www.RealismInVue.

com

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Contents copyright © 2011 by Daksh Pandhi.

Foreword copyright © 2010 by Nicholas Phelps.

Photographs copyright © 2008-2011 by Daksh Pandhi and Cynthia Najim. Used with permission.

Published by e-on software, inc. with permission. This book and its contents are protected by U.S. copyright
law as well as by international intellectual property conventions. Any reproduction, sale, transfer,
transcription, storage in a retrieval system, translation into any language in any form or distribution by any
means whatsoever of this software or accompanying documentation, in part or in full, without the prior
written permission from e-on software, inc. is strictly forbidden. Any such act shall constitute a copyright
violation and shall be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The contents of the book including instructions and software usage advice are provided “as-is” without any
warranties, express or implied. The contents of this book should be used at your own risk. In no event shall the
author or the publisher be liable for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, damages for loss
of business profits, business interruption, loss of business information, or any other pecuniary loss) arising out
of the use of or inability to use this product, even if the author or the publisher has been advised of the
possibility of such damages. Under no circumstances shall the author or the publisher be liable to any user on
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and to the fullest extent permitted by law.

e-on software, inc.

6107 SW Murray Blvd, Suite 264
Beaverton, Oregon 97008-4467 - USA

www.e-onsoftware.com www.quadspinner.com

Vue, Vue 8, Vue Pioneer, Vue Esprit, Vue Studio, Vue Frontier, Vue Complete, Vue Infinite, xStream,
Vue 8, Pioneer, Vue 8 Esprit, Vue 8 Studio, Vue 8 Frontier, Vue 8 Complete, Vue 8 Infinite, Vue 8
xStream, SolidGrowth, SmartGraph, EcoSystem, Cornucopia, Cornucopia3d, “The Natural 3D Studio”, “Natural
3D”, “The Art of Natural 3D”, “Solutions for Natural 3D Environments” are trademarks or registered
trademarks of e-on software, inc.

QuadSpinner, HyperTerrain, and related entities are trademarks of Nukeation Studios. All rights reserved.

All other product and brand names mentioned in this manual are used for identification purposes only. They
may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and, as such, remain the exclusive property of their respective
holders.

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Page | 3
 To my father…

who introduced me to the key things that shaped my life:

art, computers, and a love of adventure.

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Atmosphere ...................................................................................... 25
Rock Formations ............................................................................... 26
Materials ........................................................................................... 27
Clouds ............................................................................................... 28
Perception ......................................................................................... 29

Reflected Light .................................................................................. 41

Sunlit Shadows .................................................................................. 46
Lighting Scenes ................................................................................. 47

Sun .................................................................................................... 48
Light .................................................................................................. 49
Global Lighting Adjustment .............................................................. 50
Lighting Model Extra Settings ........................................................... 50
Clouds ............................................................................................... 50
Sky, Fog and Haze ............................................................................. 51
Haze Ground Density, Haze Mean Altitude, and Haze Color ............ 52
Fog Ground Density, Fog Mean Altitude, and Fog Color .................. 53
Glow Intensity ................................................................................... 53
Scattering Anisotropy ....................................................................... 53
Cloud Anisotropy .............................................................................. 54
Aerial Perspective ............................................................................. 54
The Importance of Scale ................................................................... 55

Global Radiosity Gain ........................................................................ 57

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Sky Dome Lighting Gain ..................................................................... 57
Global Radiosity Bias ......................................................................... 58
Force Reflected Light ......................................................................... 58
Advanced Force Reflected Light ........................................................ 60

Key Observation Points ..................................................................... 61

Indirect Atmospherics ....................................................................... 85

Cloud Layers ...................................................................................... 86

Scale .................................................................................................. 87
Altitude and Height ........................................................................... 87
Cover ................................................................................................. 88
Density............................................................................................... 88
Opacity .............................................................................................. 88
Sharpness .......................................................................................... 88
Feathering ......................................................................................... 88
Detail Amount ................................................................................... 89
Altitude Variations ............................................................................ 89
Ambient Lighting ............................................................................... 89
Shadow Density ................................................................................. 89
Cloud Materials ................................................................................. 90
Scaling ............................................................................................... 90
Roughness ......................................................................................... 90
Variations .......................................................................................... 90
Uniformity ......................................................................................... 90
Custom Cloud Profile ......................................................................... 91

Cover ................................................................................................. 97
Density............................................................................................... 98
Opacity .............................................................................................. 99
Sharpness .......................................................................................... 99
Ambient Lighting ............................................................................... 99
Shadow Density ............................................................................... 100
Feathers ........................................................................................... 100
Amount............................................................................................ 100
Scaling ............................................................................................. 101
Roughness ....................................................................................... 102
Variations and Uniformity ............................................................... 102

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Why Godrays occur ......................................................................... 114
Godrays in Vue ................................................................................ 115
Strong Light ..................................................................................... 115
Dense Haze ..................................................................................... 115
Light Inhibitors ................................................................................ 116
Quality............................................................................................. 116
Examples of Godrays ...................................................................... 117

The Terrain Fractal .......................................................................... 124

Understanding the Terrain Fractal Settings .................................... 125
Wavelength ..................................................................................... 125
MetaScale, Largest Feature, and Smallest Feature......................... 125
Roughness ....................................................................................... 126
Gain ................................................................................................. 127
Stretch Damping ............................................................................. 127
Variation Strength, Smooth Areas, and Smooth Area Altitude ...... 127
Distortion ........................................................................................ 127
Bump Surge ..................................................................................... 128
Ridge Smoothness .......................................................................... 128
Noise Type ...................................................................................... 128
The Strata Filter .............................................................................. 128
Strata Filter Settings ....................................................................... 131
Processing Strength ........................................................................ 131
Rock Layer Hardness ....................................................................... 132
Rock Layer Thickness ...................................................................... 132
Layer Spacing .................................................................................. 133
Plateau Filling .................................................................................. 133
Smooth Edges ................................................................................. 134
Smallest Feature ............................................................................. 134
Tilt Heading ..................................................................................... 134
Tilt Angle ......................................................................................... 135
Tilt Offset ........................................................................................ 135
Confined Strata Filter Settings ........................................................ 136
Strata Position > Origin ................................................................... 136
Do Not Stratify Below / Above ........................................................ 136
Fade In/Fade Out Height ................................................................. 136

Desert Strata Example .................................................................... 137

Terrain Base .................................................................................... 137
Terrain Overlay ............................................................................... 137
Strata .............................................................................................. 138
Blend: Add....................................................................................... 138
Terrain Sprinkles ............................................................................. 138

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Blend: Add 2 .................................................................................... 138
Large Scale example ........................................................................ 138
Planetary Terrains ........................................................................... 141
Infinite Variations ............................................................................ 142
Combining with Infinite Terrains ..................................................... 143

Creating HyperTerrains ................................................................... 148

Define the MetaBlob ....................................................................... 149
Define the Displacement Fractal ..................................................... 150
Baking the MetaBlob ....................................................................... 151
Assigning a new Material ................................................................ 152
HyperTerrain Displacement ............................................................ 152
Sedimentary Rock............................................................................ 153
Complex Sedimentary Rock ............................................................. 153
Lava Flow ......................................................................................... 154
Asteroid ........................................................................................... 154
Transformed Cristals ....................................................................... 155
Stones in Dirt ................................................................................... 155
Fast Rock ......................................................................................... 156
Grainy Blobs .................................................................................... 156
Ultrasharp........................................................................................ 157
Smoothing Artifacts ......................................................................... 157
Balancing the Scale .......................................................................... 157
Variable Displacement .................................................................... 158
Shaping with Subtractive MetaBlobs .............................................. 159
Baking vs. Live Displacement .......................................................... 160
Creating a Multi-Layer Live Displacement Material ........................ 161
The Will of the Fractal ..................................................................... 163
Exploring HyperTerrain Styles ......................................................... 164

Understanding HyperTextures ........................................................ 173

Creating HyperBlobs ........................................................................ 174
Controlling and Baking HyperBlobs ................................................. 176
Maximum Resolution ...................................................................... 176
Smooth Mesh / Max Smoothing Angle ........................................... 176
Keep only largest single chunk ........................................................ 176
Cache baked mesh between renders .............................................. 176
Examples of HyperBlobs .................................................................. 177

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Creating your first material ............................................................. 183
The Fractal-Color-Bump Interaction ............................................... 186
Color Changes ................................................................................. 187
Creating a complex material ........................................................... 188
The Color Production ...................................................................... 189
The Fractal Production .................................................................... 190

Do not avoid noise .......................................................................... 195

Scaling Bump Issues ........................................................................ 196

Filter Examples ................................................................................ 199

Grainy Fractal .................................................................................. 200

Terrain Fractal ................................................................................. 200
Voronoi ........................................................................................... 201
Round Samples ............................................................................... 201
Clumps ............................................................................................ 202
Cracks .............................................................................................. 202

Math Operations............................................................................. 204

Conversions..................................................................................... 204
Vector Operations........................................................................... 204
External Dependencies ................................................................... 205

Soft Rocks........................................................................................ 209

Hard Rocks ...................................................................................... 211
Distant Grass ................................................................................... 212
Rocks and Snow .............................................................................. 213
Displaced Rocks .............................................................................. 215
Sand ................................................................................................ 217
Yellow Minerals .............................................................................. 219
Dust ................................................................................................. 220
Damaged Metal .............................................................................. 221

Backlighting for external plants ...................................................... 223

Standard vs. Dynamic EcoSystems .................................................. 230

Foreign objects ............................................................................... 231

Layer Affinity ................................................................................... 232

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Environment Sensitivity .................................................................. 233
Altitude and Slope ........................................................................... 233
Orientation ...................................................................................... 234

Rocks ............................................................................................... 236

Size .................................................................................................. 236
Distribution...................................................................................... 237
Multiple Materials ........................................................................... 237
Distinguishing Materials .................................................................. 238
Rocks + Grass ................................................................................... 238
Tropical ............................................................................................ 239
Dead Trees....................................................................................... 240
Aerial View EcoSystems................................................................... 241
Multiple EcoSystem Layers.............................................................. 242
Grass ................................................................................................ 242
Flowers ............................................................................................ 242
Lavender .......................................................................................... 242
Rocks ............................................................................................... 243

Transparency in Depth .................................................................... 250

Reflections ....................................................................................... 250
Specular Highlights .......................................................................... 251
Refracted Depth .............................................................................. 253
Clear Water ..................................................................................... 254
Muddy Water .................................................................................. 255
Jungle River ..................................................................................... 256
Deep Ocean ..................................................................................... 257

Reflecting the Sun ........................................................................... 261

Displaced Water Angles .................................................................. 263

Rocks, Rocks, and More Rocks ........................................................ 276

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Macro .............................................................................................. 278
Telephoto ........................................................................................ 279
Normal Distance ............................................................................. 281

Supersampling ................................................................................ 310

Optimized ....................................................................................... 310
Systematic ....................................................................................... 310
Antialiasing Strategy ....................................................................... 310
Automatic ....................................................................................... 310
Crisp ................................................................................................ 310
Sharp ............................................................................................... 311
Soft .................................................................................................. 311
Blurred ............................................................................................ 311
Subrays............................................................................................ 311
Min and Max ................................................................................... 311
Quality Threshold............................................................................ 311
Regular Sub-Pixel Sampling............................................................. 311
Texture Filtering .............................................................................. 312

Per-Object Texture Antialiasing ...................................................... 312

Orthodox ......................................................................................... 313

Rogue .............................................................................................. 313
Blunt Force ...................................................................................... 313
Large Scale or Cloud Renders ......................................................... 313

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This book holds the name of a single author, but that author could not have completed
it without the culminated help, support, and encouragement of a collective of people.
No matter the size of their contribution, it was all vital.

My profound gratitude to Cynthia Najim, my muse and partner in QuadSpinner, for all
our memorable expeditions, for your ever unique perspectives on life, for those extra
nudges to get the job done, for helping me finish this book, for excellent driving that
saved our lives on several occasions, and for “sourcing the finest locations…”

Conrad Allan provided invaluable (and maddening) feedback while I was writing the
book. He helped make sure the book made sense in more than one aspect. He coined
the ‘burn the box’ metaphor for the Function Editor.

Parvez Ansari, my right hand at Nukeation Studios, single-handedly held back chaos so I
could finish this book in peace. Without him, this book simply would have never been
finished at all.

My parents – Mahim and Bharti Pandhi – for planting my roots in art since I was born.

Drea Horvath and Michel Rondberg provided testing, constant encouragement, and
useful feedback, helping keep the book on track. My cohorts at deviantArt: Matthew
Attard, Jonathan Pearce, Kerem Gogus, and the Aussie (and Kiwi) Band of Merry
Renderers who kept me focused on finding the right issues to look at and talk about.
Marek Mihok came in late into the project, but his help was indispensible.

The masters of Vue: Eran Dinur and Chipp Walters for their inspiration and insights.

Thanks to everyone at e-on for creating Vue. Natural 3D never found a better home!

Finally, special thanks to Nicholas Phelps, father of Vue, for making this book a reality.

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Photo © Cynthia Najim.

"I would love to create a world in Vue and live there."

Dax Pandhi is both artist and technician. His scientific mind prods him to probe,
challenge and invent. The results of these trials are refined by his masterful eye for
composition and story. Dax's innovations in CGI are testament to his deeper
understanding of nature's processes and his effective translation of that knowledge
onto the digital platform.

Dax is also a gifted teacher. Beyond this book, he has gained popularity through his
training videos that share his unique methods in a simple format. "Learning all of this
doesn't mean anything if I can't share it with others."

Dax's artistic roots are in traditional painting and photography - each serving as a
feedback loop for the other. In 2007, he released his first photography book, Visit to
Earth. He is currently working on two other photo books.

Outside of his background in art, Dax has built a successful career in technology, ranging
from CGI to software programming. Based on his innovative design work and service
under his company Nukeation Studios, Dax was awarded Microsoft's MVP for 3
consecutive years. He served as journalist for Associated Press covering the aftermath of
the devastating 2001 earthquake in Bhuj. He is proficient in 8 computer languages and 4
human languages.

Dax lives in the desert in Bhuj, India.

To view more of his works, visit http://www.daxpandhi.com

For information on his Vue products and training series, go to QuadSpinner.com.

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Over the past couple of decades, 3D technology has developed and expanded
exponentially. The popularity and rapid fire growth of this new medium are at the core
of a new wave of artistic expression. Gamers of all ages are captivated by challenges
presented with elaborate imagery. Movie goers are visually seduced by the
imperceptible blend of the real and non-real, as well as by the enormously creative feats
of pure animation. Advertisers, architects and designers have also embraced the
breadth of possibilities that 3D technology brings to their businesses. And students are
equally eager to harness these tools to cultivate lucrative careers.

This irreversible trend is fueled in large part by the accessibility of 3D technology. A

normal home computer, when coupled with intelligent software, now has the power to
produce Hollywood quality CGI. Putting these resources in the hands of inspired users
will continue to raise the bar of performance. Dax Pandhi exemplifies these leaps in
what is possible and shares some of his knowledge with you in Realism in Vue.

The purpose of Vue is to provide the evolving tools to digitally create authentic natural
environments. When working with nature, the defining characteristics are the subtlety
of the details and their contrasts – veiled textures, bold strength, naked fragility, and the
climaxing ballet of light. Vue was designed to work as nature does in real life. Replicating
this in 3D requires a special way of thinking and unusual applications.

Dax has emerged as one of Vue’s most prolific pioneers, artists and trainers. This book
takes a grassroots approach to achieve dramatic realism by helping you understand
nature and translating it into comprehensible language. These methods uniquely bridge
the complex machinations of programming and the delicate nuances of art and the
natural world. By experimenting with the software and daring to push the limits, you
will be guided to new frontiers with tools that will help you create your own version of
magic in Vue.

Seeing what enthusiastic talents like Dax have produced in our software has been
deeply gratifying for me personally. Remembering Vue’s simple beginnings and
witnessing its extraordinary evolution into one of the leading tools of the CG industry is
both rewarding and humbling. I look forward to the continuing journey. For you
beginners, welcome. For our loyal friends, my sincere gratitude.

Nicholas Phelps
Founder & President
e-on software

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The exquisite beauty found in nature is made of imperfections.

In CGI, the most challenging aspect is to create or recreate such “mistakes”. In nature,
these imperfections are produced and ultimately harmonized over eons, whereas an
artist is required to achieve this triumph in a miniscule fraction of that time.

The true beauty of the natural world often combines seemingly random series of events.

In CGI, there are no set rules on how to authentically create our natural environment.
The 3D artist – much like a lab scientist – must manually and consciously compose that
which nature often unsystematically brings into being. Through copious hours of trials, I
have discovered and, in some cases, literally stumbled upon techniques (mistakes!) that
yield outrageous results – terrains, scenes, atmospheres, and materials that simulate
nature.

The tools paramount for success: an understanding of nature’s processes, your intuition,
and dedication. To aid you in your development, this book steps away from the setting-
by-setting and step-by-step approach. We will first explore the why’s and then delve
into the how’s. In doing so, you will be well equipped to deliver dramatic realism in 3D.
Enjoy the ride.

Dax Pandhi
Bhuj, India - 2011

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Realism is a never ending quest for any artist working in the 3D graphics space. Over the
past decade, 3D CGI has come very far in matters of realism. One of the first areas to
achieve photorealistic results was interiors and manmade structures, followed by
humans and fantastical creatures. You can now create a scene in almost any major 3D
application of the interior of a house with a person sitting on a sofa and very few people
would be able to tell the difference between the render and an actual photo.

However, take the same character and replace the interior with a large dramatic
landscape. Now you have reached the frontier of 3D graphics. Creating digital
landscapes is not a new concept. It has existed for over a decade. But creating a
photorealistic natural scene is still a difficult process.

Vue takes a very different look at natural 3D scenes when compared to normal 3D
applications. Everything becomes procedural and infinite in scale. Instead of creating a
piece of a world like you would in any other application, in Vue you enter into a world
itself and then reshape it. The results of this are fantastic and near-perfect when
compared to a photograph.

Realism in Vue takes on a different approach than with most other 3D applications.
Instead of setting up a “fake” simulation of objects around a camera, you work within a
physical world. Think of it like this: working in a typical 3D application is like working on
a studio set with lots of lights, a stage, props, and so on. Working in Vue is like taking a
camera outdoors and shooting pictures from atop real locations.

As you can imagine, when you go out of the studio, the rules change completely. You do
not create the perfect setup – you work with what nature gives you. Thankfully, in our
case, Vue is “digital nature” so you can create a near perfect atmosphere to suit your
needs; but at the same time there are “physics” of the digital world you are working in
that keep you close to how things are in the real world.

At that point, we reach the topic of this book: realism in Vue. It takes on a very different
form than normal 3D, so we will take a different look at achieving realism in your natural
3D scenes.

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It should be noted that all the techniques presented throughout this book are based on
over 9000 hours of experimentation in Vue. There are often different ways to achieve a
single effect. In some things even the Vue manual may say something different than a
technique presented in this book, but it is my belief that there is no “right” or “wrong”
as long as the end result is achieved.

So I would encourage you to experiment and create your own techniques – whether
they are built from the ground up on your own, or based on my techniques. The key to
excellence in any technical field – and especially in an artistic form such as natural 3D –
is that there is no greater teacher than experimentation and experience.

In furthering that concept, instead of the usual “step-by-step” method most books use,
we will be going through a little more of theory and higher concepts rather than tiny,
detailed steps. It may sound boring and counter-productive, but the other way would
only help you clone the scenes you will see in this book rather than learn how they were
made, and why the settings used were like they are. Gaining understanding of the
reasons behind each setting will help you become stronger in Vue than anything else.

Throughout the course of this book, you will see new settings with descriptions saying
“To achieve this type of effect you have to use a value of X”. Those settings are not the
only way to achieve that goal, but rather a starting point. In your scene, the light may be
different or the material may use a different color and whatever setting that was
recommended may not work perfectly. Experiment around those values by using it as a
starting point for further exploration.

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In Vue, realism is based on 5 basic factors or foundations: atmosphere, rock formations,
materials, clouds, and perception.

Let’s create a simple scene and see how each of these foundations contributes to the
final result.

Atmosphere is the key element that binds all the other factors. It is the key to lighting
and the key to the most visible aspect of your digital world. In 3D, lighting is almost
everything. Proper lighting can make even the most ridiculous and fake looking object
look real enough to make you want to touch it.

However, Atmosphere goes beyond just lighting and the visible sky. The atmosphere
also controls how all the elements of the world are shown to the camera, with fog, haze,
and even the particle density in the atmosphere that creates the illusion of depth.

Atmosphere is one of the first things that need to be set up when creating a new scene.
And as such, in our first scene we see a blank scene with a sunny atmosphere setup.

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A natural scene is nothing without a landscape. The landscape creates the anchor of the
final image and decides how the rest of the world is shown to the camera.

For the purposes of this book, we will talk about the normal terrains and procedural
terrains that are the hallmark of 3D landscapes in Vue, but only briefly. We will focus
more on HyperTerrains and other ways of modeling rock formations for adding extra
realism. HyperTerrains allow you to break the typical topographical-only terrain model
and create alcoves, caves, jutting rocks, strong vertical cliffs, and just about any natural
rock formation.

As we take our scene to the next step, we add a typical rolling hill terrain (sand colored)
along with a rock outcrop HyperTerrain (gray) added on top of it.

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If lighting can make a fake material look real enough to touch (three dimensional) then
it is the material that gives it the form of a real world substance. In Vue, the normal
bitmap approach to creating a material co-exists with the more powerful procedural
method where the material is made up of scientifically generated “infinite” textures and
properties.

This procedural method has literally infinite applications. Instead of scouring for
photographic references and stock images to create a texture for your material, you can
use fractals and other mathematical functions to create any kind of texture you want.
And beyond the normal texturing, the procedural aspect of the material is also
functional. It will interact with aspects of the world like height, slope, altitude,
transparency, and more. This functional aspect is the core of Vue and adds a powerful
layer that we can use to achieve more realism.

And finally, one of the most useful features of the material in Vue – the EcoSystems – an
infinite array of unique plants and trees that can be added to any object or terrain with
the help of the Vue EcoSystem Material. This adds the most unique layer of Vue to your
3D scene.

Once a scene is set up, making the materials is the next key phase. In our scene, we now
add a grassy EcoSystem on a sand-like material, and make our rock outcropping look
more realistic with a stone material - all procedurally created.

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One of the toughest things to create in 3D is realistic cloudscapes. Vue utilizes the new
Spectral2 atmosphere system in version 7 and 7.5 and Spectral3 in version 8 and 8.5 to
create realistic clouds in all shapes and sizes. There are two main types of clouds: cloud
layers that encompass the entire world, and MetaClouds – cloud objects that can be
manipulated by hand.

In Vue, you can create clouds to be realistic, fantastical, or both. With the same internal
Material Editor Engine and the SmartGraph Function Editor working inside the Cloud
Editor you can use fractal functions to create just about any type of clouds imaginable.
With the new Planetary Cloud Density feature you can create an overall bitmap that
controls the cloud density and distribution over the entire scene, but still maintains the
fractal infinite detail of the actual clouds.

Clouds are an inseparable part of a natural scene, and as we move forward in our scene,
we add a very Summer-like cumulus cloud layer.

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Perception is more powerful than reality. We are not talking philosophy. In 3D, and
especially in Vue where scale becomes a relative concept, it is the perception of the
viewer that makes your render look real or not.

Through millennia of evolution, a very powerful and deeply ingrained feature of the
human mind is that whether we consciously decide to do so or not, if something is
wrong in a render – it will be the first thing that we see! In the wild, this meant the
difference between life and death. Animals that are dangerous to humans have
camouflage that helps them hide in the environment and we evolved to be able to
recognize such hiding tactics. So whenever we see something trying to mimic nature, we
always find out. Often we do not even know why it looks wrong, but we know it is
wrong. Coming out of the wild and back to our renders, this could mean that your
endless days of labor over the render can go to waste if you miss little things. And that is
perception.

Unlike the other foundations, perception is not part of Vue itself, but is rather an added
layer on all the other foundations and contributes that final touch of realism. While we
will discuss each of the other foundations in chapters of their own, perception is a
matter that is scattered throughout this book and we will discuss it in relation to each of
the other foundations.

Specifically, perception is about making your scene look believable. It can be something
as simple as a camera angle, but it can also be about matching the atmospheric haze
with the overall lighting of the scene. It can be about making 20 meter tall terrain look
5000 feet tall. It can be about creating a never ending chain of mountains without
having to create it all yourself.

In our scene, we add the final touch of perception by adding a light haze and a little
ambient lighting, as well as increasing the Aerial Perspective to create a sense of
grandness. And we’re done.

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One thing that you will find stressed again, and again, and again, and then a few more
times is the importance of scale. It may not sound like much, but this is – from a
technical point of view – the single most important thing to consider when doing
anything in Vue.

The gravity of this concept hit me at its maximum when I heard Nicholas Phelps (the
creator of Vue) explain the way light and atmosphere are processed under the hood.
The sentence was something like: “We trace the ray of light as it passes through the
atmosphere and calculate the oxygen and nitrogen in the air…”

This statement made me realize consciously a concept which is so easy to forget: Vue is
a complex tool. The ease by which we can manipulate an entire “world” makes us forget
that a certain order and meticulousness is required for achieving realism in 3D.

Vue is deliberately designed to mimic the real world – after all, the whole point is
realism. So the best thing to do is keep in mind that if you treat every square meter of
your Vue world as a real square meter of the real world, for example, by not coercing a
20 square meter mountain to hold 20,000 trees by forcing down the instance size in an
EcoSystem, then you will always have a much better shot at achieving realism.

The scaling controls in any aspect of Vue, whether atmosphere, materials, terrains, etc.
are for fine tuning. More often than not, to make something bigger or smaller, you
should actually resize the object itself to proper real world sizing than to force an effect
by changing the scale.

So one last time (in this chapter, at least): do not abuse the power of Scale.

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Over a year ago, as of the writing of this chapter, Vue has been put on a bi-annual
release cycle. This means that a new major or sub-major (.5) version is released
approximately every six months.

As a result of this, the book was written across 3 major releases of Vue. You will see
screenshots from Vue 7, 8, and 9 illustrating examples of techniques and features
throughout the book. This is a positive thing, because Vue’s core remains the same even
if new features are added. What’s more is that if you haven’t upgraded, or have certain
assets that cannot be upgraded due to project restrictions, you will still be able to make
good use of the knowledge in this book.

Great care was taken to maximize the compatibility of techniques presented in this
book. The majority of the content here will apply to most versions of Vue, while Vue 8
and higher will be completely compatible.

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Page | 32
Page | 33
Page | 34
In creating a natural 3D environment, the atmosphere plays a vital role. The way we
perceive nature everyday has to be mimicked in 3D to make your scene look real. In this
chapter, we will explore several different atmospheric concepts, compare them to real
world references, and then simulate them in Vue. We will also go over the Atmosphere
Editor using the Spectral atmosphere model and understand how each setting affects
our atmosphere.

Vue also has other atmosphere models. However, all of them are somewhat obsolete
when compared to the Spectral model. The Spectral model is a very complex model first
introduced in Vue 6, and now in Vue 8/8.5 we have the third generation of the model. In
this model all light is processed as it would be in the real world. When the sunlight
passes through the atmosphere, it is exposed to various factors such as the dust
particles in the air (haze), water particles and condensation (fog), and many others as
we will explore shortly.

As Spectral is the most realistic method for creating natural atmospheres, for the
purposes of this book we will use only the Spectral model.

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In most other 3D software, it is a very common practice to use multiple light sources to
light a scene. Many Vue artists who switch over from other software tend to use this
technique in Vue as well. While there is nothing exactly wrong with this method, it is
prudent to use a single light source – the Sun – when lighting an outdoor (or even
indoor) scene.

