EIAS 7.0 Preliminary Feature List 10/27/2007

[frogjackson]

well you just answered my question about crashing with Photoshop/clipboard business !

and wooooooo hooooooooo what a superb set of new toys to play with - well done to all you guys at EITG :bowdown: , I'll be upgrading as soon as I get back from my holiday.

James

:applause:

[3dData]

Can't wait for the HDR and dynamics! I ordered my upgrade!

[juanxer]

Could you expand on what attributes do the included Layer Shaders export? Can one derive an occlusion pass layer, for example, or a tangency to camera one? If not so, would that be easy and cheap for some developer to provide?

It would be great to hear from the developer community about the new plugin and shader API features: what they think they'll be able to accomplish through these.

This is incredibly exciting!!!


(Any secret features to reveal some time later, "Autodesk, start your photocopiers"-style? :D :D :D)

[halfworld]

You know I happen to know for a fact that something pretty cool has been missed off that list ;)

Ian

[Vizfizz]

More than one.. but again.. its best to let EITG spill the beans in due time.

Meanwhile I'm prepping a new list of CA tools for v8. I plan to be heavily involved in that upgrade.

[jimjam]

Wow! I'm truly impressed.
This upgrade will make a big difference for me in terms of convenience and quality.
Thanks a bunch, guys!

Jim Mulcahy

[A.C. Farley]

That's some list. Very nice!

[FelixCat]

Hi, Brian.
In regards of the v.8 and your involvement in it, can i point you about TAFA morph animation system? I hate to be a pain in the ass, but Mac Reiter (the developer) hardly could make any OSX version and seems that further development its hard too. Is a very eficient facial morph animation tool and something like this could be a huge steap forward comparing with the current implementation. I don´t know what kind of deal can be done with him, but could be very great.

http://www.macreitercreations.com/

FelixCat

[Vizfizz]

Felix,

I'm familiar with the application. Vertex morphing & caching for v8, however its improved upon, will take a number of things into consideration...however, I'm not one to determine if its techincally possible. (aka, I'm not the programmer) My input will be my pipeline and animation experience at the major studios and how we can begin modifying EIAS' capabilities to make it a more friendly character animation application.

I deal with CA setup and animation every day in previs and I have a pretty good understanding of how everything should "fit" together in a robust pipeline. But like all things, time, money and personnel will dictate how much will actually get accomplished.

[NorthernLights]

The real question here is not whether or not you CAN improve the CA tools but whether or not you SHOULD. Let's say you decide to jump off the bridge and then you see the dude standing below (it's a movie reference) and magically you now have CA tools in EI. Do you honestly think that major studios will go "Oh, cool, EI's got CA tools! Let's pitch our entire Maya pipeline in favor of EI!"?

[FelixCat]

Hey, Blair, don´t be unfair. I coubt anybody is thinking about major studios droping the entire Maya pipeline in favor of EI. but i´m not so sure the big houses are the big business. There are lots of medium and small shops doing CA for TV spots, documentals and demos, and the FX for TV are done in many, more or less, low end apps like Lightwave and C4D. And this medium and small shops had droped EiAS when their business become more focused in animation (Matt Drummond comes to my memory). My own very little business is slowly shifting to CA and i´m not happy shifting apps, and i´m doing everything in my hands to not do so... Besides the huge invest in time, i like this app, and his workflow fits my way.

FelixCat

[DickM]

I agree with Felix here. You won't get the big studios, but you may keep a lot of animators jumping the EI ship to go to other apps cause they have out grown EI's CA abilities. ME and a lot of others I know come to mind. If EI had tried to add/fix some ca tools, I would not be moving to another app. But we CA have been ignored for quite a while.

I will continue to use EI for what it's good for, and I hope work continues to bridge gaps between Camera and apps like Maya and C4D. Love to animate there and render in Camera. And if it was done right, small studios would move to Camera/renderama. Camera kicks ass. It was the one thing that kept me coming back to EI.

