operators, available
with the Noise pull-down. There are a ton of them,
and they are worth experimenting with. One note of caution:
Noise functions can vary dramatically in their calculation
times, so if your terrain is suddenly slow to render, try
adjusting Noise functions.

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