v8 Update from Ian

[jimjam]

Thanks Ian and Brian!

It's great to hear details on the progress.
Light Objects is a nice addition.
Does 50% gray produce displacement in version 7?

JimMulcahy

[cjberg]

I have to ask...

Has there been anything on the WMP tools? Alonzo hinted things were better, but there has been no mention of any kind regarding them... I am assuming the base is the same, and they will continue as the current version... just asking.

Cj

[halfworld]

Hi Jim,

In V7 50% grey would produce a 50% displacement strength.
In V8 this could produce 0% displacement strength meaning that, you can displace up and down in the same map, whereas in version 7, you could only displace on one direction with a map.

Hi CJ,

The base is the same, so far as I am aware. I know Alonzo has been testing some things in this area and recently. The tools are more advanced then promised for V8. Which is always nice. I'll let someone more qualified then me make further comment about them though as I am yet to use them in any serious way.

Personally, I think the ability to save out a 'UV snapshot' is of use to everyone, and is a great addition to the set.

Best,
Ian

[vrusch]

Thank God for the "Preview Animation" fix !
Don't want to sound harsh here, but this is so basic, it should have been fixed 3 versions ago...

Amen, Bert.

[richardjoly]

In V7 50% grey would produce a 50% displacement strength.
In V8 this could produce 0% displacement strength meaning that, you can displace up and down in the same map, whereas in version 7, you could only displace on one direction with a map.Best,
Ian
There is something I don't understand here. V7 is displacing in both directions.

EDIT: Ian explained it correctly. Continue reading for illustrated explanation. (Thanks Ian & CJ...)

[3DArtZ]

Hmmm Richard posts an interesting picture.
Perhaps the feature was mislabled as new, but its really just
a feature that is working as it should????

Its not a huge deal, but it does begged to be clarified :)

[cjberg]

yes, that is correct... but show the undisplaced object as well, and it will be at the 0 level... in other words... the black is at 0, the 50% is a .5 and the white is at 1...

not positive/negative displacement.'


Cj

[estudiodesign]

Hi Richard,

would you mind to load up your displacement project ?
I tried this in V7 but I didn`t get it to work at all.
My plane does not displace anyway which settings I use.
I must do something wrong.

Thanks
Tom

[Gigayoda]

I'm curious about Alonzo's WIP in Z-brush and how it would translate into EI?

[cjberg]

Here is another example image of 0 -> 1 displacement... with a reference plane... balls & sticks are turned on in Ubers to show the plane easier...


Hi Richard,

would you mind to load up your displacement project ?
I tried this in V7 but I didn`t get it to work at all.
My plane does not displace anyway which settings I use.
I must do something wrong.

Thanks
Tom

[richardjoly]

Nice example CJ. When you put something at the "0" reference you clearly see V7 does not go bellow the "sea level" like I thought but all up like Ian said. V8 will give us a nice option by letting us locate the sea level.

Tom
Here is the project. I rendered the "floor" like CJ did to show the effect of the map.

http://www.rdn.qc.ca/eias/Displacement_V7.mov

project here:
http://www.rdn.qc.ca/eias/displacement.zip

[Reuben5150]

THe obvious advantage with the 50% grey feature is you only need to use one map generated from ZB, its a much welcome feature i wanted for a while, i am about to start testing it.

Reuben

[A.C. Farley]

I'm curious about Alonzo's WIP in Z-brush and how it would translate into EI?

Z Brush won't export all the types of maps it should out of the Mac version. Craptastic.

-Craig

[Reuben5150]

Z Brush won't export all the types of maps it should out of the Mac version. Craptastic.

-Craig

Yep, there is massive prob's with th mac version i hear.

[AVTPro]

Hey Folx,

I meant to get back sooner.

EI CA is officially BACK!!! Weight maps aren't only back, they are BETTER than what they use to be. It's vastly improve and tears are a non-issue.

The weight map works so well, it will make you slap happy. It's very interactive, very subtle and very effective. It's actually "Easier" and "Faster" than any 3D animation I have ever used.

OK. I only know two. :)

We worked out that last bug on a couple of CA quadrupeds I did for my client this past week.

I would like to show a couple of WIPs. I can also answer a few questions.

I'm also very excited about the new "sea-level" displacement feature. There's are two key CA feature that I believe EI Users are going to "ROCK THE WORLD" with.

Also, under the hood, Camera handles 32 bit imagery so high frequency map depth is going to look great.

(images soon)

[plsyvjeucxfw]

Outstanding news Alonzo. Thanks for reporting.

[estudiodesign]

@ Richard

Thanks for the file, it works now.
My displacement setting simply was too "gentle" ;-)
Also I forgot to set a minimum value in the Bump.
Even if I don`t want a bump...it doesn`t displace with a 0-value.
;-)

Tom

[juanxer]

This interdependence between bump and displacement: shouldn't it be eliminated?

[richardjoly]

...My displacement setting simply was too "gentle"
Even if I don`t want a bump...it doesn`t displace with a 0-value...
We have to remember that the bumps and displacement are now in granger units so it's easy to predict the output. And yes, it would be nice to get rid of the interdependance of bumps and dispalcement...

[AVTPro]

This interdependence between bump and displacement: shouldn't it be eliminated?

No. they are two different things. Displacement changes geometry, it displaces or moves verts. Bump is an image effect. If you look at the contour or outline of the object the surface isn't changed. It only looked bumped. With displacement it's really bumped.

[Vizfizz]

There's are two key CA feature that I believe EI Users are going to "ROCK THE WORLD" with.


Care to elaborate?

[AVTPro]

Care to elaborate?


Hey Brian, are you testing v8? Or part of the beta team? Haven't seen you around.

Well, to answer your question maybe i am being subjective?

Always thought to do very good quality Character animation, whether it be manually or automatic, EI only need a few visual elements.

Texture control (EDIT: which is already has UVs capabilities)
Multi target morphs

In other words, what's the "LEAST" needed to do good looking CA? or what is the very least EI need to meet modern animations standard.

A character that looks realistic and moves realistic. (perceptually real).

This was my main course of outline of progression into CA. I needed a character that looked good. OK. What is look good?

UV 3D paint surfacing. You can't get good texture control without UVs. So, I needed to learn a UV layout tool. I tried Wings3D (via Gustavo), UVmapper (Lance) and then used my own which was Maya.

Before all the those rock solid solutions I tried a plethora of tools. 3D painter. Metacreation. MeshPaint from PolyTrans and it use to do Fact File format. Even used Endless Texturizer. And considered BodyPaint.

All in an effort to to control paint surfaces and have model that were one solution color or models with a smearing texture map.

Basically if you don't have a model with a painted face or clothes, it wont meet the look of todays characters. Correct? OK.

Zbrush was really just a way to paint textures surfaces for me. The rest of what the program can do is just gravy to me. Ok. Really thick gravy like Mom use to make but still just extra sauce. EIAS now has that extra with displacement map control.

It's really a beautiful thing that they did because it never made the brown feature list. It's extra gravy to have displacement on top of 3D paint textures.

EI CA users are going to rock the "look" of their models.

2.

Though EI doesn't have the all the fine animation controls. It has always have enough to do good CharAnim. Problem is there was monkey wrench thrown in when Weights maps went bad. There's been EI users whose CharAnim have made front page here on CGTalk even with the wmp problem. (cat and box)

So animation tools or F-curve is not the problem. EI is a proficient tool. Could be better but it works.

Now the weight maps are fixed. That means EI Users can dress up their single mesh superhero again. We all know, the main deal breaker was the wmp bug. OK. It's fixed. It's fast and it's easy.

EIAS v.8 Smooth Tool (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xF6RFsIGHQ)

High Res is still processing

[juanxer]

No. they are two different things. Displacement changes geometry, it displaces or moves verts. Bump is an image effect. If you look at the contour or outline of the object the surface isn't changed. It only looked bumped. With displacement it's really bumped.
Precisely that is why I ask that question. I don't understand why Animator requires one to put non-zero values in bump for displacement values to work at all, as Tom said.

[AVTPro]

Precisely that is why I ask that question. I don't understand why Animator requires one to put non-zero values in bump for displacement values to work at all.


Oh why a bump value is needed to activate the disp? I don't know, but it seems OK to me.

Bump and disp are different but they do very related things. Indentation on the surface.

[Vizfizz]

Hi Alonzo

No I am not on the beta team. At the time I asked it was a closed beta. So I just figured I'd bow out and hopefully be surprised.

So a UV tool and better weight maps. Ok. I'll give it a good once over when I get my upgrade.

[AVTPro]

Hi Alonzo

No I am not on the beta team. At the time I asked it was a closed beta. So I just figured I'd bow out and hopefully be surprised.

So a UV tool and better weight maps. Ok. I'll give it a good once over when I get my upgrade.

Hey Brian,

No. UVs are the same. They were always good (enough). Not sure how that confused.

My point was, to do good looking animation two things were a must (to me). Good texture and good skins.

Of course there are more needed. I think MultiMorphs targets are a must but I don't think that made the brown list.

Did you check out the video? The new Strength Map Smooth Tool?

[cjberg]

Alonzo,

Interesting video... cant judge whether that will address my issues or not. But it will get me to eval EI v8. I debated sending in a model for rigging and testing, but I need to be hands on to address the specific issues I had with rigging.

Cj

[A.C. Farley]

Why do they sell thus stuff to people, (Z Brush) KNOWING it doesn't work? Makes my blood boil.

[AVTPro]

Alonzo,

Interesting video... cant judge whether that will address my issues or not. But it will get me to eval EI v8. I debated sending in a model for rigging and testing, but I need to be hands on to address the specific issues I had with rigging.

Cj

hey Cj,

Do you have a pic of the model and what was the problem specifically?

Be honest with you, they would have just sent the model to me.

I generally handle stuff like for Matt. He's a PM not a rig tech :)

BTW, thanks, I'm just happy we can use EI again, anything they do will be

after I'm getting "Approvals" and "E-transfers".

Bottom line truth of the matter.

[AVTPro]

Why do they sell thus stuff to people, (Z Brush) KNOWING it doesn't work? Makes my blood boil.


What do you mean ZB doesn't work? It just saved my tail on my last project and I am getting paid because ZB pulled me out of a pinch...maybe 3 days ago.
:arteest: :buttrock: :bounce: :love:

You mean it's slow development on the Mac side compared to PC? I did hear of a displacement map bug...but that's just displacement maps...and it's like very 3 right? I only got v.3 in feb I think. It was released a month or two earlier.

Displacement mapping still works in ZB2 right. Quite honestly, the there's only one maybe two new features I like in ZB3.

My biggest gripe with them is Mac development time. There's no ZMapper right? That's my biggest gripe. No Zmapper and ZappLink.

Zpheres ROCK.
Sculptiing ROCKS.
ZPainting ROCKs.
ZTextures ROCK.

I have to check into the displacment. I haven't try it yet. Please post sample folx.

[cjberg]

Alonzo, the character(s) (beaver, porcupine, bear, etc...) is similar in body to Richard's gopher. The legs go into the body side, and have large belly. The leg without a WMP effects the belly too much, and with a WMP tears the belly. With a lot of work, the tearing could be lessened, but there are always trade-offs.

it gets to the point that you have exhausted WMPs and adding bones and have to face a rig that doesnt work. Been down this road too many times to count.

Cj

[halfworld]

This interdependence between bump and displacement: shouldn't it be eliminated?

Hi Juanxer,

This is often seen (and talked of behind the scenes) as a feature in itself... Less set up time, more predictable results. We can just put 0.001 in the bump box if we don't want to have any noticeable bump.

On a side note, bump mapping now looks much cleaner in V8, less need for high AA settings.

Ian

[juanxer]

Mmmm. The thing is, it is not a logical relationship (completely different and independent underlying mechanisms), and it often stumps people trying to do displacement and seeing no results until they learn the relevant voodoo :p (I don't remember if this is explained so in the manual). Oh, well...

[Gigayoda]

Alonzo or Ian,

The displacement maps preview in animator openGL or only when rendered? Can a low poly model appear smooth with the displacement map applied? Meaning does new geometry get created with the displacement option?

Will we have painting tools now in EI to add remove displacement a-la Amorphium of old?

Alonzo, thanks for your breakdown on improvements.

