The above landscape and the 'bitwise' text in this picture were created and rendered in Vue.
The remaing text, above and below, was added using Fireworks

This month we’ve been looking in some depth at three of the best known 3D landscape creation applications: Bryce, Vue and MojoWorld. These programs have many potential uses: you might want to create rendered landscapes to import into image editing software such as PhotoShop; or you may want to export terrains for use in animation suites such as Cinema 4D; perhaps you want to use landscapes in web graphics or logos; or then again, you might just want to create pretty pictures…!

Whatever your requirement, one or other of the three programs reviewed here should be able to do the job. Bryce is one of the best-known and influential of all landscape generators. Vue, which might once have been regarded as a mere imitator of Bryce, is now a powerful and sophisticated program which is setting standards rather than following them. MojoWorld, meanwhile, is an almost ludicrously ambitious program which creates entire worlds rather than mere landscapes…

MojoWorld

MojoWorld 3.1 is, in some respects, the most innovative and ambitious of these products. Whereas Vue and Bryce are content with creating limited (albeit potentially quite extensive) areas of landscape, MojoWorld is satisfied with nothing less than entire planets. The level of detail in MojoWorld is remarkable. You can examine the contours of rocks and ground at close quarters or fly out into the upper atmosphere to look down upon your world from an astronaut’s point of view. There are limits to what MojoWorld can do, however. It has few built-in modelling features and no 3D text capability. Its animation features are restricted too. It’s easy to animate the camera for fly-throughs; animating the orbit of the sun and moon or the motion of clouds is also reasonably straightforward; animating water is trickier; animating most other things is difficult or impossible. When you combine the limitations of the animation with the complexity of the software (this is the most difficult of the three packages reviewed to use to its full potential), you might wonder why we are so enthusiastic about MojoWorld. Put simply, this product is pushing back the boundaries of 3D graphics software. It may not yet have arrived at its ultimate goal - of creating completely realised 3D worlds within completely realised solar systems (or maybe galaxies?) - but it’s on its way. MojoWorld 3.1 is already a marvellous tool for world building and exploring. Even so, we feel that this is still a product ‘under development’; it has not yet reached its full potential. Needless to say, we shall be keeping a close eye on future releases.

Bryce

If MojoWorld is still relatively immature, Bryce certainly isn’t. The oldest and, perhaps, the most famous of the scenery generators in our review, Bryce does landscapes, trees and animations and it also has a decent range of primitives (3D shapes) for doing simple modelling. Recently taken over by DAZ - a company which has hitherto specialised in models for the human-figure software, Poser - Bryce has been given a modest overhaul which includes a degree of integration with DAZ’s own figure-posing software, DAZ|Studio. All the same, Bryce 5.5 is underwhelming. There is nothing innovative in the software by modern-day standards and it is hampered by its bizarre user interface.

Vue

Vue 5 Infinite is hugely more impressive. Its user interface is a model of clarity. Its new ‘ecosystem’ tool takes 3D vegetation to new levels - making it remarkably quick and easy to populate an entire landscape with trees and plants. Moreover, the quality of the images and animations which can be created by Vue is simply breathtaking. While it doesn’t create entire planets like MojoWorld, Vue 5 Infinite is, in our opinion, the best choice 3D landscape application for most serious artists and designers.

Other Alternatives…

Terragen

The three programs reviewed here aren’t the only landscape generators available. One program which has a dedicated following is Terragen (for Windows or Mac OS 0 and X). . While this is not the easiest program to use (lots of dialogs and parameters rather than ‘drag and drop’), Terragen is notable not only for the beauty of the images which it can create but also for its cost - or lack thereof! The basic version of Terragen is free for non-commercial use. However, the free version does have limitations - in particular, it cannot render images at high quality. For photorealistic rendering or for commercial use, you must register the product at a cost of $99.

Carrara

Perhaps a bit of a ‘dark horse’ among landscape programs is Eovia’s Carrara. I say it’s a dark horse because it isn’t generally thought of as a landscape program at all. Carrara is a general purpose modelling, animation and rendering application which happens to do landscapes as a ‘sideline’. But, my word, what a sideline! The rather crude terrain modeller which appeared in earlier versions of Carrara has been replaced with powerful landscape sculpting and texturing tools in Carrara 4. Combined with the software’s other features such as its water planes, skies, clouds, atmospheric effects and tree editor, this makes it a strong rival to dedicated landscape generators. Carrara 4 costs $249, the Pro version costs $549. Eovia is on the point of launching a new version, Carrara 5, which we shall review shortly.

December 2005