Just wondering if it'd possible to import Vue scenes or at least the detailed landscapes and skies into Houdini?

Maybe importing them into Max and then Houdini?
Just a thought.

Thanks,
~Shawn

thats a shame because vue has a nice, but SLOW renderer…its kinda the direct opposite of mantra….super easy to set up….but ineffecient yet hard to fine tune…

especially with the spectral atmosphere settings…and the noise generator for materials….Something I would love to learn how to do in mantra….

the only thing is that you simply get to a point where you get super stuck on optimizing a render….like a scene with clouds and shiz can easily go over an hour for the frame.

but I think it could be done in houdini…its just the new focus needs to be in mantra/vex “mimicking” what we see in other renderers….

Yeah, I wondered why Renderosity artists usually only do stills: it's the long render times. But the stills do look good and the landscape scenes are complex so I figure Mantra would take a while to render a forest.
Forget the skies, I suppose you could use Vue to import landscapes models into Houdini. Procedural is the best way to build, but not always the fastest. So I was just wondering if anyone has gone that route.

Take a look at this customer story:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1193&Itemid=68 [sidefx.com]

Andy speaks of using Mantra's delay load feature to create procedural trees that are very efficient to render….

massta
Just wondering if it'd possible to import Vue scenes or at least the detailed landscapes and skies into Houdini?

Maybe importing them into Max and then Houdini?
Just a thought.

Thanks,
~Shawn

I'm not terrible experienced with Vue, but as far as I know Vue scene is different type of entity and can't be easily expressed in terms of standard geometries' types.

Freezing it to obj and exporting as is, is the only way to handle interoperability but this process leaves you without big part of details from a scene. Vue can handle so much details, because they simply don't exists, they are procedures not objects.

The thing you can do, is to use Vue to render panoramas, possibly splitting a landscape into many layers. I suppose this is the way Vue is used in most cases in film industry.

I too was completely BLOWN away by the delayed load feature in mantra…

But the problem is its accessibility….like houdini can do EVERYTHING vue can do…but vue has the spectral renderer hooked up instantly to a sun source…and its volumetric clouds and super easy to make.

its instancing and ecosystem functions are also super easy….BUT

its comes at a HUGE sacrifice…

CONTROL….its a real pain in the butt to control it….

but in the right hands its a good tool….esp. for matte painters….

I wish it was that easy to set houdini up like that….OR to have great docs. for mantra.

LIKE:

user guide showing us how to setup everything we know how to do in other softwares….

like mental ray

like vue…

and a doc DEVOTED to optimization…

I think that sidefx will do it soon though…that company rocks.