[AVTPro]

Alonzo or Ian,

The displacement maps preview in animator openGL or only when rendered? Can a low poly model appear smooth with the displacement map applied? Meaning does new geometry get created with the displacement option?

Will we have painting tools now in EI to add remove displacement a-la Amorphium of old?

Alonzo, thanks for your breakdown on improvements.


No, inorder for more geometry to be added it must be subDivided by a plugin like Encage or Blair plugs.

I use Encage.

[Vizfizz]

As far as I know internally painted strength maps have not yet been adapted to serve as a source for displacements. Maybe that's changed? Any beta testers wanna chime in?

One of the geometry plugins I was trying to sell the Igors on before we split was an enhanced displacement type plugin that could replace Image2Mesh and offer the ability to paint the displacement within Animator. It was a combination of I2M and Erosion from Konkeptoine. Something similar to Maya's Artisan. Alas...it never saw the light of day.

[AVTPro]

Alonzo, the character(s) (beaver, porcupine, bear, etc...) is similar in body to Richard's gopher. The legs go into the body side, and have large belly. The leg without a WMP effects the belly too much, and with a WMP tears the belly. With a lot of work, the tearing could be lessened, but there are always trade-offs.

it gets to the point that you have exhausted WMPs and adding bones and have to face a rig that doesnt work. Been down this road too many times to count.

Cj

Ha! so funny, I just got an email "kick back" from my client about the same problem with the cat (quadruped). Well, actually it's not funny at all it's more of a dreaded coincidence. Anyway, so I definitely understand the issue you describe. It is a common issue between (fat belly) quads and I have to deal with the problem right now. The stomach of "El Gato" is caving in when he sits because the low skin area between the hind leg, the chest and the protruding belly. In my case the chest pushes out, the belly concaves and the low skin (or webbing) between the hind legs pulls the geo tauntly back up across the sunken belly. The lower abdomen essentially ripples in that area.

This is as you say, a heavy problem not necessarily related to weight maps at all. This is one of the reasons I say "Skinning" is a category and study until itself and why I said Maya can be exhaustive.

The problem, specifically Morley's fatty gopher belly interpenetrating the hind legs is a collision problem, not a wmp issue. in Maya there are several ways to deal with it., one being skin collision detection. However EIAS doesn't have such sophisticated skinning tools. That's probably a good thing because so many techniques are mind numbing.

There's still a couple of ways to deal with it in EIAS like "Corrective Morphs". Go to the point in the animation where the problem occurs, export a parked model frozen in that position, clean up the colliding surfaces in a modeler and reimport as a morph. When the animation gets to that point, simply dial in the corrective model shape. in EI, this works in theory but are generally hard to do because of all the hoops involved translating fact files and maintain point orders. The theory in process is very simple. I tried it on the cat but the problem is specifically EI workflow need cleaning up. However I have used it successfully where animation were not involved and only a bone deformation need correcting. It's easier if you know to set up the models with consistent geometry before you skin. ( I know..essentially a "redo" rerig)


This is why Brian and I asked for "Morph Sculpting" or SDK (sculpt a corrective morph on the fly and set it in the animation). You could simply use an SDK at the point of the collision to keyframe in the corrective morph. Yes, XP could do it, but for this, SDK is more intuitive and artist like.

Problems that make this process so frustrating in EI is, exporting the model will cause geometry reordering. Then the morphs won't work. It's seems once a character is skinned then, to exporting the model is inconsistent. The poor part of the process is FACTS FILES.

Go to the point in animation of the post you would like and after you export the model as a fact file, you have to use one of several apps to get the fact into the a modeler via Obj or DXF. It would be better if EI could just export models at FBX. Yes, EI has obj but everytimes I try I get garbage imports.

Anyway, the new weight map tools are a great start for future features. I believe since this is just one pose, I can use the new smoothing tools that were not available when I did the cat. BTW, I think Morley now has solution with that in C4D's point constraints.

[halfworld]

Mmmm. The thing is, it is not a logical relationship (completely different and independent underlying mechanics), and it often stumps people trying to do displacement and seeing no results until they learn the relevant voodoo :p (I don't remember if this is explained so in the manual). Oh, well...

Hi Juanxer,

On the contrary, it is indeed a very logical relationship ;)

Bump recalculates normals.
Displacement moves polygons and then recalculates normals (it isn't enough to simply move the polygons about).

Moving polys around with a map is easy, calculating the normals is the hard part, in fact it's upward of 75% of the calculation, and it's the part that bump does (hence why it needs to be activated).

I believe the manual mentions a couple of times that bump needs to be activated for Displacement to work.

I hope this clears things up!
Best,
Ian

[gdogfunk]

Hey AVT!

Wow, that video sure does look promising. Can you render out that puppy animation so we can see the final results of the test?

When is v8 looking to ship? I'm anxious to give that new tool a whirl!!! By the way, Alonzo, I have a couple of questions about bringing in motion data for a character like that. Jump on IM when you have some time!

Thanks!

Ryan

[markalanthomas]

On the contrary, it is indeed a very logical relationship ;)



Logical shmogical. The way it should work is, you enter a value in the displacement field, and the bump field automatically gets filled in too. I lost an hour trying to get displacement working the first time I tried it because I didn't RTFM and just tried to play it by ear. In my opinion, software should make it as easy to play it by ear as possible. Abstracting those two fields is user hostile.

[richardjoly]

...The way it should work is, you enter a value in the displacement field, and the bump field automatically gets filled in too...
That would be nice indeed. I don't know if it is a simple thing to program...
In the mean time, a little reminder right under the input field might prove an easy job...

[markalanthomas]

That would be nice indeed. I don't know if it is a simple thing to program...
In the mean time, a little reminder right under the input field might prove an easy job...

Yep, that would be reasonable.

[AVTPro]

Hey AVT!

Wow, that video sure does look promising. Can you render out that puppy animation so we can see the final results of the test?

When is v8 looking to ship? I'm anxious to give that new tool a whirl!!! By the way, Alonzo, I have a couple of questions about bringing in motion data for a character like that. Jump on IM when you have some time!

Thanks!

Ryan

\m/ Lord Mininger \m/ :buttrock:

What? me? Render? What kind of guy do you think I am? LOL :deal:

I basically don't render however, I rendered the cat because my associate doesn't have Encage yet. My client rendered the puppy. I guess I can render the puppy later but I wouldn't post animation until my client has it plugin and published in his sponsor site.

But I get the point, the cat has no weight maps yet, and the puppy was a better model to wmp because the legs are more separate from the belly. There shouldn't be any tears.


My client gave me permission to show the work, but I may have to wait until they actually publish final renderings. I'll try to post before the v8 is out.

It's great to see the new or "restored" wave of interest in EIAS CA again.

See on you in chat after I get this moving again.

[AVTPro]

Ian, I have to commend you on your candor.

...but it happened to me ...like 5 times.

haha.

Most people only make the mistake once. :buttrock: :buttrock: :applause: :bounce: :rolleyes:

It is logical but it just doesn't make sense. :beer: :sad: :cry:

[Vizfizz]

Alonzo and CJ,

Another solution to your problem would be to incorporate a deformer into the rig that can modify the shape of the belly when reaching a certain position. In Maya this can be handled by integrating lattice deformers into a rig. Of course we don't have lattice deformers and wont until Animator's framework is updated to support component selection and transformation of vertices. I suppose you could potentially try using Animator's existing deformers tied into XP to control stuff like that, but I can't imagine it being a pleasant experience.

[Vizfizz]

It's great to see the new or "restored" wave of interest in EIAS CA again.




I've said it once, I'll say it twice. CA and animation / geometry manipulation tools are EI's only hope of expanding its market share. The resulting technologies that come out of addressing those issues will only improve the application as a whole.

[cjberg]

I tried and have utilized this route... but a morph can not overcome the influence of the bones, unless of course, you have realtime modeling in the animation package where you could pull points.

Alonzo... I am not going to go down the road of discussing the issues with the current WMP system... it has been over documented and discussed. I just want to note that the tears usually happen at the intersection of WMPs and not from folding geo.

Cj

Alonzo and CJ,

Another solution to your problem would be to incorporate a deformer into the rig that can modify the shape of the belly when reaching a certain position. In Maya this can be handled by integrating lattice deformers into a rig. Of course we don't have lattice deformers and wont until Animator's framework is updated to support component selection and transformation of vertices. I suppose you could potentially try using Animator's existing deformers tied into XP to control stuff like that, but I can't imagine it being a pleasant experience.

[Vizfizz]

Oh I also forgot to mention that influence objects are a HUGE plus in Maya. This is where various pieces of simple geometry are inserted into a skinning solution to represent how certain areas of geometry should hold their basic shape even while under the influence of bones. This is something we could potentially integrate into EI, but the current skinning implementation in EI would require integrating those influence objects into the initial bind.... and that is road we've talked about over and over again.

Until I get a chance to really play with these new strength map tools, I'll withhold making any snap judgements.

[juanxer]

Hi Juanxer,
On the contrary, it is indeed a very logical relationship ;)
Bump recalculates normals. Displacement moves polygons and then recalculates normals (it isn't enough to simply move the polygons about)...
Thank you: I wasn't aware of that :). Still, I think it ought to be transparent to the user: after all, it makes no sense to "offer the option" of inputting a certain displacement value and a zero bump value, then.

The reminder idea would be nice... and funny :p .

[AVTPro]

Alonzo and CJ,

Another solution to your problem would be to incorporate a deformer into the rig that can modify the shape of the belly when reaching a certain position. In Maya this can be handled by integrating lattice deformers into a rig. Of course we don't have lattice deformers and wont until Animator's framework is updated to support component selection and transformation of vertices. I suppose you could potentially try using Animator's existing deformers tied into XP to control stuff like that, but I can't imagine it being a pleasant experience.


Brian is it anymore pleasant in Maya? Influence objects are as pleasant as influenza. I agree with you 100% but "advanced skinning" is not without it share of pangs. Advanced skinning like vertex transformation, lattices point transformation, flexors, muscles, influence objects, wrap deformers, clusters, wire deformers, the list goes on and on Doesn't even make sense unless you have ample time and budget.

I had one day to these quadruped characters.

I agree, EI should at least start with the spreadsheet and vertice selection/addressing. Smaller stuff, like select points then grow selection and the points can be weight to one strength map or another. Even with just a read out we can tell what bones are and are not effect a vert. This way we can separate parts that are too close to paint, like ears too close to the mouth or upper and lower lips, or belly too close to the legs to paint.

Like is said, "advance skinning" is not idea for the common character animator who just needs the character to look good quickly. Maybe a "cluster" would be good. Bone should be able to do that. Grab bones, cluster them to a transformation bone. Then you can animate the correction.

Anything thing else is just so intensive. I'm still trying to coup from all the "Advance Skin" stuff and I have only gone half way.


http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f190/AVTPro/influ.png

Best thing I can say is that I know it, but my client couldn't ask me to do this in a week.

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f190/AVTPro/advanced.png

I bet I can get this whole character done in EI in a 3rd of the time it took in Maya.

[AVTPro]

I tried and have utilized this route... but a morph can not overcome the influence of the bones, unless of course, you have realtime modeling in the animation package where you could pull points.

Yes, 4 letter word here, starts with "M" ends with "A". Thing is I will skin and bone in Maya, fix the morph in Zbrush, once I pull the point in May and then bring it all into EIAS via FBX.


Alonzo... I am not going to go down the road of discussing the issues with the current WMP system... it has been over documented and discussed.

My eyes are already glazed over. threads upon threads of discussion.
This is why I wasn't beta testing. There's was simply no more to be said.



I just want to note that the tears usually happen at the intersection of WMPs and not from folding geo.

Cj

Thanks. I'll keep this in mind when I'm fixing the cat. Tears shouldn't be an issues, this is a folding issue.

The puppy tears were specifically and directly related to a UV issue. It was a beta concern only. It just made a good example of how good EI v8 weight smoothing is. No one will get tears like that when they use v8.

[plsyvjeucxfw]

Not as easy or intuitive perhaps, but weren't MAGNET deformers developed for just this purpose?

Could you correct the skin with the Magnet Deformer - then export the model as a Morph target, or perhaps tie the Deformer's influence with XP to some logical controller?

