VUE renderer in MS CE 10.16.01.56 - still pretty much useless...

I downloaded the latest MS CE16 and tried to render some of my projects. Unfortunately, VUE still produces very, very poor results. Here is a couple of screenshots:

Demo no.1 - a view was rendered with Maxwell renderer (I have a token for Maxwell renderer for CE16). Rendering was slower than with VUE but materials look good and RPC cells render fine, too.

Demo no. 2 - The same view was rendered with VUE & path renderer. All materials look strange and RPC cells are gone...

Demo no. 3 - the same view was rendered with VUE & ray tracing. The image looks just as bad as demo number 2

I am seriously worried because my Maxwell token will stop working after 31.12.2021. That means, there is less than two months left and VUE is still pretty much useless for production...

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  • Here is another comparison:

    Demo 1 - tall grass rendered with Luxology in MS CE16. Fur works relatively well and ever fairly large moders render fine.

    Demo 2 - the same grass rendered with VUE in MS CE 16. Not quite as natural looking as Demo 1. Should this be an improvement?

    At this point it is hard to bellieve that VUE should be better rendering engine than Luxology. I really hope that it is just me and  I am missing some essential settings. I tested some PBR grasses too, but they don't look good either. What should one do to get good looking 3-dimensional grass with VUE? It seems that most of the useful features in Mircostation's rendering engine has been removed.

  • Hi,

    The best approach for grass is to create a Vue Ecosystem material which you can then import into Microstation.

    The partial support for fur with vue rendering in 10.16.1 builds going forwards now requires a configuration variable  MS_VUEFURPROXY to be set = 1. This may cause your machine to run out of memory when processing the fur if you have large areas of it.

    Regards

    Paul 



  • Hi Paul,

    The best approach for grass is to create a Vue Ecosystem material

    Similarly to Max's question: Does it mean to use VUE in MicroStation fully, I need to buy another set of software?

    which you can then import into Microstation

    Is there any tutorial or video, showing complete workflow, how to use other VUE software (but which one?) and how to import the results to be used in MicroStation?

    Also, I am not rendering specialist, but I am confused as there are VUE PlantFactory,  PlantCatalog. What is their relation to VUE in MicroStation and how they can be used? It looks like PlantFactory is mandatory (for grass and other materials?), whereas PlantCatalog maybe is useful to enhance MicroStation with own set of plants?

    Regards,

      Jan

  • Paul,

    You said that tthe best approach for grass is to create a Vue Ecosystem material which you can then import into Microstation.

    How does that happen? I haven't found any documentation about the perferred procedure. Does it mean that one has to purchase standalone VUE to get proper looking grass? IMHO,  it doesn't make any sense for a Microstation user who pays for Select Subscription and expects to get value for the money, considering that the previous version of Microstation did it already without any external apps.

    Personally I would except that if Bentely removes some well working feature it  should be replaced with sometihing that works even better. Otherwise the Select subscription fee feels more like robbery.

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  • Paul,

    You said that tthe best approach for grass is to create a Vue Ecosystem material which you can then import into Microstation.

    How does that happen? I haven't found any documentation about the perferred procedure. Does it mean that one has to purchase standalone VUE to get proper looking grass? IMHO,  it doesn't make any sense for a Microstation user who pays for Select Subscription and expects to get value for the money, considering that the previous version of Microstation did it already without any external apps.

    Personally I would except that if Bentely removes some well working feature it  should be replaced with sometihing that works even better. Otherwise the Select subscription fee feels more like robbery.

Children
  • I tested configuration variable  'MS_VUEFURPROXY=1' briefly. It doesn't work as desired. Here is a comparison between Luxology rendering engine and VUE in CE16. I use fur for grass materials but also for creating shrub plantings. The material which I have attached to the shape element on the left hand side uses an image of an shrub to create shrub shaped billboards for fur stems. It works like a dream in Luxology, even in a large scale model. The first image was rendered with Luxology and the second one which looks pretty awful was rendered with VUE using variable MS_VUEFURPROXY=1.

    I am sorry if I sound upset but I am seriously upset regarding the recent 'development' of the rendering engine.

  • Hi Yrjo,

    I am sorry if I sound upset but I am seriously upset regarding the recent 'development' of the renderin engine.

    I think you are not alone.

    After years, when Luxology / modo was used, existing knowledge base (discussions, materials created by Jerry etc.) allows to find a solution or at least the right direction.

    Now, everything is different, moreover it often does not work. I would expect quick intros / tutorials for all typical situations, where VUE is different, like "When RPC cells are used", "When XFrog cells are used", "When grass or fur material need to be used" (which is always), "When new tree, plant ... need to be defined" etc., because they are tasks common to the most of visualizations.

    For me, as "visualization amateur" (and need it only few times per year), it's easier to use anything else but not VUE in MicroStation, because I will quickly find explanations and tutorials how to do any task in software like Blender, for example. Information and videos about how great is Nvidia denoiser in VUE are completely useless in this situation.

    Regards,

      Jan

  • Hi,

    With regards to Vue Ecosystems, they would need to be defined in Vue and saved as a .mat file from Vue, which can then be brought into Microstation. Yes this would mean purchasing a license of Vue, if this is a feature you wanted.

    With regards to fur, the support which I added is only a partial solution and will not be a full replacement of fur, as the ability to use Vue Ecosystems is a much more powerful workflow.

    With regards to availability of educational content etc. Yes, we need to work on this further, I recall that Jerry did a number of Visualization SIG's over the last year or so where he demonstrated a workflow with both Vue and MicroStation on using Vue Ecosystems. These should be available to watch from learn.

    Regards

    Paul



  • Paul,

    Basically I would like to get back all features which you have removed from MS CE16's rendering cababilities, prefrerably without pushing them to a costly 3rd party application.

    BTW  - what is a SIG? and where should I find it? If VUE ecosystems are so powerful then why wouldn't you document the workflow properly so that end-users could benefit it? And provide a good selection of samples so people would get an idea what they are capable of?

  • Hi Yrjo,

    it's a Special Interest Group about visualization, you can find that video's here:

    https://learn.bentley.com/app/Public/ViewLearningPathDetails?lpId=111389