A Basic Introduction to the Vue 6 Interface

Vue 6 is a software product of E-on software. It comes in two versions, Infinite and xStream. Given its capabilities, it's a fairly inexpensive piece of software, especially when you compare it to something like Maya or XSI. Its purpose is to allow the user to create 3d environments which the user can then render out as either 2d images (which can be used directly or reworked in a 2d image editor such as Photoshop), or animation files (which can then be edited in video editing software such as Adobe Premiere Pro, or Avid, or AfterEffects). The program is now being widely used by advertisers, architectural firms, movie studios, and many, many more to create realistic terrains, forests, skies, and so on.

In this tutorial, we will take a look at the user interface in Vue Infinite. In the first image, you will see that four sections are outlined by a red line. These are the views. The views can be toggled between these four views and a larger view (see below). When placing objects, it is often best to keep the four view setup. Also, in the first image, you will see a series of icons above the views. The first of these are outlined by a yellow line. These icons are the standard new, open, save, cut, copy, and paste functions, as well as an icon for duplicating/scattering objects and undoing and re-doing. The next six icons, outlined in green, are load atmosphere, save atmosphere, edit object, paint ecosystem, select ecosystem instances, and show material summary. The five icons after this are all related to how you view the scene, and are outlined in blue. They are frame all/selected objects, frame selected area, zoom in, zoom out, and toggle view. The last five in this section all have to do with image rendering and animation. They are show color picture (which shows you the last render) save color picture, show timeline (for creating animation), select render area, and render.

Off to the left is another vertical set of icons. The first nine of these is shown in the second image (outlined in yellow) and allow the user to add various types of objects that come with Vue directly into the scene. They are water/cloud/ground layer (all flat plains), primitives/planes, text, terrain (essentially hills and mountains), plant (a large selection from grass to trees), rock, metacloud (a cloud you can put in place), planet, and load an object (an important feature that allows you to import an object). The next group under this (outlined in green) all involve grouping objects. The first is group objects (which lets you combine two objects in the layer panel). The second is the boolean tool (which lets you do simple modeling by subtracting or adding one object with another). The third down is the create metablob object (a rather tricky but useful way to make organic shapes). The fourth down is the ungroup tool. As can be seen, there are more icons below the ones above mentioned, and this group is outlined in blue. These miscellaneous tools are the light tool (for creating various types of lights for your scene), the directional ventilator (for creating wind effects), the alignment tool, select by wireframe color, and finally the drop objects tool.

Now we will turn to image three and take a look at the right side of the interface. This side is more complicated. At the top you will see a section that is outlined in yellow. This section is primarily for materials, position, and animation. The tab with in image three that has a yellow 1 over it is the materials tab, (which allows you to decide what kind of material you will apply). The tab with the yellow 2 over it is the numerics tab (this section allows you to input things like positions and sizes). The tab with the yellow 3 over it is the animation tab (which lets you determine things like motion type, tracking and so on). Looking particularly at the materials tab, you will see that the image under the yellow 4 is the material preview. The icon under the yellow 5 is load material. The two icons under the yellow 6 are preview options (they adjust how the preview appears). The one under the yellow 7 controls the scaling of the material, while the four below the 8 control hiding things from the render. Below this level, in the area highlighted in green, is the camera control panel. The section with the green 1 on it is the render preview (which gives you a real time idea of what the render will look like). Below this, under the green 2, are the actual camera controls, such as zoom, pan, and rotate. And in the last part of this panel, seen under the green 3, are the controls for saving and recalling cameras. Finally, we go to the last section on this side, highlighted in blue. Here under the blue 1, we see the objects layer tab, which presents you with a list of all the objects you have in the scene, and the layer they are on. Under the blue 2, you will find another material tab, which presents you with information basically similar to the material summary mentioned earlier. Under the blue 3, you have the librarytab (which lists all the objects in the scene, as well as ecosystem populations). Next to this, under the blue 4, is a tab for links (which gives you all the linked objects in the scene). And at the very bottom, under the blue 5, are a set of basic icons fro adding new layers, deleting them, and so on.