[AVTPro]

I've said it once, I'll say it twice. CA and animation / geometry manipulation tools are EI's only hope of expanding its market share. The resulting technologies that come out of addressing those issues will only improve the application as a whole.


cosign: Alonzo Von Threet

[AVTPro]

Not as easy or intuitive perhaps, but weren't MAGNET deformers developed for just this purpose?

Could you correct the skin with the Magnet Deformer - then export the model as a Morph target, or perhaps tie the Deformer's influence with XP to some logical controller?


Yes "YOU" can :)
Please post samples.

Actually, I realize that I adapt to a certain workflow and don't always use all the different tool. I hadn't use range limits in years until this project.
It is essentially a "visual component editor". I never used magnets because I use to use wmps when it worked without them. This is why it takes multiple people with difficult workflows to really test a software.

[Vizfizz]

Hi Alonzo,

Rigging is never fun unless you're a masochist. (Or a sadist and you decide to assign it to one of your crew). But ultimately it turns out that all these extra means to control a surface come in quite handy and each have their intended use. For the anal retentive, rigging is an exercise of precise control and while that level of control hasn't been implement into EI yet, at some point it will have to be addressed for sake of the future of the application.

With the tools and scripts I have in Maya I can rig a biped or quadruped in 30 minutes or less, but ultimately if I want precision controls to ensure body deformations occur exactly how I want them to, I wind up having to use those extra tools in conjunction with weight maps. Influence objects have saved my butt several times.

Once I get my hands on v8, I'll do an in depth trial on the new features. Its my prediction that these new tools will improve skinning for simpler characters, but will likely fall short on more complicated geometry. At that point, we can start introducing new tools to assist with those restrictions or limitations.

[halfworld]

I'll log 'autofill bump value' as a request.

Ian

[AVTPro]

Hi Alonzo,

Rigging is never fun unless you're a masochist.
With the tools and scripts I have in Maya I can rig a biped or quadruped in 30 minutes or less, but ultimately if I want precision controls to ensure body deformations occur exactly how I want them to, I wind up having to use those extra tools in conjunction with weight maps. Influence objects have saved my butt several times.

Once I get my hands on v8, I'll do an in depth trial on the new features. Its my prediction that these new tools will improve skinning for simpler characters, but will likely fall short on more complicated geometry. At that point, we can start introducing new tools to assist with those restrictions or limitations.

Hey!! who you calling a masoka... nevermind...I can't spell it. :)

What Maya scripts do you use in these areas? Is there's special skinning script beyoud mirroring?

Can you please list them? Especially, weight maps skinning mac or pc.

EIAS v.8 is a grandpappy step in the right direction. Yes, techniques like poly influence object that translate or scale are lifesavers.

Lattices saved my life...Liitterally. It's going to be a must for EI and it's not a complex process. However, it needs to be implemented so that the points move and are skinnable.

I wouldn't have my mocap system without lattices.

[Vizfizz]

Hi Alonzo,

Most of our scripts are proprietary, however we also use Setup Machine which works rather nicely. Its rig is a bit overly complex for previs purposes, but for $99 bucks you can't go wrong.

[jimjam]

Thanks Ian for logging 'autofill bump value' as a request.
The current approach has always been annoying.
Thanks also for your earlier displacement explanation.

JimMulcahy

[Vizfizz]

Not as easy or intuitive perhaps, but weren't MAGNET deformers developed for just this purpose?

Could you correct the skin with the Magnet Deformer - then export the model as a Morph target, or perhaps tie the Deformer's influence with XP to some logical controller?

Hi Kurt,

Magnets were a pseudo attempt to provide regional control over an area of geometry. They're intended to attract or repulse geometry along with the underlying bind. They should be incorporated into an active skinning solution rather than just using them in a passive mode to alter and save out geometry as you suggest. One should be able to use them and animate the magnetic influence to cause geometry to modify while animating. Tie it into XP and you could potentially create muscles. Essentially its a primitive influence object. Add in a range limit and you can ensure they only work over a very small area.

Magnets have a few problems. Number one, the shape of their influence can't really be defined except to the length of a bone. So they can only potentially generate cylindrical or sphere like influence regions. But judging from what I see in v7, the beta team may want to examine magnets because it doesn't look like their strength or falloff routines are working too well.

[FelixCat]

Aparently there are some good news in the CA front, sadly nothing about something so basic as the morph control. Right now, doing a lip sync is almost a nightmare, and seems that will be like that in the near future.
Well...

FelixCat

[A.C. Farley]

Well, is that because there's more than one way to do that or does it simply not work at all?

[DickM]

Aparently there are some good news in the CA front, sadly nothing about something so basic as the morph control. Right now, doing a lip sync is almost a nightmare, and seems that will be like that in the near future.
Well...

FelixCat

Yes Felix
One of the reasons I left EI for character animation (still use it with my other work). Lip sync is very tedious in EI. Since it's not modular, the morph window had to be up, reopened, moved out of the way...etc. I wanted the morph window to be more like a palette that could be quickly collapsed to the side and reopened but also slightly transparent. I created a HUD with XP to mimic what I wanted myself. But even then, without audio scrubbing, it was still a major PITA. :banghead:

As I said, I still use EI for other things, as for CA, the grass IS so much greener elsewhere. Makes it difficult to imagine that even if EI finally did start adding these features, that I would return for CA. :sad:

[ediris]

Funny thing is that i dont use EIAS for CA, but for camera mapping exclusively.
Anything else i will use another application. I can get work done in a fly but i loose time when i render my animations.
The interface helps a lot as Morley said stack windows could be very beneficial, the redraw on the second monitor is non existent.How can you guys keep silent?

[gdogfunk]

While camera mapping is nice, EI offers a LOT more than that, which I am sure you are aware. I use it all the time for complex projects and I own 'other' apps that just don't cut it for me. And since I DO use CA from time to time, I'm looking forward to using the updated tools in an already speedy workflow AND speedy renderer. What version are you on again? 2.9? If you don't have v6 or 7 you are really missing out on some nice features, regardless of what other apps you are using.

Looking forward to v8!

Ryan

[ediris]

While camera mapping is nice, EI offers a LOT more than that, which I am sure you are aware. I use it all the time for complex projects and I own 'other' apps that just don't cut it for me. And since I DO use CA from time to time, I'm looking forward to using the updated tools in an already speedy workflow AND speedy renderer. What version are you on again? 2.9? If you don't have v6 or 7 you are really missing out on some nice features, regardless of what other apps you are using.

Looking forward to v8!

Ryan

Hey v7 here man. Yes give me v2.9 back i missed the I/O beauty.
At least the plug ins were working, Image2Mesh.. we still have the same deformers than decades ago.So yes it seems like v2.9 and 20 years later.
Sorry man i am looking forward for improvements in Animation, that is what is all about.
Edgard

[plsyvjeucxfw]

i am looking forward for improvements in Animation

Yep - we all are. I think as these discussions continue, that EITG may actually be realizing that we WANT animation and workflow enhancements, not just new rendering features.

So with the major bugs of Weight Maps and the Preview Playback Speed addressed, maybe we'll start to see movement on the animation front. I know the Igors have mentioned implementing 'Mesh' to allow for component selection. They've also mentioned custom attributes and set driven key functionality. So who knows? Maybe version 9.

Unless Tesla can advance faster than Animator to become the new top of line product.

[gdogfunk]

If they can add audio scrubbing to the features (which I hope is in there as an added bonus) in addition to the framerate playback, I would be a very happy animator!

Ryan

[markalanthomas]

Thanks Ian for logging 'autofill bump value' as a request.
The current approach has always been annoying.
Thanks also for your earlier displacement explanation.

JimMulcahy


Another thing that should happen in EI is that anytime you enable a feature which requires raytracing, raytracing should be automatically enabled in the Render window.

Also, upon enabling transparency, a non-zero refraction value should be automatically applied to the material. I'd make it default to glass.

God is in the details, folks. Little stuff like this would make using EI more enjoyable.

[FelixCat]

If they can add audio scrubbing to the features (which I hope is in there as an added bonus) in addition to the framerate playback, I would be a very happy animator!
Ryan
------------------------------------
Me too.
Well... if i can dream... i could be very happy with an animation tool like TAFA (sadly no MAC and, maybe, no nothing). It was a very powerful morph tool, developed by just one man as an stand alone app, but can´t comunicate with EiAS and was a dead end.:(
FelixCat

[Vizfizz]

Felix,

Its not a dead end. There are several people interested in ensuring EIAS obtains new animation features. I think it becomes more and more apparent with each upgrade that render enhancements just wont cut it anymore. Something has to change. Users are getting tired of constantly being told that animation features should wait.

[halfworld]

I agree Brian.

[FelixCat]

Brian, i REALLY want you are right. I´m a bit tired to hold my breath, and becoming blue!
Right now i´m working in a possible project that can beneficiate very much with the rendering and Weight Maps improvements, but the lack of audio scrubbing and the framerate playback are real show stopers... (i can be happy with the TAFA capabilities, they are old in CA, but we are so far below).
FelixCat

[Vizfizz]

Felix,

I completely sympathize. If anyone should throw their hands up and walk out on waiting on EI's animation improvements its me. I had to embrace Maya in order to stay in business, but I wont give up on trying to get EI back on the animation track. The problem is so multi layered that its difficult to try an correct the problem without causing a cascade of other problems. Instead of biting the bullet, EI's developers chose to play it safe and quite frankly I think that's one of the primary reasons for EI's attrition.

I support Tesla and truly do see the need for that application in order to "restore" the entire system to a whole, but the focus on Camera upgrade after upgrade is taking its toll.

[mike33]

Not to digress, But Luxology seems to have accomplished a lot with Modo in a short time... very curious to see if 401 will have animation tools.

This isn't a post to start a them vs us type of thing, it's just kind of intersting to see Modo's continued progression.

Also, another thing is the modelers out there - Silo, bonzai, modo...

I'm very curious what Tesla is going to be able to do...

[ Unfortunately It' s not going to matter much to me at the moment, I had a double whammy between an expensive car reapair last week and Furlough days at work. I've lost the $ to upgrade both Mac and software for the time being. The economy is taking it's toll, it will be interesting to see what the 2nd half of the year brings to the aerospace companies, I wanted to throw caution to the wind, but we've decided to be conservative and hold back on any upgrades. Sigh...:sad: ...at least the G4/400 is still jugging along(10 years old come Nov.) and my pencils still work.]

Cheers, Mike

[juanxer]

About Tesla, a question would be if Team Kishore have this first version of the app well delineated enough so that they can start coding as soon as they get acquainted with the new Qt framework. In short, we can't wait! :)

Anyway. About Light objects: what kind of options and parameters do they provide compared to a Light (specially regarding shadows)? Are they sort of a generalization of the new Area Lights?

[halfworld]

Hey,

The new Light Objects have all the same options as Area Lights, that's because you use an Area Light to 'drive them' (that is to say, the luminescent objects use a 'light wrapper'). It's very simple to set them up. I completed an intro video for them today, it's uploading now.

Best,
Ian

http://homepage.mac.com/cake_or_death/lightintro.jpg

[Vizfizz]

Well one thing for sure is we're gonna have one hell of renderer. Interesting stuff Ian.

[monday1313]

heh, are we going to have access to the V8 tuts before it's released?
I'd like to be able to hit the ground sprinting...

Thanks Ian!

[scottfox]

Im looking forward to v8. The imagery is beautiful and lighting and rendering enhancements are nice. \ Unfortunately, the largest 'realistic' area of growth for EI is NOT CA as some have stated. There are multiple options for Pro CA on the market for the consumer to choose from. This waters down the number of animators even willing to make a 'switch' to another package that even in its next incarnation, most likely wont be "pro" level.
...
Mograph apps that are superior to EI equal 1. C4d. Theres a much larger pool of new and professional users available to check out a credible alternative to c4d. And the road to making EI superior is much easier to 'drive' than the CA road is. But EI did not listen to me, and thats fine. In the meantime i need to continue 'practicing' in Cinema.... :cry:

[jimjam]

Brian,

You speak of the need for animation improvements, but the renders coming from some other renderers (V-ray, Maxwell, Modo...) these days are so vastly superior to EI renders IMHO (especially in product and architectural visualizations) that I would have left EI for dead if it hadn't been for the coming render improvements...