On a typical day in the outdoors, there is only one light source - the Sun. So it is logical
to simulate the outdoors in 3D using only one light source. It may seem like a difficult
thing to do, but unlike omni or spot lights, the directional light source that is used for
the main Sunlight light source in Vue is very atmosphere-sensitive and will light your
scene very close to how the real sunlight affects the world.

When you use only one light source, one of the biggest benefits is that it lowers the
potential for lighting mistakes. You will never have to worry that one light is pointed this
way and the other light in some other direction. The overall scene consistency in terms
of lighting also increases since a single light source affects the entire world.

In other 3D software, the main reason for using multiple lights is to simulate reflected
light. Throughout this chapter we will explore how to create realistic lighting as we see
in the real world, and one of the main factors is reflected light. We will simulate this
using Global Radiosity, the most powerful lighting model available in Vue.

Before we explore this concept further, let’s explore Global Radiosity first.

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In Vue, we have several lighting models: Standard, Global Ambience (GA), Ambient
Occlusion (AO), Global Illumination (GI), and Global Radiosity (GR). The last one is the
focus of all lighting we will explore throughout this book.

The first three lighting models, Standard, GA, and AO are more or less irrelevant to this
book, so we will not explore them. You can read about them in the Vue manual.
However, to explain Global Radiosity, let us compare it with the second most powerful
lighting model in Vue – Global Illumination.

Global Illumination, unlike other lighting models, calculates how the light coming from
the sky itself affects the scene. It creates soft shadows based on reflected light around
the objects. In the image below you can see the difference between a Global Ambience
and Global Illumination render. Notice the softness of the shadows in the Global
Illumination comparison.

The Global Illumination lighting model is able to simulate sky lighting very nicely, but it is
limited in the way it affects the shadows. Put simply, it only scatters light for shadows.
The Global Radiosity model imbues color into the ray of light when it reflects it off an
object. While Global Illumination scatters only shadows, Global Radiosity scatters all
aspects of light.

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Here are three images comparing Global Ambience, Global Illumination with Artificial
Ambiance, and Global Radiosity with Indirect Skylighting respectively.

Let’s take a look at how simply switching from Global Illumination to Global Radiosity
with Indirect Skylighting can affect scenes. Each of the following scenes illustrate
different environments and have two versions, the left version using GI and the right
using GR. Notice how the light-bled color affects the entire scene.

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In a tropical setting such as this, the atmosphere is clear and the sunlight strong creating
a varying ranged color reflected light – brown-white from the stone and soft blue-green
from the ocean. Global Radiosity changes the reflected light color based on the object it
bounces off from.

Inside a closed rock formation, such as this waterlogged cavern on the next page,
sunlight reflecting on water creates an interesting colored light that spreads throughout
the interior. A strong Global Radiosity Gain in this next image helps create the enhanced
green reflected light from the water coming from below as well as the soft muted tones
of brown and gray as light reflects on the top parts of the cavern. The latter is more
noticeable on the top of the arch.

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When creating semi-interior shots such as this open cave, reflected light becomes of
utmost importance as that is the only way to realistically light the inner physical
elements. The Global Radiosity lighting with a little Gain for intensity penetrates the
shadows of most nooks, niches, and crevices while still leaving enough shadows to show
the depth of the caverns. A small Gain value such as 0.75 is enough for this effect. Larger
values may remove the shadows completely.

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We have seen how Global Radiosity can create reflected light. But let’s explore why we
need reflected light. Simply put, because it happens in the real world. To perfectly
simulate the real world in 3D, we must do as much as we can to duplicate the effects
seen in the real world.

Without going into detailed physics, we tend to think that only mirrors, glass, or other
such objects are reflective but actually everything that we see is reflective. But
reflection does not mean we will see our own reflection like we would in a mirror or a
highly polished piece of marble. That would be "uniform reflection". Most objects that
are not shiny or smooth but still reflect have "inconsistent reflection".

Let's understand with this figure. Keep in mind that the surface we are looking at could
be at a very close or even microscopic level.

The image shows a smooth surface (left) like a highly polished piece of metal. A smooth
surface uniformly bounces the rays of light into the same direction. The distribution of
color per ray of light (or photon) is equal, and so we see a vivid reflection in which we
can see entire scene or ourselves being reflected back towards us.

An uneven surface (right), like a rock or raw unpolished wood, will bounce the incoming
rays of light but they wouldn't be reflected in the same direction. Like an uneven object
being put under a strong flow of water, the rays of light would be reflected into various
uneven directions based on the part of the surface they are being reflected on.

So it is because of this “photon bouncing” that Global Radiosity is able to make 3D

objects look very believable as the reflected light takes on the colors or even entire
textures of the object off which it is being reflected.

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The renders below show how different types of materials reflect light and bleed color in
the reflected light when using Global Radiosity.

Notice how the red overpowers reflected light more easily than the green. The red is
receiving direct sunlight which enables more reflected light, while the green is lit by only
the Sky Dome Lighting Gain and Global Radiosity reflected light, hence providing only
moderate amount of color bled reflected light.

To understand how light reflects we will explore some real world examples. In the
images below, the orange beams represent direct light, and the blue beams represent
indirect illumination – both the light reflected off the surroundings and the skylight.

Page | 42
Under a bridge, the clean morning sunlight is reflected all around providing soft lighting
for the underside of the bridge. As the light fades in the deeper corners, it is worth
noting that it still does not become completely dark.

The truly important balance of light to observe in an image such as this is that the
reflected light, represented by blue, is a combination of both the Blue of the Sky (Sky
Dome Lighting Gain, in Vue terms, as we will soon examine later in this chapter) as well
as the pure direct sunlight reflecting off the surrounding area.

Real light, in day to day landscapes, exist as a balance between blue and orange (Sky
color and Decay color). Finding that right balance for your scene is what will make the
sky and overall lighting look realistic and believable. If either goes out of balance, you
may compromise the quality of your render.

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In this sandstone and limestone canyon in Zion, Utah, the evening light is still strong
enough to cause red tinged reflected light combining with the blue overhead light off
the sky itself to light almost all parts of this massive rock formation.

When you have selected Global Radiosity, Vue will calculate the reflected light color
based on the Ambient Light Color specified in the Atmosphere Editor’s Light.
Unfortunately, it does not create a realistic enough effect especially when dealing with a
scene containing a wide range of colors. To overcome this limitation, we have to turn on
Indirect Skylighting.

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In a bright open environment such as this, direct Sunlight plays the biggest role in
illuminating the scene, however, important details such as the shadowed side of the
rock in this image is illuminated by the strong reflected light from the surroundings.

While the effect of a little ambient light coming from the sky may seem extremely
subtle, you can see the difference in shadows where objects get a mix of both bled color
from nearby objects as well the Sky Dome Lighting Gain color. The shadows are tinged
with the color of those objects.

Often it may seem such a small effect may not be worth the render time required for it,
but that is one of the major facets of achieving realism in 3D: a massive amount of small,
almost unnoticeable touches added by such effects is the reason why the final image
looks more realistic.

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As we know, in the real world, there are no absolutely dark shadows in outdoor
environments. Even in semi-enclosed or completely indoor environments, there is at
least a small amount of reflected ambient light. One of the most common mistakes a 3D
artist can make is to have all shadows be very dark. While in some situations it does
create a striking effect and may be useful, as far as realism goes, it will work against you.

To illustrate the point, let's look at the following examples. These two renders are
exactly the same except that the first one does not have reflected light, while the
second one has small amounts of reflected and ambient light. As a result, the second
image looks much more realistic than the first one.

In most situations, just turning on Indirect Skylighting under Global Radiosity can
automatically give you realistic reflected light. If for some reason you do not get enough
reflected and ambient light this way, the next section discusses several lighting
techniques you can use to boost Global Radiosity settings to provide better lighting
solutions.

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There are literally infinite types of scenes you can create in a natural setting, and the
lighting solutions for them are just as many. Thankfully, if you can learn the essential
basics of lighting - especially the "why" of the important settings - then you can light any
situation intuitively.

To achieve that objective, we will explore some of the most useful lighting situations
and create the perfect atmosphere for it. The general categories for lighting conditions
are "outside" and "inside". For outside, we will cover large open vistas, high altitude
mountain ranges, above the clouds, and vast landscapes. For inside, we will look at
being inside a cave, being just outside a cave and looking in, inside a deep jungle, and
inside a water-filled grotto looking at the ocean outside.

As we have seen before in this chapter, understanding how light works in the real world
is very important; the most critical part being the balance between direct light and
reflected light. The second step is the color of those lights, which does not mean colored
light solutions, but rather the atmospheric settings which infuse colors into the light in
different situations. And lastly, the shadows - perhaps the most important part of CGI.

To understand different lighting concepts, we need to make sure we understand the

Atmosphere Editor.

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The Atmosphere Editor is the heart of realism in Vue. It offers several modes as we
discussed earlier in the chapter, but since realism is best with the Spectral model, we
will focus solely on using the Spectral Atmosphere Model and Global Radiosity. Please
note that some settings may behave slightly different in other lighting models and
atmosphere models.

In this section we will touch upon the most important settings in the Atmosphere Editor
as relevant to our goal of achieving realism in Vue.

The first tab, Sun, helps control the position and size of the sun, and the size of the
corona or "glow" given off by the sun. These controls are very self-explanatory, and for
most of our exercises we will keep everything except the position of the sun at default
values.

The Size of the Corona and Size of the Sun setting are loosely, but directly, connected to
the Glow Intensity setting we will examine in the Sky, Fog, and Haze tab a little later.

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The second tab, Light, allows us to make the high level decisions. Global Radiosity with
both Indirect Skylighting and Optimize for Outdoor Rendering should be turned on for
all our scenes, except the indoor scenes or any other where specified that Optimize for
Outdoor Rendering should be turned off.

Global Radiosity uses photon calculations based on how light works in real life. A photon
needs to be bounced back for a proper calculation. But natural scenes are infinite in
nature compared to normal 3D. So photons won't bounce back in outdoor scenes, but
when you turn this setting on, Vue intelligently decides how far a photon should go
instead of infinite and adjusts the rendering engine accordingly to create a realistic
rendering solution without creating crazy calculations which in many other 3D
applications cause errors or warnings to appear.

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Light Intensity controls how dark or bright a scene is. You can use this setting on top of
everything else to control the light exposure of the scene. It is perfect for fine tuning the
intensity of the scene without changing other settings.

Light Balance controls whether the main sunlight is ambient with soft or no shadows or
direct with dark shadows. Settings such as Sky Dome Lighting Gain are dependent on
this setting and will be ignored if the Light Balance is at 100% Sunlight.

Light Balance at 0% Light Balance at 50% Light Balance at 100%

Ambient Light controls whether the ambient light is distributed equally throughout the
scene or is coming from the sky. For the purposes of all the examples and exercises in
this book, we will keep it at 100% or completely from the sky, unless otherwise
specified.

Light Color and Ambient Light Color do exactly as the name says: create the color of the
direct sunlight and the ambient light. In the Spectral model the Light Color is disabled as
all the atmosphere settings contribute to create a realistic non-linear color of the
sunlight. The Ambient Light Color is best left at the default light blue shade as all Earth
lighting is close to that color.

On the right side of the Lighting Model control group where we selected Global
Radiosity. We will explore these controls in the next section.

The Clouds tab allows us to create cloud layers in our scene. We will explore this portion
of the Atmosphere in the Advanced Atmospherics chapter.

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The Sky control group allows us to define the color, intensity, and altitude of the sky. In
realistic terms, it lets us decide how blue and how “high” the sky should be. The Decay
controls decide how much the light color is decayed.

Decay is essentially the color decay of the sunlight as it passes through greater distance
in the atmosphere near sunrise or sunset as opposed to late morning or afternoon light
which passes through less distance in the atmosphere, as shown in this diagram. The
orange hue we see during twilight is caused by this effect as light passes through more
airborne particles and eventually ends up dissipating part of the light spectrum.

In Vue terms, when you are creating a twilight sky, Decay lets you paint the sky and the
light in orange tones. This will happen when the Sun is below the Decay Mean Altitude.
Objects below that altitude are all affected even when the Sun is above that level.

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Refer to the ‘Extreme Decay’ in Chapter 9 for examples of usage of Decay.

Sky Density at 0% Sky Density at 100% Sky Density at 100%

Sky Mean Altitude at 0km Sky Mean Altitude at 3km Sky Mean Altitude at 10km

Decay Density at 0% Decay Density at 50% Decay Density at 100%

Decay Mean Altitude at 4km Decay Mean Altitude at 4km Decay Mean Altitude at 4km

Starting with Vue 8.5 the atmosphere altitude has been extended to 100km. Refer to
Appendix B for information on how to take advantage of these changes.

Do note that even though you can extend the Sky, Decay, or Clouds to 100km, it does
not invalidate any <10km scenarios we will explore in this chapter. In fact, for best
visually correct (if not technically correct) results it is recommended that a below 10km
atmosphere be used.

Haze as interpreted from the real world into the Vue world is a complex mix of water,
dust, and other airborne particles that fill the lower atmosphere.

Haze Ground Density at 0% Haze Ground Density at 20% Haze Ground Density at 100%

The Haze Ground Density is very much like the Sky and Decay densities. It controls the
density of the color from the Haze Color that is added to the atmosphere. One of the
unique techniques we will explore in this chapter is using “Black Haze”, an extremely
dark gray – in fact, almost black – for the Haze Color, and only 5% to 12% for the haze.

The Haze Mean Altitude decides how far the haze goes up into the atmosphere. In most
scenarios, a value of 800m to 1.2km is more than enough.

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The Fog controls work exactly like the Haze controls however both are independent of
each other allowing you to add fog in your scenes.

Fog can be used to add an extra layer of ‘particles’ in the air aside from the Haze. In real
world terms, if haze is caused by dust and other particles, fog is caused by intense water
particle accumulation. When Fog and Haze overlap, their colors interact with each
other, so in practical terms, you can use Fog to change the color of the haze or to simply
show fog in your scene.

This method can be seen in practical use in the Godrays section later in this chapter.

While this is a useful thing in some cases, my own techniques use a different method for
Fog. Therefore in just about all of my scenes, the Fog is set to a low Density setting of
3%, the Mean Altitude about 500m, and the Color a soft white-blue. These settings offer
an almost negligible amount of fog to the scene, just enough to make the horizon look a
little whiter for more open scenes but not enough to affect the color of the atmosphere
in any major way.

The Glow Intensity controls how bright the glow of the Sunlight is in the atmosphere.
This value is added on top of the Light Intensity in the Light tab. While the Light Intensity
is comparable to the Exposure of a real world camera and controls the brightness of the
scene uniformly, the Glow is more directional coming from the Sun.

Glow at 0% Glow at 10% Glow at 100%

It is very useful to use the Glow Intensity in conjunction with appropriate values for
Scattering Anisotropy and Cloud Anisotropy.

The minimum and maximum amounts on the Glow Intensity slider are 0% and 100%
respectively, but the text entry field will accept any values. In certain situations, values
of 200% or higher can be helpful.

Scattering Anisotropy is one of the most important aspects for making the sky and the
atmosphere look realistic with sunlight glow. This setting takes the Glow Intensity and
disperses it across the atmosphere. A minimum value of -1 makes the glow come closest
to the camera, while the maximum value of 1.0 keeps the glow restricted absolutely
close to the sun.

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The Scattering Anisotropy value helps create Godrays. In most situations, keeping the
value between 0.45 and 0.65 is helpful as it adds a realistic glow in the “middle range”
of the atmosphere.

Scattering Anisotropy at 0.0 Scattering Anisotropy at 0.75 Scattering Anisotropy at 1.0

Cloud Anisotropy at 0.22 Cloud Anisotropy at 0.90

Cloud Anisotropy works just like Scattering Anisotropy, but is restricted only to the
clouds in the scene. This setting decides how light is dispersed inside, especially on the
edges of all axes, so a cloud bulge anywhere would get proper highlighting if the light
hits the back of that formation.

The minimum value -1.0 means the light from the back is dispersed, or goes through the
clouds, as little as possible, while the maximum value +1.0 makes the sunlight punch
through the clouds no matter how dense they are. It is worth noting that even at
maximum value, only the sun’s disc and corona will show through, not the entire sky.

One of the most important settings in your atmosphere is the Aerial Perspective. This
setting helps you define the scale of your scene. The default setting of 1 makes your
scene real scale – one square meter of your scene is processed as one square meter.

When you enter a higher value, it acts as a multiplier of various sorts. All the internal
calculations of the atmosphere: clouds, lighting, haze, dust particles, and so on are
multiplied and the effects of such phenomenon are enhanced making your scene look
bigger than it is.

For example, a 100 square meter terrain can look several kilometers larger just by
turning up the Aerial Perspective value.

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 Aerial Perspective at 1 Aerial Perspective at 200 Aerial Perspective at 500

Of course, all of this comes with a reminder of the warning “watch the scale” as we
discussed in the first chapter. That is always the secret of getting your scene right. But
let’s explore why it is so important.

One of the easiest aspects of realism to ignore while working in Vue is scale. Sizing
settings such as Aerial Perspective, Material Scale, Function Scale, EcoSystem Instance
Scale, etc. are all so useful in controlling the size of individual aspects of the scene to
make it “fit”. But for enhanced realism, such settings should correspond to each other.

The easiest way to do it is to use 1:1 scale. That is, if you are creating a large mountain
terrain, make sure it is sized in hundreds of meters just like a real terrain would be. The
Aerial Perspective should be kept at 1.00 as well.

Never be afraid to create a terrain or other large scale object that goes outside of the
circular scene perimeter seen in the Top View when you zoom out.

For more information, refer to Chapter 9, Perception.

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Sometimes light reflection even through Global Radiosity may fall short of your
requirements. Perhaps you may need some more artistic effect or a specific look that
Global Radiosity default settings may not have. In such a situation there are a few
lighting techniques you can use to boost the Global Radiosity settings.

Below is our initial render. The scene is a tropical shallow water scene set next to a rock
formation partially submerged in water. In this scene we will explore the three main
aspects of reflected light: Global Radiosity Gain, Bias, and Sky Dome Lighting Gain.

Note that you need to have the Sunlight-Ambient Light Balance slider set towards
Sunlight (70% or more) to have the pronounced effect of Global Radiosity Gain. If your
scene contains too much ambient light, Global Radiosity Gain will not provide the
desired effect and may muddle the ambient light.

The ambient, reflected light in this image is very basic and unpronounced as defined by
the default settings we are working with. Our goal is to have it be dramatic so we will be
changing the atmosphere for that goal while keeping the scene realistic, and believable.

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First of all, we need more reflected light. So let's change the Global Radiosity Gain to
0.5. We do not want to overdo this as too much reflected light makes a scene look much
smaller than it should be, like a fake model.

With a 0.5 Gain, we now see more reflected light. You will notice the reflected light
most in the far left side of the image.

Remember, Gain represents the intensity of the reflected direct sunlight. If you use
extreme settings, you may have more reflected light than required and may cause the
lighting of your scene to appear imbalanced and fake.

Now that we have more reflected light from the objects themselves, we need to balance
the image by adding light being reflected from the sky itself. In the real world, even
though there is no direct light coming on an object, if the sky is clear and blue the entire
scene would be tinged with blue-tinted reflected light. Try looking at a white colored
house or wall that on a clear day is well lit but not directly lit by the sun. Think of the sky
as a big solid ceiling.

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To apply this effect to our scene, we change the Sky Dome Lighting Gain to 6.0.

Now our image has more balanced ambient light, with a Sky Dome Lighting Gain of 4.
You can note the effect of Sky Dome Lighting Gain in the top right corner of the image in
the nook of the rocks.

Lastly, for a more pronounced reflected water effect we want our reflected light to be
teal/blue colored since the color of the tropical water should color the rocks in that
tone. To do this, we will bias the Global Radiosity reflected light color. We will change it
to a teal-like value of RGB 36, 60, 50.

With a Bias color, our reflected light is finally where we want it.

The techniques we have seen so far work globally - across the entire scene - but
sometimes you may need to reflect light on only a selected portion of your scene.

In the real world, photographers use reflectors to do this. A large piece of reflective
colored board is angled to reflect the light on the subject. So if Vue's Global Radiosity
engine mimics real life, then we can use the same method in our scene.

Let's explore this in this scene. The face of our character is lit from the right so the left
side does not have too much light on it. We can use Global Radiosity Gain or Sky Dome
Lighting Gain to raise the ambience but that would change the look of the entire scene.
We only want to add more reflected light on our character.

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To do this we will add a reflector object. Any basic primitive object would do the trick.
The cube is by far the most convenient. So let's add a cube to our scene and resize it to
approximately our character's profile. We now place this cube next to the character but
out of the camera's field of view. Finally, we will change the material of the cube to a
bright white.

This new render clearly shows how the reflected light adds more lighting to the
character's shadowed half. Such a technique can be very handy when you are creating
"hero" images or movie poster style images.

Now just like with a white reflector, you can use colors to add more dramatic effects.
For example, let's say we want our character to look as if she is walking close to a
flowing river of lava. But we do not want to change the layout of the scene to show the
lava. We work with the perception by insinuating that there is a lava flow nearby. One
instinct a 3D artist might have to do this would be to add a low-intensity orange colored
light off camera. While that would be acceptable, a spot or omni light would not be
appropriate for doing this as we need a more broad scale lava glow/light coming over to
the visible parts of the scene to imply that there is lava off camera. To get this uniform
large scale glow that would not be possible with lights, we create another cube - this

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time more flat and low - and place it in front of the character. We add a red-orange
material to the reflector cube.

Now our image looks like this. Notice how the cube placement throws red-orange light
on the character but not on the boulders behind her.

To add more realism, a colored fractal or other texture can be applied to the reflector.
With Global Radiosity it will reflect textured light. For more intensity, the Luminous
factor of the material can be used at low values as well.

Taking our reflector technique, we can use an artificial light such as a Spotlight instead
of the direct sunlight for use in interior or Sun-less scenes. Instead of pointing the light
directly toward your subject, place a reflector near the subject and point the light on
that reflector. The image below was created using a white reflector cube with a 500
power spotlight pointed at it.

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Now that we know the exact details of how the Atmosphere Editor works, we will
explore several different lighting scenarios and look at what specific settings in the
Atmosphere Editor help create the core of these atmospheres.

As you go through the examples in this section, these are the main points you should try
to observe visually in detail. The numbers corresponding to these points are written
below each image, but the impact they have on the visuals because of their interaction
with the rest of the settings is important and can only be observed visually.

The scale – whether 1:1 or otherwise – is what sets the stage for each scene. A 4 square
kilometer terrain can look very different if the Aerial Perspective is set beyond 1.00. In
the same way, different amounts of haze will purport different observable scale.

At the end of the day, the numbers are there just to give your bearings. The actual scale
is achieved in the visual result regardless of what numbers were used.

The best non-lens depth of field is created by haze. Good haze values, depending on the
scale of the scene, will help you differentiate the layers in your scene without washing
them out.

Haze, Aerial Perspective, Fog, and other atmospheric settings are brought to life by
Glow Intensity. This will allow sunlight to become a more integrated part of the scene
rather than just a backdrop feature.

With the right Haze settings, Glow Intensity allows you to create remarkable sunlight
effects, including subtle Godrays.

The final item to look for is reflected light. Reflected light is the most realistic, natural
method of creating ambient light and controlling shadow darkness.

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For this massive 4 x 4 km mountain made from a Standard Terrain of a detailed
4096x4096 resolution, there were three goals: show the immense size of the mountain,
create drama in the atmosphere, and hide the tiny imperfections in the rock material
under the snow in the terrain. For many artists, there is a struggle between maintaining
both speed and quality on a commercial project – which was the case for this project.

For the first goal of showing the immense size, first the Aerial Perspective was set 1.00 –
which is real size, so every inch of the 4x4km terrain would be processed in realistic
scale. This would make handling the atmosphere slightly more difficult than normal, but
the end result would be worth the pain. The EcoSystem of conifers populating the
terrain was set to the normal 1.0 scale for Instance Size. Remember, when you go with
Aerial Perspective 1.00, everything should be scaled to normal or 1.0 size. Because of
such a large and dense EcoSystem (Dynamic EcoSystems come in so handy here!) the
size of the mountain was shown quite nicely.

For the second goal of dramatic atmosphere, the haze (more Black Haze) was set to a
Density of 38%. Very high for the normal settings I prefer, but I compensated by keeping
the Haze Mean Altitude to only 650m. That meant that only the lower half of the terrain
would be covered in haze while the top of the mountain would be pretty much haze-less
and receive brighter sunlight enriching the perception of the massive size. Volumetric
Sunlight was turned on so the early morning shadows on the terrain would become
volumetric and create yet more grandness. Global Radiosity Gain was set to -0.15 to
hide reflected light which should not appear at this time of day on such a large terrain.
The intense morning light was created by pushing the Glow Intensity to 500% and
moving the Scattering Anisotropy to 0.40 which helped create the volumetric sunlight.
Fog was completely removed, letting only the Haze and the Aerial Perspective create
the air density effects.

The Sky itself was the default blue, but only 65% of Density and a Mean Altitude of
4.85km. The Decay on the other hand was at 80% Density and with a Mean Altitude at
2km. This resulted in a crisp orange-tinted light with clear blue skies.

For the final goal of hiding some unwanted non-realism in the materials, the dark
shadows caused by the Sunlight Light Balance of 100% helped! The Sky Dome Lighting
Gain of 15 with a Skylight Color of RGB 36, 68, 145 created a darker sky with

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still enough ambient light to show the shape of the terrain in the shadow in the “west”
but keep everything dark enough. The contrast between the dark shadows and bright
highlights hide the fact that the underlying rock material has too much tiling.

This desert scene needed stark shadows with soft skylight. All objects were scaled to
actual size, spanning 4 x 4 kilometers for the main terrain, so an Aerial Perspective of 1.0
was used. 88% Light Balance biased towards Sunlit-shadows was used.

A Sky Dome Lighting Gain value of 7.00 with a soft blue tone and 8.8km Sky Mean
Altitude with 90% Sky Intensity create uniform ambient light coming in from the sky,
adding light to all the dark shadowed areas without removing their starkness.

In this scene, an Aerial Perspective of 2.00 is used to enlarge the effect of the
atmosphere, especially for the distant areas. By pulling in the Scattering Anisotropy to
0.33 and Glow to 65%, the sunlight comes in a soft white wave. The sunlight glow is
enhanced by a dark gray haze of 18% intensity, climbing up to 900m.

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The desert atmosphere from the previous page is enhanced by using 2.0 Global
Radiosity Gain to enhance the reflected light three times more than default.

Such high intensity reflected light increases the illusion of scorching heat rolling off the
terrain in the desert. Notice how the shadows are infused by the color bleeding of
Global Radiosity Gain.

This ground level shot requires lighting that would normally be considered overexposed
for a visible-sky shot. A 3.00 value for the Aerial Perspective enhances the lighting by
multiplying the atmosphere calculation by three.

100% Glow Intensity coupled with 0.29 Scattering Anisotropy bring the 100%/5.67km
Decay into the foreground and light up the grassy EcoSystem. The overexposed Haze is
created by 200% Haze with a Mean Altitude of 400m. This is recommended only for
enclosed places such as this. Although this place is semi-indoors, it still uses Outdoor
type Global Radiosity optimization.

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In this scene, the surroundings play just an important part as the atmosphere when it
comes to lighting. This moss covered log is surrounded by trees in such a way that the
far background trees are appropriately shadowed by the trees in front of them. This
creates the illusion of a larger forest environment without having to actually create one.

The dark shadows are intended to portray a morning dank enough to encourage moss to
flourish yet with enough strong sunlight to create a hot and humid feeling.

Sky Dome Light Gain is kept low at 1.5 with a Light Balance of 89% to create the darker
shadows while creating enough reflected light under the log to show off details from the
displacement. Global Radiosity Gain was kept at a neutral 0.0 to avoid excess color or
light bleeding.

