Animating a Landscape with VUE

Rendering a photorealistic animated landscape is possible with VUE, a powerful application for creating computer-generated natural environments needed for visual effects, animation, architectural visualization, and illustration. In this course, Aaron F. Ross demonstrates the VUE workflow for digital nature, including interoperability with other 3D programs, terrain sculpting, populating the scene with plants, daylighting and atmospheres, complex material functions, keyframe animation, and production rendering.

Realistic skies and lighting are achieved with the VUE photometric spectral atmosphere model. This course covers adding animation to plants, water, and clouds with procedural wind effects. Aaron also shows how to create camera movement by employing the Timeline's intuitive tools, including animation and curve editing. Rendering many animation frames poses challenges not experienced with still image rendering, and so the course concludes with key strategies for optimizing the balance between image quality and rendering time.

Learning objectives
Laying out the scene
Importing and sculpting models
Adding water, plants and clouds
Directing sunlight and atmosphere
Customizing exposure and tone mapping
Building procedural materials
Working in the Function Graph
Automatic and manual keyframing
Editing splines in the Animation Graph
Adding wind
Keyframing the atmosphere
Optimizing render settings for animation