JimMulcahy

[Vizfizz]

Hi Scott,

All the animation advancements proposed will ultimately help the Mograph effort as well. I think the consensus is for improved Animation Tools....in which CA tools and Mograph tools will be a part of. As long as CA and Mograph artists focus on improving Animator, we'll all be better off for it.

[Vizfizz]

Then again, Brian, the renders coming from some other renderers (V-ray, Maxwell, Modo...) these days are so vastly superior to EI renders IMHO (especially in product and architectural visualizations) that I would have left EI for dead if it hadn't been for the coming render improvements...

JimMulcahy

Hi Jim,

I don't doubt that render enhancements have kept a select group of artists in the here and now loyal to EI, but I would care to say the numbers lost to attrition, because of animation deficiencies, is probably higher. EI's death rate exceeds its birth rate and its early gen x user base is getting older and older by the day. Of course that's an opinion and I have no numbers to back that up, but its my experience in the entertainment industry that tells me this.

I see it like this. There are two primary ways to market a 3D application to the world. One is to focus on technology that supplies an end "product" (like modeling or rendering) and the second is to focus on the "process" to meet an artist's creative need. Ultimately a balance must found between these two marketing systems to truly be successful, but usually an application will find a niche in one of those systems and exploit it. That's fine as long as the niche doesn't wind up choking the life out the 3D application by preventing it to grow. (As I believe is currently the case for EIAS)

I believe that "process" based marketing is more effective in today's market place than "product" based marketing. In the early CG years, people were more impressed by technology buzzwords and "product" marketing was extremely effective. Just look at the computer hardware market as an example. 15 to 20 years ago, CG jobs could be won or lost because of what hardware you were using or which software technologies you could leverage. (notice I didn't say software application)

While those things are still important today, CG artists of the 21st century are more interested in how a 3D application can assist their creative process to tell a story. Whether you are animating a logo, a car, or a 3D character, you're always trying to tell a story as a means to communicate. Animation becomes the vehicle of communication...its also the foundation of the creative "process". If EITG could learn to sell its ability to fulfill the "creative drive" the application would sell better.

EIAS is intended to be a "system" of applications designed to assist the artist with his creative process. Unfortunately that doesn't happen. The current emphasis on rendering technologies limits EIAS marketability as a "system" and the problem is compounded by those technologies being trapped by an outdated animation application we know as Animator. Since Camera is a closed rendering system (unavailable to other 3D applications) potential new users wanting those fancy rendering technologies are put off by a weak creative process. In essence, by failing to improve Animator, EITG is completely limiting its ability to succeed.

All is not bad news here. EITG is attempting to improve its "process" marketing by re-introducing Modeler to complete the "system" of applications. This can appeal to new users because they can now do "everything" within one set of applications if they choose too. EITG has also done a good job ensuring its competitive with rendering technologies. I'll admit that Camera needs 64bit access for more memory, but I personally think multithreading should take a back seat to Animator improvements and Telsa's release.

[monday1313]

There are a lot of things that could be added, but a lot of the things that are requested (with the exception of the CA tools..) can be done with a little creative problem solving or a few extra steps. Granted, nobody wants to make any more work for themselves, but once you get used to the workflow, and can do it quickly without thinking about it, it's really not that big of a deal. Like the Silo to OBJ2fact to EIAS flow, or a quick snapshot using all your slaves. The requests for things like the bump values being changed automagically when you adjust displacement would be great, but I'd rather that the programmers add new features rather than make the current ones slightly easier to use(or fix ones that don't work). This isn't exactly a high priced app relative to MAYA and the like...you don't get the features of a new mercedes for the price of a hyundai, but they will both get you where you need to go(usually)...

[juanxer]

Modo has been cited here, and that feels quite apropos, as I think that half of what any new Modo iteration provides is workflow shortcuts, ways to abbreviate processes, new timesaving features. These are easier to come up with in the case of (mostly) a modeler, true, but it's not as if we haven't pointed out some of the most clear-cut ones we'd happily kill Bambi's mother to get into Animator.

(In the case of the Displ./Bump values issue, it is just that the way it works is rather absurd from an user interface perspective, and, citing Admiral Ackbar, "it's a trap!" we all fall into sometimes :p . If calculating displacement somehow requires invoking bump mapping's Normals calculation code, it shouldn't depend on the user triggering that by inputting bump map values in cases where no bump map has been loaded. It should just trigger it anyway, invisibly)

[3DArtZ]

no man is an island, and becoming more of an enclosed system will isolate EIAS even more then it is today.
Good CA tools will birth new users(period, end of story).
Becoming a one trick pony, at this point in time, will keep current successful users happy and will find some new users who are concentrating on that particular market. But will not bring fame and fortune back to EI.

From what I've seen, looks like EI is doing an ok job at touching on all areas.... but more needs to be done and if they are taking the steps needed, then whatelse can we ask for???

Ive grown beyond impatient at this point so I'll toss my hands into the air and just wait to see
what EI is going to show up to the party with....

Mike Fitz
www.3dartz.com (http://www.3dartz.com)

[Vizfizz]

but it's not as if we haven't pointed out some of the most clear-cut ones we'd happily kill Bambi's mother to get into Animator.


Now there's an image. lol. I can just see Juan sharpening his Rambo knife or loading his shotgun/rifle.

[Ideas]

'Like the Silo to OBJ2fact to EIAS flow, or a quick snapshot using all your slaves.'

Having just started using slaves - what is the quick snapshot trick?
Mike.

[scottfox]

Mike, exactly who or what 3d character artist is going to look at EI and its CA tools and choose it over Maya, Max, or even Cinema or Lightwave? Maybe a hobbyist. But with the beautiful renderer, many more animators in visualisation and mograph, dont have to sacrifice a whole lot to get a rich hi end looking output from EI.
.....
Now, when I hear Brian or other Pro's on this board claim that EI's CA tools, at least 'rival' the competitions, THEN we may have something....
.....
and nothing personal to you Mike....

[DickM]

CA tools affect FAR more than just CA's!! Silly not to start adding them!

[Vizfizz]

One thing I wish people would understand is this: Advancements in animation tools for character work will benefit the ENTIRE animation process despite your specific creative discipline. Whether you're a visualizer or a Mographer...you will reap the benefits.

[3DArtZ]

Well Scott, you have brought up part of my point.... Hobbiest use the same money as pros do... and some hobbiests turn into pros themselves.

I do a lot of character work for industrial clients, like General Electric, and I cant use EIAS for even the most basic of the animation work where people are to be used in product demonstration.

So no offense taken, but thinking that concentration on mograph is going to keep EIAS afloat...
well when I hear from Pro's that the mograph market is EI's golden ticket... well the I'll start to think that EI is in better shape :/

[Vizfizz]

Mograph is an excellent discipline with lots of users. It would be very beneficial to market to them. But instead of leading this conversation into a comparison or even a competition as to which discipline is "better" for the health of EI, we should look for where the two markets overlap and start formulating feature requests around that.

Where does Mograph and CA overlap in terms of animation features? I could name several, but let me hear from you...

[DickM]

Mograph is an excellent discipline with lots of users. It would be very beneficial to market to them. But instead of leading this conversation into a comparison or even a competition as to which discipline is "better", we should look for where the two markets overlap and start formulating feature requests around that.

Where does Mograph and CA overlap in terms of animation features? I could name several, but let me hear from you...


Set Driven Keys
Updated Gui such as morph window customizable slider HUDs
Poly selection sets
Vertex level control
Jiggle and Lattice Deformations
Soft Ik
Spline IK
....to name a few.

They are extremely important for good CA, and I know that other disciplines would benefit from them. Up to date CA tools help everyone!!!

[Jens C. Möller]

I think its correct vice versa. ANY enhancement of the animation abilities of Animator will be beneficial to CA. Enhanced FCE editing with weighted tangents, keyframe copy paste, easy continuity and leveling functions (ease in/out etc.), blending of curves - whatever will greatly be beneficial to CA. Enhanced Deformations, including Free Form Cages, point level editing, etc. will be good for all purposes, but also of course for CA. Enhancements of the interface also.

I think its fair to say that with enhancements in each part of the software it will come nearer to a "full featured" CA tool. Be it scripting, nodes, skinning, bones and joints, Physics (for Ragdoll effects), Keyframing... you name it. So, to demand "great CA tools" actually means to me many many enhancements to the current structures, that would not only be beneficial for the CA animator, but for the whole system in general.

So, when the FCE is adressed, and enhanced, EI is afterwards a better CA tool - not yet "THE" CA tools, but at least one step further. I have no benefit of a really beefy skin editor, when I do not have the ability to also keyframe and animate it adequatly.

To make a summary: The EIAS lacks many things - its not news. I belive it can add many things step by step that many, many users have requested over the last years that will directly result in new and better CA abilities, since they effect the system and its workflow globally. Such an enhancement can also be beneficial for a Motion Grafics designer, or an architect. An Architect may appreciate that he finally has access to easy to use "character libraries" to populate their renders etc. The Mograf Designer may be pleased that he has direct spline import and better Animtion and Compositing abilities.

EIAS is not a good CA tool - yet. But CA is "many tools together", this may "diminish" the glorious "CA features" to many small but also cool features - its just another name.

So, most EACH feature that is improved in Animator can be considered to be also an improved CA tool.

Jens

[Vizfizz]

So Jens... do you feel its finally time to REALLY focus on improving said "overall animation tools" yet or will other priorities continue to dominate EI's upgrade schedule?

[Jens C. Möller]

Actually, Brian, I have no idea :) But if it was me, I would sort through all feature requests of the past 10 years, make packages of them i.e. "Project Window" or "FCE" or "Model I/O" and adress them one by one. That alone would make a gorgeous version 9 I think.

Jens

[Vizfizz]

Dividing up feature sets is a good idea and we both know that some features are required first before others can be implemented. That being said, we must look to the trends of computer animation to help determine what should be placed as a priority. Trends are established by the users, not developers, but technical considerations must be factored into that decision making process to avoid potential technological pitfalls.

[Jens C. Möller]

Yes, Brian. The best developer is a user. ;)

Jens

[Vizfizz]

Hey Jens... not to try and push the subject, but has Ramjac and EITG settled its differences? If you want to plead the 5th that's fine. But I'm sure many want to know if we'll be seeing Ramjac products in v8.

No need for details. A simple yes or no will do. (We'll also accept I'm not at liberty to say yet).

[Jens C. Möller]

Yes, I know that everybody awaits a statement regarding the future of ramjac products. In fact the situation is somehow "stable" in that the ramjac press release is still true and relevant. On the other hand there is communication between ramjac and the EITG, so, everybody is trying to figure something out. It is unfortunately still much to early to say anything about it. I say "still" since everyone is in an unstable and uncomfortable position. We, EITG and also all users and I wish that this changes soon.

We still do our best to find a solution.

Jens

[Vizfizz]

Well at least there's communication. That's the most important thing. However v8's release is seen to be "right around the corner". Hopefully an agreement will be made soon.

[Jens C. Möller]

Yes, I know. Anything regarding EI8 and its future, which is indeed around the corner and has seen some long due bug fixes and will be a pretty decent release I think, will be said when we have a solution with EITG or we don't have any.

Jens

[halfworld]

From the EIAS 8 b38 release notes:

- Displacement options are disabled if bump = 0

I'd say that's not a bad turn around on a feature request!
Ian

[juanxer]

Whoa! :surprised :)

[ediris]

Hey Ian that is a nice image, i wish there could be a better way to have an outdoor look realistic.Havent seen one in the gallery. All of them are either in the darkness, seems like these days is easier to be angry than to be happy.

I am looking forward for Tesla.
Edgard

[estudiodesign]

I'd say that's not a bad turn around on a feature request!
Ian

cool... :thumbsup:

[monday1313]

'Like the Silo to OBJ2fact to EIAS flow, or a quick snapshot using all your slaves.'