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This scene is set high up in a snowy mountain region with coniferous forests
surrounding the primary mountain peak. The scale of the objects in the scene becomes
2
very important for the haze required to show proper depth. The mountain is 4 km and
approximately 1.3km away from the Camera. Using too much ambient light can break
the foreground, but with a high mountain size and distance from camera the mountain
automatically receives a lot of ambient lighting. For the ambient light we use a Sky
Dome Lighting Gain value of 6. An Aerial Perspective of 10 is used to enhance the scale
of the large terrain.

The sun is positioned to the “west” or right of the scene and a little over 40 degrees.
With a low Decay Amount 66% but high Decay Mean Altitude 4.0km the overall scene
retains a pleasant blue tone with just a hint of orange decay distributed evenly across
the scene.

The Light Balance value is 94% which makes sure there is enough ambient light but
retains dark shadows for our foreground. Note the scale of both the foreground and
background in the top view. The scale is paramount in a scene like this.

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For this tropical scene which needed to portray a murky sense, no sky is visible. But the
Sky settings still greatly influence this scene. Hot tropical weather is often best shown
with an overhead sunlight. In this scene, having the sunlight at a 12’O clock position
further helped put highlights in the water.

Because of such a high sun the shadows needed to be dark, so the Light Balance slider
was set to 96% (towards Sunlight) and the Sky Dome Lighting Gain was set to 3.0 which
amplified the ambient light coming in from above. With these settings the shadows
remained dark but there was just enough ambient light to properly show the underside
of all the rock formations.

The vegetation in a scene like this requires consideration in terms of lighting since very
dark shadows will never be able to show the density of the vegetation on such a large
scale. Therefore having Sky Dome Lighting Gain and Global Radiosity to provide the soft
ambient and reflected light on the vegetation helps portray the depth and density of
this tropical undergrowth – especially on the foreground objects.

Finally, another important scenario where Global Radiosity reflected light is needed is
when you have arched terrains like the ones in our foreground here. If the underside
goes unlit, it may look too deep and dark making it look somewhat unreal. Besides, the
ambient lighting lets you show off the rock formation’s underside properly which is an
excellent place to create some detail.

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For this bright, sunny seaside scene, an intense sunlight and a feeling of grandness were
required. The Aerial Perspective is set to 20 to enhance the feeling of depth, while the
Light Balance slider was kept at 90% sunlight leaving very little ambient light. To
enhance the brightness of the sunlight, a 0.80 Global Radiosity Gain value was used with
the Gain Bias color set to a very dark blue (RGB 5, 5, 18) .

For tropical scenes with such bright light, dark shadows are important but to convey
depth in the different layers of the rock formations, the farther a layer of rock is from
the camera the hazier it should appear. A very common mistake would be to just
increase the Haze Density. For a much clearer and accurate result, the rock formations
should be taken farther and made larger.

While a good Sky Dome Lighting Gain value is useful to show the bright blue of the sky
dome being reflected on the ground, a Global Radiosity Gain value of 0.5 or higher (0.8
in this case) is recommended as well. Because of such bright sunlight, there is bound to
be a large scale light reflection off of all these rock formations and the color of those
rocks will bleed into the reflected light as well (as seen in the beginning of this chapter).

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Simplicity is the key to this image. All the settings for the Atmosphere are shown in the
screenshot below. The main principle behind the lighting in this scene is how the Glow
Intensity and Black Haze intercept each other. An almost excessive Aerial Perspective of
20 makes the small terrain seem grander than it is.

When you keep the Decay strong but restricted to less than 4km, it paints the scene
objects in an evening-like orange hue but prevent the blue sky from turning too orange.
The resulting effect is more believable than a full out orange sky of a sunset. Another
aspect to consider in this scene is that the sun is not visible. As in photography, 3D
renders will look better if the Sun is kept out of the frame.

This stark desert scene uses an Aerial Perspective of 1.0 with a strong blue haze of 8%
and height 2km. The scene itself uses terrains that are 16 kilometers large, creating this
deep sense of grandness.

A contrasted Light Balance of 98% with Global Radiosity Gain of 1.55, mixed with Sky
Dome Lighting Gain of 8.0 create the believable dark, desert shadows that still show
some detail through reflected light.

You can learn more about using massive terrains to create a sense of majesty in your
scenes in Chapter 9, Perception – Massive Terrains.

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For this cold spring morning scene (supposed to be set somewhere in the Rockies) a
bright Glow Intensity of 80% with a high Scattering Anisotropy of 0.65 is used. The Sky
Mean Altitude and Density are maximized at 10km and 100% respectively, while the
Decay Density is set to just 40% and the Mean Altitude at 3.66km, giving just a hint of
orange in the light while keeping the skies electric blue.

The shadows are kept dark by using a low Sky Dome Lighting Gain of 1.00 and Global
Radiosity Gain of 0.0. The Light Balance is kept at 94% to provide just enough ambient
light while keeping the shadows dark.

A Haze of 8% with an Aerial Perspective of 3 is used.

This scene uses a maxed out Sky Density and Mean Altitude with very low Decay. The
Glow Intensity is very high at 80% and the Scattering Anisotropy is 0.45.

The resulting vibrant sky reflection in the water and the bright sunlight on the object in
the water create the “fresh blue morning” feeling. The sun is positioned so as to throw
just a little bit of glow and highlights in the water in the lower right corner.

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The additional glow of highlights on the water – both white ‘hotspots’ and the blue of
the sky reflected in the water – is thanks to high Lens Glare values in the Post Render
options.

We will delve deeper in the concepts for such water scenes in the Waterscapes chapter.

For this desert canyon scene, Godrays became an important factor. A low 8% Black Haze
(RGB 13, 13, 13) covers this terrain at an Altitude of 2.1km. The Aerial Perspective is
22.00 on this 1.5km x 1.5km terrain. A low Scattering Anisotropy of 0.12 and a Glow
Intensity of 100% create the intense Godrays in the Haze.

In this high altitude scene, the light intensity plays an important role as the higher you
go the brighter the sunlight becomes of the thinning atmosphere. Not only are we using
a very bright sky, with both the Sky Mean Altitude set to 10km and the Sky Density to
100%, but there is very little Decay.

At high altitudes the sky becomes very blue and there is very little atmospheric particles
(especially during the day) to make the light become orange. To further accentuate the

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high altitude of the scene, we use a strong Sunlight-Ambient Balance value of 90% with
only 10% ambient light. However, the ambient light seen here is another strong value of
6.0 for the Sky Dome Lighting Gain which adds the blue ambient light to the strong
shadows.

The Sunlight uses 2° soft shadows to show the scale of the scene by blurring the
shadows being thrown. Further, the MetaClouds use a low Opacity of 70% to create the
illusion of very intense sunlight. We will explore that in the Clouds section.

In this high altitude scene, a strong Haze helps create the “way up there” feeling and
creates Godrays in the top-right portion.

The clouds are highlighted by an extremely strong Glow Intensity of 200%. The
Scattering Anisotropy is kept at 0.50 to avoid brightening the scene too much.

The scene uses an Infinite Procedural Terrain, so to keep everything in proportion, a 1.0
value is given for Aerial Perspective.

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A high Glow Intensity of 100% with a very low Scattering Anisotropy of 0.21 causes the
100% Density / 10km Mean Altitude Sky to go completely white and the whole scene
ends up looking extremely bright. Sky Dome Lighting Gain of 3.00 with a Global Radiosity
Gain of 2.0 causes a lot of reflected light. Low MetaClouds with extremely small values
of density (0.5%) create mists in the scene. A dark blue Skylight color helps create the
blue reflected light in the dark shadows of the terrain.

In this sunset scene, a high Glow Intensity of 55% is used with a Scattering Anisotropy of
0.97 to intensify the glow of the Sun. The mountain creates perfect shadows while the
sunlight is positioned to properly highlight the foreground. The haze is set to 100%
Density and 1.19km Mean Altitude for the perfect glow to be visible in the sky. The Haze
Color is default. The Aerial Perspective is kept at 2.00. Sky Density is 78% at 4.8km Mean
Altitude and Decay is 77% at 6.8km Mean Altitude.

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This surreal image was created by using a steel blue Haze (RGB 43, 49, 63) with 38%
Density and a Mean Altitude of 620m. The 21% Glow Intensity merging with a Scattering
Anisotropy value of 0.12 along with a Light Balance of 93% creates these long shafts of
Godrays on this large stretched terrain. The key to Godrays lies in a strong haze, lots of
shadow darkness, and a relatively low Aerial Perspective (3.0 in this case). The
Scattering Anisotropy brings the light from the sun visibly forward, and once your
camera is in a shadowy area, the strong Godrays will appear in the Haze.

This deep jungle image was made using only a single procedural terrain with a dense
jungle EcoSystem loaded on it. The terrain was stretched high enough to create this
valley. It also blocks the sun for most of the area visible to the camera. A dull blue Haze
(RGB 84, 97, 109) with a Mean Altitude of 1.4KM and Density of 6%
encompasses the landscape. A full 100% Glow Intensity and a Scattering Anisotropy of
0.12 bring the bright sunlight closer, but a Light Balance of 94% keeps the shadows deep
and murky. MetaCloud fog enhances the misty effect of the scene.

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The thick jungle atmosphere is achieved by using a large value for the Aerial Perspective
(10.0) while keeping the terrain smaller than the scale should normally be. This
increases the “blueness” of the Haze. Sharp overhead lighting increases the damp and
humid feel of the rainforest. Global Radiosity Gain of 1.5 and a Sky Dome Lighting Gain
of 2.0 were used for this atmosphere. The Decay Amount was kept low to avoid the
lighting from getting too orange tinged.

Two scenes were rendered – one with +0.35 Exposure in the Post-Render Effects, and
one with 0.00 Exposure. They were blended together in a paint program to have the
center be a little darker and less blue than the rest of the scene.

For this forest interior style shot, the Sun is positioned slightly to the left and away
(towards the far horizon) from the Camera but still high enough to give us highlights on
the top of the trees and the rock obelisk. A small blue (RGB 180, 210, 255)
Omnidirectional Light is used to create fake ambient light. Two simple terrains are used
as “light blockers” so the trees are not lit too much and the “holes” between the trees
where they are not dense enough do not show the empty backdrop.

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In this forest scene the same lighting as in the previous scene is used, however the
Decay value is increased and the Sun put closer to the horizon to create the twilight
effect. The EcoSystem of HD Trees in the back is used for creating the interesting
shadows on the foreground HyperTerrains. The Sun’s Shadow Softness is set to 2º to
create the soft evening shadows.

For lighting the interior of the cave, a strong Global Radiosity Gain of 3.0 is used. The
sun is positioned so that only the rim of the cave is highlighted. The Sunlight-Ambient
slider is set to 95% so only 5% ambient light is available. The excess Sunlight helps boost
the intensity of the Global Radiosity Gain which illuminates the inside of the cave.

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With the help of strong Global Radiosity Gain (1.5) and Sky Dome Lighting Gain (3.5),
and the Sun positioned overhead but slightly tilted towards the camera, the
HyperTerrain rocks in this scene are brightly lit with reflected and ambient light
spreading in the shadowed regions. The bright highlights on the rocks also create the
white reflections in the water. The Glow Intensity is set to 125% and Scattering
Anisotropy is set to 0.45 to intensify the sunlight.

For this twilight-lit grotto, Global Radiosity plays a dominant role. Almost 2/3 of the
scene is lit only by indirect light. The direct light is used only to highlight the large
mountain and the statue in front of it. The main subject area of the four explorers is lit
by Global Radiosity using a Gain of 2.5 and a small 120 power Omnidirectional Light on
the “torch”. A Light Balance of 90% creates the deep, dark shadows. A large cube is set
off-screen on both sides of the camera to block the Sunlight on the rest of the scene and
create the illusion that the camera is inside a large valley.

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Such large blocks can be a very creative mechanic for light blocking techniques. If you
require shaped shadows, these blocks can be replaced by large terrains. They need not
be high resolution since they only need enough resolution to create a good silhouette.

In this bright sunlit scene with cloud cover, a low Cloud Shadow Density is used with a
large ambient value of 78% in the Sunlight Balance slider, along with a Sky Dome
Lighting Gain value of 2.00 to create this bright blue sky. The color of the sky is owed to
a custom blue color (RGB 17, 71, 171) with a Density of 70% and Mean
Altitude of 10km, along with a low Decay Density of 62% at Mean Altitude 4km.

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The release of Vue 8.5 introduced extended sky limits. You can now take the Sky Mean
Altitude to 100km. This new extension is provided to simulate what other planets might
be like.

In the real world, on Earth, the Atmosphere does extend to 100km. At 100km, in the
Troposphere, we have the Kármán line – the boundary at which the Earth’s atmosphere
ends and outer space begins. However the atmosphere level as far as visual coloring is
concerned (as in, Vue’s Sky Mean Altitude) the typical altitude is 8.8km.

Clouds are, generally, limited to the 18km/60,000ft altitude. While Vue does allow you
to take them up higher than that, it is recommended that this option be used judiciously
as it may make your scene unrealistic.

The main issue we will discuss here is how this affects the lighting of our scenes, as using
large and previously unavailable values changes the scene atmosphere dramatically –
and in some cases, fatally.

For example, we have this scene below which uses a 10km Mean Altitude and 100% Sky
Ground Density: the maximum of the previous versions, and generally realistic values.

If we were to change that to the new maximums, say 100km and 100% respectively for
the Mean Altitude and Ground Density, then the resulting image would definitely be
labeled ‘fatal’.

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Whether you look at it on-screen or in print, this image is extremely overexposed. We
had to put a black border on the image so it can be viewed somewhat in printed form.

These new levels are extreme and require subtle maneuverings we are not that
accustomed to with Vue atmospheres.

By changing the Sky in a new way, we can get our old visuals back by using new settings.
If we were to keep the 100km Mean Altitude but change the Ground Density to 20%, we
get this image:

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The new limits may at first seem harder to control, but they provide a massively
improved degree of control over the atmosphere when you are dealing with
atmospheric animations or extremely high-altitude renders on non-Earth environments.

You can also use this to fine tune your Earth-bound scenes, but careful calibration is
recommended as unrealistic values may create unrealistic renders if you are unsure of
your settings and their effects on your Vue world.

Higher density per kilometer of Altitude allows for brighter scenes and stronger lighting
when dealing with dark, overcast scenes. Stronger light also means stronger Cloud
Anisotropy for edge-lit clouds.

Planetary scenes can have greater atmospheric effects for dramatics.

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Additionally, the 100km skies create some fascinating effects along the terminator line
and horizon.

Old 10km limits are still valid, so all your existing assets will keep on working as-is, and
you retain the flexibility to move into the new limits too.

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Indirect atmospherics, or Cloud Radiosity, was introduced in Vue 9. When clouds are
large enough, they reflect light and color to the ground. By simply checking this option,
you enable a new level of realistic light/color interaction between atmospheric Radiosity
and object Radiosity.

Indirect Atmospherics is part of the Global Radiosity lighting model.

Practically speaking, the effect of this can be big or small depending on the structure of
your scene. If you have large, low hanging clouds the effect may be more apparent than
small, wispy clouds at high altitude. Indirect atmospherics will also add to the memory
overhead of the render and may not be worth it in certain cases – especially long
animations. However, at the same time they can be cached along with the indirect
illumination for the rest of the scene.

Indirect illumination covered in the Clouds section does the opposite – taking the
reflected color of the landscape and bleeding it into the cloud’s ambient coloring.

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One of the most difficult areas to control and even more so to master are the Clouds.
They play one of the most important roles in making a render look attractive, yet are the
easiest thing to go wrong in.

The major difficulty in achieving realism in clouds is to maintain a level of consistency

between the lighting of the scene and the lighting of the clouds. Since cloud layer
lighting can be changed through the ambient light settings, it is easy to ignore or forget
what part the other settings such as Opacity and Density play in the overall lighting of
the cloud layer.

In this section, we will explore what makes a cloud, how to push it to the limits by
exploring several real examples and taking apart each and every setting for Cloud
Layers, Cloud Materials, and MetaClouds.

Cloud layers are the best way to create large cloud fields for your scene. While you can
change the actual fractal of the cloud layer using the Function Editor, the major changes
you need are controlled by the Clouds tab of the Atmosphere Editor.

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As we go explore what makes clouds, I would like to tell you of one simple rule to keep
in mind whenever you make clouds: clouds are puffs of gas and water. They are not
solid objects. If you use extreme settings, which are often seen in novice renders, they
will look like solid objects. Avoid this at all costs, otherwise it will be a major setback to
the realism of your scene.

If you would like to see the visual changes brought about by any of these settings, load
up any default Vue Spectral cloud layer and drag the sliders to different, random
settings.

This is the fractal scale of the Cloud Material. Increasing it changes the overall scale of
the shapes of the cloud layer. This is useful if you take your Cloud Layer to high altitudes
and it starts looking small or speckled. There is no recommended value for this as you
need to experiment with it to find the right value for your scene’s needs.

This is the altitude at which clouds start to form. The minimum is 100m and the
maximum is 10km, however you can enter manual values. The height is the actual
vertical thickness of the Cloud Layer, which can be from 100m to 1km, but again you can
enter manual values.

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This is the amount of cloud cover you get in your skies. At 100%, and unless you have a
fractal in the cloud material that contradicts this setting, the entire sky will be overcast
with the cloud layer. At 0%, you have no clouds at all, obviously. Sometimes minor
changes to this setting can help get better cloud shapes, so experimentation is highly
recommended.

This is one of the key properties of a Cloud Layer. This controls how thick and dense the
clouds appear. Normal recommendations are: 60% to 80% for thick, strong clouds; 10%
to 40% for high altitude clouds; and 0.1% to 1.0% for extremely thin, wispy clouds. A
100% can be useful sometimes, but is not always recommended as it makes the clouds
look like solid objects.

This is the sister property to Density. Opacity controls how far light penetrates into the
Cloud Layer. If you have a medium or low density cloud layer but want it to appear a
little thicker and darker without making it denser, a high 80% to 100% Opacity can help
achieve that effect. Or if you have a dense cloud layer where you want to show a lot of
light coming through, a 20% to 50% value can help. Experiment with this property in
conjunction with Cloud Anisotropy for some very interesting results.

This value controls the sharpness of the edges of the Cloud Layer. For soft, fluffy clouds
this should always be 0. With higher values, light is processed more (as in low opacity)
near the edges and the areas away from the edges have light processed less (as in high
opacity). At the same time, the graininess of the Cloud Layer increases while also giving
it a more “solid object” feel. A normal rule of thumb to use is to decrease the Sharpness
(if using it at all) when the Density and Opacity go high, and increase it if Density and/or
Opacity are low.

This is a sensitive setting so experimentation is the only way to understand its depth in a
visual sense.

Just as the name suggests, this setting affects how edges of the Cloud Layer ‘feather’ or
elongate into small curving wisps. At 0, there is no feathering. At higher values small
edge wisps start appearing. At higher values still they interact with other cloud elements
(of the same layer) close by and start merging as if it were a MetaBlob.

For most situations, a value between 0 and 25 is recommended. This feature is very
useful for creating thin, wispy clouds. However, excessive Feathering can lead to clouds
having an “exploding pillow” feel with feathers flying everywhere.

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This is a very important setting. The Detail Amount controls how the “main clouds” are
broken into little “cloudlets”. Taking the main Cloud Material fractal into consideration,
Vue starts breaking the edges of your clouds into smaller clouds.

Low values under 10% are not recommended for realism. However there aren’t any
recommendations for this value. You have to experiment to find the right amount of
detail based on your scene. High values of 60% to 90% are useful when creating thin,
high altitude clouds.

This setting pushes certain random areas of the Cloud Layer to an additional altitude.
For example, if the Altitude is set to 200m, a high Altitude Variations value would cause
the affected areas of the Cloud Layer to start at 201m, 202m, and so on. This creates an
unevenness that adds realism to your Cloud Layer instead of the normal, fake looking
even cloud layer. This is very useful for large clouds.

A range of 30% to 70% will create enough altitude variations to make the cloudscape
look realistic, however values higher than that may make the clouds look predictable –
an aspect you may want to avoid.

Ambient Lighting controls how much ambient (non-Sunlight) light is applied to the
clouds. This is very useful if your scene appears dark because of the clouds. Do note that
this applies the light uniformly across the entire Cloud Layer, so it should be used for
tweaking. If your clouds appear too dark, it is better to control the Opacity first and then
come to this setting. Too high values will make the clouds appear “separate” from your
scene, in terms of realism. At the same time, if your clouds appear too dark because of
no or extremely low Ambient Lighting, the same effect may happen.

This setting controls how dark the shadows thrown by the Cloud Layer can be. If you
turn on Godrays or Volumetric Lighting, this also affects how strong the Godrays
generated by the clouds are. If your cloud cover is high, do not use high values like 80%
or more as the shadows on the ground will become too dark. In fact, one rule to keep in
mind is to lower the Shadow Density when the Cloud Layer has a high Density and
Opacity. If you have to use dark shadows, for example when you require strong
Godrays, then using a higher Sky Dome Lighting Gain is recommended.

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A cloud layer is controlled by the settings we saw in the previous section, however, the
actual shape of the clouds is controlled by the Cloud Material.

Scaling controls how large the “cloudlets” that form a cloud can be. If you have a large-
scaled cloud layer where you see too much small clouds or unnecessary detail in the
cloud, you can fix that by changing the Scaling amount of the Cloud Material.

This setting controls how the edges of the cloud (along all axes) break away from the
central body of the cloud. When you have a very low Roughness value, the edges
become smooth and look like soft ice cream rather than clouds. At too high values, they
will break into too many small cloudlets and create an edge scattering effect. Depending
on the scale of your Cloud Layer, you can experiment with the Roughness value to find
the right amount of detail and cloud formation shapes.

The Variations setting allows you to control how varied the overall cloud formation will
be. High values cause the entire cloudscape to have a unique, non-regular look.
Extremely high values may cause excessive roughness and breakups in the Cloud Layer,
so judicious use is recommended. Keep in mind that this setting works on the entire
Cloud Layer and may not create changes that are visible at a smaller scale.

This setting will create a uniform or non-uniform distribution of shapes between the
lower and higher altitudes of the Cloud Layer. If you use a high setting, the lower areas

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of the Cloud Layer (especially the base) will become just as rough as the top side. Lower
values cause the underside of the Cloud Layer to become smoother and rounded.

This Filter control allows you to change the density of each ‘segment’ of the altitude of
the cloud. You can edit this filter to alter the density of the cloud in specific altitudes.

This filter, for example, makes the cloud dense at the top, keeps it
dense in the middle region and gradually lowers the density in the lower parts of the
cloud.

This default filter keeps the cloud dense at the top and uniformly
decreases the density as it goes lower (towards the bottom of the cloud).

This last filter maintains strong density at both the top and bottom
parts of the clouds but thins it out in the middle area.

You can find out more about filters, how they work, and how to manipulate them in
Chapter 6, Materials.

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Before we understand Cloud Anisotropy, we should talk about Isotropy and Anisotropy
– in how it applies to our work.

In the Advanced Material Editor, you can change the Isotropy/Anisotropy of the shine of
the material. If the shine is Isotropic, the angle of shine is uniform or homogenous. If
you change it to Anisotropic, then the shine bends along the surface of the object
relative to the direction of the incoming light.

The sample image below shows two metal spheres that use the same material, however
the sphere on the left uses 0% Anisotropic Highlights (it is isotropic) and the right sphere
uses 99% Anisotropic Highlights (almost completely Anisotropic). You can see how the
shine bends in the second sphere.

In the same way, with Vue 7.5 and higher, we also have Cloud Anisotropy. This follows
the same principle, but works somewhat differently.

Clouds are not solid objects, but a giant collection of small water particles moving in
clusters. At a distance the isotropy/anisotropy (in relation to light) of each particle
combines to create a larger visual effect – or in other words, the same anisotropy of a
single particle becomes the anisotropy of the entire cloud as if it were a single object.

Just like the shine on our metal sphere bending along the surface of the object, if light
hits an anisotropic cloud surface in Vue, it penetrates the cloud particle field, bends
along the internal surfaces and comes out (lightly or strongly, depending on the amount
of Anisotropy chosen) on the other side and towards the camera.

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Cloud Anisotropy can create some beautiful effects. Because of the nature of the
physical process, Cloud Anisotropy is best experienced with Volumetric Lighting or
Godrays enabled, and the Sun is behind the clouds.

The diagram above shows how the Cloud Anisotropy setting in the Atmosphere Editor
works. When your setting is -1.0, the Sunlight does not penetrate the cloud that much.
At 0.0 there is neutral or balanced penetration, but still not enough to create large light
effects. At +1.0 there is as much light penetration as possible, bringing 100% of the
penetrable light across through the cloud and towards the camera.

Do note that your Cloud Layer’s Opacity, Density, Ambient Lighting, and Shadow Density
also affect how Cloud Anisotropy is rendered visually. Boosting the Atmosphere Quality
can also improve results.

In the images below, you can see how Cloud Anisotropy is bending the light along the
cloud surface and propelling it in the form of edged ambient light towards the camera.

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The MetaClouds are similar to normal Cloud Layers except that they are independent
from the infinity of the Vue world. MetaClouds are confined to the cloud primitives that
create them.

Before we go any further, I would like to remind of the basic cloud rule we talked about
in the previous section. Clouds are made of countless small particles. Clouds are gaseous
in nature. Clouds are not solid objects. Keep them in mind as you explore the settings of
the MetaCloud material.

To edit a MetaCloud preset, all you have to do is enter the MetaCloud in the Object
Browser by expanding it and selecting any MetaCloud Primitive. At this point the
MetaCloud button changes to the MetaCloud Primitive button.

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The basic idea behind each setting in the MetaCloud material is the same as the Cloud
Layer settings we discussed in the previous section. So in this section instead of
repeating what each setting does, we will see how they behave differently when
working with MetaClouds.

As with the Cloud Layer, the Cover setting defines how much of the cloud area (in the
case of MetaClouds, the Primitives making up the cloud form) is filled with the cloud. It
treats the edges of the primitives as a boundary. Cover based filling of this boundary
starts from the densest portion.

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As the name suggests, Density controls how thick the clouds are. Often when dealing
with MetaClouds for “close to ground” situations like a dust storm, or even a gust of
wind dragging up some dirt, you may want to use ‘micro-densities’ or density values
between 0.0 and 1.0. You can see examples of that below, and in realistic usage in the
examples section following this section.

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The Opacity setting is responsible for deciding how much light penetrates the cloud.
Extremely high values (beyond 80%) may make your clouds look like solid objects.

Sharpness defines how sharp the edges of the clouds are. This is a very delicate setting
as we discussed previously. Even medium range values may cause your clouds to look as
if they were solid. Use with care.

This is the sister setting to Opacity. Unlike Opacity, Ambient Lighting will provide light
from all directions. This setting behaves slightly different on MetaClouds. Since
MetaClouds are made of small “cloudlets” but are more tightly packed and visible than
in a Cloud Layer, excessive Ambient Lighting may make individual cloudlets visible in
ways we may not want them to be.

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This property controls how dark the shadows thrown off by the MetaClouds are, and
how strong the Godrays created by them will be. Unnecessarily high values may create
almost solid shadows that may cause the underside (or shadowed side) of the
MetaCloud to look unrealistic.

Just like with the Cloud Layers, Feathers shift the cloudlets from “blobs” to “feathers”. In
MetaClouds, feathering can often play an important role in changing the shape of the
cloud. Experiment in each instance to find unique shapes.

Amount, or more precisely, Detail Amount, controls how much detail is added to the
cloudlets inside the MetaCloud boundary. Do not let the 100% maximum of the slider of
this setting stop you. You can go beyond the 100% value by manually typing in any value
you want. Often with larger clouds or other specific situations, values beyond 100% may
give you the right amount of detail.