[Vizfizz]

The real question here is not whether or not you CAN improve the CA tools but whether or not you SHOULD. Let's say you decide to jump off the bridge and then you see the dude standing below (it's a movie reference) and magically you now have CA tools in EI. Do you honestly think that major studios will go "Oh, cool, EI's got CA tools! Let's pitch our entire Maya pipeline in favor of EI!"?

Thats not the point Blair. (At least in my opinion.) EIAS has a choice to either compete against its competitors (Which we all know include Maya, XSI, Max, C4D and LW) or relegate itself into obscurity as a previous generation hard surface animation tool. Its either that or settle outside the entertainment industry and try to exist as an auxilary support package. Every other application out there is making strides into Character and storytelling and we must too. (Heck even Houdini is embracing character tools) We all know Camera can hold its own rendering wise, but Animator is woefully underpowered. Now when I say Character Tools...that doesn't necessarily mean just rigging type tools. Perhaps I should clarify and say EIAS needs a massive overall animation upgrade to Animator.

There are three fronts that EIAS must address in order to become fully competitive again.

1. A dedicated modeler.
2. Enhanced animation, character tools and vertex level caching, deformation and manipulation.
3. Additional bridging tools that allow EIAS better access into various companies' pipelines.
(Preferably direct access to the Camera rendering engine but that's probably unlikely)

The first one is a gimme. We all know we need our own modeler...preferably one that understands EIAS and is geared specifically to address the needs of EIAS users.

The second is necessary because EIAS is still primarily limited to hard surface animation and always has been. Some have been able to obtain some decent character and organic output, but comparitively, it looks dated and vintage and they have to limit their characters to the limitations within Animator. The entertainment industry thrives on story and story is dependant on characters. IF EITG doesn't want to break back into the entertainment industry, then it should gear itself solely to the hard surface markets. Will they survive on those markets? Probably..but they wont ever really grow. Broadcast is becoming more and more character driven as well. My arguement suggests that CA tools are far more energizing to an application and its desirability than any other feature. Why? Because all the other applications that support CA can also do hard surface just fine. Just look at Gnomon, Animation Mentor, and every school out there. CA is unquestionably the BIGGEST reason people get into computer animation. We should address that.

The third is necessary because we must live in a world dominated by packages like Maya, Max and the whole autodesk clan. Direct access to Camera via other platforms would be great, but that's never been a goal of EITG. The alternative is to ensure that other applications can bridge into EIAS with extreme ease and take advantage of our awesome renderer. You've already gotten the ball rolling with FBX, but we also need FBX export, rock solid UV texturing transfer, and vertex caching to transfer deforming geometry from other applications.

#1 Satisfies existing customers.
#2. Appeals to new younger users that expect CA animation capabilties in their software.
#3. Appeals to larger companies and business looking for alternatives to renderman and mental ray etc.

Do we need other things? Sure. We need a new interface, better particle systems, soft body dynamics, referencing, instancing, and so forth. The list goes on and on. But the need for #1 is being talked about and recognized by EITG. #3 you've already gotten started but must finish. #2 is the only thing not being addressed....and its time.

[yhloon]

I'm agree with Felix and Richard.

[yhloon]

well said brian...

and i m also curious, if EI 8.0 not going to emphasise in CA, what else... any advise?

[plsyvjeucxfw]

I know the issues of improving the Character Animation toolset within EIAS must seem difficult, perhaps even overwhelming, given how EI's traditional focus has been hard body, logo, and arch viz work. Attempting anything that is new and unfamiliar will bring with it certain difficulties and feelings of unease.

However, moving beyond your comfort zone is a way to push your abilities and grow. Sure you might stumble, have initial failures; but success will come, provided you make the attempt and work hard.

As Brian has stated earlier, it isn't necessary to overhaul EIAS completely to turn it into a Character package, it just needs a few additions and improvements to offer Character Animators a stronger showing from their favorite animation software.