Having just started using slaves - what is the quick snapshot trick?
Mike.


in the render window, set timing to current frame, set the number of strips to the number of slaves you have and then use a network render to render out a snapshot. Alternatively you can not use the strip feature and set a number of single frames rendering. like when you want to see the model from different angles or something. the handy thing about that is you can still do an actual snapshot form the camera window if you have free cores available...or use a seperate machine to render out the single frames. another trick that somehow managed to not make it's way into my habits for years despite numerous mentions is turning off antialiasing for previews...this is the single biggest time saver ever for me personally...

also, multitasking is important here. If you adjust the way you work a little to take the 'shortcomings' of EIAS and turn them into advantages, you'll get more production out of your production time. A little planning goes a long ways...

[FelixCat]

Ey, Ian!
Did you posted the intro video? i´m very interested!
FelixCat

[halfworld]

Hi Felix,

It is online but it is not public yet (I made some small mistakes in it), anyone (including yourself) that would like to see it can email me privately and I'll send the link.

Best,
Ian

[Vizfizz]

Ian,

With v8 this close... get Brad to let you release it now. Stuff like this generates interest and can only help sales. (after you fix the mistakes of course)

[halfworld]

Sure, I hope to do that tonight...

Ian

[scottfox]

Look, I wish the best for EI and its ability to stay in business. But frankly, no one answered me how CA tools in V8 make EI a better alternative than the other packages out there. We cant even import Poser Content like everyone else. IF EI has a guaranteed 10 more years in business, then maybe they have the time to develop features that a vast minority of people want or need. Ian has done user polls before, its a slam dunk. Most architects use actual stock\keyed footage of real people in all angles imaginable for their "random" people in a scene. So understand CA people that you DONT know what Motion Graphics and especially visualization Pros need. I gave up, I even voted for the few CA additions because EI has chosen a road that leads nowhere. They are too far removed from the real production world
of animation, especially for Broadcast, Cable and the internet, to understand whats actually getting animated out there. Hobbyists have money too? I dont even know where to begin on that. Do hobbyists go to animation schools? Will hobbyist adoption help lead EI to acceptance in academia? You want to get EI into schools, build it for the "masses" not the fringe user. Is EA sports using EI for characters? Is ANY video game company? Even previs', if I understand it correctly, cant currently use it, and previs does not need all the super detailed bells and whistles.
.......
Listen, root for CA. Beg for it. You have won the 'battle' here so far, in that CA is being addressed. But please, STOP, telling me or any motion graphic artist that this in any meaningful way helps us do our jobs any better than V7 did. Im thrilled for the rendering enhancements, I love them! So I will upgrade. EI had a chance to make itself THE mograph price\performance leader in our industry with a few specific additions to the software. I was prepared to proudly review the software against Cinema as a credible alternative, and do it in a forum that is the LARGEST on the internet. The creative Cow.
Im doing a master series DVD for them and need to use C4d for my 3d content in order to get hired for the project, NOT EI. None of you cares about this probably, but I DID.
Hundreds of thousands of creatives could of heard about EI and its "return to prominence" in the mograph and visualisation markets. But the powers that be at EI and somewhat on this board, are much better able to provide guidance and exposure for EI, and for the price I was charging (free upgrades basically). I cant wait to see the great exposure these new CA tools bring in a product review vs any other package. And Im sure theres a lot of faithful EI users willing to give EI free or virtually free massive exposure. Im exhausted...
.........
Im frustrated, tired, and out......... :banghead:

[ediris]

Wow that was some adrenaline there Scott, i heard you man. I wish we could have within the package a way to bring illustrator files pain free, but we dont and the product that was developing and making it possible just went out of the face of the earth.

But i am stuck with EI i have to get a few plug ins to make it work like Pro Modeler but is meaningful compared with what Mograph Module has to offer, i am sorry to hear these words coming from you Scott.
Thanks,Edgard.

[scottfox]

Hi Ediris, I just have never had such access and opportunity to help a person or entity, besides myself, and seen it basically dismissed. And by an entity that really needs the "help". EITG and "relationships" could take up a whole season on the Dr Phil show. I dont need to overstate the obvious. Its just sad to me.
.....
Im outnumbered, especially here on CG Talk where EI still has hollywood style visions of grandeur. The reality of the marketplace and the emotion of artists dont mix well. I grew up with a business background and mentoring, it has been the number one reason I have been financially successful as an artist AND a businessman. Most creatives ive met couldn't balance their books or write an effective business plan to get a bank loan. I am, and have always been the 'general' opposite of my peers. Im conservative, I love and believe in God, Im good with the business side of art, I haven't smoked Pot, I love sports, (I was the only artist in the history of my university to be on a sports scholarship) and still never find a fellow sports fan in the various workplaces I am in and out of, (sigh) So I do struggle at times to 'relate' to my fellow designers. (anyone else watch all NCAA games today? :beer:
......
Why does this matter? Im not real sure, other than, as I do love with a passion what I\we do for a living, the other aspects of our industry and specifically EI confound me at times.
In its simplest form, Im offering my services for free or basically free and those services would cost the "entity" tens of thousands of dollars to get, if they even tried to. Ive been rejected, basically. My Church is far more worthy of my time, and appreciative of it. So are many other pursuits where generosity is seen as something to be appreciated.
.....
Ediris, you remain very cool, and a positive person. Dont change... Im fine.... sort of ;)

[Vizfizz]

Scott,

Where do you want me to start? Mographers and CA artists are asking for the same thing:

Improvements to the animation systems within Animator. Plain and simple. That should be our mutual battle cry.

The benefit that Mographers already have is EIAS only needs a couple of enhancements to make a good package even better. EIAS is excellent at object oriented, hard surface animation tool which makes it just fine for Broadcast Design right now. Should new Mograph tools be added? Of course they should. But at least you are capable of doing your work. That is not the case for CA users. So why not abandon CA as you suggest?

Because its a bad idea. Here's why:

1. CA is a market EITG needs to address in order to stay competitive with the Big 5.

- Look at every other major 3D application out there. Each one of them expends huge resources to embrace the CA market. Even applications like Houdini are getting into the CA business. Now if EITG wants to regulate EIAS to a single, specific market, fine...but like it or not it is the "hollywood grandeur" that's fueling the trends in CG. While I don't have specific data to quote it would be interesting to look into schools that teach CG and determine which CG discipline is growing most.

If Mograph was enough, EI would be doing better against the competition. Problem is its not. Why? Because every other application out there can do hard surface, object oriented animation for broadcast work. They can do that AND animate characters too. Why buy a 3D package that limits you to one? If I were a new artist I'd want a package that offers the greatest range of capabilities possible. Everything else is just a matter of interface and workflow.

2. I believe CA is the largest growing segment of CG animation in the entertainment industry.

- Granted, this is my opinion, but if you were to look at what drives films, TV, and video games in today's market...its story. And what's needed for story? Characters. Of course we need all the other disciplines in CG to make the whole thing work, but as a 3D company, does EITG want to limit themselves to a niche or try to appeal to a wider audience?

3. CA will push the evolution of EIAS faster than Mograph.
- This one will probably spark more debate than anything else, but CA will stress an application more from an animation development viewpoint than Mograph.

So why would CA tools be beneficial?

1. Extremely improved deformation controls and true component level manipulation of a model on the vertex level. Nearly unavailable in today's EI and probably the biggest reason why EI has difficulty competing. Your broadcast design work would take on a completely new dimension if you had that kind of control. You just haven't embraced that yet.

2. Improvements in various kinematic systems and data exchange protocols like FBX which acts as decent means of exchanging animation information between applications.

3. Better sound syncing to animation capabilities for things like lip syncing.

4. Character animation drives the need for non-linear animation capabilities.

5. Advancements in motion capture capabilities.

6. Advancements in fur technologies for animal creatures.

7. Advancements in soft dynamics for cloth systems for character clothing.

Should I keep going?

[ediris]

Wait Brian i am glad we are talking about which market should EITG focus i have to agree with Scott and at the same time with you, CA tolls help to create better motion graphics at a level. But at the same time is way of the target of what us Mographers want from an application.
I dont remember manipulating any objects vertices in C4D, sure i added some bones but everything was simple, we had Dante which works great for Animation but Blair left the product die, not given the user any support or answering in a unconsidered way.
I use C4D almost every day an we love it in South Asia,why?
Well Mograph Module is like having all the trapcode plug ins but in 3d.
Is very easy to add elements to the interface.
Is not as cluttered as EIAS.

Is well thought and yet very simple to update, evrybody writes plug ins for it and it has a very robust set of tutorials and free plug ins.
It has very few limitations for importing files with textures, is a joy to work with.


So EIAS needs a new interface ASAP.
If i can bring my models via whatever with their textures jut as i left them it will be very nice.
Well just to mentioned a few, you want me to go on?
Thanks,Edgard.

[scottfox]

Brian, I was not talking to you, but now there is an example of the strong arming of an idea on people. Ill debate you until im purple on the number of markets and careers available to animators. Hollywood 'grandeur' has nothing to do with what the thousands of corporate video animators look for in a package. I know you are busy working on the next feature film, but Im sorry, you are so far off on this. Just like the President tends to lose track of what a gallon of milk costs at the store, i know you have completely written off the majority of animators out there. (the ones that use more than just 3d, yes, most animators use more than just 3d) You conveniently can not answer ANY of my main points. But thats fine.
List all the technical CA stuff you want it only proves how out of touch you are to "joe basic" animator. They\we want SIMPLICITY in our 3d. Hard surface is not a phrase we ever bring up. Does it import into AE smoothly, can I use and manipulate illustrator files? EI is CLOSER to being a first and maybe 2nd choice as a tool to a huge audience, IF they add a few major features. Is it better to be the choice among 2 packages to a massive audience of working class animators. OR to TRY and be the "choice" among a handful of 'elite' and fickle Hollywood types who ALREADY have watered thier choices down to roughly 5 3D PACKAGES! Do the math. One competitor and huge user base, or 5 GREAT competitors and a fickle super detail oriented group of CA artists. So, what version of EI will EVER please the 'elite' CA guys in hollywood? With huge money at stake, what company is going to drop their package for EI? Over Maya? Over Max? is Pixar?
Leave me alone, or answer my questions. But im not alone on this. Most users are afraid to disagree with you, and thats not right. We have talked about your ideal vision for EI and its future. Dont let that cloud the reality of EI. Some of us NEED it to make a living with EI, and driving it off the road for a personal 'hope' is not going to help EI bring in any more
money in sales. EI has effectively made their package not good enough on multiple fronts.
The time it takes to implement Modern hi end CA tools will bankrupt and end EI as we know it. Not enough NEW people will see it as a good option for CA for at least another few versions if that. By then, not enough sales will kill the company. But, on this board, anyway, thats fine. Ignore the user stats that EI has, we don't own the company, so we can suggest whatever the heck we want, right? Maya is still there....

[juanxer]

From the EIAS 8 b38 release notes:
- Displacement options are disabled if bump = 0
I'd say that's not a bad turn around on a feature request!
Ian, sorry to be a nuisance about this: could you suggest that they put an explaining text in the Bump/Displ. pane anyway? Even this disabling of the Displacement field can be confusing to the uninitiated.

[juanxer]

This CA vs. MoGraph discussion gets old because we all arrived to some valid conclusions time ago: that we need Illustrator's .AI importing and a few Paralumino-type modeling tools able to derive objects from these, better model I/O and some AE-type animation and project management tools. For a good start. And the main requirement (.AI import) was shot down by EITG. Wait for Tesla for that, the mantra was, because we don't want feature duplication (which is a silly argument because what we need isn't elegance but good workflow).

This shouldn't be an either/or case. We need decent CA for MoGraphers to know they can evolve with EI and give it a try and incorporate it into their arsenal, too.

This is a Brad-level issue. The case was stated time ago. It is up to him to allocate the resources go Tarantino on his teams yadda yadda. It would help to know what the masterplan is.

[halfworld]

the main requirement (.AI import) was shot down by EITG.


Hi Juanxer,

You're not wrong, but it isn't so black and white. The response was that EITG has no programmer that can do this at the moment. With the release of EIAS 8, EITG will hopefully be able to afford to hire a new one that can.

Best,
Ian

[juanxer]

I'd understand EITG not wanting to change its objectives for V.8 midcourse. My hope is that they target these areas for V.9.

[A.C. Farley]

Hi Scott,

I don't think anyone is afraid to disagree with anyone else at all in the EI world. Scott, it reads as if maybe you are taking on too much, attempting to drive this process.