Use with caution as high values are liable to break up your cloud into too many smaller
cloudlets. This setting works in conjunction with the Scaling and Cover settings, as each
of them affects the other. With high values resulting in small cloudlets, you may also
wish to increase the Density and Opacity settings so as to not have 100% light
penetration on the smaller cloudlets.

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Scaling is a very important factor in shaping MetaClouds. Often with the actual size of
the MetaCloud being changed, the resulting effect is completely altered as the Scaling of
the MetaCloud material is incompatible with the actual size. When this happens you get
either extremely small cloudlets or extremely large cloudlets. Neither of which is ideal.
So when you change the size of the MetaCloud object, play with the Scaling setting until
you get the right shape.

Also note that Scaling should be used in conjunction with Cover and Amount settings for
best results as they interoperate between each other.

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Roughness breaks the cloudlets as roughly as dictated by its value. This allows for some
interesting unique shaping that breaks away from the normal uniform feel of a typical
Vue cloud. As with Detail Amount, high values can cause a little too much chaos
between the Cloudlets.

High roughness settings can create very interesting effects on large MetaClouds that
have strong sunlight and low Opacity values.

These settings work in the same way as we discovered in the Cloud Layers section.

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In the following pages, you will see several examples of both Cloud Layers and
MetaClouds. We will also explore the main aspects and strengths of each example,
including various Material and Atmosphere settings for the major clouds.

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For confined camera angles, MetaClouds can often prove to be more useful than cloud
layers. Additionally, they’re often easier to sculpt/shape than an entire cloud layer.

Great care must be taken to compensate on both the material scale (overall) and Scaling
inside the material for the MetaCloud when resizing the cloud objects drastically.

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This cloud layer takes advantage of a very low Sun angle and strong Shadow Density,
along with Volumetric Lighting to create this foreboding sky.

Such lighting is time consuming in both render time as well as positioning.

Fractal Cloud Layers are generated mathematically, not artistically so the cloud shape,
scale, or position (Origin of Material) often need to be experimented with to get the
right cloud shapes or clusters.

Cloud Configuration
Altitude Height Cover Density Opacity Sharpness Feathers
1.2km 1km 77% 100% 100% 0% 63%
Detail Amount Altitude Variations Ambient Lighting Shadow Density
22% 100% 44% 100%

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A precisely placed cloud layer interacts with the infinite procedural terrain to create this
other-worldly mountain environment.

A large amount of time was spent on experimentation with the Origin of Material
setting in the Cloud Layer to get the right cloud positioning.

Volumetric Lighting is used to get heightened realism by producing shafts of rays

between the clouds and the mountain peaks.

Cloud Configuration
Altitude Height Cover Density Opacity Sharpness Feathers
698m 796m 94% 58% 100% 2% 40%
Detail Amount Altitude Variations Ambient Lighting Shadow Density
40% 100% 0% 100%

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MetaClouds form the rising mist of this deep, dark tropical jungle. While the same result
can be easily achieved with Cloud Layers, MetaClouds provided a deeper level of
precision in the placement of the mist.

Beware that such low densities increase render times exceedingly, often turning hours
into days at very high resolutions. To find easier ways to render such scenes, refer to the
Appendix for tips on decreasing render times.

Cloud Material
Cover Density Opacity Sharpness Ambient Lighting Shadow Density
100% 1% 50% 20% 20% 40%
Feathers Amount Scaling Roughness Variations Uniformity
0% 100% 19% 54% 30% 75%

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This menacing sky is made from a dense cloud layer with almost 100% coverage and a
low Sunlight angle. Intense Shadow Density is responsible for the dark pockets in the
cloud layer.

The Sharpness setting plays an important role here as it provides the pronounced edges
for the under-lit clouds.

Cloud Configuration
Altitude Height Cover Density Opacity Sharpness Feathers
516m 1km 95% 47% 94% 10% 40%
Detail Amount Altitude Variations Ambient Lighting Shadow Density
18% 25% 66% 100%

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A blissful summer scene with low cumulus clouds. The clouds use low density to pick up
some color from the blue skies and add to the summertime feeling.

There is also a high level of ambient lighting which bleeds different colors of the
surrounding atmosphere into the clouds themselves.

Cloud Configuration
Altitude Height Cover Density Opacity Sharpness Feathers
106m 1km 46% 47% 94% 10% 40%
Detail Amount Altitude Variations Ambient Lighting Shadow Density
18% 25% 100% Does not cast

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Two clouds comprise this cloud field: the low-lying cumulus and the very high altitude
wisps of cirrus.

By having multiple cloud layers, even if the secondary (High Altitude) layer is very subtle
in appearance, the scene looks more realistic since the real world often has multiple
layers of clouds.

Cloud Configuration
Altitude Height Cover Density Opacity Sharpness Feathers
971m 4km 45% 26% 100% 1% 15%
Detail Amount Altitude Variations Ambient Lighting Shadow Density
18% 100% 16% 44%

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Giant MetaClouds envelope this craggy mesa to create a massive Sandstorm-front. The
accurate positioning of the MetaClouds is key in such a scene as often the puffs of
smoke/sand/cloud may not exactly coincide with the visual border of the MetaCloud
primitives. A lot of small preview renders were performed to ensure proper cloud
positioning before the final full resolution render was performed.

Cloud Material
Cover Density Opacity Sharpness Ambient Lighting Shadow Density
100% 43% 61% 0% 20% 40%
Feathers Amount Scaling Roughness Variations Uniformity
0% 100% 19% 71% 30% 75%

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A scene inspired by intense summer sunsets in the deserts of India, this multiple cloud
layer scene uses small cloud shapes overlapping each other to create a rich cloudfield.

A lot of Ambient Lighting was applied to avoid the clouds from becoming too dark from
the intense sunlight.

Cloud Configuration
Altitude Height Cover Density Opacity Sharpness Feathers

697m 100m 38% 100% 93% 27% 36%

Detail Amount Altitude Variations Ambient Lighting Shadow Density
169% 94% 80% 100%

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One of the most sought-after aspects of natural 3D scenes is Godrays. Those almost
elusive shafts of light are sometimes difficult to achieve, but when they are created
properly the end result gives a massive boost to your scene.

In this section we will explore the basic mechanics of creating Godrays in a Spectral
atmosphere. While the new Vue 8 and 8.5 Spectral Atmosphere enhancements create
better Godrays, most of the concepts we will talk about apply to Vue 7 as well.

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It is often difficult to achieve Godrays in Vue. The reason behind this is that Vue is
designed to process atmosphere as it would be in the real world. And as we know from
daily life, Godrays are not a constant but rather an occasional occurrence.

To create Godrays with ease, we must first understand why Godrays occur in the real
world, and how they occur. Once that is understood, we can create a similar
atmosphere in our Vue world and Godrays will be created automatically.

In this photograph, you can see large shafts of sunlight filtering through the trees. Light
normally passes through those same trees all the time, but we do not see Godrays every
time it does. This is because Godrays are created with very strong shadows, not just
strong light.

When there is a dense particle field in the atmosphere, like the dust in our photo, the
light bounces off those particles creating the shafts of light and dense shadows among
the particles. The result is what we call Godrays.

In essence, there must be a strong haze, fog, or similar natural phenomenon for Godrays
to be created. So in turn, we must create strong haze or fog in Vue to create Godrays.

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You have to follow three basic rules in Vue to create Godrays. Strong light, dense haze,
and light inhibitors – objects that create the shadows.

Taking this render as an example, let’s break down the 3 rules into their components.

The Light Balance slider in the Light tab in the Atmosphere Editor is set to 98%, so there
is very little ambient light, and subsequently, dark shadows.

The Glow Intensity is set to 100%, with Scattering Anisotropy set to 0.24, so the Sunlight
glow is drawn towards the camera.

To avoid overexposing our scene, the Aerial Perspective is set to 1.00. Obviously,
Volumetric Sunlight is selected. Godrays is not checked, since we already have
Volumetric Sunlight selected.

A very light color of RGB 220, 205, 218 is assigned to the Haze Color, with an
intense value of 250% in the Haze Density setting. The Haze Mean Altitude is a low
800m, which keeps the Haze hanging near the ground rather than all over the sky.

The Fog Color is set to a soft hue with RGB 247, 221, 195 . Fog Density and
Mean Altitude at set to 100% and 550m respectively. These settings augment our
almost neutral colored Haze with a soft pink/orange hue in the lower areas.

Be prepared to deal with a hot white, overexposes sky. Like with real life, getting
Godrays in a ‘shot’ means sacrificing the neutral exposure of the sky.

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Finally, we need objects – in this case, trees – that will block the sunlight partially and
create the shadows in the Haze. Large objects are easier to use for blocking sunlight, but
smaller objects can work too. Essentially it is important to remember that more light in
the frame (not the scene!) has to be blocked than the light that is allowed to pass freely.

It should be noted that you need a minimum of +3.0 Global Settings > Quality Boost in
the Atmosphere Editor to achieve proper Godrays. For better renders, a value of +10 or
higher is recommended. This will obviously increase your render times, but the end
result quality increases greatly and can be considered worth the sacrifice.

For example, look at the difference between these renders.

Quality Boost at 0.0 Quality Boost at +4 Quality Boost at +10

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Godrays need not be extreme. Subtle rays can create stunning effects too. In this
example, soft Godrays filter in from the top of this enclosed environment creating a
musty feeling.

In this dense jungle scene, a large 3.5 x 3.5km terrain with a dense EcoSystem is used as
the Light Inhibitor to create our Godrays. With enough Sky Dome Lighting Gain the
Sunlight Balance which is set to 96% is overcome with a small infusion of ambient light.

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This is a variation of the scene we deconstructed. The Sunlight is position so that the gap
in the EcoSystem throws a lot of sunlight onto the ‘floor’ with a dense population of
grass plants. This helps negate the stark darkness of the forest.

This scene uses an off-screen Sun to create out Godrays using the terrain itself as a light
inhibitor. The haze isn’t too strong therefore the Sky isn’t overexposed because of the
intense glow that would normally be there. The Aerial Perspective is changed to 7.0 to
enable strong Godrays at the expense of some minor realism and scale.

This scene uses extremely low density MetaClouds with 0.32% Density to force localized
haze. Strong Godrays are created within these clouds, but come at a heavy price since
the micro-density MetaClouds are very cumbersome to render.

Additionally, such delicate Godrays require an Atmosphere Quality Boost of +10.00.

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Here is another scene that uses the terrain itself as a light inhibitor. A low, dark haze is
used to propagate the shafts of light. A darker haze allows for stronger sunlight without
overexposing the scene, ensuring strong Godrays. The Aerial Perspective is 1.0.

This is the ‘Glory’ scene included with Vue. I originally designed this scene to show off
the Spectral2 power of Vue 7, but the above render using Vue 8 shows the advanced
capabilities of the third generation Spectral atmospheric render engine. The Godrays are
created using the clouds as the only light inhibitor. You can find this scene on the Extras
disc of Vue and experiment.

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In your scene, the terrain will often be the most important physical object. The entire
scene depends on it, therefore the more realistic and well-formed your terrains and
rock formations are, the more believable your scene appears.

Vue provides three types of terrains, Standard, Procedural, and Infinite Procedural
terrains. We will focus mainly on Procedural and Infinite terrains as they provide more
realism than the Standard terrains. We will also explore HyperTerrains, a new technique
for creating procedurally generated rock formations in Vue.

With a mix of Procedural Terrains creating the larger terrains, and HyperTerrains
providing the individual rocks and rock formations, your scene can create a marvelous
sense of realism.

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Procedural Terrains are now becoming the primary way to create terrain. The main
advantage is that Procedural Terrains are infinite in both size (although you can limit
them in size) and detail. Because of their procedural nature – grown from a Fractals
designed to recreate real world features – the terrain maintains an overall natural
quality that is often not found in hand sculpted terrains.

In this section we will cover two major features of Vue that will help you create fantastic
terrains – the Terrain Fractal and the Strata Filter.

The standard fractals found in Vue such as Perlin or any other prior to version 7.0 were
not enough for creating realistic procedural terrains. To address this need, Vue 7.0
introduced the Terrain Fractal. It has its root in existing fractals and behaves in ways we
are used to with the Perlin and Granite fractals, however, this new fractal brings out a
very powerful shaping system which creates mountains and entire mountain ranges
with natural form distortion that other fractals cannot.

A new setting available to fractals is called MetaScale. When used in conjunction with
the Largest Feature and the Smallest Feature, it can provide fascinating results. The
image above shows a top view – almost satellite image like – of a procedural terrain that
uses two terrain fractals. The first fractal creates the massive rock formations and hills,
and the other terrain fractal creates the flow lines and water erosion striations at the
‘ground’ level.

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The long striations seen in the ‘ground’ level are caused by a very high Distortion
setting. When Distortion is set above 50%, we see long curving shapes in the fractal as if
you are dragging your fingers in water. In real life, if you look at satellite images such
large scale curving formations can be seen in mountain ranges.

One thing every digital nature artist should keep in mind – especially when creating
terrains – is to look at the entire scene from a very high altitude. Such a “Gods Eye
View” helps keep your scene in perspective. If your scene looks realistic from high
above, no matter what your lower camera angle is, it will always look realistic to the eye
at that level too.

Now, let’s explore the Terrain Fractal and see what each setting can do. We will start
with the following settings, and to explore each setting, only that setting will be changed
while the rest remain at default.

This is the base mathematical wave from which the fractal is generated. You can change
the size of the fractal along all three axes – X, Y, and Z – from here. Changes to these
settings are often not required, unless you want to use a non-uniform value in one axis
to stretch the fractal on that axis.

The MetaScale is, in essence, the size of any mountain ranges being created (blue line in
the image below). The Largest Feature is the size of the largest rock formation or
mountains in that range (red line in the image below), while the Smallest Feature is the
smallest sized formation in those mountains (image on next page). Usually, best results
are found when the MetaScale is larger than the Largest Feature, and the Largest
Feature is higher than the Smallest Feature. Of course, using unorthodox values for each
can bring unique results.

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The smallest feature also serves as a base value for Roughness. When you have a high
Smallest Feature value like 10, the fractal discounts all minor details and creates only
the larger shapes as you can see in the image above.

This is the amount of roughness – or strong raggedness – that is applied to the fractal.
Between the ranges of 0.35 and 0.65, this can create interesting and useful shapes. Near
and above 0.7 values will create sharp spikes across the terrain in most situations.

If you need to use a high Roughness value without creating jagged spikes over the entire
terrain, use a medium or high Smallest Feature value. If you need your terrain features
to have more height, then Gain may help achieve that. However, do note that with a
higher Gain value some of the lower features may decrease in altitude or disappear
completely if the Gain overpowers them.

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This is the height boost given to the entire fractal. 1 is the default value, but usually a
value of 2 or 3 is more useful. Values of 4 to 10 can create strong mountains but must
be used with care. Using this setting in conjunction with Bump Surge is recommended
for optimal terrain outputs.

The blue arrow in the image above shows the direction the terrain is intensified by the
Gain setting.

If any of your axes use a value different from the other two, you may see stretching in
the fractal output. If you want to dampen, or soften, the stretching, you can use this
slider; unless if the stretching is intentional in which case you may skip the damping.

Variation Strength controls the variation of the noise in the fractal that creates medium
to large scale variations of noise or shapes in the Fractal to give it a more non-uniform
feel. A low value in the Smooth Areas setting will create an intense amount of
smoothness in your terrain, while a strong value will create sharper terrains. Smooth
Area Altitude controls the altitude level up to which the smoothing from Smooth Area is
applied. High values (up to +1) cause less smoothing allowing more altitude variations,
while lower values (down to -1) cause massive smoothing creating less altitude
variations between the highest and lowest altitudes in the Fractal.

This is one of the most important settings in this fractal. It distorts the terrain fractal by
smearing the shapes around as nature does in real life. These striations can create some
marvelous effects.

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The blue lines above mark some of the large positive (high altitude) and negative (low
altitude) distortions being introduced into our Terrain Fractal.

This setting increases the bump, like the Gain setting, but works mostly on the higher
altitude areas that are above the ‘average’ level of the terrain.

The ridges on the top of the terrain, at the highest altitudes, are softened using this
setting. It is very helpful if you see anomalous artifacts or unwanted sharpness on your
ridges. Often these artifacts are caused by the Roughness or you may also wish to check
the Roughness and Smallest Feature settings.

This list lets you select between a few different basic fractal types that affect the overall
shaping of the terrain. There is no ‘best’ or recommended setting for this as they all
create unique effects that are best chosen by experimentation or by the specific needs
of your terrain. However, in most situations the default ‘Ridges’ option works well.

One of the most useful new features in Vue 8 is the Strata Filter. With this new feature
creating sedimentary terrains with strata of rocks and bedrock becomes so much easier.
The Strata Filter comes in two varieties – the normal Strata Filter and the Confined
Strata Filters. Both are available in the Recursive category of the Filter Node. The main

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difference between the two filters is that the Strata filter works on the entire terrain
while the Confined Strata filter can be restricted to a specific altitude range.

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Apart from the stratification of the terrain, the Strata Filter provides a fascinating new
feature – terrain tilting. The filter tilts the entire terrain at the fractal level, which is
different from tilting the terrain by just rotating it along one axis. This will change the
shape of the terrain as can be seen above.

The realism factor provided by this specific feature is very important. In the real world,
so many terrains – especially desert mesas or large flat bedrock layers – are flat in
nature, but over millions of years they become tilted as one side sinks into the earth.
The picture below shows a perfect example of how a stratified terrain is often tilted.

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This setting is the intensity with which the stratification process is applied to the parent
fractal. Increasing it makes the terrain more stratified, while keeping the value low
makes more of the original fractal stay as it was without stratification. For most
purposes, values between 0.6 and 0.9 are best.

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In the preview, high values of this setting look as if the fractal image is being posterized
and contrasted. The actual effect is that the edge of a stratum is made sharp and it
abruptly drops to the next lower level. Recommended values for most purposes are
between 0.65 and 0.85. Too much Hardness will create artifacts and unrealistic shapes
in your strata.

This setting controls the thickness of a layer of rock in the strata, creating almost
‘sublevel strata’ in each stratum. Rock Layer Thickness is responsible for creating small
steps or terrace features in strata and between two strata transitions. However, if this
value is larger than the Layer Spacing (see below) it may be ignored. A good value for
this setting is between 0.2 and 0.6, depending on your Layer Spacing setting.
Alternatively if you are using very high Layer Spacing, choose values between 20% and
60% for the Rock Layer Thickness.

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The height or altitude of a stratum before the subsequent one is set with this value. In
other words, it divides up the terrain vertically into strata or ‘slices’. High values create
fewer strata (because of greater height of each stratum), while lower values create
more strata (because of the reduced height of each stratum allowing room for more
layers). For realistic results, a midlevel value of 0.6 to 1.5 is recommended, but the
actual settings needed may depend on your scene’s visual requirements.

The Plateau Filling controls the slope of the strata. Higher values ‘fill’ the top of strata
with sedimentary deposits, therefore controlling the slope by creating a range of
landslide style deposits that break the monotony of the sharp terrace style strata. Usage
values are completely arbitrary depending on your needs. However, for most situations
a value of 1 is generally recommended. Too high values will result in loss of the finer
features of stratification.

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To avoid too many sharp edges and jagged artifacts in your strata, Smooth Edges allows
you to do just what the name says – smooth the edges. Depending on your visual
requirements, a good amount of smoothing can add more realism since sharp edges in
the real world are eroded by water and/or wind erosion. Values of 0.05 to 0.45 are
usually enough.

Like with the Terrain Fractal, this controls the smallest amount of detail. The default
value of 0 means that the detail is almost infinite – the closer you zoom in, the more the
fractal will undergo iteration resulting in more detail. If you do not require too much
detail, higher values can be applied – especially useful for very far away terrains.

One of the most exciting new features in fractals is the Tilt in the Strata filters. The Tilt
Heading sets the direction towards which the strata will tilt the terrain.

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This setting is the angle at which the strata will tilt. At 0, the tilt is absolutely parallel to
the ground (no tilt) and at -89.9 or +89.9, it is almost vertical. Note that as we saw
earlier this is not a simple rotation but an actual tilt at the fractal production level which
causes the shape of the fractal itself to change according to the tilt.

The Tilt Offset can be used to fine tune the tilted strata in case you see features you may
want to avoid. Essentially, it shifts the stratification process “forward” or “backward”
along the Tilt Heading. Think of it as a water wave moving forward (or backward, to be a
little imaginative). This allows for a certain amount of tweaking of edges by offsetting
them to get or remove a certain feature.

This is a very case-specific setting and no ‘recommended values’ are applicable. It is best
to experiment with these settings to find the right values for each terrain.

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The Confined Strata Filter has two set of controls, the Stratification Altitude and the Tilt
Origin that are different from the normal Strata Filter.

The Origin setting can be used to define the location on your terrain where the tilt will
‘start’. This setting is relative to the center or origin of the fractal/terrain. The green line
in the image below shows the Origin when set to the ‘bottom left’ corner of the terrain.

These two settings decide the altitudes between which the stratification will be applied.
The orange lines show the range in the example image below. This is the only range of
the terrain that is stratified.

This setting represents the relative height where the fading of the stratified and normal
fractal output is merged. The higher you set the value, the smoother the transition will
be. However, high values may result in unrealistic results. The fade in/out range is
shown with blue lines (both above and below stratification) in the image below.

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One fractal is often not enough to give the terrain shape you want. By combining more
than one fractal in a Procedural Terrain you can easily achieve different effects such as
localized erosion, unique formations in only one sector of the terrain, or even lakes and
rivers that are created without affecting the rest of the terrain.

In the stratified desert terrain above, a Terrain Fractal is passed through a Strata Filter,
and then blended using a Combiner node with another Terrain Fractal with smaller
Feature values to create the minor details over the larger strata.

This Terrain Fractal creates the base shapes of the terrain with medium level distortions
and large formations using the Largest Feature. A “Flat Area” MetaNode is used to
flatten the central area of the fractal.

This largely distorted and ‘mangled’ looking Terrain Fractal adds almost random shapes.
They are called random only because they are different from the Base fractal.

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Both Terrain Fractals are passed through a Strata Filter (both Strata 1 and Strata 2 are
identical) to stratify the entire terrain. Large amounts of Plateau Filling are applied to
create believable stratifications rather than simple terraces.

The two Strata Filter results are passed through a Blender Node that uses the Add mode
to mix the two fractals using a ratio of 0.15, so most of the Terrain Base fractal is
preserved and only a small effect of the Terrain Overlay fractal is added to the mix.

This is a very small MetaScale and Largest Feature enabled Terrain Fractal with very
strong yet small distortions for adding superficial features to the terrain.

Another Blender node is used to mix the output of the previous blending with the
Terrain Sprinkles. This Blender also uses the Add mode, and mixes it with a 0.4 ratio. The
Terrain Sprinkles has a low Gain value, so a larger ratio is allowed as opposed to the
minor ratio in the previous blending.

Another example is this large terrain as seen from a very high altitude, that we first saw
in the Terrain Fractal section at the start of this chapter.

As mentioned before, the long ‘ground’ level is created using one fractal and the
mountainous areas by another.

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The Function here shows exactly how the terrain was made. Over the next pages we will
deconstruct this example and see how it was put together, and what each node does.

The long striations of the ‘ground’ fractal are caused by the strong Distortion value. They
are exaggerated in the fractal itself so that when it is blended with the ‘mountain’
fractal, the damped down version of this fractal will maintain the essential features
without losing them in the blending.

The solid mountainous formations are enhanced by the filter shown overlaid on the
settings. These formations exist as large separated entities as opposed to the joined
striations in the other fractal. This separation helps create a better blend.

Both terrain fractals are combined using a Blender node using the Blend mode, and a
ratio of 0.7071.

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Creating a planet scene in Vue can seem tough, but once you get a handle on the
Terrain Fractal, you can create some intensely creative terrains that encompass an
entire world by using just that one fractal.

This planet scene was created using a single Terrain Fractal shown below:

A terrain fractal with a very large MetaScale of 500000, Largest Features set to 150000
for giant mountains, and Roughness of 0.63 for creative shaping. Distortion was set to
0.57315 with a 4.0 value for Bump Surge to make the mountains seriously tall. Finally, a
Noise Variation Strength of 0.9 created large variations in the altitudes between
different levels of the terrain.

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One of the best advantages Procedural Terrains give you over standard terrains is the
ability to create as many variations based on the same fractal.

To do this, all you have to do is change the Origin value of your fractals that contribute
to the terrain shape. If your fractals draw upon a Seed node created by Vue, you can
change the origin values of all fractals drawing from that Seed node by changing the
Offset values in the Seed node. You can also change the individual fractal Origins to
achieve greater control over the shape.

Below are examples of 6 different terrains achieved from one fractal by changing the
Origin property.

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A single mountain or hill can be confining when trying to compose your scene. Having a
horizon is helpful in such cases, but you need the general terrain (not the mountain
itself) to extend into infinity in the horizon. The obvious solution here is to use an
Infinite Procedural Terrain. However, instead of using the same terrain and turning it
into an infinite terrain, it is much better and easier to combine it physically, not fractally,
with a new infinite terrain.

The key here is to use the same material (or a variation, if needed) on both terrains. If
your individual terrain has Zero-Edges turned on it will be better still as it will merge
easily with the infinite terrain.

Below are a few examples to illustrate this method:

As clearly visible in the image above, if your materials match the infinite and non-infinite
terrain will merge seamlessly.

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One of the most restrictive aspects of 3D terrains has been that all terrains are confined
to up-down topography only. Think of contour maps of a location. You can see the peaks
of a mountain and the flat areas near a lake but you cannot see caves, alcoves, arches,
natural bridges, and so on.

How can we create convincing digital images of nature if we cannot replicate such
common and beautiful natural phenomenon? Obviously, you could use a sculpting or
modeling software to create such objects but there would be certain disadvantages: the
detail would be fake-ish because it would be handmade rather than procedural; it would
be extremely time consuming; it would be extremely difficult, if not near impossible, to
create similar looking variations based on one object. The new terrain sculpting tools
are big step forward in this area but it is still limited by many of these same restrictions
along with some new ones.

I started experimenting with different techniques until I accidentally used Displacement

on a MetaBlob. This suddenly opened up new avenues for creating groundbreaking rock
formations. Thus were born HyperTerrains, a fractal modeling technique.

Three years after HyperTerrains were invented I started experimenting with “Mark III”
HyperTerrains. Instead of using displacement, a HyperTexture was used to create the
surface of the MetaBlobs. The idea was passed on to the creators of Vue and in the next
major release – Vue 9 – the new HyperBlob technology was introduced.

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The image below shows the basic HyperTerrain creation process – Primitive Geometry
becomes a MetaBlob, then the MetaBlob is displaced into a HyperTerrain using a fractal
function defining the sub-primitive shapes.

Let’s start by making our first HyperTerrain.

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To create a HyperTerrain we start out by defining our vague shape in the form of a
MetaBlob. In Vue, MetaBlobs are made from the Primitive Geometry offered in the
forms of Cube, Sphere, Cylinder, Cube, Cone, Pyramid, and Torus.

Now we convert into a MetaBlob using the MetaBlob button on the left toolbar.

The primitives will be used as an inner boundary instead of an exact shape as in the case
of a Boolean operation. While this may seem somewhat detrimental to the traditional
modeling method, it does serve a very important purpose. As with sculpting – digital or
traditional – first a working shape must be sculpted onto which several iterations of
details are carved. Similarly, this vague shape

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This is our basic shape. Think of it like a lump of clay that will be sculpted into a statue.

There is no limit to how many primitives you combine, but the better way to get more
detail and shape is to work on the Fractal Displacement rather than the primitive
geometry.

The next step to creating the natural details of the rock formation is to create the
Displacement Fractal for our MetaBlob. Using a Fractal for displacement has the great
advantage of making our HyperTerrain procedurally generated, giving us an infinite
amount of detail and creating an almost natural shape which we normally cannot do by
manual modeling.