[Vizfizz]

If dedicated character tools are not in EIAS' future I would suggest the following:

1. A new interface for Animator (v7.5) Complete overhaul.
2. A dedicated modeler (v8)
3. Advanced instancing, referencing, snapping and placement tools that exceed Placer Deposit and rock solid UV tools and improved texturing capabilities specifically designed to address architectural and broadcast markets. (v8.5)
4. Any animation tool upgrades (outside of CA) that we can muster. (ie improved graph editor, a relook at constraints, updated link editor and pivot snapping in windows, integrated path animation, local transforms, soft regions for deformations, FBX export, etc...(v9)
5. Further advancements in Dynamics, softbodies and fully integrated particle systems that take advantage of the instancing tools in v8.5. (v10).

[summers]

I'm 100% with Brian.

1. A dedicated modeler.

2. Enhanced animation, character tools and vertex level caching, deformation and manipulation.

3. Additional bridging tools that allow EIAS better access into various companies' pipelines.

But it is my opinion that no-way EIAS will attract new user's without a dedicated modeler.

[plehrack]

I don't want to ruffle any feathers, but I keep hearing about an increase in CA for broadcast work... where? I can think of Human Weapon... anything else? I know that people like to do CA, I just don't see the market. The big studios handle the movies, the video game industry is pretty set in it's ways, what else is there? Maybe I'm missing something. I do work for broadcast (cable) and in my experience, there is no budget nor time for CA. Maybe one day that'll change, I see no evidence of it today.

Peter

[cjberg]

Can I get an Amen, brother...

I don't want to ruffle any feathers, but I keep hearing about an increase in CA for broadcast work... where? I can think of Human Weapon... anything else? I know that people like to do CA, I just don't see the market. The big studios handle the movies, the video game industry is pretty set in it's ways, what else is there? Maybe I'm missing something. I do work for broadcast (cable) and in my experience, there is no budget nor time for CA. Maybe one day that'll change, I see no evidence of it today.

Peter

[Vizfizz]

I understand your point. Before I switched to film, I worked in the broadcast design industry myself for nearly seven years. Typical bread and butter broadcast work consists of:

1. Network and product identity graphics
2. Logos & bumpers
3. Sports and news graphics
4. Show opens

Typically, none of these require a lot of character work if they remain limited to the local markets because of a lack of budget and turnaround time, however when you start moving out of the local markets and into the national level things change.

I would sum up broadcast design with the following specialities:

1. Local network identity, local advertisers, local news and cable television markets.
CA requirements: Nearly zero

2. National level network identity, realtime sports and news graphics, national cable advertisers.

3. High-end national level advertisers, ad agency work, dedicated high-end cable series programming.

Now of these three, which should a company like EITG target? Well local markets barely have enough money to keep the lights on but there are hundreds of them and you could argue that the shear quantity of potential sales is priority here. But do we really want EIAS' demo reel to consist of graphics for "Big Bob's house of Cars?" or "Crazy Larry's Used RV's"? Not that impressive.

So we step up to the national level and here we see your area of expertise Peter. Here the call of CA is stronger, but most graphics and animation in this level are still hard surface oriented. This mid range is a solid market to appeal to. It still has a very large user base and the visability of the work produced in this level ranges from simple to very sophisticated. EITG currently targets this market but could use more animation tools to improve its offerings.

Finally we move up to national level advertisers, their ad agencies and dedicated series programming and here, as I pointed out earlier, story is king and characters are needed to support story. In this bracket we're basically moving into the same realms that are occupied by the film and entertainment industry, but just on a smaller scale and in a different medium. This level is occupied by the Digital Domains of the world. A quick examination of their site and we see animated eagles, disney characters, various creatures and animals, the michelin man, animated football and foosball characters, robots and all manner of CA work. They are only one company. What's their broadcast design package of choice? Lightwave followed by Maya. But I can tell you, after working there too, that the budgets for these CA based national ads are HUGE, but granted, their are fewer of them.

Try to remember, I'm not only fighting for CA tools, but for major enhancements to the animation capabilties of Animator as well. Anything we do to make strides into CA will directly benefit you.

[plehrack]

Brian,

I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I admit that the advertising industry is one of which I know little to nothing, perhaps EITG can make inroads there. I suggest that the tools that shops use to produce the CA in those segments are in place, well understood and widespread in the artist community. Going after them at this point in the EITG's saga seems like swimming against the stream, they are very well developed and catching up may take a small army of 'programmer artists' ;-).