Anyway, I def want the CA capabilities, as well as the things you've mentioned. I don't think it's a 'one or the other' proposition. EI has to catch up.

-Craig

[3DArtZ]

Scott, honestly I think you need to calm down a bit. Believe it or not, the emotions of your frustrations are identical to what the rest of us have been feeling since around 1999, as the defincies in the software have so ever slowly started to become apparent to the userbase.
Then why not leave the software, one might ask. and in looking back over the years in getting the big picture. the magnitude of EIAS shortcomings was never black and white.
It was slowly made apparent to us over time/upgrading, all the while financial investments have been cementing us(well me at least) into this situation.

VizzFizz got it right when he said, at least you can use EIAS to get your work done. I can only use EIAS when I only need to render out product shots.

Other then that, it turns out to be one of the more expensive tools that I dont use all that much.... and I'd welcome the chance to start getting camera output speed and quality into my life! I mean, I've got 14 cores sitting on my network that are just itching to fire up renderama... and yet they sit idle while other slower rendering apps are getting used. oi.

If C4D can offer ca solutions, all the while being a big player in mograph(which I dont have much experience in at all), then why cant EI? seems to be a good formula for them.

I think we all just need to wait and see what EI brings to the table with this latest version. Me being one who is quick to complain, I admit that! I am optimistically satisfied with what I've heard about the upcoming release.

Mike Fitz

[FelixCat]

Scott, you definitively are a passionate guy, i like that, but this is not some US versus THEM war. Brian has been tireless in promoting changes in EiTG. You too, and both are right. Sadly, Ei is so behind the top 5 that needs everything: CA and MOGRAPH and that is impossible in the business situation of the company... :argh:
I´m more interested in CA and think CA capabilities are first in the new user´s list. It´s the most demanded as far as i know and, in my case (and don´t pretend to be representative of nothing), i have more requests for CA than MOGRAPH, (CA beeing beter payed, too). Right now i´m thinking to reject a work because the CA involved is more than EiAS can take... and i´m not happy about that. It´s an easy task (more or less) for LW or C4D, but not for EiAS.
I fear my options are upgrade my hardware and go to the Houdini and/or Maya route. :sad:

FelixCat

[Vizfizz]

I dont remember manipulating any objects vertices in C4D, sure i added some bones but everything was simple.

Is very easy to add elements to the interface.

Is not as cluttered as EIAS.

So EIAS needs a new interface ASAP.


Hi Edgard,

I don't disagree with you on any of these points. Its simple to see that Animator needs:

1. I/O improvements.
2. A new interface.
3. Efficient workflow.
4. Bug Fixes.
5. Framework improvements.

Mograph, CA, Arch Visualizers, and Designers will all benefit from these kinds of enhancements. What you're talking about is foundational issues that improve the life of anyone using EI. I am not against this. Luckily Camera is pretty much finished. All it really needs is 64bits and multithreading to truly be on par with everything else. Of the two, 64bits and 16bit output is more important than multithreading. So where should EITG redirect its upgrades after that? The only thing on the docket that has to see the light of day next is Tesla. My guess is v8's sales will be pumped into Tesla which in turn will hit the market and its sales will be pumped into something else. What will that something else be? Hopefully animation tools and improvements.

What always seems to be the point of question in these kinds of threads is where EI should spend its upgrade dollars... Everyone wants a say for their specific camp. All I'm pointing out, without the least bit of "elitism" in mind, is that EI needs to choose a focus that will most radically evolve the company to match what EI's competitors have. This is where I feel CA will drive the evolution of EI better than Mograph (as a focus).

[monday1313]

can anyone say with reasonable accuracy how many people are using EIAS? I'm curious because there is a relatively small amount of us involved in this conversation(and most others) the user pack vote had like 60 or so votes...that's not a lot...

[DickM]

think there's like 12 of us!

honestly, i too would like to know some numbers, and know what their disciplines are too. That won't be fair though to say "see, there are only 3 CA's using EI, why upgrade ca tools" because most of the CA's (me included) already left EI. There were actually quite a few of us. So I'm sure it leans heavy towards archi now!

[mike33]

There's at least 24 different people based on how many folks posted to this thread. :)

I wonder if Brian can tell how many different people have subscribed to the Cgtalk EI forum?

TGIF... :beer: ...

Mike

[Gigayoda]

The question to ask is how many are using EI and for those using it what version? I for one rely on V3 and V4. I state V3 because V4 is on PC and the workflow back and forth with my editing tools is blah.

Oh used to CA in V3 stopped and moved on to mograph. I'd like a marriage of the 2 if that's too much to ask. :scream:

[monday1313]

I don't really have a serious point with that question, just that the user base get's brought up a lot and I was wondering what that actually was. Now that I think about it, what's the user base's for the big 5? how much overlap do they have between users?

I use the following 3D apps:
EIAS 7.0.1
Silo 2.1.1
Zbrush 3.15
Vue 6.5 inf
Blender 2.48a
Groboto
Makehuman

and dabbled with the PLE of MAYA and Terragen 2

[scottfox]

Yeah, I guess I am a passionate guy. But logical as well. I feel for any CA guy trying to make a living with EI, but EI never really did do that well over the years. I respectfully would question why choose EI in the first place for CA. Ive used EI since its 2nd year as a company. Its always allowed me to do what I needed to do, I, like a lot of others are trying to hang on. What some on this thread seem to ignore, is that EI may need CA tools, but at what cost to the user base? Im lucky enough to have a number of clients that dont care what I use, but thats changing literally every month. Build on your strengths and maintain your core users, THEN add the complex CA stuff after you have reinforced your core. What EI risks, is adding, and I highly doubt this, a few new character animators, but LOSING a LOT of its other users to other packages, basically a net loss in users. Its sad to me and some of us that the economics of our careers simply forces us to use what our clients need, (c4d, maya etc) EI, does not know how many of us are teetering on the edge of leaving the package, not because we hate EI, but because our career survival MAKES us leave EI. Brian, I do have passionate ideas with EI, but they are much more nuanced than you are giving me credit for.
I NEVER claimed EI should go mograph ONLY. I just try to stress what order they address their needs as a package, and that includes CA. I dont quibble with whether we need modern CA tools, I mostly care about the order these things are addressed, which I feel, sadly will result in more user migration than EI or my CA friends really understand. EI just cant replace us with CA animators. How do you grow your user base that way? I have to face reality with c4d and my career. EI needs to as well, and it is probably too late. I would love to continue to promote my reel as 99% EI (for 3d) My clients are getting better and better. And im not alone. But sooner than later, I will be getting feedback and exposure with c4d and bragging about what IT does for me, like I used to promote EI. Other people will do the same, and EI cant afford to lose some of its better users....

[AVTPro]

Most EI CA user have used EI for mographs and logo graphics.

I did this for a national magazine for a national broadcast award show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAuIbSNrVkA

CA people are saying CA development *is* good for Mograph because they know already.

I thought this discussion was resolved some time ago?

There's no such thing as a dedicated 3D mograph app.

Unless you count the 3 apps that tried it and are now dead.

Pixar typestry, Live Motion and another I forget. (edit: Adepth RayDream)

Someone please name a successful 3D mograph app on the market today?

This is a nonissue. Most CA apps do mograph already. CA runs the current

industry. It's the edge of new growth especially to games. Cinema is

had officailly fallen when Autodesk bought Maya, Max being games.

The industry dictates the priority, not EI to the industry.

Character animation leads the 3D industry.

[scottfox]

Who ever said there are dedicated mograph 3d apps! Your arguing to no one.
There are 3d apps that are easier and friendlier for mograph work. C4d in particular.
Mograph includes the use of so many different tools to achieve looks that most 3d only artists simply don't get it. Other 3d apps are ABLE to do mograph stuff but are way overkill.
Also, typestry and other niche apps from the past did logo work. That's just one small percentage of what a motion g designer does.
No one can still answer my points on the user base for EI. That's ok though. Go ca tools,
So EI is ready to conquer video games.

This feels so pointless with such oldschool thinkers who claim to know the intricacies of mograph. Just a flying logo! Right guys.....

[AVTPro]

THEN add the complex CA stuff after you have reinforced your core.
....

and EI cant afford to lose some of its better users....

"Complex" and "Better Users" are both subjective. :)

Wouldn't going to Maya or C4D be more "complex"?

Maybe the reason why they are "better than EI" is because they have CA features?

Can you "List" what C4D has better than EI for mograph?

I think you will find the core upgrades EI CA are requesting will facilitate those C4D features.

[3DArtZ]

Just a flying logo! Right guys.....

That is actually kinda funny! Nice line Scott!

[mike33]

Could Scott please make a list of EIAS tools he uses for Motion graphics?

And can AVTPro list the EIAS tools he uses for CA?

So that we can see the differences and similarities on both your approaches to animation?

Thanks,

Mike

[DickM]

Mograph includes the use of so many different tools to achieve looks that most 3d only artists simply don't get it.

hehe, that's a good one! :surprised

[ediris]

www.psyop.tv/
www.stardust.tv/
www.aixsponza.com
www.onesize.nl

Just to mentioned a few studios using CA and Mograph tools, not only CA or only mograph we can all benefit from them but at the end everything is composed from app to app from Maya to C4D and 3d studio Max. When i see some studios using these tools together maybe CA done in Maya some FX done in Max and for final compositing of the pieces they bring C4D the order change sometimes but not everything is done in one package.
Some of the things are filmed and integrated as 2d cards.Not everything needs to be 3d, is how the artist uses the tools and their strengths.

And i dont think a CA earns more than a Mographer or viceversa it all depends sometimes is easy to buy LifeForms and load a set of .bvh smetimes is cheaper to load some background motion graphics it all depends.

Meantime evryone is pulling to their own side CA and Mographers, in the last survey about WHat do you USE EIAS for? Mograph won by far so...is not about you cant do these or that in EIAS now is more about working as a team of 3d app.
Thanks,Edgard

[AVTPro]

Scott,

Please don't be insulted. I admire your work greatly.

I wasn't trying to downplay your expertise nor talent as merely flying logos. I am aware there's a lots that goes into Mograph on many levels including motion tracking apps, compositing apps, keying apps, dynamics, particles, all kinds of stuff (camera maps, roto). Not to mention Art direction and aesthetics. Heck, then all that stuff has to be done on a deadline. Sometimes I rarely get a day do some stuff or the budget. If you even get kind of budgets and schedules to do 3D in Mograf you are better than most who only have opportunity to use AfterEffect 2D.

Then there's tons of competition inwhich no one has a monopoly on talent.

My point is, CA people want the best EI mograph tools as well because they often have to do both or composite a character in with logos, and effects. I'm sure I was one of the ones who begged EI for Motion Tracking features. However, since then tracking is such a staple to 3D and Mograph that other tracking systems has emerge that doesn't make sense for EI to dedicate more resources.

Theres are truths about the 3D market which can't be denied. The apps you mentioned are growing because CA market is growing. EI must grow in CA inorder to grow in the 3D market.

Ediris,

When was the last b.o. blockbuster Mograph film raking in 320 million in a weekend? When was the last PS3 type CPU unit to invade million of home for Mograph display? Cinema and Games are driven by STORY not just 3d effects or 3D characters. It's the emotional attachment to the experience spiced action and effects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlqCaqmrto4

Nobody is comparing salarys. It's too huge of a variable. All artist are different. All valuable all subjective. Pay has nothing to do with talent. No animator makes as much as the producers or directors.... Many know nothing about the craft and make quadruple the artist.

I use to beta test Lifeform for many years, you can't compare to the current growth in the 3D market and doesn't compare to Mobu. 3D in mograph is a very inbetween gray area, at one time there was only AE 2D. For a 3D app to offer good mograph it has to have many higher functionality which are driven by CA development.

IK, Spine IK, Bones, RLA, SDK, lattices or Vertex manipulation are not feature just for CA. The have many uses in mechanical animation.

No one knows what someone else is truly capable of. I dont underestimate anyone. I only show samples it is only to use images or to illustrate points or because I am happy with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zazQ8IJ45JQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc1pv91MMFc

Yes, I am old thinker but it takes young thinking to keep growing with 3D. That's EIAS problem in the first place. Trying to stay the same.