In the Material Editor, go to the Bump tab and go to the Load Function dialog. To do
this, right-click the Bump thumbnail and select Load Function.

Since this is our first HyperTerrain we will use a Vue fractal that ships with the software
rather than making our own. Vue ships with some amazing fractals which may seem

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simple, but provide exquisitely detailed results. For our purposes, we will select the
fractal “Transformed Cristals”.

Now that the Fractal is loaded, let’s enhance the effect by setting the Bump Depth to
2.0, and checking on “Displacement Mapping”.

To preserve the shape of our displaced MetaBlob, let’s bake it by right-clicking the
object and selecting Bake to Polygons. In the dialog that shows up, drag the Bake Quality
to maximum. In Vue 7.5 and earlier versions you will reach near a million polygons,
while in Vue 8 and higher you can go to 4 million polygons. Click OK to bake the
MetaBlob into a solid polygonal object – our HyperTerrain.

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You can choose to leave the MetaBlob with live Displacement, but we will discuss that
technique in the next section.

Now that we have our HyperTerrain, we can load a new material without affecting the
displacement map. With a new material, this is what our finished HyperTerrain looks
like.

Displacement serves as the key function in the HyperTerrain creation process. This
section explores some of the aspects of Displacement you can apply using common
fractals found in Vue, as well as controlling the scale to create effective displacement
shapes.

Vue comes with several pre-built Fractals that provide excellent displacement for
HyperTerrains. In most situations you can use a single fractal from this library to create
your HyperTerrain. Other times, you can combine one or more fractals for more detailed
shapes, as we explore in the next exercise.

First, let’s explore some of better fractals from the Vue Library.

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A very common yet very powerful function that provides a sedimentary look that can be
applied to any type of rock formation ranging from rocks in a flowing stream to large
cliffs on the shore of an ocean or even large mountains in a jungle.

For tall HyperTerrains (i.e., where the height is far greater than the width/length of the
HyperTerrain) you may wish to use a less than equal value for the Z-axis of the
Bump/Displacement Function. For example, if your X and Y axes are 1.0, then use
something like 0.5 or 0.3 (depending on the height) for the Z axis.

Similar to the Sedimentary Rock Fractal, the Complex Sedimentary Rock fractal
combines several different sedimentary patterns into one giving off a sharper look.

This is ideal for large curving HyperTerrains, but the Scale has to be kept slightly large
otherwise the fractal may pinch and/or break the delicate features of the HyperTerrain.

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One of the most versatile fractals is the Lava Flow. It creates soft undulating flow blobs.
With strong Bump Depth, this can make for very interesting effects. This is perhaps my
most used Fractal.

This out-of-this-world fractal is useful for creating cave interiors or jagged rocks. It will
feature small craters and hard crevices.

This fractal provides better results on harder surfaces such as cubes, cylinders, and
pyramids rather than spheres, torii, or cones.

There is a small warning for using this fractal with large Bump Depth values when baking
as some of the sharper curves in this fractal can cause baking artifacts.

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Another versatile fractal, Transformed Cristals provides sharp, jagged edges suited for
rock formations or even entire mountains that seem to be jutting out of the earth.

Just like with the Sedimentary Fractal, using a non-uniform value for the Z-axis can
produce some interesting effects for tall HyperTerrains. Sometimes even shorter or
flatter HyperTerrains can get a better shape with such a non-uniform value.

With a versatile fractal like Transformed Cristals, you can try the same thing on the
other axes as well.

This fractal creates a veritable ecosystem like rock pitted surface on a HyperTerrain. At
large scales you can get unbelievable formations in the HyperTerrain.

If you are mixing fractals, consider using a 6 x 6 x 6 scaled version of this fractal to give
the overall shape while using the Asteroid or Lava Flow at 1 x 1 x 1 for detail.

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Just as the name suggests this is a quick rendering fractal useful for distant objects that
do not need too much detail.

Just by increasing the Bump Depth value, you can create pronounced shapes with this
fractal, which work well both for simple near-by objects as well as large distant objects.

Another fast rendering fractal, Grainy Blobs creates soft detailed rock features. Another
fractal you can consider using at a large scale for the shaping of the HyperTerrain.

A great combination is to use this for the base layer and add a new layer that additively
blends the Stones in Dirt or Lava Flow fractals with a smaller Function Size.

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Ultrasharp is an extremely rough and jagged fractal, which when used with care, can
create very interesting sharp HyperTerrains and hard cut rock formations.

Often, a fractal will create triangulation artifacts or bad spikes in your Displacement
process. There are two ways to solve this problem.

The first is to go inside your fractals and raise the Smallest Feature value. This will lessen
the smaller shapes being created by the fractal and remove most of the spikes and
polygonal artifacts.

The second method is specific to Vue 8 and higher only. In the Bump tab of the
Advanced Material Editor, you can use the Smoothing option in the Displacement
control group. Usually a smoothing value of 20% is more than enough, as larger values
may take away detail from your fractal output.

This is the most critical thing to look into when a HyperTerrain does not displace or bake
as it should. For example when you see too many spikes and jagged edges or if the
desired fractal shape does not appear at all, this is because of an incorrect Scale setting
of the displacement material.

Sometimes you may need to change the scale of the material – either globally (of the
entire material itself) or in part (of the Bump function or a Fractal inside it) – to get the
shape you want, you must also keep in mind these following caveats.

If the size of your MetaBlob is too small and the scale of the material is bigger (that may
happen even at Scale 1.0, relative to the size of the MetaBlob) then the fractal shape
applied may be so big that it will not show any particular effect on your MetaBlob. For
example, if the object is small than 3 cubic meters, this may happen.

On the other hand, if your MetaBlob is too big and the scale is too small for that
MetaBlob, then you will see too sharp edges, spikes, jagged edges, or a completely

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distorted displacement. For example, if your material Scale is 1.0 and the MetaBlob is
over 90 cubic meters.

The recommended method is to keep the scale of your MetaBlob primitives near the
default size that Vue sets during generation. If not for all primitives then at least the
major shape defining ones. This will apply the scale of 1.0 properly. The general
recommended range is between 1 to 9 cubic meters.

After you have baked the HyperTerrain, you can make it as large as you want.

In all the HyperTerrains shown in this book, the above technique was used so keep this
in mind as a benchmark when you make your own HyperTerrains.

Controlling the shape of a HyperTerrain can sometimes be a difficult task since the
entire object’s shape is being funneled through the rules of a fractal. However, you can
still achieve a broader degree of control by changing the material or displacement
fractal values of individual fractals.

The primitive that has a different material will blend its own material with the materials
of the closest neighbors it blobs with. This does not necessarily mean you should assign
a different material. While that is possible and can be desired in some cases, to achieve
finer control all you need to do is select the individual primitive or primitives and simply
edit their material.

The blending is governed by the primitives blobbing properties such as Intensity and
Envelope Distance.

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Overcomplicating the MetaBlob by using disharmonious fractals – where the fractal
shapes are starkly different – may cause strange artifacts to appear on the geometry. In
extreme cases, it will cause Vue to crash or run out of memory.

Adding an extra displacement layer on individual primitives in the MetaBlob is a viable

practice but must be handled with extreme care as it may cause disharmony in the
fractals as well.

One little known feature in creating MetaBlobs, and eventually in creating

HyperTerrains, is using the Subtractive effect in a MetaBlob primitive to create ‘holes’ in
your MetaBlob rather than adding a shape.

In the example below, a Sphere is selected and in the MetaBlob Options (Object > Edit
Object) window, the Subtractive mode is selected. Now the arch created by the Torus in
the MetaBlob is broken in the middle where the Subtractive sphere exists.

More examples are shown later in this section.

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If you want to achieve more detail than normal, you should consider not baking the
HyperTerrain but rather keeping the displacement live and then adding a layer or more
of materials on top of the base Displacement material.

The differences between a baked HyperTerrain and a HyperTerrain that uses live
displacement are shown below.

Baking Live Displacement

4 Million polygon limit Theoretically unlimited polygons

Faster renders, limited quality Slower renders, better quality

Easier management of visual Layered materials providing the visual

material when scaling them. material have to be managed in
Especially useful for using Mixed conjunction with the displacement
Materials. material layer.

Larger file size and slower loading Smaller file size and faster loading time,
time, very quick render buildup. render buildup takes longer.

Baked meshes are permanent. You Live displacement always allows editing
cannot go back and edit anything. any aspect of the mesh.

Same memory usage whether near Lower memory usage when distant from
or far from the camera. the camera.

Live Displacement previews will often look somewhat different from the actual
displacement. Use a Final quality render for testing Live Displacement.

Live Displacement HyperTerrains often come in handy when you are doing a close up
shot of a HyperTerrain and prefer to have more detail.

We will now explore the proper procedure for adding a new material layer to our live
displacement material (which for the sake of convenience will be referred to as the
Displacement Layer) while making sure that all the hard work and effort put into the
displacement fractal is not affected by our new material layers.

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Let’s start with this simple spherical MetaBlob with the Lava Flow displacement fractal
loaded. The Advanced Material Editor window and the viewport render show the state
of our material.

To add our new material, click the Add Layer button and load a new material: for
example, the Red-Brown Rock material in the Rocks category.

When we load this material, a new layer is added. But some Vue multi-layer material
defaults will affect our Displacement Layer, such as Alpha Boost, Highlights, and Bump.

By default, the Alpha Boost will not be at 100%. However, we need it to be at 100% so it
covers up our underlying Displacement Layer.

Next, we go to the Bumps tab and move the ‘Add Bumps to Underlying Layer’ slider
from Replace to Add (100%). Make sure Displacement is turned off on the new layer.

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The Environment settings also affect how our new layer is applied on the base layer. So
make sure all sliders are at their default values. Mainly, the Fuzziness sliders should all
be at 0 and the Slope and Altitude sliders should be at their minimum and maximum
values as shown in the screenshot below.

If you notice any strange artifacts in your renders, like too much shine, or unwanted
transparency, set all the unused sliders on Displacement Layer in the Transparency,
Shine, and Reflection tabs to 0 (or the appropriate minimum value).

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Procedural fractal modeling requires something that is not commonly practiced in the
3D world. It is a partnership with the fractal being applied and yourself, by accepting
“The Will of the Fractal”.

Because a fractal in Vue is more or less random, you are bound to end up with
something slightly different from what you originally intended. After creating over 2000
HyperTerrains of all shapes and sized, one conclusion I have reached is that you can
never really draw something on paper and expect to get the exact same from your
displaced MetaBlobs. Not without excessive amount of work – and even then it will still
not be EXACTLY the same.

This does not mean you won’t get a shape you are looking for. If your MetaBlobs are
perfectly created and placed, and the displacement fractal is well formed, you can get
excellent results. But no matter how hard you try, they won’t be truly “modeled” in the
traditional 3D sense. The fractal itself will create shapes and details you did not
anticipate or want.

To a new HyperTerrain modeler, this may seem like a problem or a restriction.

Personally, I’ve never experienced it as such. The perspective that has helped me create
truly wonderful HyperTerrains is to approach it with only a little planning and be ready
for a “fractal adventure”. By letting the random values in the different fractals surprise
me more often than not I get a rock formation that is better than what I was originally
hoping to create. It requires a little flexibility to shift your scene’s concept slightly
sometimes which may seem like a pain, but the results are always worth it.

The best advice I can give from my own personal experience is: learn the depths of the
fractals and their uniqueness, and that is the best way to achieve a greater degree of
control over the HyperTerrains.

And always remember, the MetaBlob only defines the boundaries. The actual
HyperTerrain is modeled in the displacement!

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A stack of 9 flattened Spheres with interlocking Cylinders at the base and top create this
fantasy rock monument. Spheres have a way of blobbing a little too much, so using a
Cylinder can help restraint the MetaBlob shape. However, it has to be used with care as
sometimes a bad “join” caused by the position of the Spheres near the Cylinder can tear
the mesh apart. In such cases, do some test renders by moving the Cylinder a bit in any
direction or by scaling it.

This scene uses only HyperTerrains to create the canyon these ruins are located in.
Unlike normal terrains, these are very useful for creating craggy vertical rock faces with
various protruding formations. There are three major HyperTerrains: the far cliff wall,
the cliff wall right behind and to the right of the ruins and the independent rock
formation in the sunlight. All were created using only Spheres with the Lava Flow fractal
displacement. QuadSpinner Mineral Infinity materials were used to smooth over and
hide jagged edges and broken polygons in these meshes. With a lot of grain in the
material the polygons are almost unnoticable.

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This is a simple scene of an old city courtyard. The subject of the render - simple
HyperTerrain – is made with 2 Cylinders, half of which is submerged in this scene, a
Cone for the central formation, and three rotated and stretched Spheres surrounding
the Cone. The Complex Sedimentary Fractal was used to bake this HyperTerrain. Thanks
to the blobbing of the MetaBlob spheres of alternating size, you can see some natural
rock-like stretched areas in the top half. It is often helpful to rely on the HyperTerrain’s
MetaBlobbing nature to create distortions. Experiment with various sized spheres by
keeping them barely in range so they blob together.

This scene uses a complex HyperTerrain as the main subject with normal terrains in the
background. The HyperTerrain is a live displacement version with a combination Grainy
and Terrain fractal providing the crumbling look and feel. A mixed Snow/Rock material
(which we will explore in greater detail in the Materials chapter) takes advantage of the
roughness to create a soft sprinkled effect for the snow. The material bump adds to the
underlying HyperTerrain displacement. This provides additional microscopic details that
add richness to the scene, although at the expense of increased render time.

The base HyperTerrain is made of a single Cylinder, a perfect example of my favorite

Vue expression that “the detail should be in the fractal, not the model.” Vue’s ability to
create extremely complex visuals using fractals often helps make objects become more
sophisticated than their base mesh may normally allow in any other 3D application.

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This scene comes from the 3D World Magazine (Issue #125, available at
www.3dworldmag.com) tutorial for creating a rich fantasy jungle. The HyperTerrain
pillars are all a single model rotated to look as if they are different.

These baked HyperTerrains are made from 6 spheres and 3 Cylinders (for the
outcrops/platforms). By rotating the Cylinder on an uneven axis (two axes rather than a
single one) and then stretching it vertically allows you to created knife-like shape the
normal Cylinder does not provide. This strong edge can be used to create platforms or
terraces in your HyperTerrain. A Sphere or two at the base or portion where the
Cylinder connects with the main MetaBlob helps ensure a smooth transition rather than
a torn mesh.

This scene contains two HyperTerrains, one far right in the distance, and one up close
with the platform supporting an EcoSystem. Both are the same HyperTerrain.

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A 3 Cylinder MetaBlob was subjected to extreme Voronoi fractal based displacement
with the Bump/Displacement Value being 32.00. The resulting HyperTerrain has strong
vertical cracks that portray a vertical cliff face often found in large canyons.

In the baking process, the polygon count (or Mesh Resolution) was kept intentionally
low (0.65 million polygons) so the mesh would have square-ish faces. For further
refinement, the Decimate function in the mesh was used to lower the mesh by 25,000
more polygons. This can often help create a blocky terrain.

These HyperTerrains were created using a single torus, several spheres and cubes on the
sides, and a large cylinder that used Subtraction on the bottom half of the MetaBlob.

Such creative negative blobbing can create very creative shapes.

Such an arch can be combined with other HyperTerrains or embedded into a terrain.
Refer to the next section for more information on this technique.

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A powerful Voronoi-based Function is used to create the displacement of the two
massive 2-sphere MetaBlob. The first HyperTerrain is the one in the foreground cradling
the tree, and the second is a vertical obelisk wedged into the mountain face behind.

These MetaBlobs were baked at 3.5 million polygons for extreme quality. Two level-of-
detail versions were created using the Decimate function (in the Edit Object dialog) to
bring down the polygon count to 2 million and 500,000 polygons each.

A strict ‘Displace Outwards Only’ option was chosen for these HyperTerrains, and the
Fractal used a strong 15.5 Gain to create the sharp cracks in the rock.

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A single cylinder was displaced with large scaled Square Samples and Crystals format
Variable Roughness Fractals, resulting in this strongly eroded limestone rock formation.
A compression on the Z-axis by making it less than the other two axes, caused the
stratification to occur strongly.

Another HyperTerrain made from a strong Voronoi fractal. In this case, not even a
MetaBlob was required. A single sphere (slightly squashed horizontally) had the same
Function from the previous example applied to it. The gain in this case was lower and
the ‘Displace Outwards Only’ option was disabled allowing for deeper cracks and
crevices to be designed.

Such individual rocks are great for monument style rock formations. They can often be
duplicated, rotated and placed overlapping each other to create interesting formations.

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We explored the integration of a standard terrain with an infinite terrain by using a
common material. The same is possible for HyperTerrains and HyperBlobs – between
themselves or different objects.

The key possibilities are:

 A HyperTerrain combined with another HyperTerrain

 A HyperBlob combined with another HyperBlob
 A HyperBlob combined with a HyperTerrain
 A HyperTerrain combined with a Standard/Procedural Terrain
 A HyperBlob combined with a Standard/Procedural Terrain

And so on.

The idea behind this is to combine different techniques to get terrain shapes that are
not possible by any single method alone. A good example of this is where a procedural
terrain with stratification is combined with a HyperTerrain that uses a Confined Strata
filter to stratify the bottom third of the HyperTerrain. This allows for a near seamless
shape merge when the HyperTerrain is simply position to overlap the procedural terrain.
The need to manually model the shape into the terrain is replaced by a more
manageable solution.

As with mixing Standard and Infinite terrains we saw in the previous chapter, the
materials have to be identical so the general coordinates of the fractal functions that
create the bump and color output merge seamlessly with the different objects.

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Three years after HyperTerrains were invented, the creators of Vue took an idea I had
for extending that process to create even more complex meshes. In the next major
release – Vue 9 – the new HyperBlob technology was introduced.

HyperBlobs are very similar to HyperTerrains, yet behave very differently. HyperTerrains
are shaped based on a displacement material on top of a MetaBlob and provide detailed
control over the shape. HyperBlobs are however made of a MetaBlob with a
HyperTexture material and the level of control is sacrificed a little to bring forward a
granular method of rock creation that has never been possible before in natural design
software.

To understand HyperBlobs, we must first talk about HyperTextures.

A HyperTexture is a volumetric material. Vue takes the MetaBlob and treats it as a three
dimensional boundary inside which a HyperTexture is “filled”. Imagine a blown up
balloon being filled with toothpaste.

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With HyperTerrains, the MetaBlob serves as a starting point rather than a limiting
boundary. When a displacement fractal gets intense enough, it goes beyond the
MetaBlob boundary. A HyperTexture will instead respect the boundary and stay with it.
Like the toothpaste, it will flatten itself to the shape of the balloon (boundary).

The fractal powering the HyperTexture creates small shapes by micro-displacement.

These micro-displacements help create complex shapes for which creating a manual
boundary like a HyperTerrain would be near impossible. For example, a typical piece of
large sandstone rock has lots of small perturbations on the surface. Modeling it by hand,
HyperTerrain fractal displacement, or otherwise is difficult. A HyperTexture can create
micro-displacement (as well as large displacement) that a normal displacement material
may not be able to.

The core area of a HyperBlob becomes so dense that it is completely solid. The rest of
the 3D space between that dense core and the boundary becomes variable in density –
changing from one place to the other based on the density fractal used to create the
HyperTexture.

While HyperTextures have been possible in Vue for several years, HyperBlobs adds a
dynamic new feature that saves a lot of time: baking.

HyperTextures take a long time to render, as well as have free floating pieces inside the
boundary where the boundary and density don’t harmonize to our needs. HyperBlob
technology shaves off these floating “particles” and bakes the HyperBlob into a mesh
dynamically during render. Unlike HyperTerrains, you get a real-time preview of the
mesh as well.

When baked, a HyperBlob renders quite a few times faster than a normal HyperTexture.

Since a HyperBlob is a dynamic baked mesh, unlike a normal HyperTexture object, you
can apply a displacement material on it for a far more complex object that possible by
any single technique.

Since HyperBlobs are based on the HyperTerrain technique, they are created in the
same manner. First, we create some basic primitive objects that will be converted to
MetaBlobs.

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A live, viewport preview of the HyperBlob lets you easily manage it in the scene and
work with creative composition much faster than with a HyperTerrain.

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Unlike HyperTerrains, HyperBlobs don’t need to be manually baked. Vue intelligently
bakes the mesh for you during the render process. Edit the HyperBlob to bring up the
HyperBlob options.

Just like a MetaBlob, individual primitives can have an additive or subtractive effect, as
well as variable intensities.

This is the mesh resolution used to limit the baking density. The higher the resolution,
the more quality and detail the HyperBlob will contain. But with complex HyperTextures
this can cause slowdowns in your render.

For test renders, the resolution can be temporarily lowered but beware of some shape
changes depending on the type of fractals used to create the HyperTexture density.

This option allows the mesh to be smoothed. The maximum angle works exactly like the
normal object smoothing available in Vue. A higher angle allows for stronger smoothing.

Unlike simple HyperTextures, a HyperBlob will shave off ‘free floating particles’ that are
often a side effect of HyperTextures.

A HyperBlob is baked right before rendering. By allowing Vue to cache the baked mesh,
the renders start faster. If you face problems updating the mesh, uncheck this option.

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HyperBlobs provide a unique procedural modeling method for creating both realistic
and fantastic shapes.

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HyperBlobs have a distinct advantage over HyperTerrains – their detail is much more
complex than what simple displacement can offer.

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Perhaps we shouldn’t say ‘the importance of materials’, we all know materials are
important in a 3D scene. Perhaps we should say ‘the importance of the right materials’.
Like bad lighting, a bad material can ruin your scene. The actual shape of any 3D object
is altered by the shape perception added by the material.

The most important step in a 3D artist’s learning is to start creating their own materials
from scratch. In other 3D applications, this step comes in early. But for Vue users, who
are given a large library of presets, this step often doesn’t come in time. This plateaus
the skills of the artist and reduces the creativity and uniqueness of the renders.

One reason Vue users often do not create their own materials, choosing to use presets
instead, is the fear of the complexity of the Function Editor. The Function Editor is
complex, no doubt, but it is not insurmountable. One of the major aspects of this
chapter is going to be learning about the SmartGraph Function Editor, how it works, why
you should use it, and to experience firsthand how easy it can be.

Creating properly designed, realistic materials adds yet another aspect of realism to
your scene. And because these are your own materials, created using your own unique
ideas, your scene will always look different from all those others that are using presets.

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The SmartGraph Function Editor is the heart of Vue. You simply cannot create
sophisticated, serious imagery without touching the Function Editor. However, a lot of
Vue users are confused or afraid of the Function Editor, deeming it complex and difficult
to master.

In truth, the Function Editor is simple to understand and use once you grasp the basic
tenets. The Function Editor depends mainly on a few fundamental elements: color,
grayscale values (numbers), filters, input, and output nodes. It is true that the Function
Editor is capable of creating extremely complex mathematical functions and processes
however our focus is going to be on creating materials and learning about the Function
Editor’s basics from that exercise.

Contrary to the highly technical outlook the Function Editor might bring out in our
minds, it actually depends a lot on imagination rather than technical knowledge. You do
need to understand what piece does what but combining those pieces into a
comprehensive, usable function requires imagination. You need to be able to visualize
something in your head first without working on any fractals.

Like any other aspect of Vue, or anything in any field of work, some people exhibit more
talent for one specific area than others. So do not let yourself be disheartened if the
Function Editor seems too complicated. Going to its deepest levels may require a good
grasp of logic and a somewhat warped sense of imagination, but the basics of the
Function Editor are approachable, learnable, and quite easily usable for anyone.

In all the years I have used Vue, I have never needed to go beyond the basic to medium
range of the Function Editor except for a few instances. That range can still give you
massive power to wield in creating your digital worlds.

The primary thing we will do in this chapter is learn about the Function Editor by
creating real-world projects like new materials. So let’s jump straight into creating our
first material.

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Let’s start by creating a simple sphere. It will have a default sand-like generic material.
Open the Advanced Material Editor. To enter the Function Editor, right-click any
spherical thumbnail in the Color, Bump, or Highlight tab and select Edit Function.

Since we are in the default material, you will see this function already laid out in front of
you. Select these three nodes – Color, Filter, and Constant - and delete them.

On the left toolbar, you will see the Fractal Node button. Click anywhere in the graph
area in the Function Editor and you will see a blank block highlighted with a red border.
Click the Add Fractal Node button.

By default this will create a Simple Repeater type fractal. We will explore other fractal
types shortly, but to show you how easy it is to create lifelike materials we will select
the Grainy Fractal.

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The Grainy Fractal is very closely related to the Terrain Fractal we saw in Chapter 4.
Unlike the Terrain Fractal which is built for generated large scale terrain, the Grainy
Fractal is designed to create realistic sand/grain/sediment patterns.

Let’s change the Origin of our Grainy Fractal to X: 45, Y: 90, Z: 250 to give it a little
uniqueness from the default Grainy Fractal. In fact, this is recommended for any fractal.

This should suffice for our basic material. Let’s drag the little blue arrow from the Bump
node as shown in the image and connect it to the underside the Fractal Node which will
be represented by a small blue circle when you drag the line. When you connect the
nodes, you will see a popup appear asking which output you want to use. Select
Altitude. (We will be looking at the Rough Areas output in a separate section later.)

The shape of the material is set, so now we need to add color.

To do this, select a blank space and click the Add Color Node icon. You will now have a
new Color Node with a gradient in it. This specific Color Node is called a Color Map. It
takes a fractal and distributes the gradient over that fractal pattern. Right-click the
gradient and select Load Color Map. Load the Rocks and Grass > Metallic Brown color
map preset.

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Connect the Output of the Color Map to the Color Output node as shown in the image.
When asked to select an option for the output during the connection, select Color
Output. Then connect the top input of the Color Map node to the Grainy Fractal. When
asked for the Output option, select Altitude.

Let’s click OK and go out of the Function Editor. This is what our material looks like.
Notice the fine grainy details and curving distortions in the preview.

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We chose to pass the color map and the bump map through the same fractal. This is
because in real life a color change in an object – rock in our case – is often created
through a change in the shape (and therefore a change in the intrinsic material). So
when we pass the color and the bump through the same fractal our object takes on
color changes in synchronicity with the shape changes in the bump.

In technical terms, the grayscale output created by the fractal is made up of numbers –
0.0 representing the black (lowest altitude), and 1.0 representing the white (highest
altitude), and the infinite number of grays by the infinite decimals between the two. The
gradient map is then divided into bits with the left side representing 0.0 and the right
side 1.0, with the colors in between representing the infinite decimals in between.
Finally, each color point from the color map is applied to the object using the grayscale
fractal output as a guide by painting each altitude decimal level with a corresponding
color from the gradient. The image above shows a rainbow gradient with blue
representing black and red representing white.

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If we were to swap out our color map with other maps, this is the kind of changes we
could see. You can see how the color maps are distributed over the fractals.

Working with different color maps is one of the easiest and best ways to create
variations of a single material – whether you change the entire map or tweak the colors.
It is always a good idea to save your custom color maps as you can often use them

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Now that you have seen the basics of the Function Editor, let’s dive a little deeper by
understanding a more complex method of creating materials by using filters, combining
different fractals and using variable properties.

In the Function Graph above, you will see five node types: a Color Map, four Fractals, a
Turbulence node, two Combiner nodes, and two filters.

Combiners are a simple node that takes two (or more) inputs and combine them using
one of several modes such as Blend, Add, Subtract, Max, Min, etc. We saw one use of
this in the Terrains and Rock Formations chapter when we combined two different
terrain fractals.

Filters are, in their simplest form, an X-Y axis graph that helps define the bias of the
input and applies it to the output. Sounds extremely boring and complicated, but in
essence it helps fine tune which parts of a color map or fractal gets more emphasis and

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which parts get less. We will explore these in detail with practical examples later. In
their more complex forms, Filters can create massive changes in a color map or fractal.

