Help with exporting/importing spreadsheet data

[plsyvjeucxfw]

I quickly opened up my John Sledd "Electric Image Handbook" where there is a project using spreadsheet data to control a muscle buldge.

Some of the things to watch for, according to the book, EI likes it's data in long, horizontal rows. Most spreadsheets don't have enough columns, so you'll need to add enough for the 800 frames.

Make sure the Project Window is in Keyframe or Frame mode and open the disclosure triangles (twirlies) to get to the values you need to control. Whatever you end up pasting, has to be in EI's format - that is you need X position, Y Position, etc. in the places where EI expects to find them. (Sorry if that's obvious.)

http://home.comcast.net/~787kfillmore/images/cells.jpg

Depending on how your data is formated it might require some preprocessing to get it normalized to the range EI expects and into the right format.

[vislaw]

Ok, I spoke with one of my forensic animator friends who has been down this road. It turns out that, for some unknown reason, EI elected to NOT implement the ability to paste spreadsheet cells from external applications on the PC version of EIAS. To do this you have to be using the Macintosh version. Obviously, the majority of users won't have need for this approach. However, forensic animators often receive positional data from accident reconstructionist/engineers and the ability to paste that precise data into EIAS is a huge feature that sets EIAS apart from the competition.

If you are doing a forensic animation and the engineer you are working with has generated postional data, you are at serious risk of having the animation excluded from evidence if each applicable coordinate does not match the engineer's data table. Being able to print out the EIAS project window spreadsheet in Frame mode is a very useful tool to help lay the foundation for court.

I guess this is another good reason to buy a new Mac for those of us who do forensic work.

Mark

[plsyvjeucxfw]

Elected not to?

Rats. If it's just a technical limitation I hope they'll implement a workaround. The two platforms should work near identically (as much as possible).

[halfworld]

Sounds like an oversight to me, when I hear the programmers discussing features they always mention absolute feature parity as a requirement...

Contact EITG and make the request... :)
Best,
Ian

[lmcgarry]

I identified this problem on the PC side in v4 and nothing has changed yet. Perhaps you can request again or just buy a Mac if it's critical.

Linda

[vislaw]

I've got both Macs and PCs in my studio but I've been working off-site with a PC so I haven't been able to use a Mac to import the spreadsheet data. Moreover, I was surprised that I couldn't even cut a single value from a text document and paste it into the cell in EIAS. Seems that the clipboard functions differently in the PC version than the Mac for EIAS.

If you have access to a Mac version its simple enough to import the data on the Mac side and then reopen the file on the PC. If you don't have access to a Mac version its too bad as this ability to import long strings of precise positional data is a huge advantage if you are working with civil engineers providing simulation data.

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