It took a lot of guts for me to go into 3D CA. It was very scarey to let go of my comfort zone and not just do same thing I was use to. I use to do product, forensic, teach, architecture rendering and Mograph. I respect all the disciplines. All are geniuses.

[Vizfizz]

Ok.. instead of "us" talking about trends and what the market is moving towards, lets take a look at a survey done by Animation Mentor, an online school that teaches computer animation. Now granted, I'll admit, this is a character centric learning facility, but the survey is interesting and brings up some very interesting points that should be looked at.

This report looks at job satisfaction, career outlooks, salaries, and various trends in the industry. It was a global survey from 1235 professional animators. Some of the trend findings were:

1. Increase in stereoscopic animation.
2. The gaming market sees trends for higher quality character driven animation in games.
3. Motion capture is the #1 trend listed by this survey.
4. Outsourcing will continue.
5. Increases in skills of the overall personnel in the industry due to advances in technology.
6. Of listed job titles, "Animator" captures the largest percentage of cg job titles.

Top four sectors of computer animation are:
1. Video Games
2. Feature film character animation
3. Advertising/Commercials
4. TV shows

Who makes the most money in animation?
1. Feature Film Animators.

Number one career for most job satisfaction by type of work?
1. Feature film and vfx animators.

Most job satisfaction by job title?
1. Technical directors and film animators have the most job satisfaction by job title while those working in advertising is lowest.



So what could be the flaws of this survey? Well, probably not enough attention was dedicated to asking questions about Broadcast Design or Mograph. Nowhere within the survey was broadcast design or mograph even directly mentioned. Indirectly you could potentially suggest that "advertising" or "commercials" would constitute the mograph element of animation world. If this is true or not, advertising and commercials constituted the lower end of the job satisfaction and salary scales.

The survey also directly concludes that new animation technology is critical to advancing in this field. This supports my premise that CA is a more effective means to induce evolution within EIAS.

Here is the survey:

http://www.animationmentor.com/report/AnimationMentor-IndustryReport.pdf

[scottfox]

my issue is that you quote hollywood and the handful of production companies as the MAJORITY. They are not. Even on a film, look at the CA artists, then the matte painters, lighting guys, rendering, and all the specialists that team up in mass to produce one of those movies. CA guys are a minority, they are specialists and Imho AMAZINGLY talented. CA is a high end talent that few are VERY good at. These are just facts.

Are there more corporations doing animation and video work in the US, or more movie houses? There are literally tens of thousands and thousands of corporations. Dwarfing the number of users in Film and Video Games where there are Dozens of companies. Throw in thousands of tv and broadcast companies around the world, roughly 1000 in the US alone, all with a creative dept. Throw in ad agencies, NOT the handful of HUGE ad agencies that handle the pepsi's and mcdonalds of the world, but the agencies that handle mid to lower level budget clients. They tend to have inhouse animation to save costs.
This is what I mean by elitism on this board. Sure the best of the best mograph artists have the rare ability to ALSO absorb and utilize character animation, I wont deny that. But I have earned 6 figures a year and more over the last 8 or 9 years of my career and won many National Promax Awards among others. I only say this to point out I only have animated a "character" in maybe 4 or 5 spots over 17 years. (ironically I won an Addy award for an animated talking fish done in EI back in 95 - no ik needed just deformations)
The huge majority of mographers out there only dabble in 3d, or maybe use Zaxwerks. Im friends with Zax and can tell you his user base is pretty huge. There are (and Brian and I talked about marketing to this group at one point) tons of people either new to 3d or using a zax product to do '3d' that would make the jump to a fullblown 3d app if it was EASY to use and fit into their workflow and was affordable. AI import, and things like c4d's dedicated mograph module. These animators, which are the majority of mographers, dont have 3-7 thousand dollars to drop on an application, let alone one like Maya or Max with learning curves that take months and even years to learn. This is just logic. Ive been there, C4d has the rep of being THE mograph app (right or wrong) and being pretty easy to learn. Friendly to the designer types. EI has a HUGE price advantage over c4d which is half the battle on the mid to low end. Training for Cinema is cheap, training for EI is pretty much free, training for maya costs Thousands and thousands AND your first born child!
So in closing, I argue for the majority of animators that are not "good" enough for Hollywood or the handful of Hi End production houses. But do the majority of tv commercials, corporate video, internet animation, mid level production houses and much much more.
.....
I am one of the leaders on the creative Cows "Motion Graphics' how do i" forum. I spoke with the owner of the Cow, last week, and he informed me that he is getting near a hundred thousand new members a month! These are not hollywood hi enders, they are new users hungry to learn and in some cases be guided. I mean this politely, but some on this board thumb their noses at those users and dismiss them. BIG BIG mistake. You want to get EI back on the national radar again, get THESE users when they are making career decisions, I have recommended EI to countless people in personal emails who question my reel and how I did it. These people dont care about advanced CA tools, they want to be shown a product they can afford AND learn, because unlike dedicated 3d guys, mographers
NEED to learn or master MANY applications and plug ins. Throw a difficult and expensive 3d app into the mix and unless they want a total career change, they never would do it.
.....
Like I have said before, and I am not getting my way here, cater to the new to 3d user and his need for integration with adobe illustrator and plugins like paraluminos and the mograph module in C4d and you have a chance to change the "tide" and appeal to a massive number of new people who are being whispered in the ear - c4d c4d c4d c4d -
......
I wish EI well going for Maya\Max etc CA parity. Was it Nero that fiddled while Rome burned?

[ediris]

Bravo Scott!!! :bowdown:

[AVTPro]

Fine then.

Someone call Play Inc.

EI tried that already. Didn't work.

Remember EI "BROADCAST" ?

Video mograph company using EI for only mograph.

Almost tanked EI.

I use to make 6 figures doing product for a fortune 5 in NYC.

I left because I wanted to be more creative "emotionally" storywise and be on the cutting edge of 3D which was CA.

Even if I couldn't do that in Hollywood, I hoped to do 3D Character for "Commercial/Advertisng". Lots of mograph people had to leave EI because of the wmp problem.

Heck David and I did a Pepsi commercial 2 months ago in EI. I made more in a day than I would at my corporate in-house 3D that I spearheaded. But David and I also was part of team that won and IDEA Business Week for CA creatures in EIAS. (Love your award story there Scott).

EI CA people are often MoGraf people who want to expand into CA and get bigger budgets for their advertising work. All I'm doing is specializing in CA so that other EI Mograf people can give bigger projects. Geico and all those nonHollywood client use 3D character to sell product. Product renders, Titles, and CA can all be done in one EIAS commission.

[Vizfizz]

Back in the hey day of CGI, Silicon Graphics commonly remarked the following about the CG animation business.

Hollywood constitutes less than 10% of our total revenue for hardware and software solutions sold, but contributes to over 90% of our product's awareness and success in the market place.

What does this mean? Simple. Hollywood films and its "grandeur" may indeed constitute a smaller "market" than all the other CG disciplines combined, but what did SGI turn to in order to promote sales to other markets? High end visuals generated by the pioneers of the 3D industry. Without Hollywood, SGI wouldn't have gotten so big or sold as many systems.

The same principle applies today and its one of the core reasons why the big 5 applications are trying to capture the market that defines the high end of the animation industry. What's the high end? I'd have to say the film and game CA animation market.

If appealing to the lowest common denominator of all these entry level artists would spell out success for 3D animation software company, why isn't Zaxwerks the greatest and biggest selling software package on the market? How about Strata? Here's an application that has "embraced" the Mograph and CG Illustration market more than any other 3D application out there. Its flash capable. Its PS and AI friendly. Its designed to be as friendly as possible with the Mograph and Design market. But where is it? At one point, it could have been a contender...

What drives the market in order to appeal to the entry level new user? The high end.

So how much longer are we going to continue this conversation? I think we should address Mike33's question and make lists of what's needed in both the Mograph and CA markets and see where the overlap lies and focus there.

[plsyvjeucxfw]

Hey Scott,

love your enthusiasm and agree with you - nearly totally.

For me personally, better animation tools are just better ANIMATION tools. Whatever end I put these tools to is up to me.

As for EI, well, they just keep giving us Render Feature after Render Feature (with some little crumbs thrown in now and again).

I'm NOT talking CA here - since it seems to be causing issues to mention that topic. I'm just talking Animation tools and Workflow.

For instance - I'm sure you've noticed the difference between Scaling Key Frames in After Effects vs. trying to Scale Key Frames in ElectricImage. Lousy, absolutely lousy, that the process for Scaling Key Frames is so clunky that someone recently suggested using the 'Offset Editor' for that, as it was easier.

But on to better things.

Perhaps you could start a new thread - and list the EXACT tools you would like to see added to EI that would make it stand out in the MOGRAPH world. For each tool, please take the time to explain how it fits into the workflow, and how it makes the Mographer's life easier, the work more efficent and profitible.

I know the venting makes a person feel a bit better, gets some of the frustration out, but a tool list might show the rest of us what kinds of things you're looking for.

Also, please remember, EITG has weird ways of doing things. Remember how many Versions, and how much ranting and complaining it took for EITG to even admit that Weight Maps (might) have a problem? And how we hope (finally) that they're fixed.

I can see EI polishing up Animator with features to help those of us who make keyframes, but unfortunately, I can also see them moving on to Tesla, and letting Animator go quietly into Animation history. Others say 'NO' Animator has many, many years of life left. Well - I see the effort being put into CAMERA, but as Brian has said, to get to Camera you have to go through Animator, and that process is not always easy, or pretty.

I would love to hear that more Animation features are coming to Animator, but, I've stopped holding my breath. We'll see it when we see it.

So please start up that thread - I would love to learn more about your techniques, tips, workflow, and the kinds of tools that would aid you in achieving your goals quicker and more efficiently.

- Kurt

[Vizfizz]

Sounds like a good idea Kurt. It was suggested multiple times already. An effective comparative of both disciplines would be good to find where the overlap lies and focus there.

[AVTPro]

I would definitely like to see if the list could be averaged out between CA features and Mogrfx

Honestly I think I have more Mgfx request for EI than CA.

Flexpath and Contornist are great plugs but it really bothers me that it's not intergrated into the main app.

Basically you can't draw a motion curve and snap objects to a curve. That totally annoys me :banghead: Animate a null and snap any object to the animation curve and it bends to the curve.

So, buy a plug. :sad:

What if I need to edit the model in the animation app? I have to go all the way back to the modeler and reimport?

So I used Maya, edit the shape and animation and export to EI with some AVT magic. EIAS doesn't not have batch model import (maybe it's fixed?)
I use new morph plug to blend models instead of replacement animation. (request multimorph)
Then EI has a problem with animation node. (need to check again)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sjvXggyNcg

So when we ask for vertex manipulation or multi morph, it seems like it's only CA but it would get more use from Mechanical or MoGfx elements.

[ediris]

Excuse my ignorance but all the NorthernLight plug ins should be included into Animator cuase than EITG will be the one who can take care of the product as a whole and not just Blair alone. These plug ins are awesome for Mograph instead of using Thinking Particles (c4D) i could use Dante but i hear from people that is unstable.

I never understood how a dedicated animation and rendering package dint ever had a plug like Contortionist or Flex Path into the core.BUt i found out that Maya had one in the core and than i found out that C4D had one but EIAS.

But lets start from the basics of Mograph, AI files(there are some solutions like ProModeler), stack windows like a deformer or a plug into the interface . When this issue is resolve than we can start talking about other matters. Like being able to set place holders that import into After Effects with multiple channels,mattes,lights and alphas.