A Turbulence node is made for creating fractal based turbulence. It uses a fractal noise
to create a turbulence map that can be used instead of a normal fractal node. However,
the detail level is very low so it is not advisable for such usage. We will use it to help
modify our fractal nodes.

The purpose of our material is to show a rocky cliff surface with moss-like vegetation
growing on it. So let’s deconstruct our complex material.

This is perhaps the simplest part of our material. A color map made up of different
brown tones (mostly light colors) is mixed with a bit of green. Once the fractal was set
up, the colors were readjusted to make the peaking bits of the fractal turn green
representing our mossy vegetation. The rest of the colors create the rock.

A filter is added to the input coming from the combined fractals with this curve.

This biases the gradient to use some values more than others.

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This is the heart of our material. Notice in the function graph that the Turbulence node
feeds values to the side of the two variable roughness fractals rather than the top or
bottom as we saw in the other functions before. This is because many values in fractal
(or other) nodes can be variable, that is it can be a multi-value fed from another node
rather than just a simple constant value (a number, in most cases).

If you try to connect a non-compatible value, the “receiving circle” on the target node
becomes gray. This means you cannot connect the two.

However, for us the Turbulence node creates a basic turbulence which we connect to
the Origin of our Variable Roughness Fractals. The effect can be clearly seen in the
image below where the left images show the fractal without the Turbulence node
connection, and the right image with the connection.

Fractal 1 and 2, through the Advanced Turbulence node provide a horizontal and slightly
curving set of lines that create a sedimentary feel.

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A “Opposite (-X)” filter is added to the output of Fractal 1 – which acts as an Invert
function would on a bitmap – and passed on to the Creep In smoothness value of our
Voronoi-based Fractal #3, while a combiner node mixes the first two fractals along with
this third one. The reason for passing the inverted fractal output to another fractal and
then mixing that fractal with the original is to give it a sort of familiarity in the shape
output while still making the third fractal a bit more unique by passing on values from a
fractal rather than standard numbers.

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The fourth fractal, a Grainy Fractal, serves as the “natural noise” node. Instead of using a
standard noise node which creates a limited shape, this node gives us a more variable
and natural looking noise. The output from our other combiner and the Grainy Fractal is
combined using a new combiner that uses the “Multiply” mode.

This fractal output is passed on the Bump channel as well as the Color Map.

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Now let’s take a look at the output of our function graph in the form of the complete
material, as well as the material used in a scene.

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Traditionally, noise is just noise – a random sprinkling of dots to add a grainy feel to a
material. But nature often employs a different type of noise; a noise where large level
changes occur in the consistency of the dots.

Forget the shape of the rock in this picture but “thinking fractally” look at the color
changes that would be a noise-producing node in a fractal. It would have a large range
of inconsistency in the noise. The lower right, and the far left areas have darker patches
of dots which occur because of the change in the physical shape of the rock not the
basic material (sandstone) from which it is made.

This is why we use a Grainy Fractal node instead of a noise node for creating such visual
noise. The noise node can be instead used for providing connected values (like we did
for our Origin values in the previous section) since they are less memory hungry than a
Grainy Fractal.

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Often when you render your scene using a high-noise material you will feel the
bump/noise is overwhelming. Instead of removing or lowering the noise, one thing you
should try is rendering the scene at Broadcast or higher quality, or by increasing the
Texture Antialiasing in the Render Settings (see Appendix A). The real world has a LOT of
noise, and so to keep your renders real, you must have good amounts of noise in your
scene too. They can be softened to make your renders look cleaner, but it is important
for the sake of realism to keep the noise in the image.

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Sometimes if you increase the Scale of the entire material for the fractal shapes to grow
larger, the bumps start looking bad. Let’s define bad first: if your bump is strong enough
but the shape of the object (a sphere in this case) does not show that shape on its
edges, then the bump is bad.

If this starts happening, try lowering your bump value in large scale factors. For
example, if you changed the Scale from 1.00 to 20.00, lower your bump from 1.00 to
0.200. For a Scale change from 1.00 to 50.00, use 0.050 for the bump, and so on. There
is no fixed formula for this. Try different values until you find the right effect.

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Filters come in a variety of forms. The most basic form we see is the graph-based filter
which is available in almost all tabs of the Advanced Material Editor. The other types of
filters include Smooth Clip, Gaussian, Bias, etc. We covered the Recursive Strata Filters
in Chapter 4.

To understand how filters work, look at our Fractal-Color-Bump interaction.

We discussed in that example that a fractal output of altitude is basically a set of values
ranging from 0.0 to 1.0, including all the infinite decimals in between. This output is
visibly shown as black for 0.0 and white for 1.0, with infinite grays showing the decimals
in between.

In the default filter graph shown above (left), the left most side represents 0.0 and the
rightmost side represents 1.0. The systematic downward slope represents the decimal
values between the two.

If we changed the filter as shown above (right), values between 0.0 and 0.5 would be
normal, so would the values between 0.9 and 1.0, but the range between 0.5 and 0.9
would have a downward curve which means the “bright grays” in the altitude become a
little darker, resulting in a lower altitude.

Take a look at this fractal that creates wide Perlin noise. But the preview shows only
strong grooves instead of large terrain like features that we normally see in such a
fractal. Because the 0.0 to 0.4 and 0.6 to 1.0 ranges are very high, only the central
values are processed giving us the sedimentary groove shapes needed for our material.

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In this image above, you can see which portion of the altitude of the terrain is
represented by which part of the filter. The same applies to any fractal or Color map
(Refer back to the Fractal-Color-Bump section for information on how a fractal interacts
with a Color map) with a 0.0 to 1.0 distribution of values across every type of node.

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Taking our fractal and filter from the example we just saw, let’s see how different filters
change our fractal output.

In Filter 1, the default filter, the output is

untouched.

In Filter 2, we create our sedimentary

grooves by using only the middle range
values.

In Filter 3, we create a mesa effect by

flattening the low-range values, creating a
sharp jump in the values right after the
mid-range, and flattening the high-range
values.

In Filter 4, we create a very smooth eased

curve where low and middle range values
are lowered and the high range values get
a gentle boost with still lower than
normal values when compared to the
default.

In Filter 5, we create a strong middle

range mesa with sharp drops in values
outside of the middle range that create
sharp hardness in the fractal shape
output.

Filters are useful because they let you adjust (or literally filter) values provided by a
fractal without having to change the fractal itself. For example, in a terrain if the lowest
areas have too much noise, then using a filter like the one in example #4 above would
smooth them out.

You are never limited to one filter either. You can use multiple filters as we will soon see
in our materials in the following section. The more creatively you think, the more
powerful your filters’ usage can be.

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The complete list of fractals available in Vue, and their potential uses, is so large that we
would require a separate book for that. However, we will touch upon some of the more
useful ones. Except for the first two samples, the renders shown use a Variable
Roughness fractal.

This is one of the most useful fractals. At its most basic usage, it can create a varied
range of noise and grit for your rock materials. At a higher usage level it can create large
terrain-like noise without using too much memory.

With a higher Smallest Feature value, you can tune out the excess noise and create
some very interesting realistic rock-based shapes.

This is the ‘big brother’ of the Grainy Fractal. It takes the rock-like realistic shapes and
creates them on a larger scale.

Just like the Grainy fractal, the Terrain Fractal features a distortion effect that can be
smoothly controlled to give you large sweeping shapes that are realistic enough to use

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on terrains and rocks, and yet organic enough when given a higher value that they can
be used on other surfaces too.

One of the most commonly visible fractals in nature – especially in rocks – is the Voronoi
fractal. In a “hard” form it looks like multi-faceted shapes joined at the sides. With the
softness available in this fractal in Vue, they can help you create the perfect rocks and
even rock cracks.

This fractal can create small rock fields or large rocks with massive cracked surface
features depending on the size and roughness used.

By itself this fractal doesn’t look too impressive, but when combined with a rough
fractal like Voronoi or Grainy, it can create very realistic shapes.

It is always a good idea to use filters or high roughness to adjust the shapes of this
fractal so they do not look too geometric.

When overlaid on another fractal like Voronoi, it adds different yet permeable shapes
that result in a unique, life like pattern.

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Another fractal that by itself may look too geometrical, but when combined with a
rough fractal, it can create realistic wide range cracks and surface variations all along the
material.

It is advisable to use a Combiner or Blender node to mix this with another fractal so this
fractal appears only in some parts of the entire surface rather than all over the surface
as that may look too systematic.

A relative of the Clumps fractal, the Cracks fractal has stronger crack-like features and
can be used to create strong gaps and lined cracks in stone materials.

Just like the Clumps fractal, it should be used sparingly by combining or blending it with
another fractal to avoid geometric patterns.

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When creating your materials, take the extra time to render it on more than one shape.
If you are relying on the Material Editor’s preview, try changing the Options to Cube,
Cylinder, etc. instead of Sphere. This will help you spot irregularities in the UV mapping
the fractal is producing.

UV or UVW mapping is a mathematical coordinate mapping technique. While UV

mapping is associated more with other 3D programs than Vue, it does happen in the
internal calculations of Vue render engine. Essentially, it is how an “unwrapped” map
(whether bitmap or fractal output) is wrapped around an object.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to create an empty scene and add a HyperTerrain to
it. Use the HyperTerrain as a testing object for the material. By their very nature,
HyperTerrains produce complicated UV output. So if the material looks good on a
HyperTerrain you can be sure that it will work well in most other places.

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A large array of simple and complex operations in the Function Editor is done via the
Math nodes.

You can use the Math Nodes to do mathematical calculations and operations such as
Arc Cosine, Sine, Floor, Multiply, etc. You can also invert values with the Invert node. In
practical terms, the Invert Node would have the same effect as an Opposite (-X) Filter.

One of the most useful Math nodes is the conversion nodes. For example, if you have a
4 Color Variation MetaNode creating color, and you want the same pattern for your
bump you would need to use a Color to Brightness conversion math node to convert the
color output (green) to altitude or brightness (blue) to pass it on to the Bump channel.

Other conversion operations include RGB and HLS (Hue-Luminosity-Saturation), as well

as Vector to Color. The latter is useful for taking input such as Slope, Height, etc. and
performing color changing operations based on those values.

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The more seemingly complex category of the Math nodes is Vector Operations. This
category contains nodes that allow you to take vector input such as Position or Normal,
and perform various operations on it. For example, if you want an additional 10 degrees
on a certain axis more than being provided by a certain node or other input from the
scene, then you can take the Orientation Rotation math vector node and offset the
additional degrees needed on whichever axis you would like to. The output of these
nodes is Vector so you can perform multiple operations if needed.

These nodes require an in-depth analysis with detailed examples to be understood.

Unfortunately, this falls out of the scope of this particular book.

One of the advanced features of the Function Editor is to allow the output of a node in
one function to be access outside that function by another function that is completely
separate from the first function. This is known as an External Dependency.

Let’s follow a simple example to understand how it works.

In this image, you can see the function that creates a Procedural Terrain. The Terrain
Fractal that creates the terrain has two types of outputs – “altitude” and “rough areas”.
We are going to take the second output, Rough Areas, and use it in a mixed material to
distributed two materials.

Once you have the node, connect its input to the Terrain Fractal output. Select Rough
Areas when asked to select an output.

The External Dependency node can be named for clarity. We will call it Rough Output.

Click OK and close the Function Editor.

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We will use a Mixed Material for the Terrain which has a flat gray material mixed with
the Basic Red material so we can see the exact areas affected by our Dependency
Property.

Now, we go into the Distribution Function and create an Input Node called External
Dependency. In the node, you can select the External Dependency as shown in the
image. We connect the output of our Dependency node to the Distribution input.

The clear effect of the distribution can be seen in this completed render.

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Similarly, you can use External Dependencies to use any numeric value, fractal output,
or any values provided by a node in the graph in one object and use it in another
object’s graph.

Applying the same material to multiple objects – especially similar or duplicated objects
– can be a serious detriment to the realism of your scene. To avoid a tiling or patterning
effect, try creating material variations.

This is easier than it seems. Like the Origin property of a Fractal node, all Vue materials
themselves have an Origin property. It can be found in the Effects tab of the Advanced
Material Editor in the form of three numeric inputs for X, Y, and Z axes.

By changing these values, you essentially offset the surface map of the material by these
new coordinates. Since Vue fractals create infinitely large maps, you can enter any
random (or planned) values in these three input fields and your material will look
different on each object.

The image here uses the same material on four different spheres, but unique Origin
coordinates are entered to create completely different material features.

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Practical application is perhaps one of the best learning resources. To understand the
Function Editor and the process of building both simple and complex materials, we will
explore some common material scenarios and explore their finer points in detail.

It may sound like a joke, but excelling in the Function Editor often requires you to warp
the way you think. One Vue artist, an editor on this book in fact, commented that “You
cannot just think outside-the-box. You have to burn the box and throw it away, and
never, ever think inside the box ever again.”

Nothing in the Function Editor is set by any rules. The only rules you have to follow is
that you cannot force a vector input into a bitmap, an RGB input into an altitude output,
and so on. Other than that you are only limited by your imagination.

In the following examples, you will see some nodes or settings that may make you
wonder how they were thought up. Some were created accidentally which led to
understanding a new way of doing that particular thing, others were found by
experimentation, others still by trial and error.

As with everything else about Vue, experimentation is the key to greater knowledge.

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While seemingly complex, this is a fairly straightforward material.

The color and bump shapes are mostly different except for some slight blending using
the Blender node to combine the color producing Fast Perlin Fractal and the Variable
Roughness Fractal that creates the overall splotches for the Highlight. The Bump
producing Fractal is passed through two filters – the Opposite (-X) filter which inverts
the fractal output so it creates grooves or carved areas instead of raised areas, and an
Offset (X + a) filter that deepens the intensity of the fractal output. The same process is
repeated for the “splotch” fractal for the Highlight and Color, with the addition of a filter
that adds contrast to the output. These fractals use a Turbulence node for their Origin to
give it uniqueness.

The Bump fractals are combined and passed on to the Bump channel.

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A Fast Perlin Fractal powers two Linear Interpolation color nodes providing ranges of
dark grays and light browns to the final Linear Interpolation color node as Color 1 and
Color 2 inputs. When you can define only a single color in such a Color Node, you can
use other Linear Interpolation nodes to combine two colors and pass the range of that
color into the final node, giving you a larger array of color variation than the two
individual colors you would normally be able to specify.

The final color node also uses the blended Fast Perlin and Variable Roughness discussed
in the second paragraph above as the fractal input to distribute the interpolated color
values over.

The resulting material is a soft, time-eroded rock suitable for cliff faces, sea shore rocks,
or even river banks.

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This is a deceptively simple material. The “Transformed Cristals” fractal is loaded in the
Bump channel and two different Color Maps are blended into the Color channel.

One Color Map uses the Transformed Cristals fractal input, and the other uses a highly
distorted Grainy Fractal. Displacement is turned on. The combination of these maps is
more powerful than using just a single one as it is funneled through a fractal.

Half of the color is the same pattern as the bump so it provides familiarity in the
material shape, yet the other half sweep colors over the bump creating separate
patterning which is more lifelike.

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This is an extremely simple distant grasslands material. Its function uses the Color-
Brightness Variation color node to use a single color to create varied color patches in the
same family. A grainy fractal with a filter to control Brightness and Contrast is used to
create the Bump.

The output given to the Bump channel is also given to the Brightness correction Color
node to adjust the output of the Color Map to match the Bump to an extent.

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In this snow covered rock material, there are three key things: the distribution, the
environmental influence, and the mixing method. The snow is the simple Snow Layer
found in the Vue Layers materials, the rock is a QuadSpinner Mineral Infinity material.

The Distribution is based on a fractal. Personally, I always prefer to use a Grainy or

Terrain Fractal, but for distant objects a simple fractal would do just as well. In this case,
we are using the Grainy Blobs Fractal Preset. The difference of using a fractal versus not
using one (which some Vue users often do) can be seen clearly in the images comparing
the two methods below.

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By using a distribution function, you get a little unevenness that looks more natural than
a flat line where the distribution parts. This becomes more important when you have a
gentle sloping terrain without many crags. Experiment with different fractals (or even
Fractal presets) to get the best look for your scene.

The Material Mixing Method of the Mixed Material is set to Full Blend (Cubic Bumps).
This instructs Vue to combine the bumps of both materials. In the right image in the
comparison above you can see the rock bump edges bleeding into the snow layer.

Finally, below you can see the Influence of Environment settings used to have our snow
stay on flat surfaces while steep slopes expose the bare rock.

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The amount of detail on this material creates an image of an extremely complex
function in our minds. But that is far from true. The power of realism is often found in
simplicity. The function editor does not really require complex graphs, but rather
complex thinking to create good results. And this material is a study in simplicity.

This material is powered by three fractals and two color nodes.

The first fractal is a Simple Fractal using the Voronoi pattern. This creates the “rocks” in
our material. The second fractal is a highly distorted Grainy Fractal which creates the
“sand” in the material. The third fractal is a Variable Roughness Fractal using the Perlin
pattern that creates the flaking/crusting effect in the sand areas giving it a sandstone
effect.

The Voronoi fractal is passed through several filters to remove the excess lower areas of
the output and creating only the “stone” shapes we need. Mainly, brightness-contrast
control is used for this. This fractal is combined with the Perlin fractal using a Blender
with the Max blending mode. Another Brightness-Contrast filter stabilizes the output.

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This output is passed on to the Color Map that uses a soft cream color and a medium
brown that creates the rock-sand colors for the overall material. The output is also
passed on to another Blender node which uses the Max blending mode as well. The
Blender mixes this output with the Grainy Fractal with a bias towards the Voronoi than
the Grainy fractal. The combined output is passed on to both the Bump and
Displacement outputs.

A separate color map with soft sandy colors has the Grainy Filter passed as the input.
This creates the soft swishes in the sand. The two color maps are mixed using a
“Multiply” combiner.

The result is a rocky material with big rock clusters protruding from flat stone and sand.

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Sometimes the simplest of materials require a complex function to achieve a high level
of realism. For this sand material, we are going to use several different types of Noise
nodes and two fractals with the goal of creating realistic sand that has cresses and
windswept curves which can be used on large scale terrains.

The function for this material starts with a Noise node which uses the Water Wave Math
Pattern with a Simple Turbulence node providing the Origin which increases the
amplitude and repeating of the noise node. The output is filtered to add more
brightness resulting in larger shapes. It is combined with a Basic Repeater that uses very
small scale Perlin Noise.

This is the ‘grain’ feature of the sand. The combined output is blended with a larger
scale Terrain Fractal with a very high distortion to create the windswept sand features.
The bias in the Blender is of 0.89 towards the Terrain Fractal.

The color is created by a very low-contrast Color Map using 3 sand colors with a Linear
Noise node as the input.

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The color map is then output to a HLS (Hue-Luminosity-Saturation) Shift node with two
new Linear Noise nodes providing the Luminosity and Saturation shifts.

Because of such large scale color and bump features, we have a sand material that is
more realistic than a simple patterning material which would look tiled from a distance.

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This material is one of the easiest and simplest to create. It uses a single MetaNode –
the 4 Color Variations – available in the Color nodes and a single Grainy Fractal with
default settings for the bump.

Finally, a simple color correction in the Color Tab shifts the entire brown-stone look to a
soft, yellow mineral deposit feeling.

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This is the same material we encountered in the MetaClouds section of Chapter 3. By
changing the density of this MetaCloud material from 43% as shown in the first image to
a very low 9% creates this soft, windblown dust as seen in the second image.

By placing several, small scale simple MetaCloud objects between mountains or even
smaller objects like architecture can create a dusty environment. The function of this
material is extremely simple: a single Perlin Noise > Gradient noise node with a Scale of
10 and everything else at default values.

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This damaged metal material has a very simple Grainy Fractal passed on the output to
the Color Map via a filter.

This filter lowers the “damage” area and the orange-brown color in the color map.

The Grainy Fractal is also passed on to the Bump and Reflection nodes, where different
settings and multiple filters are applied to fine tune the bump and reflection, as well as a
non-Function powered Variable Highlights setting.

The highlights have a custom intensity filter to create an uncommon type of shine that
further enhances the warped nature of the surface of the metal. The Highlight Color
uses a light blue color to avoid the overly glossy white highlights. Lastly, the Highlight

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Size is filtered to have a high 0.0 value and a low 1.0 value so the highlight is a little stark
and contrasted rather than too smooth.

The bump is a very low -0.150 so our surface looks like real metal. The filter applied to
the bump staggers the bump and cuts it off at the higher values to keep it from looking
too bumpy and blunt.

Finally, the a very high and somewhat blurred Reflections setting, coupled with a HDRI
map powered reflection through the Use Reflection Map option create the final touch of
realism for our material. The reflections are powered by our Grainy Fractal which also
creates the bump however you will notice that we use an extremely inverted filter for
Reflectivity. This creates reflections only in the fractally-low but by color the “high” or
metallic areas. The damaged looking areas which reside in the high ranges of the filter
are cut off completely. This filter has virtually the same effect as using the Invert or
Opposite (-X) filter node, however we get greater control over how the reflection is
distributed over our material’s surface.

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Backlighting is a very special material feature of Vue that often gets overlooked. By
using backlighting, you can have light penetrate the object to a degree and simulate
translucency.

Let’s take a look at the image above to understand a practical example of backlighting.
This render has two flat planes in front of a distorted cylinder. Both planes use the same
material, except the right plane has Backlighting set to 100%. You can see light
penetrate the second plane and even see the shadow thrown by the cylinder.

Unlike Subsurface Scattering, backlighting is much faster but provides a non-

sophisticated solution comparatively as it only lets light through the object in a virtual
sense. Subsurface Scattering actually calculates complex light bouncing patterns inside
the object and takes your specific absorption and refraction index settings into play,
while Backlighting only provides simple light penetration.

Backlighting can add realism to leaves, thin clothes, papers, flying light debris, and any
thin object that would have light penetrating its surface.

Sometimes you may wish to use external plants created in other 3D software or custom
modeled by yourself. Backlighting is an important aspect of materials in Vue that you
have to apply to keep the realism of the plants consistent with Vue’s own SolidGrowth
plants.

Backlighting, a property available in the Effects tab of the Advanced Material Editor,
processes light as it would appear coming through a very thin surface. This is not like

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Subsurface Scattering, as it is much simpler method and the resulting effect is not as
complex.

Leaves are thin enough for light to penetrate. So in the leaf material for your plants, you
may want to turn up the Backlighting from 50 to 100% depending on your needs, the
thickness of the leaf, and lighting conditions. You may also wish to turn on the One-
Sided option for the leaf material for faster processing.

Often overlooked as being too simple or too complex (depending on your point-of-
view), the Subsurface Scattering capabilities of Vue can allow you to add a rich layer of
detail to your renders.

In a “normal” material, a ray of light bounces off the object and the returning color
value of the surface is used to create the render. In a Subsurface Scattering (commonly
referred to as SS or SSS) material the ray of light partially bounces off the surface as it
normally would, but it also penetrates the surface creating a more complex and
physically realistic version of the material.

In the real world, a large number of objects have subsurface scattering of light - our skin,
wax, the rind of an orange, clothes, marble, Styrofoam, and so on. Almost all organic
matter (both flora and fauna) have a good degree of subsurface scattering. Subsurface
Scattering works by taking light and partially absorbing it into the object and scattering
the rest into the depths of that object.

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While still a basic feature in terms of depth, Subsurface Scattering in Vue is still powerful
enough to create some fantastic results.

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At the core of Vue, lies its best feature – EcoSystems. With a few clicks of the mouse,
you can grow an entire tropical jungle, or a coniferous forest, or a pile of rocks, or even
a street full of cars!

EcoSystems are one of the things that all Vue users are familiar with; and often because
of the ease by which you can create extensive EcoSystems they can be taken for
granted.

This technology, when used with a little finesse, can create breathtaking vistas that can
rival an actual photograph. But the finesse can often be elusive. There are certain
techniques that will help you as you experiment with different EcoSystems.

In this chapter, we will cover techniques that can apply to most types of vegetation and
can ease the load of adding millions of objects (and billions of polygons) to your scenes.

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Do you use Standard EcoSystems or go with Dynamic EcoSystems? In some Vue circles,
the choice becomes an either/or choice, but in reality they go hand in hand. The answer
to the question comes by asking another question: what is the purpose of this
EcoSystem? The choice should be made on the requirements of the scene and what the
hardware is capable of.

Standard Dynamic
Placement Very precise. Sometimes quirky.
Memory Extremely high for large Uniform. Memory consumption is
Consumption densities; affordable for smaller distributed to each piece being
terrains/objects. rendered, regardless of size.
Rendering Does not require dynamic Ramp up time to render very slow for
Speed population and repopulation large EcoSystems as instances need to
during render time resulting in be populated repeatedly.
faster renders.
Instance Limited by hardware. RAM/CPU Unlimited. Renders may slow down for
Capacity for rendering, GPU for viewport extremely large EcoSystems but
display. capacity does not get limited by
hardware.
File Size Enlarges by number of Remains the same regardless of
instances populated. instances. (Except if preview instances
are stored)

So again, depending on what your requirements are, you may choose to use either type
of EcoSystem population. Personally, if I have enough hardware to handle it, I will
choose Standard EcoSystems because of their fast response time when performing lots
of quick renders. And sometimes, I use a mix of both population types based on the
work at hand. In the following pages we will explore several scenarios and how to use
both types of population in them.

As someone coming from a background in old school 3D (since DOS, I’m sad to say), the
ability to grow literally thousands and thousands of objects makes me feel so powerful! I
know many people share this feeling with me where you just want to hit ‘Populate’ and
have everything be covered with vegetation.

Unfortunately, that is not how the real world often operates. Even the thick, densely
populated tropical rainforests have patterns of growth. If you follow these patterns,
your results will be even more realistic.

The main constraint types we will use are: foreign objects, other vegetation, altitude,
slope, and direction.

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Rocks, manmade objects, water surfaces, individual tree objects, and the like are all
considered foreign objects. Vegetation should not overlap with them. Depending on
what they are, the EcoSystem should stop a little far away or just at the edge.

For faster performance, large primitive objects places outside the camera field of view,
with Hide from Render checked, can prevent unnecessary population of non-dynamic
EcoSystems resulting in less instances in the scene.

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Sometimes you would have more than one layer of EcoSystem. For example, if you have
an EcoSystem of large rocks or trees, you may want a second layer of grass to grow
closer to these larger objects. The Affinity to Layer setting can help with this.

Repulsion from layer can do the opposite and make the instances grow farther away
from these objects.

The topmost (or higher) layer should be the one on which affinity or repulsion settings
are applied.

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Altitude and slope constraints are more or less self-explanatory. With these options you
can choose to control the altitude levels or slope range between which your EcoSystem
will be grown. Altitude can be chosen according to the object, the world, the material,
or relative to Sea level, while Slope can be chosen according to only the steepness of the
object itself, as judged by its current axis.

Slope’s two entry fields and sliders represent 0 degrees on the left side and 180 degrees
on the right side. Essentially, the left side represents how steep a slope can be to grow
EcoSystem instances and the right side represents the flatness of the slope. For
example, if you would like to have a flat terraced object or terrain, such as a cliff’s side,

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you may want grass to grow only on the flat ledges. To do this, you can set the Slope
levels between 160° and 180°.

Orientation allows you to choose the side of the object on which the EcoSystem
population will be favored. The intensity of this setting is controlled with the Orientation
Tightness, where 0% does not affect the EcoSystem at all and 100% strongly limits the
EcoSystem to the side selected by the Orientation angle.

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In nature, certain plants or trees may grow only where the sunlight falls, or the reverse
in case of a harsh climate like the desert. Sometimes you may want to have strict control
over where EcoSystems are populated or not for artistic reasons. In such situations,
Orientation and Orientation Tightness can be used for subtle, yet deep control over the
EcoSystem.

