Vue 8 is almost here! We're really excited to announce that we'll be shipping this feature-packed release by the first week of November!

For the first time, we will release all products at the same time*.

3 Product Families and New Products Announced

With Vue 8, the product line in now organized in 3 families: Vue for CG Professionals, Vue for 3D Artists and Vue for 3D Enthusiasts. This new organization is designed to better address the different market segments of our ever growing user base.

Each familiy provides Digital Nature authoring with the best blend of capabilites and features:

• Vue 8 for CG Professionals: Vue 8 Infinite and Vue 8 xStream (Ozone 5.0 will follow).
  Offers CG professionals the premiere solution for creating exceptionally rich and realistic Digital Nature environments with seamless integration into any production workflow.
• Vue 8 for 3D Artists: Vue 8 Esprit, Vue 8 Studio and Vue 8 Complete. 
  Provides 3D artists and small studios with powerful modular applications to create richly natural 3D Digital Nature scenery and landscapes. Vue 8 Studio, our new mid range application, offers a feature set similar to that of Vue 7 Pro Studio.
• Vue 8 for 3D Enthusiasts: Vue 8 Pioneer & T-Packs and Vue 8 Frontier. 
  Features content-filled, easy-to-use scenic nature creation for home and family use, with the addition of the new, cost effective Vue 8 Frontier, specifically dedicated to Poser™ users.

Extra Modules for Vue 8

Vue 8 retains the modular approach introduced with Vue 7. You can still grow at your own pace, all the way up from Vue 8 Pioneer to Vue 8 Complete, through the addition of 12 optional modules. These additional modules will be available at Cornucopia3D.com

If you already own a module for Vue 7, you will be able to upgrade to the corresponding module for Vue 8 with a 50% discount on the full price.

No more Boxed versions!

As the leader in creation of natural digital environments, we are very aware of the need to reduce our carbon footprint, and our impact on the environment. With this in mind, we have decided to reduce our production of unnecessary paper-based products. This means we will no longer offer Boxed references for all Vue products going forward.

However, you will still be able to order the DVD cased products (which includes the CD set, as well as the electronic version of the reference manuals). And, for those of you who prefer a paper manual to a pdf documentation, you will still be able to order the printed manual separately.

Just because Vue can create billions of trees doesn't mean we don't care about deforestation! ;-)

Following is a short list of some of the exciting new features you will find in the upcoming Vue 8 release:

• 3D Terrain Sculpting: Allows you to freely sculpt terrain features such as overhangs and caves directly into Vue standard and procedural terrains.
• Localized Infinite and Procedural Terrain Sculpting: Combine the best of both worlds with the ability to locally sculpt features on the infinitely detailed procedural terrains. Now, you have the ability to fine tune or completely rework localized areas on procedural terrains providing even greater artistic control and creativity.
• Scene Context Sculpting: Sculpt terrain features in the context of scene elements. Sculpt rocks and reliefs around vegetation and architectural buildings.
• New Stratified Terrain Fractals to create richly detailed stratified, terrain features.
• New Directional Displacement Engine for textures to create more detailed and life-like surface features with greatly increased performance.
• Spectral 3™ Atmospheric Technology which dramatically improves the quality and realism of clouds, god rays, and atmospheric shadows.
• Direct Re-Posing of Rigged Meshes: Rigged mesh objects can now be re-posed and animated directly inside Vue.
• New Shader-based OpenGL preview engine for improved real-time performance and previewing accuracy.
• Deeper xStream Immersive Integration offering more seamless operation and improved workflow with the leading CG applications, including support for Maya 2010, Cinema4D R11.5, Softimage 2010 and V-Ray for Maya.
• All the new features introduced in Vue 7.5: camera mapping, planetary rendering, cross-shadowing and cloud masks, spherical cloud maps, animated EcoSystem populations, material mapping on terrains and more.

More details on the new features as well as the complete description pages will be disclosed at the time of release. Stay Tuned!

Version 8 of Vue xStream and Infinite will add significant new functionality to Vue 7 and Vue 7.5 (see above). The upgrade to Vue 8 Infinite and xStream is available at no charge for all users under maintenance.

All users under maintenance can download a pre-release version of Vue 8 Infinite or xStream immediately (download instructions have been sent in a separate e-mail).

With the final release of Vue 8, we will introduce several new upgrade possibilities:

Upgrades from Vue 6: If you are a user of Vue 6, you can upgrade directly to the corresponding Vue 8 product! (for instance, upgrade from Vue 6 Esprit to Vue 8 Esprit, or from Vue 6 Pro Studio to Vue 8 Studio, etc...). You can also sidegrade from Vue 6 Pro Studio directly to Vue 8 Complete. If you are still using Vue 6 Infinite you can either upgrade to Vue 8 Infinite, or choose the cost effective Vue 8 Complete alternative.

These upgrade options will not be time limited.

Maintenance bundles: Thanks to the new pre-bundled maintenance options, you can now save up to $200 on your yearly maintenance fee!
Maintenance bundles are available for all upgrades and sidegrades to Vue 8 Infinite and xStream. Please note however that this offer will be limited in time.

Late buyers: If you ordered your copy of Vue 7 after October 1, 2009, you can get your upgrade at a special Late Buyer discount. More information on these late buyer programs will be made available shortly.

As of today, all purchases of Vue 7.5 Infinite or xStream will include 30 days of complimentary maintenance. Among other benefits (see below), this means that you will receive the upgrade to Vue 8 at no charge!

With the complimentary 30 Day maintenance plan, you receive:

• Unlimited, priority web-based technical support,
• Access to EEF releases (Expedited Engineering Fix),
• Free upgrades during the maintenance period (access to pre-release versions not included).

The 30 day maintenance plan will be automatically added to your account. If you decide to purchase maintenance together with your product order, the yearly maintenance period will extend the 30 days, providing a total of 13 months coverage.

This new policy will apply to all Vue 8 Infinite and xStream products.

>> Upgrade to Vue 7.5 Infinite and xStream Now! 

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