EcoSystem Effects
Use EcoSystem effects to populate EcoSystems along a spline and in the
area defined by a spline. You can also use a spline as an EcoSystem mask
to erase other EcoSystem instances.
EcoSystem instances can be aligned dynamically along the spline
direction. Additional Rotation and Variability settings are also
available to precisely control the orientation of your instances.
Geometry Effect
Use Geometry effects to extrude a defined geometry along a spline. The
spline editor gives you access to several geometry properties such as
profile presets, profile dimensions, profile dimension ratio along the
spline, material, twist (mode and limit), and more...
Road Tools
Based on the brand new Spline technology, Vue 10 offers a built in Road
construction tool that allows you to directly draw a road path on your
terrains. The resulting spline is automatically textured with an asphalt
material, and carves or raises the terrain surface to adjust it to your
path.
Vue 10 also ships with specific spline content composed of 3 predefined
spline-based materials (road, train track, and track support structure),
2 python programs for adjusting splines (to lay flat on terrains), and
tutorial files showing how to use splines to carve tunnels and create a
railroad track.
Rocks
New Parametric Rock Materials
Rock Convexity
These new dynamic rock templates contain unique, parametrically defined
materials that are completely user controllable. Color, bump,
highlights, and EcoSystem variations are easily adjustable to create any
desired appearance.
Rock Convexity
In nature, parts of the rocks that are on the outside will be more
exposed to external factors such as weathering. Thanks to the new Rock
Convexity node, you can now change the look of the rocks based on their
actual geometry, for instance to create dirty insets or polished edges.
Physical Water
Vue 10 introduces a brand new - physically accurate - Water shading engine.
Vue 10 physical water adds absorption and scattering parameters to allow for realistic light absorption in the body of water.
Light now interacts accurately with ocean waves to produce realistic
underwater caustics: underwater light will be more concentrated in some
areas, while other areas receive less light. The deeper you go, the
darker it gets - as in the real world!
For added artistic control, you can adjust the focusing of caustics so
that they appear at their maximum sharpness at a specific depth.
Visible shafts of underwater light can also be created very easily.
Terrain Technologies
Terrain modeling is an area of active R&D at e-on as we continue to
improve Vue's powerful terrain technologies in response to user
feedback.
Terrain Color Pattern Node
This new node is a fractal function designed to create extremely
realistic color patterns as observed in nature. This node is typically
used to drive the material editor's functions.
It produces a mix of smooth and rough variations of color similar to the
distribution of grass patches, rocks or sedimentary soil.
Previewing of Environment Constraints
When brushing a layer with altitude, slope or orientation constraints,
it is now possible to preview these constraints direclty, so that the
areas where the brush will have an effect appear clearly.
Terrain Brush Improvements
Brushes in Vue 10 can act only on certain levels of details, while
leaving others untouched, so you can modify the general shape of a
terrain without removing smaller details.
3D Painting Undo brush: The undo brush now also works in 3D.
New Custom 3D brush: This brush lets you define a specific direction for the displacement applied to the terrain surface.
Mask Rotation
You can now optionally enable mask rotation when painting in the terrain
editor. When mask rotation is enabled, the mask will rotate together
with the view allowing precise control when painting materials or
painting geometry in the terrain editor (ideal for footprints!).
New terrain material layering
Advanced Layering
Vue 10's terrain editor introduces fully additive material layering.
This new system preserves the orginal alpha presence of layers, lets you
paint multiple layers simultaneously and painting one layer no longer
affects underlying layers. Layers are combined in the function graph
using a 'Layer Painting' metanode.
For instance you can now easily erase parts of a snow material layer to
have an underlaying grass material appear only where you want.
New Strata3D Node
The Strata 3D Node in action
The new Strata3D noise node is ideal for creating realistic canyon walls
and stratified rock formations. This node works in conjunction with all
other fractal and noise patterns.
Other Terrain Editor Improvements
You can now limit the maximum amount of painting in the terrain editor.
Non airbrush mode for 3D painting works like 2D effects.
The brush map images in the terrain editor can be inverted.
Terrain altitude color map can be mapped to the visible range of altitudes.
Terrain effect buttons can be set to repeat a given number of times automatically.
You can manually set the Level of Detail (LOD) for swifter painting in 3D.
You can refresh the OpenGL preview of terrains with the click of a button.
Cyclic Noises & Fractals
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