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For more advanced uses, you can tie the Variable Density to Slope, Altitude, and/or
Orientation nodes and manipulate them by using filters and fractals.

The Rock Ecosystem in the image above uses the standard Vue rocks, but uses a custom
material to add realism the default material does not provide.

Instead of creating a few large rocks, a lot of small rocks add a more believable quality
to your renders. Thanks to Dynamic Population, you can have as many rock instances as
you’d like.

Use a relatively low size. For the scene above, a size of 0.250 was used with a Variable
Size of 6.0 which created randomly sized rocks all over the surface.

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In addition to the size, in the Density tab of the EcoSystem in the Advanced Material
Editor, the Offset from Surface should be set to Proportional to Size of Instance, and the
Distance slider below it should be set to anywhere between -35% to -10%. This will
cause the rocks to go that much percent, based on their individual size, below the
surface. Rocks in real life are often partially embedded into the ground. The default Vue
rocks fail to give that appearance.

Normal distribution is ok for general situations, but sometimes you may want a little
randomness in the rocks. Using any simple fractal from the Fractals function category in
the Variable Density can help you achieve that look.

The image above uses the “Stones in Dirt” fractal.

If your terrain has medium or high level steep slopes, then using a Slope Range of 0.8 to
1.0 is recommended as slopes cannot contain rocks. If you must have rocks on the
slopes, decrease the Offset from Surface to -35% or higher. You can use multiple layers
of EcoSystems to have different rocks on the slope and the rest of the terrain.

By using the same method of creating more than one EcoSystem layer (this can be
simply done by creating an EcoSystem layer, then going back to the Underlying Material
and changing its Material Type to EcoSystem which adds another EcoSystem layer) you
can have different types of rocks. One layer can create sparse large rocks with smaller
rocks provided by another layer.

Using the EcoSystem Materials group, you can change the material of the rocks. But if
you would like to have multiple rock layers, then it is recommended that you change the
material of the first layer before adding the new layer. Otherwise both layers will use
the “Chipped Rock” material and changing that in the Materials Tab will change both.

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If you are using the same material for the terrain (or whatever object this EcoSystem is
applied to) and the rocks, you may wish to change the Origin of the material. Otherwise
you may see the same color variations on the rocks as well as the underlying terrain
which may hide some rocks or even make them look artificial, as if created by
displacement rather than actual object population.

In the same way as with multiple rock layers, creating a mixed EcoSystem of rocks and
grass is better when created using layers rather than adding both types of objects in the
EcoSystem.

The image above is created of a two layered EcoSystem. The first creates the small rocks
over the entire surface. The second uses the “Small Grassfield Plants 1” and “Carex”
SolidGrowth plants to create the minute grass, with a 0.005 presence of Long Grass to
create the occasional larger stalk of grass.

With Decay near Objects set for the grass, but not the rocks, the grass grows only on the
top of the terrain while the rocks are everywhere including inside the water.

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One of the easiest mistakes and one you will often see, in making a tropical EcoSystem is
to use the Coconut Palm only. Such scenes are very rare in real life and occur mostly on
very small islands or a section of a beach. Even in such a place, the density of the trees is
very low. Due to the nature of palm tree roots, you may find clumps of multiple trees,
but a large, dense forest of palm trees is not possible.

For creating a visually rich tropical EcoSystem, try the EcoSystem shown in this image.
By using the generic looking trees such as Sonneratia, Summer Cherry Tree, and Old
Eucalyptus along with the Coconut Tree gives off the effect of a realistic tropical
environment.

While technically the Eucalyptus may not usually grow in such an area, by lowering the
size to almost half, we can make it look a generic gnarled tree. Pay attention to the
ratios used for the trees.

The Coconut Tree ratio is particularly very low. The resulting distribution of the trees is
quite dramatic looking and visually realistic.

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In the real world, not all trees are green and perfect – in any environment, especially
densely packed ones – there are always dead or dying trees. By adding at least a single
such tree species in your EcoSystem, you can lift the level of realism in your render.

In this scene above, we have a large northern temperate environment with large
broadleaf (Lime and Ash) trees, we have added a ‘dead tree’ species with only 0.4
Presence. This peppers our scene with a few random dead trees.

This can be done for any type of EcoSystem as Vue has a large dead tree collection.

Try experimenting with different tree types, or if you feel ambitious, try modifying these
existing types to be more scraggly and use your own new tree species in EcoSystems.

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When your camera is hundreds of meters up in the sky, EcoSystems demand some
simplicity for easier rendering. However, simplicity does not have to mean sacrificing
quality.

This image shows us a typical single SolidGrowth tree EcoSystem on an island terrain. If
you look closely, the EcoSystem is too even. In the real world, such dense growth would
be uneven with trees of all shapes and sizes.

If you do not want to add more SolidGrowth plants in the EcoSystem, you can ‘cheat’ a
little by simply increasing the Maximum Size Variation in the Scaling & Orientation tab
of your EcoSystem to X: 1.0, Y: 1.0, and Z: 12.0 (or in that range between 8.0 to 16.0
based on the tree you are using). This will elongate the trees vertically. While obviously,
not something you should do for close-up EcoSystems, it does wonders for an aerial
view EcoSystem as follows.

If the size variations seem too random, a fractal can be used in Variable Scaling to create
a rhythm for the size changes in the EcoSystem instances.

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Multiple EcoSystem layers help manage your instances in an easier way while allowing
greater creativity. Densities can be changed per layer, and constraints can be altered to
suit that specific item’s needs.

To create a new EcoSystem, simply switch to the base material layer and click the
EcoSystem material type at the top of the Advanced Material Editor. This will create a
new EcoSystem layer.

One of the best things allowed by multiple EcoSystems layers is the option to have
certain layers to have Dynamic Population while others remain standard and/or
manually painted.

We will deconstruct the above image to understand the practice of such multilayered
EcoSystems.

With a strong density of 80% and Altitude range ending just near the edge of the water,
the Grass layer contributed the largest manually populated EcoSystem. Instead of
choosing the Decay near Foreign Objects option, a logical altitude restraint was used to
enable faster population. The Grass layer had 3 types of grass SolidGrowth plants.

Using the ‘Transformed Crystals’ fractal, two small SolidGrowth species of flowers were
grown sparsely (3% density) throughout the terrain. The fractal was assigned for
Variable Density, allowing a non-linear pattern for the flowers to grown on. The
different Altitude constraint was used to keep the flowers away from the water. This
allows the creation of a clean grass shoreline.

rd
The Lavender plant was created in a 3 party software and wasn’t SolidGrowth. It
required special rotation and size values than SolidGrowth plants, so it was kept on a
separate layer. The Variable Density fractal was a Round Samples fractal with high

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contrast. This created smaller patches of the plant, allowing them to grow in bunches
rather than distributed throughout the terrain.

This was the most intense and only Dynamic EcoSystem layer. The rocks were very
small, and used a custom material. Manual population was resulting in over 3 million
instances. The rocks had a variable size, but no other constraints except for altitude. By
unchecking Decay near Foreign Objects, the rocks created a massive ground cover. The
goal was to hint that the entire terrain, including the grassy bits as well as the river bed,
was covered in small pebbles.

By using an altitude constraint that overlapped slightly with the Grass layer, enough
rocks were placed in the foreground grass to hint to more rocks being present
everywhere else but the angle and grass being so thick that they weren’t visible. This
saved the software from rendering several other instances of the rocks had such a
restraint not been used.

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As the life-giving element of our planet, Water becomes an integral part of natural
design. With water, the object simulating the shape of the water and the surface
material simulating the feel of water becomes more closely interconnected than any
other object-material relationship.

In this short chapter, we will explore the main principles behind creating realistic water
surfaces in Vue. Whether your aim is to create calm lakefronts, or rolling oceanic
depths, a subtle combination of techniques presented here will enable you to get more
out of your waterscapes.

In Vue, creating Water Surfaces is the epitome of subtlety working over starkness.
Minor adjustments, made with precision, go a long way in creating excellent results. So
the best thing you can do to create great water scenes is to pay careful attention to
what each setting does, and change them in small increments to experiment with.

This applies especially to the water materials and the foam settings (both in the material
and the object itself), because it may seem tricky at first, but you can get fantastic
results once you get the hang of it.

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With Vue 7, a new feature was introduced where we could displace water surfaces.
Previously, they were just flat infinite planes with bumps simulating waves. The image
above shows the traditional water surface.

With displacement the actual surface itself becomes 3D while adding procedural detail
that is infinite in nature. This creates a very believable and realistic water surface. The
image below is the exact same scene as above, except the Displaced Water Surface
option is turned on.

Displaced Water Surfaces work well in both large panoramic images of open oceans and
close up scenes of a small bubbling brook or a calm lake.

In fact, when creating a calm waterscape, like a crystal clear lake, it gives you added
realism if you create displaced water surface while keeping the Overall Agitation to
minimal. Take a look at this example, the first image is a normal, non-displaced water
surface while the second image has displacement applied to the water surface.

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The tiny details of having physical waves – no matter how small or calm – is better than
the painted bump effect of a flat water surface. While not immediately visible to the
eye, the added effect enhances your scene’s realism factor greatly.

When you create animations, displaced water surfaces become highly important. When
the camera moves around the water and the water itself is moving, the difference
between a bump-painted water surface and a fully displaced water surface become
paramount!

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The material of your water surface is just as important, if not more so, than the shape of
the water. To achieve our goal of realistic water, we will create four different water
materials based on the Default Water material that comes with Vue. These four
materials will be Clear Water, Deep Ocean, Jungle River, and Muddy Water.

Before we create our water materials we will explore four cornerstone conditions to
consider when making water materials.

A common mistake seen in Vue renders is the transparency of the water is decreased
using the Fading Out controls and pushing the Clarity slider towards Murky. While this
control is useful to add murkiness to your water, forcing it to become too dark will make
you lose the other helpful properties of water – for example any terrains or objects
partially submerged in water will go completely invisible too quickly in the water rather
than softly fading out creating the proper illusion of depth.

Another important aspect of realistic water is reflected environments. Below the Fading
Out controls is a slider that controls reflectivity called Turn Reflective on Angle. This is
usually left at around 30%. However, most types of waters have this kind of (30%)
reflectivity when seen from higher altitudes close to 75º or higher! For a more realistic
“human eye level” reflectivity, you need to push this reflectivity to 65% to 90%.

This may sound like extreme amounts, but take a look at the example images below to
see the difference between the default water (left) and the high reflectivity water
(right).

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Due the nature of physics, reflectivity also relates to our eye the “liquidity” or viscosity
of the water. Therefore, more reflectivity results in our eye believing the water to be
fluid and flowing.

Never use Reflectivity itself to increase the reflections on the water as it is

indiscriminate and will not take wave angles into consideration. Always use Turn
Reflective on Angle.

The last aspect of realistic water materials we will look at is Highlight – the tiny specks of
light that shine on the water. Just as the reflections contribute to the fluidic look of
water surfaces, the highlights contribute to the same factor along with adding the
“surface level” illusion.

The surface level illusion is basically the appearance of having the shiny specular dots on
“top” along with the reflections and therefore enhancing the effect of depth visible in
the other submerged portions where objects are partially visible below the water.

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So the “surface level” and the “depth level” are contrasted in the mind of the viewer.
Additionally, the shine of the water has to be sharper.

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It is extremely important to consider what is going to go beneath your water surface.
Just like in real life, Vue will refract a distorted image of whatever is below the water
onto the upper surface. Even if using a flat surface below the water, make sure you have
a proper material applied to that surface.

The differences between a no-material (Default), bad material (Rocks > Sick rock), and
proper material (Rocks > Green-Brown Rock, Scale at 5.0) surface resting below the
water surface are shown below.

To clarify the difference between a bad material and a good material would be the
amount of noise it creates on the water surface. You can tone down the bump value on
the underlying material to lower the noise, in most cases.

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Like with all the other waters (except Deep Ocean water), I recommend not using the
Foam layer unless you absolutely have to. If you do not use it VERY carefully, the Foam
layer can make your entire scene look unreal.

So let’s start by creating a Water surface and editing the material.

First, we remove the Foam layer by changing the layer Alpha to -100. Then we go to the
Highlights tab and change the Highlights by pushing the Highlight Global Intensity and
Highlight Global Size to 100% for both. This will make our water shine brightly and make
it look sparkly as clear water should.

Next we go to the Transparency tab and change the Turn Reflective with Angle to 78%.

The rest of the settings can remain default. If you want the water to be more clear and
tropical, you can change the default Murkiness from 30% to 20%.

This is what our new Clear Water looks like:

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Exactly opposite of our Clear Water, is the Muddy Water.

To achieve a muddy look, we change the same settings as before. Start by removing the
Foam layer by setting the Alpha to -100.

This time, the Highlights need not be as high since mud infused water would not have
the same sparkle as clear water. By changing the Highlight Global Intensity to 2% and
the Highlight Global Size to 65%, we will achieve highlights similar to real muddy water.

In the Transparency tab, we make more changes than before. First we increase the
Murkiness from a Clear 30% to a Murky 63%. The Fade out Color becomes a RGB 95, 78,
47 and the Light Color changes to a RGB 210, 215, 195. The Turn Reflective with Angle
value is decreased to 40%, as muddy water will not be as reflective. You can turn this
down further if your scene requires even more “muddiness”.

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A Jungle River water material can be built upon the same principles of the Muddy
Water, however we will make slight changes to adapt our water for a jungle
environment.

Again, we remove the Foam layer by setting the Alpha to -100.

We change the Highlights Global Intensity and Size to 50% and 80% respectively
allowing for the slightly more shiny water found in a jungle river as it contains particular
matter just like muddy water, but because it is flowing it will have more crispness.

Next we go to the Transparency tab and change the Turn Reflective on Angle to 32% to
compensate for our ‘contaminated’ feel of the water. We further enhance that by
changing the Fade out Color to a RGB 62, 77, 50, and the Light Color to a RGB 166, 186,
117. Both of these colors are very green hued, allowing for the illusion that organic
matter such as dead leaves and other such things may be inside the water.

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Creating an Ocean Waterscape requires a strong material to properly portray the depths
of the water.

We will start by using the Default MetaWater, since we will require the Foam layer in
this material. All changes mentioned below are to the lower Water layer, and not the
Foam layer.

As before, we change the Highlights settings by sliding the Highlight Global Size to 80%
to accommodate the sun on the open ocean, and the Highlight Global Size to as well
80% to properly show the shine on the larger waves.

In the Transparency tab, we change the Clear-Murky setting to 50% to make the water
look deep and dark. The Fade out Color becomes a RGB 27, 41, 36, with a Light Color of
RGB 157, 216, 252, creating a murky feeling. We move the Turn Reflective with Angle
value to an even 80% to reflect either the open blue or gray overcast skies.

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A key element in creating waterscapes is perception. While we will delve deeper into
the topic of perception in the final chapter of this book, this specific case of perception
is too great to be kept apart from this chapter about creating realistic waterscapes.

Let’s start with a simple question: in 3D, when your camera is above the water not
showing the horizon, in fact not showing much of land at all, what makes your water a
river or an ocean?

The somewhat mysterious answer is: the parts of the scene not shown. The not so
mysterious principle behind it is the reflected world.

When you are looking straight into the water, whether you know it or not (as we
discussed briefly in chapter 1) your mind will perceive the reality of the scene by what is
reflected in the water. So you must create a “world” around and outside your
immediately visible field of view (i.e., off camera) that will be reflected onto your water
surface and thereby creating an expanded perception of the world.

Let’s take this image below as an example. It is a typical rock outcrop you may find in
any water body, whether a river or an ocean. However, this immediately looks like a
large water body like an ocean. We need to make it look as if it were part of a river.

We do this by adding a couple of terrains (or HyperTerrains in this case) just outside the
field of view of the camera. In the “Main Camera View” you can see the rocks just
outside the visible frame. These objects do not require too much resolution, just enough
shape that it will create unique reflections. You can use a primitive like a stretched cube,
but a terrain or HyperTerrain – even if it is a default Standard Terrain of a 256x256
resolution – will add realism a primitive cannot provide.

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In the case of our scene, a HyperTerrain is used that was decimated from 0.98 million
polygons to just a few thousand. It was then duplicated and rotated to create a larger
rock field to be reflected, giving a “cordoned off” feel. Giving your reflected world
proper materials is also important.

Now, let’s render our image.

The reflected “fence” effect of the rocks makes you believe this scene to exist inside a
contained or at least partially confined water body like a river. You can further enhance
this effect by bringing some of the rocks (or adding new rocks) closer and into the
camera view but only partially, hinting at a world larger than is seen.

Now, if we wanted to turn out scene into a lake, all we need to do is “lessen” the
reflections. Instead of our rock formations, let’s use a terrain – the Mt. Cornucopius
terrain, for example, from QuadSpinner that is available for free on Cornucopia3D. Of
course, any terrain will do if you are not looking for a very specific reflected shape.

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With this distant, large terrain looming over our water body, the subtle dark reflections
in the top of the frame create the illusion of a lake or a large contained water body.

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If you have a water filled scene with the sun reflecting highlights in the water, they may
often appear a little too bright and white. For a little added effect, you may want to
increase the Corona of the Sun.

Let’s look at an example. The image below shows our scene as it is. The Water surface
uses our Clear Water material from the previous section.

You will notice that the highlights are simple white specks. Let’s go to the Atmosphere
Editor and in the Sun tab, we will push the Corona from 20% to 55%.

In this render, you can see orange glowing edges in the highlights on the water. This is
caused by the increased Corona size of the Sun. Be careful, however, since the higher
Corona size will make the sun glow brighter and hotter. If the sun is visible in your
camera, it will make the sky a lot brighter. Experiment with different values to get the
right amount of glowing edges in the water while keeping your sky practical.

Additionally, if you want more – or rather wider – sun highlights in your scene, you can
increase the Anisotropy setting in the Highlights tab of the Advanced Material Editor. By
default, Anisotropy is set to 0%. Using Anisotropy requires a Displaced Water Surface.
Anisotropy scatters the highlights across the surface “horizontally”, but requires
curvature of some form on the object. A non-displaced Water Surface is a simple plane

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which does not have any curvature at all, so Anisotropy has to be set to 0% otherwise
the highlights will appear incorrectly.

The renders below show Anisotropy values of 20%, 60% and 100%.

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When a Water Surface is displaced, the angle used for the Wind Direction is 45°. If your
camera angle is pointing north (‘up’ in the Top View), this angle may not look pleasing.

Experiment with a variety of angles to get the right waves in conjunction with your
scene objects.

The images below show different water flows from the Wind Direction.

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Perception is at the heart of our goal of creating art that mimics nature. In this chapter
we will talk technique rather than technicality. We will apply the different aspects of
Vue we saw in all the previous chapters in real scene situations.

By changing certain minor aspects of your scene, or how a part of your scene is made
inside Vue, you can dramatically shift the perception of the viewer and make your scene
look so much more than what it is.

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A common phenomenon seen during twilight, in real life, is that the sky color near the
horizon and even the clouds take on a color that is different from the sky and the decay
– for example, pink or red. Technically, this is still part of the decay of light as it travels
through the various particle matter present in the atmosphere. However, duplicating
that in Vue is not as simple changing the decay color. Doing so may alter the light color
extensively and beyond the level of control.

The solution lies in nature itself. This extra light decay or diffraction is caused by an
extra or more potent component in the air – moisture, for example. In Vue, moisture in
the air is represented by the Fog controls in the Atmosphere Editor and dust or other
particles by the Haze controls. Therefore, by changing the color of Haze and Fog, we are
able to add such colored sunsets or sunrises in our scenes without affecting the actual
sunlight, sky, or decay and retaining greater control of the color shifts.

Let’s look at some examples.

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A common scenario found in 3D scenes would be of a canyon terrain, with the camera
stationed inside the canyon looking outside towards a larger landscape, or perhaps
another section of the canyon. The question is how to make the canyon seem deep
rather than a small gully. By changing the perception only slightly – and using only
shadows of offscreen objects – we can achieve this effect.

This image above shows our render as is. The image below shows the viewport where
we have now added a simple pair of cubes. These primitives are not visible in the
camera frame but cast shadows on the walls of the canyon that are visible in the frame.

As you can clearly see in the image above, this shadow technique shifts the perception
of the viewer into thinking this is a deep canyon.

To take this a step further, we add a flattened cube on top of the area where the
camera is. This blocks skylight and extends the depth of the canyon, making it seem
more like a cave.

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We talked about Light Decay in Chapter 2, and why it happens. It is common to find an
overuse of decay among newer Vue users. The effect looks good often, and is rightly
warranted in some situations, but generally we do not see much Decay except for times
of precipitation near dawn or dusk. High decay renders also convey a negative or
oppressive feeling.

Below we can see a comparison between a high decay and a normal decay sunset
setting.

Avoiding high decay lighting can help boost the realism of your scene.

Decay can be a subjective thing – both for artistic and realistic purposes – because the
light decay and its form vary in different parts of the world. The best way is to find
references for the type of environment (or the part of the world where that
environment might belong) and use a decay suitable for that place rather than what you
see in your own backyard.

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A render is never limited to just the objects in the camera frame. As we saw in the
previous sections, objects that are out of the frame can still affect the scene. One of the
best scenarios to use this technique for is to throw shadows of trees on to the edge
objects inside the frame to portray a larger grove of trees beyond.

In this image below, a simple resized cube (in the shape of a flat platform) has an
EcoSystem of a few HD Ash Trees that throw their shadows on the architecture.

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When we look at a natural landscape in real life, our depth perception is able to figure
out different layers. However, in a render you have to be very careful that your layers
are prominently displayed, otherwise the viewer may not be able to see everything in
the image properly.

We already saw how the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Spiral can help us create better
compositions. Similarly, by practicing an economy of ‘lines’ or overlapping areas can
help you compose your images in a more efficient and viewer-friendly manner.

To understand this concept, let’s look at a bad image. The render below, first of fails in
composition because there is no proper point of focus as our concentration is divided in
more than one areas which seem somewhat prominent but not exactly. Secondly, this
render has too many unclear areas of overlap. In this light, some of those layers become
too difficult to see.

Let’s analyze this image by drawing actual lines on the major overlap areas. The red lines
show where a large curve or depth occurs in the image creating a visual overlap zone.

On the far right, you can see that some of the elements are difficult to see because of
the lighting and the ambiguous layering of objects. The central area is relatively cleaner,
but the clarity is lost because of bad composition. The worst part of the image is the far
left where we have several HyperTerrains overlapping to create natural bridges and
large rock cliffs. While the objects themselves may be proper in form, their position and
lighting is extremely bad and the viewer is unable to clearly define ‘what is where’. This
creates a somewhat disorienting effect which will instantly lose the viewer’s attention.

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As with most of the other techniques and concepts presented in this chapter, this is not
a set rule. This is just common logic. By practicing this technique and counting these
‘overlapping lines’ in mind while making your scene, you can have a better final image.

Even if you have too many lines, making sure they do not overlap excessively you can be
assured a good render as illustrated in this desert scene below.

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Sunrise and sunset, unless it is an extremely clear atmosphere like that found after
rainfall, the sunlight is softer than at daytime. As a result, shadows are soft at twilight.

For a normal daytime scene soft shadows of 2.0 degrees may be enough, but for twilight
renders settings of 3.0 or higher may be required.

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The real world is full of rocks, stones, and pebbles. By adding a Rock EcoSystem as we
saw in Chapter 8, your terrains will come to life.

Adding rocks does not have to be large boulders. In fact, the Vue rocks are best suited
for small rocks and pebbles (HyperTerrains being the apt choice for creating boulders
and larger rock formations). Relying on Dynamic Population, you can add millions of
small stones and pebbles to enhance the beauty and realism of your renders.

By using Variable Density fractals, you can make them look even better with non-linear
population. The best fractals for this in the Vue library are the Alien Rock, Asteroid, Fast
Rock, and Lava Flow. Always remember to rescale the Function according to the size of
your terrain otherwise you may have too small a fractal shape and the populated rocks
may not look good.

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Nothing screams CGI as a lens flare. Lens flare is an optical defect (yes, it is not an
intentional effect for the most part!) created by multiple glass optics in the lens of a
camera. The only lens flare the human eye sees is the distorted glow rays which are
created like Godrays – by some object, often our own eyelashes, obstructing the
sunlight. The secondary rings and multiple circles are camera effects.

As a general rule of thumb, lens flare effects should be avoided completely when you
are aiming for realism in a 3D scene. If you must have a lens flare, it should be subtle
and not intense or glaring.

As mentioned before, a lens flare makes the image clearly identifiable as something
computer generated. Our goal is realism – to make the viewer think of the render as a
photograph rather than a CG image.

Look at the above image without (top) and with (bottom) lens flare. The bottom image
automatically looks ‘fake’ because of the sharpness and intensity of the lens flare.

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A common “mis-effect” often found in novice renders is bad depth-of-field. This rarely
happens when you use the in-built Depth-of-Field effect in Vue, but rather when a Z-
Depth map based post-process effect is applied in a paint program.

The source of the problem is not enough understanding how depth-of-field or depth
perception works in a camera. Let’s explore three common scenarios where depth-of-
field is prominently visible. If you apply the depth-of-field of one scenario to another, it
will alter the perception of your image. For example, if you use a Macro type depth-of-
field to a wide angle image, it will make your vista look miniature instead of adding a
feeling of depth.

In a macro (extreme close-up) situation, a very short and tightly focused focus range is
set. Often parts of the subject itself beyond the tight focus range are blurred as well.

Everything other than the subject itself is mostly blurred as well. Because of the high
amount of blurring, the distant objects are extremely blurred.

Macro depth-of-field is best used for character close-ups or showing small, detailed
objects. A bad depth-of-field in this range (for non-macro renders) can often make your
environments look excessively smaller than they should be.

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With a telephoto shot (70mm or more), the area between the camera and the subject,
as well as the areas beyond the subject towards the horizon (infinity) are blurred too.

The focus range can be flexible and not necessarily as tight as the Macro scenario.
However, remember that the greater the distance or Focal Range of the camera lens,
the higher the blurring or intensity of the depth-of-field.

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Telephoto depth-of-field is best used for showcasing a distant object, like a character or
tree on a hill, a ship on the open ocean, etc.

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Unlike the Telephoto and Macro scenarios, Normal Distance scenes have very little, if
any, depth-of-field.

Because of the nature of a wide lens, the camera does not distort the focus field and
only the extremely distant objects are blurred.

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In most cases, using no depth-of-field blurring or very little blurring is recommended.

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A ‘scale-less’ scene would be defined as a scene where the viewer is unable to figure out
the size of the terrains, objects, etc. in the scene. In 3D renders, the size is of objects is
relative unless they are compared to something of known size. Then the entire scene is
set into perspective for the viewer. For example, if you have a terrain-only scene like the
one shown below, you know that it is a large terrain but the exact size is not apparent.

We can easily add a human or a vehicle so as to show the scale of the scene. That would
be a problem in situations where you want a natural environment only. By adding a few
cleverly placed natural elements you can effortlessly show the scale. For this scene, we
will add a rock in the foreground and some dead grass.

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Creating black and white renders can be quite creative! However, the main concern
when creating monochromatic images is to create realistic color intensities in the
grayscale range.

A common practice is to excessively saturate, brighten, or change the color of the

materials in a way that they come out more starkly as required in the final black and
white image. The problem with this approach is that you are limited by your own
perception of the world as black-and-white. So if you cannot match the colors exactly, a
more seasoned artist, or someone with a better eye for monochromatic images may be
able to see the image as being unrealistic.

The obvious solution is to design the scene as if it were supposed to be rendered in

color. With this method, everything will be created to absolute realism and when the
image is finally converted to black and white, it will seem that much more realistic.

You can decrease the Saturation option in the Post Effects dialog to have black and
white previews of your render.

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There is a devious aspect of Vue that can ruin your scene. Vue is fun! Like a sketch artist
over-sketching, it is easy to add too much to a scene. Too many trees, too many
elements (We already talked about this in ‘Counting Lines’), or even wanting
unnecessary complexity where none is required.

