One of my favorite software packages at the moment is e-on Vue Infinite. It’s primarily a 3D rendering package that can deal with HUGE polygon counts (Billions!). It’s modeling capabilities are limited however don’t let that put you off, theres heaps of very good modeling packages out there that you can use (I’ll talk about some of these in a later post) you can easily import them into Vue or you can download models off the net, a good place to start is googles 3d Wharehouse. It’s meant to act as a community based library for Sketchup however you can normally find models in the Collada format (skp files can be converted using Sketchup Pro). Vue does however have some very cool terrain sculpting tools. You can see some screenshots in an article about a research project I did last year (as well as some renders) in Unitec’s Advance magazine (page 12-13). Note that since this was published theres been an update to Vue’s terrain tools, you can see a list of Vue’s features at e-on’s website. Another good place to find models, galleries and user forums is Cornucopia 3D. I’ll try to post a few Vue tips and tricks in the future. ‘Til later,
Z.