Best 3D software for landscape / environments?

#1

Hi all,

I’m currently using a trial version of Vue 2014 xStream from E-ON Software on my friend’s PC, but the software seems pretty laggy, buggy and just low IMO. And the PC has 24 GB of RAM with very recent processor and graphics card specs, which IMO, is WAY more than enough to run any 3D software as long as you’re not doing Hollywood CG movies.

Are there any similar alternatives? I’ve heard MODO can do terrains, atmosphere and that sort of thing?
Basically, I need a software that can handle all those atmosphere, terrain, hundreds of trees, seas, water and the like.
I’ve C4D but I’m not sure if it’s that well-suited to create those intensive breath-taking landscapes and environment.

Tks!
Nik

#2

Terragen is another option: http://planetside.co.uk/

#3

Any 3d software is good enough to do awesome terrains, however Vue is a speciality tool crafted for this very thing. Seems strange that it is lagging so bad. I used a trail version a few years back and it seemed really quite good. Using other 3d packages for this, for a huge amount of tree’s you need to look into (point) instancing.
Instancing is great for tree’s, rocks and stuff because it only occurs at rendertime, saving you lots of system resources that can go directly into rendering ect, ect.

Houdini can do this easily, VRay has VRay proxies iirc, Maya must have some sort of instancing system that quite frankly I do not know about.
Any software that cna be used in a VFX-type of role should support some sort of instancing.

EDIT: Don’t forget that VUE is basically a standard terrain shape, and the details are created by procedural shaders. All 3d software has this capability, add this to instancing and some volumteric’s and bam you got some great environments.

#4

Also don’t forget that trees and foliage from a distance can be the most basic geometry. 2 grids and a tree image.
This render was such a method, 50,000 trees accounting for 102,000+ polygons. 52 seconds to render and 4gb of ram. Not bad really concidering I had various custom attributes applied to the tree’s.

Just make sure you add some random scaling to the points before instancing.

#5

This is the one that I’ve been looking at buying for about the past year now, I’ve watched some tutorials for it and it’s pretty impressive for being $100.

http://www.world-machine.com/