Usually the best scenes you will see in Vue are very simple in nature. My personal
favorite (and possibly every Vue users’ favorite) is the example scene Cerro Verde by
Eran Dinur that you can find on the Vue disc. You will notice that the scene uses very
standard terrains. The placement of the terrains, the materials and EcoSystem, and the
lighting is what makes that deceptively simple scene look fantastic.

In the opposite effect, sometimes being able to have the ability to create an extremely
complex object or terrain in Vue can make us forget that so much complexity may not
be required. For example, if you have a distant standard terrain, then a 1024x1024
resolution may be enough. You need not go to 4096 x 4096. This will save render time
and file size. Similarly, just because a HyperTerrain can be made up to 4 million polygons
in density does not mean every HyperTerrain should be that complex. (On a side note, I
always save my MetaBlobs before baking – you can easily go back and bake a denser
model if needed) Most of the HyperTerrains you have seen in this book are around 1
million polygons.

All the resolution, polygons, and render time we save in these medium polycount
models can be put to better use – in materials! The complexity should be in the
material, not necessarily the model. Use more layers, more fractals, more details in your
material. This will paint over the seemingly low-polygon models and create striking
renders!

Let’s take a look at some examples. These not-so-high polygon density models use
materials to their advantage. Remember what we discussed in Chapter 4: Materials add
extra shape perception to all objects, changing how something appears completely.

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A procedural terrain was used to make this scene. However, since it was to be covered
in a dense tropical rainforest EcoSystem, it was converted to a 512x512 Standard
Terrain saving rendering time without loss of quality.

This extremely low resolution 1024 x 1024 Standard Terrain looks like a plastic model,
but when we add a complex eight layer material on it, it takes on a different look.

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Sometimes adding just a hint of plants can change the entire mood of the scene. Clearly,
adding plants suddenly to a scene may not be practical as it may affect the objects in the
scene. This is even more troublesome if the scene has been completed.

In such an event, you can add a very short (vertically squashed) terrain and place it just
outside of the camera frame at the bottom. An EcoSystem populated on this terrain
would be visible in the frame and create a sense of lushness in the scene. The image
below depicts such a situation.

Additionally, you can place an individual tree or shrub in a corner or elsewhere in the
scene to add the sense of vegetation existing all over the scene without actually having
to add an EcoSystem to the main scene elements.

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By default, Vue cameras have ‘Always Keep Level’ turned on. You can see this option in
the Object Properties panel as shown here.

When you uncheck this, you can rotate – or more specifically: roll – the camera. This can
help you create a diagonal horizon. Free rotating cameras can help you find creative
compositions. It can also help you overcome terrain ‘walls’ where you may want to
show objects behind the ‘wall’ in question (as seen in the second image below) without
sacrificing the view of the ‘wall’ itself.

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One of the biggest helpful features of having a slightly tilted camera is that it creates a
sense of “eye sight”. When we tilt our heads (which is a lot of the time!) our own
eyesight is not exactly leveled. Our brain processes the tilting of objects and
compensates for it. When you have a slightly (less than 15 degrees) tilted camera view
in your render, the brain will process the image similarly, which hints to our
subconscious that this might be a real view. And of course, it sets it apart from the
typical perfectly leveled renders out there.

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One of the most famous and useful concepts for artists is the Golden Section or Golden
Ratio. In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of
the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to (=) the ratio of the larger
quantity to the smaller one. That might sound a little technical, so let’s just take a look
at the Golden Section image below. In rough estimated terms, the image is divided into
1/3 and 2/3 portions, with the larger (2/3) portion divided again into 1/3 and 2/3, etc.

We will be using the Fibonacci Spiral to understand how to better compose images.
When you use this method to compose your images, the render automatically becomes
pleasing to the eye. Never underestimate the power of composition. A good image of
quality can look bad if it is not composed properly, and a low quality image can still look
good if it has a proper composition.

Artists through the ages have used the Golden Section to create masterpieces. Leonardo
Da Vinci made it very famous through his ‘Divine Proportion’ image.

If you apply the same principles from the start when create a new scene in Vue, you can
be assured to have a properly composed image. This can be done in multiple ways:
density, light/color, position of the main subject, or combinations thereof. Let’s see a
few examples to better understand this.

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This image features a barren landscape which is sparse when you look at the number of
elements. However, at the spiral point of the Golden Ratio, the density of the number of
elements becomes very strong. This automatically draws the eye to that specific point.
The main subject (the ruins) is also placed at the spiral core.

Conversely, in this image the main subject is in the center, which is generally not
advisable under the Golden Ratio rule, however we still the Golden Ratio effect
controlled by Light rather than the subject, which draws the attention to the main
subject without betraying the aesthetics of the composition. Sometimes the lighting can
be changed for better composition if the subject cannot be moved.

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In this image, the position of the main subject – a character – is placed at the spiral core
of the Golden Ratio. This leaves room for creative and non-Golden-Ratio composition of
the background, and still keeps the overall composition completely intact and attractive.

Finally, a centered image (top) compared to a Golden Ratio composition.

When dealing with multiple objects, the scene should be composed with care so that
they do not come across in a linear line. They should be juxtaposed like the rock
formation and the mountain in the image above. This can go a long way to achieving a
truly beautiful render.

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Often, after a render has been completed, you can try one very small but effective
method is to flip the rendered image horizontally. It may not always work, but
sometimes you may find a flipped version to be more aesthetically pleasing.

A case in point: the top image below was the actual render. It was flipped and published
as seen in the second image. The flipped image (bottom) resulted in better composition.

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Think of this as endurance training one goes through in a physical fitness regime. The
simple concept is: if you can get your render to look good at Preview Quality, it will
always look good at Final or higher quality. If we look at the physical training metaphor,
if you lift 40 kilos every day, picking up a box of 20 kilos looks very easy.

Of course, for details such as textures, or sampling the antialiasing of items in the scene,
a final quality render may be required. However keeping yourself restricted to a Preview
quality for renders will help you become stronger in both your Vue skills and general
artistic skills as well. If needed, try area renders of small portions to see how things
appear, but not for the entire scene unless absolutely necessary.

One of the biggest skills you will acquire (or enhance if you already possess it) is
approximation. You will be able to tell how something will look like in a final render by
just looking at a preview render. When you are short on time for urgent projects, it will
help you immensely. In general work, you will be able to cut down on your render time
by not having to do high quality renders.

The image below was rendered at Preview quality.

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Sometimes Vue users are afraid to make a seriously massive terrain, instead depending
on Aerial Perspective, vertical stretching, or some other aspect of Vue as a ‘crutch’ to
make the image look larger than it is.

However, if you truly want grandness to show in your image, make your terrain
extremely large – especially the far away terrains. Do not be afraid to move out of the
grid and circle “world” shown in the viewports.

For example, the image below has a 4 x 4 kilometer terrain in the foreground. The
background terrain is also 4 x 4 kilometers in the first image, but it does not look grand
enough. We resize it 8 x 8 kilometers and it achieves the sense of grandness that was
missing from the first image.

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In this image, a single terrain is sized to about 12km which would be a realistic size for
such a large landscape.

The same terrain in the foreground which is crisp and clear can also be seen curving out
into the background several kilometers away, accumulating haze and depth of
perception as it goes farther away from the camera.

There is simply no alternative to display grandness without making the terrain actually
grand itself.

If even after making your terrain several kilometers large, you still feel you are missing
depth then the Haze, Aerial Perspective, and Light Balance should be consulted and
tweaked as we discussed in Chapter 2.

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A mountain in Vue can be literally as large as you want it to be. With Procedural Terrains
you can have infinite amounts of detail no matter what size the terrain is. But
sometimes you may wish to show your terrains to be not simply large, but massive!

Creating a looming mountain is not too difficult. Let’s make one:

The screenshot above shows a standard ‘Peak’ preset style Procedural Terrain that has
been titled 20 degrees on the X axis (Pitch). It has been scaled and placed so that the
side edges are outside of the render frame. The top edge cuts off abruptly but since the
shape of the terrain has sharp ridges, it looks like part of the design.

If you are using EcoSystems, remember to populate it after you tilt the terrain otherwise
the environment factors may be slightly different and the population may not reflect
what you had intended.

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This technique works well if there is another foreground layer, like a HyperTerrain or
some other model that is the focus of the scene and is closer to the camera. Any minor
imperfections of our titled terrain can be safely ignored as the viewer will be too
focused on the foreground. Some minor depth-of-field, depending on the closer object’s
distance to the camera, can help overcome the imperfections of the background terrain
even more.

In this render you can see the effect of our titled terrain. While not a ‘physically
accurate’ terrain as the farther side is up in the air, but still a good backdrop!

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If you’d like the viewer to feel a stronger connection to the image they are looking at,
you might want to put your camera at Eye Level. This is usually somewhere between 1.5
to 3.0 meters from the ground.

This eye level placement helps create a sense of grandness for the scene. In real life, we
look at a tall building or a large mountain from the ground by looking up and that is
programmed into our brain as a sense of grandness. The same building or mountain
would not look as grand if you saw it from the air in an aircraft.

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One common trend you will see, especially in novice Vue renders, is to have a Sunset or
Sunrise position for the Sun and have it pointing straight at the camera. It is a common
misconception for novices to think having the Sun in the shot so starkly can make the
image look dramatic.

In reality, while this concept may work in certain scenarios, having the sun appear so
prominently in your images may make your gallery or portfolio appear too predictable
and mediocre.

Try experimenting with new Sunlight angles where the Sun isn’t visible in the frame. This
will help you grow your lighting skills and make your images more interesting.

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One way to quickly render images with low anti-aliasing and still retain good quality is to
resample the render to a lower size in a photo manipulation or paint program.

For example, if the desired final size is 2000 pixels wide, and the desired antialiasing is of
‘Broadcast’ quality then you would render using ‘Final’ quality render settings at 2500
pixels wide. The output should be downsampled to 2000 pixels. This will provide a good
enough quality of texture and object antialiasing.

This technique is useful for creating fast mockups for a project. The advantage comes
from the Final render quality which is faster to render than Broadcast since there is no
texture antialiasing taking place.

Below is a magnified quality comparison of a render created with the settings

mentioned above.

‘Extra’ resolution Final render (top left) magnified to 500% (top right), compared with
the downsampled version (bottom left) and magnified 500% (bottom right).

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When training or helping Vue users, a common complaint I’ve heard is “My render
didn’t turn out good, even though I rendered it at 4000 pixels and Ultra!”

While this is not a blanket rule that may apply to all scenes, it is a common enough
scenario in my experience: the problem here is overkill. A render will not look good just
because the render settings were pushed to the maximum and the resolution was
enlarged. It may look cleaner and sharper, but it will not make it more realistic.

The time and effort put into rendering at such extreme settings are possibly better
spent in creating richer materials, stronger atmospheres, and lots of testing of the light.
By reallocating energy into these tasks, the render will automatically become better –
no matter what render settings or resolution you use.

Also, keep in mind that the larger the output resolution the more mistakes or “CGI” will
be apparent in your render. If your resolution is large, then your fractals – both for
shaping terrains or HyperTerrains and for creating the materials – will need to have a
massive amount of complexity in them. Remember: the larger the output resolution, the
higher the required complexity.

Going to Ultra render settings is also not required all the time. In most cases, Broadcast
can suffice if you work hard on the actual content and quality of the scene elements.
Refer to the Appendix of this book for tips on how to better customize Render Settings
to save time while still achieving quality results.

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Here, we end our discussion and hit the render button.

You have just explored some of the most pivotal discoveries gained through several
thousand hours of experimentation in Vue and study in the field. These core concepts
can now be expanded upon by your own trials and research – whether through books,
photography, or nature herself.

Thank you for reading this book, and may your renders always be short! :)

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To achieve better results from Vue, sometimes it is required to go beyond the preset
render settings (Final, Broadcast, etc.) and try customizing Vue’s render settings. This is
often overlooked by many Vue users, resulting in subpar quality in their renders.
Sometimes the user will needlessly go to settings like Superior and Ultra, which may not
really be required for the scene as such results can be easily achieved by some minor
customization of the defaults.

Antialiasing is one basic area that needs customization for most scenarios. This is where
almost all detail calculations come from. In Vue the antialiasing is divided into two
categories: object antialiasing and texture antialiasing.

Object Antialiasing is for smoothing the edges of objects and the boundaries of
shadows. The higher the antialiasing the more soft and ‘integrated’ the edges appear,
and the shadows appear less grainy.

Texture Antialiasing goes beyond Object Antialiasing by super-sampling (simply put,

cleaning up and smoothing) both bitmaps and procedural textures. This is most effective
for cleaning up noise in textures. In Chapter 4, Materials and EcoSystems we saw details
on intentionally creating noise as the real world has a lot of noise and moiré. However,
to also keep the noise from looking jagged or pixelated, a good Texture Antialiasing
needs to be used.

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To enable custom settings, select ‘User Settings’ instead of one of the preset modes in
the Render Settings dialog. Use the Load User Settings button to load up the base
settings of any presets so you are not required to manually set everything.

Once you have loaded your base settings, you can click the ‘Edit’ button in Antialiasing.

You can choose between Optimized and Systematic antialiasing strategies.

This supersampling method works faster and is recommended for most situations. It will
intelligently decide which areas of your objects need antialiasing and to what degree.

This supersampling method does not use selective antialiasing, but instead will
supersample every single pixel in the render. Systematic antialiasing may provide
smoother results, but it will occupy more memory and take longer to render.

There are multiple anti-aliasing strategies you can call upon depending on your scene.

Depending on whether you are rendering a still shot or an animation, this will
automatically select Sharp or Soft respectively.

Crisp is the recommended and most accurate antialiasing strategy. It requires a lot of
antialiasing to remove the noise produced by this strategy; however the results are
most impressive.

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Sharp is best for producing stark details. It works like Crisp but produces less noise.

Soft is used for animations but can also prove useful for still renders. This is useful when
creating cloud renders where you may have too much noise which can be eliminated by
this antialiasing strategy.

Blurred is not widely used, but can be useful for certain render scenarios where you do
not require detail – like a distant background matte painting or skybox, for example.

Put simply, Subrays are the rays of light fired by the render through the light source (or
sources) – as they hit (or bounce around) objects, they calculate the color (and
subsequently, texture) of the object. Just like the resolution of an image, the higher the
number of rays, the better the quality of your render.

However, unlike an image’s resolution, Subrays are not a fixed number unless you
choose to manually force them.

These two sliders represent the minimum (or initial) number of Subrays and the
maximum number of Subrays. Initially, Vue will fire the “Minimum” amount of Subrays.
If the object’s antialiasing is not good enough with those initial rays, Vue will keep firing
Subrays until the quality improves, or it hits the Maximum number of Subrays allowed.

Do note that just because the Maximum is set to 1000, it does not mean it will send
1000 Subrays. If 4 Subrays suffice, Vue will not fire more than that.

While Vue’s renderer is able to decide intelligently whether more Subrays are needed or
not, the bias for that calculation is controlled by the Quality Threshold. The higher the
Quality Threshold, the more Vue is compelled to send higher numbers of Subrays.

Remember, if you are increasing the Maximum Subrays, then it is better to keep the
Quality Threshold conservative (60% or less) as just the increase in the Maximum will
automatically cause more Subrays to be used.

When this option is selected (which is the normal, recommended action) Vue will fire
subsequent Subrays at the same location where the initial Subrays were sent. This works
well in most situations. However, if you have a scene where a normal pattern is being
stretched a lot or even to infinity, and therefore creating distortions, unchecking this
may cause the render to improve. When unchecked, Subrays are fired at random.

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Texture Filtering allows you to ensure whether you want your material textures to
appear crisp or smooth, and to what degree.

Texture Antialiasing works just like Object Antialiasing, and the Texels per Ray work
similar to Subrays. The main new feature here is Recompute Subrays. When this is
turned on, Texture Antialiasing is applied to reflective and refractive objects. However, if
your scene does not have any major reflective or refractive objects or materials, it is
best to keep this option turned off. The Quality Threshold also works exactly as with
Subrays, and the same caveat for using conservative values with a larger Maximum
number applies here as well.

You can use the TAA Boost for a specific Material in your scene if you do not wish to
apply Texture Antialiasing to everything in your scene. However, you will still need to
turn on Texture Antialiasing (not available in Broadcast or below) for it to take effect.

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Let’s discuss three essential Antialiasing tactics developed from over 2000 render
experiments. Each has its own advantage and disadvantage, and of course, some
tradeoffs. So use them as you see fit, and always remember to experiment on an area
render (keeping the overall render size to the final resolution) to make sure the tactic
fits your scene’s needs.

Subrays set to Minimum 4 and Maximum 16. Texels set to Minimum 4 and Maximum
16. Quality Threshold between 45% and 60%.

This results in the traditional style of Antialiasing and may prove useful in most
situations, especially with renders below the size of 1200 pixels.

Subrays set to Minimum 4 and Maximum 256. Texels set to Minimum 4 and Maximum
256. Quality Threshold set to 45%.

This tactic allows for greater quality but may cause slower renders compared to the
Orthodox method. This can work well (and fast!) for both small and large renders.

Subrays set to Minimum 36 and Maximum 36. Texels set to Minimum 36 and Maximum
36. Quality Threshold set to 80%.

This extremely slow rendering tactic promises impressive quality as antialiasing is forced
to use the maximum number of Subrays and Texels. To experiment, you can use any
number in the Min and Max fields, as long as they are the same. Blunt Force tactics are
good for small renders, or if you have massive rendering capacity – like a large render
farm – otherwise your renders may literally take days to complete.

Often with renders above 1600 pixels, or when rendering just clouds (regardless of
resolution), a “Soft” anti-aliasing strategy can result in greater image quality.

Page | 313
Page | 314
4 Color Variations, 219

Absorption, 225

Advanced Material Editor, 92, 157, 161, 183, 197, 207, 223, 237, 238, 242, 261

Aerial Perspective, 29, 54, 55, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 115, 118,
119, 296, 297

Alpha, 161, 254, 255, 256

Altitude, 51, 52, 53, 62, 63, 66, 70, 71, 73, 74, 78, 79, 80, 81, 87, 89, 105, 106, 108, 109,
110, 112, 127, 136, 162, 184, 185, 233, 236, 242

Always Keep Level, 289

Ambient Light, 44, 50, 56

Ambient Lighting, 89, 93, 99, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112

Antialiasing, 195, 302, 308, 309, 310, 312, 313

Arches, 169

Asteroid, 154, 155, 276

Atmosphere Editor, 35, 37, 44, 47, 48, 61, 86, 93, 261, 268

Backlighting, 223, 224

Baking, 151, 158, 160, 168, 170, 174, 176

Bias, 56, 58, 68, 197

bump, 128, 167, 172, 186, 195, 196, 204, 209, 211, 212, 214, 218, 219, 221, 222, 249,
253, 286

Bump Surge, 127, 128, 141

Camera, 26, 66, 75, 258

canyon, 44, 71, 166, 270

cave, 40, 47, 76, 154, 166, 270

cirrus, 110

Cloud Anisotropy, 53, 54, 81, 88, 92, 93, 94, 95

Cloud Layers, 86, 96, 100, 102, 103, 105, 107

Cloud Materials, 86, 90

Clouds tab, 50, 86

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Clumps, 202

color map, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 216, 218, 221

Color Production, 189

combiner, 191, 192, 216

Complex Sedimentary Rock, 153

composition, 16, 175, 273, 291, 292, 293, 294

constraint, 230, 242, 243

coordinates, 172, 207

Corona, 48, 261

Cover, 88, 97, 100, 101, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112

Cracks, 202

cumulus, 28, 109, 110

Custom Cloud Profile, 91

decay, 51, 66, 268, 271

Decay near Foreign Objects, 231, 242, 243

Density, 28, 52, 53, 62, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 78, 79, 80, 86, 88, 89, 93, 98, 100, 105, 106,
107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 236, 237, 242, 276

depth-of-field, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 299

desert, 16, 63, 64, 69, 71, 130, 137, 170, 235, 274

Detail Amount, 89, 100, 102, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 112

Displace Outwards Only, 170, 171

Displaced Water Surface, 248, 261

displacement, 147, 150, 152, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 166, 167, 169, 170, 173, 174,
178, 238, 248

Distortion, 125, 127, 128, 137, 139, 141, 167, 185, 311

Distribution, 237

Dynamic EcoSystems, 62, 230

EcoSystem, 2, 27, 30, 55, 62, 64, 74, 76, 117, 118, 168, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234,
235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 272, 276, 285, 286, 287, 288

Examples, 103, 177, 199, 236

Page | 316
Exposure, 53, 75

Extended Skies, 79

External Dependencies, 205, 207

External Dependency, 205, 206

Fade out Color, 255, 256, 257

Feathers, 100, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112

Filter, 91, 124, 128, 129, 130, 131, 136, 137, 138, 183, 199, 204, 216, 221

Flowers, 242

fog, 25, 35, 53, 74, 268, 269

Foreign objects, 231

Fractal, 105, 124, 125, 127, 128, 134, 137, 138, 141, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 157, 163,
167, 170, 183, 184, 185, 186, 190, 191, 192, 194, 197, 198, 200, 205, 207, 209, 210, 211,
213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219, 221, 222

Function Editor, 14, 28, 86, 181, 182, 183, 185, 188, 204, 205, 208

Gain, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 50, 56, 57, 58, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77,
78, 89, 126, 127, 128, 138, 170

Global Radiosity, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 64, 67,
68, 69, 70, 73, 75, 76, 77, 85

Global Radiosity Gain, 56, 76

Glow Intensity, 48, 53, 61, 62, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77, 115

Godrays, 53, 54, 61, 71, 72, 74, 89, 93, 100, 104, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 277

Golden-Ratio, 293

Grainy Fractal, 184, 192, 194, 215

granular, 173

Grass, 184, 212, 238, 242, 243

Haze, 48, 51, 52, 53, 61, 62, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 115, 116, 268, 269, 297

HD Trees, 76

Height, 87, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 112, 136, 204

HyperBlob, 147, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178

HyperTerrain, 2, 26, 77, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 163, 164,
166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175, 203, 258, 259, 285, 286, 299

Page | 317
HyperTextures, 173, 174, 176

illusion, 25, 64, 72, 77, 250, 251, 256, 260

Indirect Atmospherics, 85

Indirect illumination, 85

Infinite Procedural Terrain, 72, 143

Infinite Terrains, 143

Infinite Variations, 142

Input Node, 206

Largest Feature, 124, 125, 137, 138

Lava Flow, 154, 155, 156, 161, 166, 276

Layer Affinity, 232

Layer Spacing, 132, 133

Light Balance, 50, 56, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 74, 77, 115, 297

light blockers, 75

Light blocking, 78

Light Intensity, 50, 53

Lighting Model, 40, 50

limestone, 44, 170, 171

Live Displacement, 160, 161

Luminous, 60

Math, 204, 205, 217

Mean Altitude, 62, 70, 73, 78

Mesa, 164

MetaBlob, 88, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 157, 158, 159, 161, 163, 166, 167, 168, 169,
170, 171, 173, 174, 176

MetaCloud, 74, 96, 97, 100, 101, 111, 220

Metal, 221

MetaNode, 137, 204, 219

MetaScale, 124, 125, 138, 141

MetaWater, 257

Page | 318
noise, 127, 189, 192, 194, 195, 197, 199, 200, 217, 218, 220, 253, 286, 309, 310, 311

Noise Type, 128

Omnidirectional Light, 75, 77

Opacity, 72, 86, 88, 89, 93, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112

Orientation, 205, 234, 235, 236, 241

Origin, 105, 106, 136, 142, 184, 190, 194, 207, 209, 217, 238

Perlin, 124, 197, 209, 210, 215, 217, 220

planet, 141, 247

Plateau Filling, 133, 134, 138

Preview quality, 295

procedural modeling, 177

Procedural Terrains, 123, 124, 142, 298

Processing Strength, 131

QuadSpinner, 2, 14, 16, 166, 213, 259, 286

Quality Threshold, 311, 312, 313

Reflected Light, 41, 58, 60

Reflection, 56, 162, 221, 222

reflector, 59, 60

Ridge Smoothness, 128

Rock Layer Hardness, 132

Rock Layer Thickness, 132, 133

rocks, 26, 58, 68, 77, 123, 128, 153, 154, 165, 171, 201, 210, 215, 229, 232, 236, 237,
238, 243, 258, 259, 276

Roughness, 90, 102, 107, 111, 126, 128, 141, 171, 190, 200, 209, 210, 215

Round Samples, 201, 242

Scale, 30, 55, 66, 87, 138, 153, 157, 158, 196, 220, 253, 283, 313

Scaling, 90, 100, 101, 104, 107, 111, 196, 241

Scattering Anisotropy, 53, 54, 62, 63, 64, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77, 115

Sedimentary Rock, 153

Shadow Density, 78, 89, 93, 100, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112

Page | 319
Shadows, 46, 272, 275

Sharpness, 88, 99, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112

Sky Dome Lighting Gain, 56, 58, 69, 75, 77

Slope, 162, 204, 233, 234, 236, 237

Smallest Feature, 124, 125, 126, 128, 134, 157, 200

SmartGraph Function Editor, 181

Smooth Areas, 127

Smooth Edges, 134

Smoothing Angle, 176

Spectral, 35, 48, 50, 87, 113, 119

Specular, 251

spotlight, 60

Stones in Dirt, 155, 156, 237

Strata, 124, 128, 129, 130, 131, 134, 136, 137, 138, 172, 197

Subsurface Scattering, 223, 224

Subtractive, 159

sunlight, 35, 36, 39, 42, 43, 45, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 57, 60, 62, 63, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73,
74, 76, 77, 78, 89, 93, 102, 108, 112, 166, 235, 268, 275, 277, 301

Supersampling, 310

terrain, 26, 27, 29, 54, 55, 62, 63, 64, 66, 69, 71, 73, 74, 75, 106, 123, 124, 126, 127,
128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 147, 169, 172, 184,
188, 197, 198, 199, 200, 205, 214, 233, 237, 238, 241, 242, 243, 258, 259, 260, 270, 276,
283, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 296, 297, 298, 299

Terrain Fractal, 137, 184, 217

Tilt Angle, 135

Tilt Heading, 134, 135

Tilt Offset, 135

Transformed Cristals, 151, 155, 211

tropical, 39, 56, 58, 67, 68, 107, 168, 229, 230, 231, 239, 254, 287

Turbulence, 188, 189, 190, 209, 217

Turn Reflective on Angle, 250, 251, 256

Page | 320
Uniformity, 90, 102, 107, 111

UV mapping, 203

Variable Displacement, 158

Variation Strength, 127, 141

Volumetric Lighting, 89, 93, 105, 106

Voronoi, 169, 170, 171, 191, 201, 215, 216

Vue 7, 31, 92, 113, 119, 124, 151, 248

Vue 7.5, 92, 151

Vue 8, 31, 35, 52, 79, 113, 119, 128, 151, 157

Vue 8.5, 52, 79

Wavelength, 125

Z-axis, 153, 155, 171

Page | 321
The following QuadSpinner products were used in the making of this book.

 Mineral Infinity
 Master Trinity (Rock X, Rock Y, Rock Z)
 Natural Monuments HyperTerrains
 Supernoi HyperTerrains
 QuadSpinner Material Development Kit (MDK)
 Arenite Warriors
 The Dark Knights
 The Defenders
 Distant Frontier
 River Rock and Sand
 Mt. Cornucopious
 El Gordo
 Sunbeams
 Procedural Terrains Pack
 Tropical Vale
 Sculpted Clouds
 Dark & Stormy
 Liquid Skies
 Summer Dreaming
 High Altitude Clouds
 Sunset Magic
 Volcan Arsolis
 Grasslands
 Toffee Delight
 Various terrain products
 Various individual scene products

All QuadSpinner products can be purchased from www.QuadSpinner.com

Page | 322