Concentrating on allowing a EITG animation app to work seamlessly with those tools seems like a more acheivable goal if other enhancements, including a much needed interface overhaul and possibly a redesign of the entire Animator framework are going to be practical to complete. A redesigned Animator core can be the basis of a modular system that will allow for not only CA, but an integrated modeler, hard/soft body dynamics, Particles, etc.

As far as the state of the broadcast industry as it relates to 3D is concerned, just flip around the cable channels.. watch the bits between the commercials and titles.. there is a lot of 3D being done. EI is fast and looks great, the perfect combination for that market. I'm not taking about sports or motion graphics... just watch the science channel and such. There is 3D in just about every show and very little, if any of it (aside from the afore mentioned Human Weapon) is CA.

just my 2 cents,

Peter

[Vizfizz]

Well its obvious we want the same things. Its just a question of approach. EIAS' framework and infrastructure is obviously dated and has been extended past its prime. The Universe update in v3 on didn't really change the architecture.. it just put on a fresh coat of paint. If we want to really overhaul the EIAS interface and the way it does business we're basically talking about creating a whole new Animator. But lets not jump the gun. I can already hear Blair and Igors thinking I'm off my rocker and that I'm blue skying things again. Stop dreaming they'd tell me. Ok.. I can do that... but I wont loose site of that as an end goal.

The question is how do we increase revenues, attract new users, and find a way to pay for new development?

1. Satisfy existing customers and find ways to increase the current EIAS' value. A potential multilevel product might work, but I dont think this is the way Brad wants to proceed.

2. Provide new base level technologies into the current animator that have never been attempted in EI before in order to attract new users. (Dynamics in v7 is a good start). And this is where I feel I chime in with new CA tools.

3. Consolidate technologies and find methods for EITG to sell sub products for EIAS. EITG Plugins, training, and so forth.

The good news is v8 is open for discussion and that's why we're here. I really value your opinion and ultimately we'll find the right road. CA tools or not.

[PaulS2]

Multi-processor support for Camera with auto, under-sampled progressive render updates as one works on materials, internal modeler with good import capabilities - ability to import ACIS/IGES and mesh internally....preferably EIM's mesher.

I'd be happy to see those features.

[Vizfizz]

Ah so many good ideas. :) Advisory board is gonna have a tough time on the next big issue to tackle.

[AVTPro]

Wow! Starve CA feature sets for years in a time when CA has been in boon for the whole of the 3D market and blame the animators. Blame the EI animator for not expanding the client base, budgets and economic interest.

Amazing, inspite of the fact that without support, we are still winning MTV, and other awards with the app. I even rigged for a Disney feature commercial this year . Still, they blame us for low marketshare when the other apps have completely, supported and reinvented themselves are CA production tools and new CA production tools enter the forray.

Blame CA people as if CA is not the bases of what is state of the art 3D in the 3D industy.
As if Maya, XSI, Max, C4D are merely production photo tools, or flyby. As if CA and Cinema doesn't run the 3D market. The real leaders of 3D is CA. Not Photo stills or fly buys. Autodesk CA are the serious leaders in town not POP. EVen car renders have serious character animation to them or transforms.

Blame the fact that some EI CA has reservation about paying for an upgrade with no CA features? While they compete for budgets with a EI against "NEW", up and coming CA tools in high development cycles? It's their fault that EI CA people has to extend themselves financially to get CA skills, and work comes twice as hard as Production suits? I support EI CA "ReadyRigs" Video Tutorial DVD because it's difficult enough learning CA in an app you already use (EIAS)... not to mention learning MAYA!! Nobody who wants to do CA, just jumps into Maya. The learning curve is far greater than other CA apps.

