About 70 million years ago, a flock of Pteranodon longiceps, returning from a day fishing at sea, soars over a forest cloaking the new young mountain range bordering the Pacific Ocean
At this point in prehistory, the Western portion of what would become North America, was a young mountain range still undergoing the pangs of volcanic birth. Many of the peaks were geologically young and craggy; while the plants which covered them were, for the most part, not unfamiliar to the modern eye. This is my first published image featuring the new Vue 5 Infinite software. It's like Vue 4 on steroids, and features many powerful new features - the most obvious among them being procedural terrains (using fractal algorithms to deliver as much detail as needed), and 'eco-systems' which allow instancing of models thousands of times in a single scene. I haven't had much time to explore V5I, due to some other deadlines; and the fine control over these ecosystems was eluding me. Fortunately, one of the acknowledged 'masters' wrote a tutorial in the current issue of 3D World magazine, and this image is the result of my playing with that tutorial, using my own terrains and content... Much more elaborate use of eco-systems is possible, this image merely scratches the surface... This scene actually contains something over 10,000 trees (not all of which are visible from this vantage point)! All told, it measures over a BILLION polygons, while not seeming to slow down my machine appreciably. Colour me impressed!
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