e-on Software is a developer of 3D applications like Vue d’Esprit. Vue 4 Professional is the company’s flagship product. Vue 4 Pro is a 3D terrain builder and one of the features that makes this a professional program is its capabilities in terms of file exchangeability with other industry-standard 3D programs like Maya, Lightwave, etc. Another high-end feature of this program is its rendering engine. The engine is capable of very high quality rendered scenes, with one Power Mac or PC running long hours before the result can be seen (in highest quality mode). To speed things up, e-on delivers its own render network with the application.

The modelling interface faintly reminded me of Maya’s, but the interface is less daunting, simply because there are less options to choose from. That doesn’t mean Vue 4 Pro is a lightweight application, far from it. The terrain editor is quite powerful, with many options to change the material and the type of terrain. A terrain starts with a ground plane on which you start building with what first seem to be mountains. However, through a cleverly designed editor, mountains can become flat or eroded, or whatever you want them to be.

The editors remind a bit of Bryce, but luckily, the interface as a whole, does not. Bryce, however, did allow you to change settings by scraping off material from a mountain or adding to it by clicking on specific buttons. Vue 4 pro works identical: you erode a terrain by dragging the mouse over it, after having selected an editing mode like ‘wind’, or ‘running water’, etc. It seems like this will not give you much control at first, but when you get used to it, it’s pretty powerful.

One of the most astonishing features of Vue 4 Pro is the plant library. This library is generously populated with plants and trees from all over the world. Using a plant in a scene can be as easy as selecting the plant and moving it to its rightful place on the terrain. However, plants can be edited as well. They can have different characteristics than the standard provided for species are capable of displaying. Not all characteristics can be edited fully, though. A rose will always be recognizable as a rose.

Plants can move too, especially in relation to wind. You can set different wind settings and each plant will respond to it differently. A palm tree will bend more than an oak. Wind and moving are characteristics of animation, and yes, animation is provided for as well. The way animation works, is a different story than you would expect from all the power that is at your fingertips in the editing process. First of all, upon choosing the animation option, you are presented with an assistant that will offer you a number of options. Those options are not particularly impressive. Worse, at the end of the assistant’s rope you get your scene back with an animation path drawn in the scene and a ‘timeline’ toolbar that doesn’t allow much but to play, preview and render the result.

It is crystal clear: Vue 4 Pro was not meant to do animation. The program relies on those other professional 3D tools to perform that sort of tricks. However, the rest of the program is powerful and easy to use enough to make it an indispensable addition to your 3D application library.