Seven years ago, I left a cushy corporate EIAS production job to reinvent myself for the next elevation of 3D in CA. EI pull the rug on it's CA modeler and CA Tools, and left this former college adjunct professor (pratt, new shool, bridgeport) and corporate production 3D dept head scurrying for solutions. It's a wonder I survived after that fiasco. Even after I floundered up to the surface in my hometown, small CA studio here in Buffalo wouldn't accept my years of EI 3D "managerial level of production knowlegde. It's was my hand drawing skills that allowed me to even intern "for free" at the maya studio.

I just hired 3 EI animators who managed to survive "the EI CA drought" no...sanction. The deliverable are tomorrow. Without this newly formed "unsupported team of EI Animators" which I dubbed "VEIT" Virtual ElectricImage Troopers, my deadline would have produced another lone EI dead soldier. Instead, they ROCKED my deadline, the Rig and the animation. And we can handle even bigger projects. Based on their OWN dedication to EI CA.

At the same time, I hired out my associated IDEA 2007 awarding production studio in NYC. (CA with FBX) The files we had to use were 550 mb to 750 Maya mb. With our EI skills, we literally "nabbed" a High End production that was made for Maya. Or so we thought.

EI lacked the "common production tools" to import the "textures". To this moment, EIAS as production tool fails in the "MOST COMMON" of basic features. Importing textures from one industry standard file to another. EI failed as a production tool...No, as a competitive High End production tool and we had to go with another render app for "Basic Hard Body Surface Rendering". You can't remap textures on 1000+ import model. To this day, there's no basic import texture feature.

Had it not been for Ramjac, (Patrick and Jens) working over the week to upgrade Obj2Fact 2.1.3. The CA budget would have gone to Maya animators as well.
Right now my client is loving my EI CA work, and this is my first project that I can PAY other EI animators outside of my associated NYC studio network.

Supporting ElTG, is not just buying it's upgrades. It's supporting the community that use the app with work, pay, tutorials and support as well not just my own pocket. EI not supporting CA hurts Production people as well. I'm both CA and Pro. Right now CA is better half of my growing business. I support production teams with CA rigs and animations so they can do more extensive production bids.

Blame yourselves for your own lack of incentive and shortsightedness. DON"T BLAME EI CA User for the market when we have triumphed in areas that EI has armed us for in CA or Production. I'm don't mind paying the v7 production upgrade cause I'm making money with EI..but the check It's going to say

"THIS HERE MONEY WAS MADE FROM EI Character Animation"

BTW... EI RULES!!!

[AVTPro]

BTW,

I'm working CA in v7 on a UB is worth it. Moves almost in RT and I barely do preview.

Like working in Maya.

11 Gb RAM, Quad Core 2.66 ghz. Dual 30" Displays.

What gets me is EI CA people have been coming up with so many solutions on their own. There's very little work that you guys have to do to help us meet our goals. It's the small things like "FBX texture import" that will help both CA and Prod work.

Anyway...sorry for the rant. Fresh battle wounds oozing from handling Pro and CA work at the same time. Both still need common production improvements.

My point is. I can understand 3D people wanting to play it safe in production. I believe it would be a good point if EI had a strong lead as production tool and it was extraordinairely faster than Maya. It would be a strong app for the industry and not just it's present segment. If Production savviness was it strong point it would be high on the totem pole. The old way of catoring to production only isn't the BEST plan for EI.

Why use it? because it's EASY, great quality, low price and community support.

Anyway everybody knows, EI doesn't have CA tools because they don't have CA programmer. Best we can is support the current programmer with more feedback.

Just don't want to see EI "try" to stiffle the creatively adventurous because of fear of jeopardizing their "famous" production bottomline and wide spread rep.

CA artist are growing in many ways.

OK. back to biz.

[arketype]

Alonzo and Brian-

"Seamless" Data exchange is a major issue for everyone CA folks and others.
My understanding is that the fact file format deals with 3d data slightly differently than many other formats, and Animator and Camera are dependent on these differences. And EIAS only supports a single UV texture space per object. This makes data conversion harder for complex scenes, and developers of other products do not understand the way FACT is different, which makes it harder for them to support it.

But RAMJAC has shown that really great conversion is possible with OBJ2FACT. Add this level of quality to FBX (and other "open" format) file exchange (including export) and we begin to have something.

