Hi Vegan,
No offense at all … What you are talking about is very important : the question of 'What is art and what is not art ’ and what is ‘cheating’ while creating 3d pictures…
IMHO : you could ask the same question for painters … if using watercolors, do you really think that painters using oil and canvas are cheater ?? or those who use mixed medias or photos ??? Some great pictures created with 3dmax or Lightwave are mixed pictures with hires HDRI backgrounds for example… and I don’t consider that is cheating … Important is not the car do you drive, but how you drive it … Comparison could be very useful between different softwares…
Vue in the last version 5 is now a very interesting soft with very cool features like GI or radiosity. It’s now possible to render very high quality pictures, and the we are far beyond the ‘easy landscape creation tool’ … Vue is much more than that . We all must learn what is possible to do with this new tool… and a place like CGTalk could be very important to share our experience and improve our skill because it is a professional, moderated forum…
Sincerly
Patrick

