We are pleased to announce a technology preview of E-on Software’s VUE Render Engine with MicroStation CONNECT Edition Update 15. This is available as the new Vue Rendering dialog in MicroStation.
The VUE rendering engine uses Global Radiosity whereas Luxology uses Irradiance Caching and the render settings are different. For this technology preview, the VUE render settings are hardcoded in rendering presets. The VUE render engine supports Path Tracing which in addition to using all CPU cores it will use all GPUs found in your system that support OpenCL. For interior renders you should find that Path Tracing combined with either NVIDIA or Intel denoiser will provide the best results especially where the scene’s materials are Physically Based Materials (PBR).
Luxology’s environment lighting consists of Physical Sky, Gradients, and Image-based lighting. Vue on the other hand supports true atmospheres that are much more realistic than just Physical Sky and it also supports image-based lighting.
You can access the Vue Rendering dialog from the Rendering group in the Home tab of the Ribbon.
NOTE: VUE’s render engine requires a CPU that supports Advanced Vector Extensions AVX meaning produced in 2011 or later.
Click on the image to enlarge it
The VUE Render Dialog lets you choose the Rendering Method, Render Presets, Atmosphere, Light Setups, Tone Mapping Options, and more.
Clicking on the Render icon from the dialog will launch a VUE rendering using the settings you have chosen. Clicking below the render icon will open a drop-down menu where you can choose Fast Preview Render as an option. The Fast Preview uses lower quality settings and Ray Tracing to achieve faster render and is suitable for test renders.
This technical preview is a work in progress and all render settings are currently presets. A VUE render settings dialog will be available in future updates.
Watch our expert, Jerry Flynn's videos on VUE Relighting and MicroStation Non-Photorealistic Rendering for more information.
One exciting improvement of using the VUE renderer vs. Luxology is in VUE’s ability to accurately render the atmosphere and includes support for traditional gradients and image-based environments.
The key to a successful exterior render is often the atmosphere it evokes. The scenes you render with VUE’s render engine are part of a world, that extends far beyond your scene. Imagine rendering a world with an atmosphere, with clouds, fog, haze, and real clouds, infinite ones, not just a backdrop picture of a sky.
You can create complex atmospheres from scratch using VUE. Any of the atmospheres created with VUE can be saved as an ATM file and opened with MicroStation’s Atmosphere Editor and used to render a scene with VUE inside MicroStation. One limitation with MicroStation’s Atmosphere Editor is that it will not allow for the creation of new cloud layers, if you load a preset atmosphere that already has a cloud layer you will be able to adjust the amount of Cloud cover.
MicroStation offers a list of predefined VUE atmospheres. Choosing one of them will let you start building your scene from a good basis. You will be able to fine-tune many atmospheric settings to improve the atmosphere of your renders. Atmospheres include settings for the sky, clouds, sun, quality of light, fog, and haze.
You can access the Atmosphere Editor dialog from within the Vue Rendering dialog by selecting .
Note: MicroStation currently only uses Photometric Spectral based Atmospheres, however other atmospheric models will be supported in future versions. Photometric Spectral is VUE’s hyper-realistic atmospheric model that accurately simulates the behavior of real-world atmospheres and lighting according to weather conditions. The appearance of the sky, sun, and clouds as well as the character of direct and ambient light are all affected by the delicate balance between the elements that constitute the atmosphere: air, dust, and water particles. The Photometric Spectral model provides its own set of controls that let you adjust each element’s density and height and rendering quality.
Below images are examples showing varying sizes of Sun corona:
The next image shows an Atmosphere with Rainbow Effect:
Take advantage of MicroStation CONNECT Edition Update 15's new rendering capabilities and do share your feedback or questions on forums.
MicroStation CONNECT Edition Update 15 is a feature-rich release. To find out about other new, productivity-enhancing capabilities available in Update 15, please read New in MicroStation CONNECT Edition Update 15.
We look forward to hearing from you about how useful this enhancement is and if you have any suggestions for improvement or if you’re interested in speaking with a Bentley expert about making the move to MicroStation CONNECT Edition, please complete this form to have someone contact you to provide advice and assistance.
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