Maya has "direct connect" file translators for CAD files, as well as support for OBJ, FBX, etc.

I think EIAS needs a "modular" perhaps plug-in based import/export system that is extensible for people's needs, and helps developers (EIAS, 3rd party, and alternative 3d Apps) send data to EIAS for use.

This needs to be a major initiative for EIAS to become a part of anyone's pipeline.

[Vizfizz]

I'm aware of the differences between Fact and other geometry formats. The Igors helped me see the difference in the way EIAS sees data. This alone is a major hurdle to face if we want to see vertex deformation animation/caching between applications. Maya has its own vertex caching system as well as Lightwave's mdd. Neither of which are directly compatible with EIAS' way of doing things. If we decide to really give advanced animation and CA a try, we'll have to consider the Maya caching system. It covers both Maya and Max which would be pretty good. Otherwise we might have to consider something proprietary. This is why the Igors and I were experimenting with the gNome format. (our own vertex caching system and currently implemented in SimCloth). It may be easier to go the other way, but that would require programmers to write gNome translators for the other applications and that seems to be a barrier too.

We definitely have a good start, but as you can guess, I want to see more.

[dwu67]

How about 16 bit displacement map and adaptive meshing on displacements for 7.1?

[cjberg]

Can you please elaborate on this... because I am under a different opinion on this fact.

<snip>Maya has its own vertex caching system as well as Lightwave's mdd. Neither of which are directly compatible with EIAS' way of doing things. <snip>

Cj

[Vizfizz]

CJ... I'll clarify.

From what I understood from the Igors.. the way the FACT format keeps track of vertices is different from the way other applications track vertices. Now we haven't done any examination of the Maya .XML caching format yet...mainly because the Igors have been too busy, but the example they gave me against the .mdd format is that if you were to look at a cube, EIAS would define a cube in 24 points where .mdd would define it in 8. Is this the case for Maya's .xml files? I'm not sure. The Igors created the gNome format to store not only vertex postional data, but a number of other specific EI/Fact data.

Here is a quote from the Igors on the EI forum:

Let us explain some tech. details (sorry if they aren’t interested). Yes, mdd file is pretty simple . There are NO any probs with read it. But there IS a big prob how to apply it. In LW all is same simple: apply “mdd vertices” to vertices from lwo file. However, in EI it does not work. A simple experiment: in LW create a simplest cube. In LW it has 8 vertices. Import it into EI. Here are 24 vertices (see Group Window, Info Tab). So, what to do with only 8 mdd vertices? Any importer can create extra vertices for EI in any order that importer wants. That’s why we could not use mdd for our tasks. Maybe it’s possible to restore a corresponding “what belongs to what” but to check this we need a representative set of mdd files together with FACTs.

Now according to the Igors, its not impossible, just difficult...and if I know them, unless sound reasonable arguements are made for why such technology is needed, they wont address the problem. Perhaps XML will be better. But if we get CA tools for v8, this type of issue will be in the forefront for me. Exchanging deforming vertex data between applications is quite critical and could be quite a boon for everyone.

[cjberg]

ok, that makes perfect sense... Thank you for the clarification.

Cj

[antnee]

Does the fact that Camera can now output RPF files allow it to output 16bit colour depth?
(sorry if this has been asked previously on this thread, or elsewhere!)

[MagicEgger]

Hey,

I did tons of animations with CA all these years with EIAS .. I receive CA scripts all months to do..
Any doubt I need a NEW CA SYSTEM?

I know we need to choose the best tools CA or not to EIAS 8.

but lets start with some new CA tools in EIAS 8 please..

Tomas

[DickM]

Well, I have done 3 pretty recent CA jobs with EI. So ca work is being done. The market for EI CA might not be big but it's there. I would have liked to see tools being added/fixed so I could have stuck with EI for these jobs. It's not about getting the new users as much as keeping your current user base happy. If EI does not see this, then more EI CA's will be saying.... ah bye bye!

I for one never wanted to say bye. I loved EI! I just wish it would have evolved like other apps that were never meant for CA either, and supported it's ca users more.

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