e-on Vue is an incredibly powerful environment creation and natural 3D tool, which allows users to create terrains, objects and environments using powerful and realistic looking elements.  With Vue, it is possible to create nearly any environment imaginable, and it has been used in various capacities in films such as Avatar and Pirates of the Caribbean.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create an epic mountain sunset using procedural terrains and global ambiance.  You’ll gain a strong understanding of some of the basic features and workflow in Vue and you’ll walk away knowing how to create your own beautiful scenes.

Enjoy the tutorial!

Tools Used:

• e-on Vue

Final Image Preview: Download the Scene File

1. Setting up the scene
I set up my aspect ratio to 70mm first, I like a cinematic feel to it.  As far as the render setting, for now, I leave it, but I switch to ‘Final’ renders once the scene is starting to come together.   When I feel that my scene is ready, I switch to a custom setting (which is basically the ‘Broadcast’ setting with little tweaks depending on the project).

2. Setting up the atmosphere
I like to set up the sun (see image) slightly to the left or right of my point view, I like to see the volumetric glow of the sun.  Also, I move it away from the camera.  I set up global ambiance as my light model setup, I’m a big fan of global radiosity but depending on your scene the other light model settings will do and your render will be faster.  See the picture for the rest of my light settings in relation to the terrains (which are created in a later step).

3. Clouds
I have 3 could layers in this scene.  The clouds that I have used are from the Vue’s own library.  Please see the picture for the settings.  The Stretched Cumulus layer altitude is at 80m, keep in mind that some of the setting adjustments in Vue go lower or higher than the default settings or slider range.  There are 3 things you have to consider when setting up your clouds: sharpness, feather and cloud detail.  Lower settings work better, using higher setting sometimes makes your clouds look too fuzzy and unrealistic.

4. Sky fog and haze
I like to set up my sky ground density at 100% with a neutral dark blue color.  The rest of the settings are just playing around with them to get the atmosphere that fits your scene.  I push my scattering anisotropy 0.80, higher settings give it a more natural look.  I also set my clouds anisotropy high to avoid fuzziness in the clouds and give it a softer look.  Higher aerial perspective settings will be like increasing the scale of your scene, note higher settings increase your render time.  The default sizes of objects in Vue are not set to realistic proportions (terrains are not 5 meters across, they are more like 5 or 50 kilometers), so you can either create your objects at life-size scales, or you can use atmospheric perspective to adjust the feel of scale.

5. Setting up the Procedural Terrains
For this scene I used 3 default procedural terrains, I double clicked on each of them to open the terrain editor and clicked on the mountain icon a couple of times to get the desired shape that I liked.  I also clipped the altitude a bit.  I rotated and positioned the mountain towards the camera (see side view), this way you will get a more interesting look.

6. Materials
The materials on the terrains are a mixed material found in the Vue’s own material library (Snowy Scrublands), the only adjustment I made was to lessen the material 2 in the mixing portion.

7. Other Tweaks
I added a point light near the top of my main procedural terrain, the light helps the sun shine more on the material. (If you refer to Step 2 you will see it).
WhenI render the final file, I use the render to screen settings, and save the final as a .bmp file.  Also, in the post render settings I check the natural film option and tweak the lens flare option (see settings), the rest of the color tweaking & correction is done in Photoshop.

My Photoshop adjustments are as follows: Level adjusment, to bring out the details of the scene, to bring out the details more I click on Shadow and Highlights (Image>Adjustments>Shadow and Highlights), I also masked out the sky & darker part of the image, and darkened it more and gave it a more dark blueish look by adjusting the colour balance (Image>Adjustments>Color Balance).  Finally, I sharpened the image.