Thanks,Edgard

[Martin Kay]

Yeah, I guess I am a passionate guy. But logical as well. I feel for any CA guy trying to make a living with EI, but EI never really did do that well over the years. I respectfully would question why choose EI in the first place for CA. Ive used EI since its 2nd year as a company. Its always allowed me to do what I needed to do, I, like a lot of others are trying to hang on. What some on this thread seem to ignore, is that EI may need CA tools, but at what cost to the user base? Im lucky enough to have a number of clients that dont care what I use, but thats changing literally every month. Build on your strengths and maintain your core users, THEN add the complex CA stuff after you have reinforced your core. What EI risks, is adding, and I highly doubt this, a few new character animators, but LOSING a LOT of its other users to other packages, basically a net loss in users. Its sad to me and some of us that the economics of our careers simply forces us to use what our clients need, (c4d, maya etc) EI, does not know how many of us are teetering on the edge of leaving the package, not because we hate EI, but because our career survival MAKES us leave EI. Brian, I do have passionate ideas with EI, but they are much more nuanced than you are giving me credit for.
I NEVER claimed EI should go mograph ONLY. I just try to stress what order they address their needs as a package, and that includes CA. I dont quibble with whether we need modern CA tools, I mostly care about the order these things are addressed, which I feel, sadly will result in more user migration than EI or my CA friends really understand. EI just cant replace us with CA animators. How do you grow your user base that way? I have to face reality with c4d and my career. EI needs to as well, and it is probably too late. I would love to continue to promote my reel as 99% EI (for 3d) My clients are getting better and better. And im not alone. But sooner than later, I will be getting feedback and exposure with c4d and bragging about what IT does for me, like I used to promote EI. Other people will do the same, and EI cant afford to lose some of its better users....

It isn't just CA that EI lacks... A decent texture placement system would be handy, UV mapping system, better visual feedback and the soon to be implemented area lights.
Ok, there are probably work arounds, but it's a real hassle finding out about these and when push comes to shove out comes c4d.
Since I recently upgraded to EI 7 I'll get Vs 8 by default anyway, but after using and messing about with Modo for a year I'm being drawn back to c4d. The thing about c4d is that it's a real world working tool (3D for the real world!) and gets the job done. The latest version renders at least as twice as quick as my current Vs8.5 and the GI is very useable and faster than Modo, plus blurred reflections are quicker and don't need huge amounts of samples to get rid of the noise you get with Modo.

Martin K

[juanxer]

Fine then.
Someone call Play Inc.
EI tried that already. Didn't work.
Remember EI "BROADCAST" ?
Video mograph company using EI for only mograph.
Almost tanked EI.
But those moves had nothing to do with the issue: Neither Play Inc. tried to do anything MoGraph-specific nor EIB was anything beyond a way to try showing an affordable product in a changing market while keeping the high pricing for the movie crowd (which, actually, afforded me to get my own private EI seat back then).

Scott's numbers make sense and, again, it's not an either/or situation. The thing is: catering for the MoGraph clientele means doing some very specific efforts in rounding the package and marketing it which, frankly, are not that superhard. Will we see EITG addressing that for V.9?

[scottfox]

Thanks juanxer, it's all a guessing game. I'm very opinionated, but I speak out because this
Effects my liveliehood! No offense, but many others here dont even use EI daily, and are fine if EI goes under. (fine career wise)

[juanxer]

...Hollywood films and its "grandeur" may indeed constitute a smaller "market" than all the other CG disciplines combined, but what did SGI turn to in order to promote sales to other markets? High end visuals generated by the pioneers of the 3D industry. Without Hollywood, SGI wouldn't have gotten so big or sold as many systems...

If appealing to the lowest common denominator of all these entry level artists would spell out success for 3D animation software company, why isn't Zaxwerks the greatest and biggest selling software package on the market? How about Strata? Here's an application that has "embraced" the Mograph and CG Illustration market more than any other 3D application out there. Its flash capable. Its PS and AI friendly. Its designed to be as friendly as possible with the Mograph and Design market. But where is it? At one point, it could have been a contender...
Well: Zaxwerks mainly is a flying logo AE plugin, perception-wise (I know it is a standalone product too, but...), plus it is a bit unwieldly and limited, even if fantastic at what it does. Strata has a stigma as a pretty but limited "has-been (not quite that much really)". Where I work they started doing 3D with Strata, actually.

(By the way: if Strata is surviving in such a market with that low profile, then it must be an interesting market)

These are not good examples: the reference is, again, C4D as a general purpose product with specialized MoGraph capabilities that are being successfully marketed.

Look: it's not that EIAS mustn't strive for being Big Five buzzword-compliant as per marketing and users' needs. And nobody is saying that EIAS must "appeal to the lowest common denominator" and that's it, either (plus isn't it sad that it isn't even able to do that as easily as others do?). What it is being said is that EIAS ought to address the needs of a specific segment that seems to be lucrative enough for others like Maxon to go for it all guns blazing.

(They do that by being sort of Adobe Creative Suite's best 3D friend. EIAS needs to be that, too. Output-wise, we are quite nearly there, so...)

[Vizfizz]

So let's hear the top ten features that are mograph specific. Truly, Truly mograph specific. My guess is over half the list or more is already what CA users have commented on or for.

Other than illustrator input.

[DickM]

Thanks juanxer, it's all a guessing game. I'm very opinionated, but I speak out because this
Effects my liveliehood! No offense, but many others here dont even use EI daily, and are fine if EI goes under. (fine career wise)

It affected my livelihood too, hence the reason I left for real CA tools. I used EI daily too. Paid for itself many times over. But once I realized they didn't give a S%$# about adding what I needed, I moved on.

[Vizfizz]

Good point Richard. I don't think people really understand the number of users that left EI over this issue and other issues like it. CA represent a new market for EI that virtually remains unknown and untouched to EI.

Why do I want to do CA in EI? Because of Camera of course.

[DickM]

Why do I want to do CA in EI? Because of Camera of course.

EXACTLY!!! Now my hopes are for camera to open up as a standalone, or for EIAS to upgrade it's compatibility features....like point level caches and so on.

People say, how many CA users are there really. Well guess what, there were quite a lot! But they have dropped off 1 by 1 when they probably realized EI was ignoring them.

Keith Lango
Frederic Merlos
Julian Love
Fred Kuentz
Damian Griffin
CJ Berg
Me...just to name a few.

I know there are still a handful sticking it out with EI (AVT, Felix, etc...), but it's only a matter of time before their frustrations force them to move on too.

[Vizfizz]

Let's see I would probably point out:

Victor Navone
Matt Drummond
Pat Gahlen
Dan Gregoire
Kory Jones
Euisung Lee
Tad Leckman
Evan Pontierro
Alex Jaeger
Dan Slavin
Eric Ippen
Peter Rubin
Myself
So many more I can't remember.

[DickM]

Sorry Brian, didn't mean to leave you off the list. :blush:

Victor Navone came from A:M, not EIAS. He's the Alien Song guy :applause: Unless he was an EI guy before A:M

ps. i did say to name a few :p

[Vizfizz]

Victor started in EI while at Presto Studios. Moved over to Hash to do CA. Now a senior animator at Pixar.

[DickM]

ah ha! Cool! I knew he was picked up by Pixar.

[juanxer]

(sorry: watching the last episode of Battlestar Galactica :drool: . Floating up there. Landing now)

So let's hear the top ten features that are mograph specific. Truly, Truly mograph specific. My guess is over half the list or more is already what CA users have commented on or for.

Other than illustrator input.

Not fair! :) Illustrator input is paramount.

OK. The cornerstone would be these, which absolutely have nothing to do with CA at all.

-A Trestle-like 2D drawing plugin able to import Illustrator's .AI files. It must be a plugin or at least an entity able to exist with or without a profile loaded in it, so that one can build preset parent/sons sets to reuse. That's why simply having an external modeler able to turn .AIs into FACTs won't do (plus it is all about avoiding costly roundtrippings).

-A "live" text-to-profile plugin with a few capabilities like those of After Effects' text layers.

-And then a set of basic profile extrusion/lathe/pipe tools to turn these into 3D shapes: so yes, the Paralumino plugins, Mr. Bevel, Mr. Revolver, etc.

That's the absolute minimum. With JUST THAT we could address most MoGraph modeling needs. I am not saying everything must be supplied by EITG, but if nobody is building the main ones then it'll have to do it itself. All this has been discussed before, and will be discussed again :p .

From there, yes, we can go to some other things that would help in every area, including CA:

-Instancing with channel value offsets. Some sort of Offsets Effector able to effect all objects in a Selection Set in several ways (at once, in sequence, by a script).

-Some Freehand/Illustrator-like align/distribute tool, plus duplicate/instance along paths/points/etc.

-A Sound-to-datachannel plugin.

-Seeing what can be done to make better particle systems possible.

Copying what works elsewhere.

And then, promoting it. Not being a marketing type, I don't understand why EITG doesn't explain in its website why EIAS is good for each segment of the 3D world: archviz, mograph, CA, previz, VFX, etc. OK, I know it is quite difficult to make a case without a modeler, so I agree that getting Tesla to market is first in the list. Once there...

[plsyvjeucxfw]

All this hooplah over Cinema 4D sent me to their web site.

In my opinion, the Cinema 4D guys cruise THIS web site, listen to our complaints about EI, and then put OUR requests into their software!

Get this -

"Man is not an island" and neither is MAXON CINEMA 4D. -they talk about being able to move files between applications, quickly and easily.


Ease of Use
As a 3D artist you know that fast, easy workflow is the key to meeting deadlines and beating the competition. - we keep saying EI is easy to use, and have requested that they promote that in their marketing.

The world's easiest to use professional 3D application has just been made even easier and even more powerful.

When your pictures need to sync with audio you can import sound and view its waveform directly in the Timeline. Better yet, activate scrubbing and listen to your audio as you manipulate the time slider. - haven't we asked for this (over and over)!

With non-linear animation, it's easy to build, layer and loop discreet motions containing hundreds of keyframes in complex hierarchies. You can easily block out animation based on predefined motions and build upon the basic movement by overlaying additional keyframes or motions.

God I wish EI would just let the RENDERING thing GO - Get over it!

Fix What's Lacking With The Rest Of The Application!

Sorry - I'm relaxed now.

Anyway - Cinema4D offers an add on module dedicated specifically to Mograph. So they seem to be listening to their customers and giving them tools to do the job. They also have no problem proudly advertising that they provide these solutions.

I only hope that EITG will pick up the pace. Jump start Animator or Tesla - which ever, but we need something resembling Animation features.

[Vizfizz]

Playing the devil's advocate...

The Igors have basically said the Paralumino plugin lineup is useless or unnecessary once Tesla its the streets. If it wasn't supported then (when they were for sale) why ask for them now? What will be difference? If you listen to the Igors, the Paralumino line up failed because I didn't promote them well enough.

Is it just that these types of functions need to be integrated into Animator to be better utilized? Or were those plugins somehow flawed? (And again..to quote the Igors AI into Trestle = bad)

Would having these types of functions change anything for EI? If so, how? If so tell Brad. If so demand them.

[Vizfizz]

Kurt...

Its easy to see that about C4D. Why? Because Paul Babb use to be EI's PR/product development guy. Both C4D and LW are filled with ex-EI officers and they're using the exact same tactics that worked to sell EI back in the day. Heck I see Jay Roth cruising this forum all the time.

Its not that Brad doesn't want to address our animation situation...he's strapped by financial limitations and developers who wont listen to the user base.

[AVTPro]

But those moves had nothing to do with the issue: Neither Play Inc. tried to do anything MoGraph-specific nor EIB was anything beyond a way to try showing an affordable product in a changing market while keeping the high pricing for the movie crowd (which, actually, afforded me to get my own private EI seat back then).

Scott's numbers make sense and, again, it's not an either/or situation. The thing is: catering for the MoGraph clientele means doing some very specific efforts in rounding the package and marketing it which, frankly, are not that superhard. Will we see EITG addressing that for V.9?

Hey Juan, I bought EI "Broadcast" under the same promo, but Play was specifically trying to market EI as a dedicated broadcast tool for their Trinity RT switcher. EI even developed a "transitions" product for Play.

The price drop had more to do with Apples failure as a 3D station (QD3D) at a time when SGI, PowerAnimtor and everyone was getting slaughtered by SoftImage and NT. SGI, the king of 3D, split HW/SW and HW went out of business. Alias only survived because it redeveloped Maya as a CA tool against SoftImage.

EI's will never be a tool for film for one very specific reason which is the basis of this discussion....core changes that effect ALL the application disciplines workflow. Very closed end system or catering to one displines say product camera rendering is the very thing that is killing EI. EI couldn't hold ground in the film industry because of "Open scriptable, interoperative Architecture". Also long as you have plugins that don't talk to each other and no access to reconfigure tools EI isn't suitable for "Big Houses" that need to revamp the tool for the need of each film.

The reality and practicality is such that I can't "mince meat" about this because not only is my livelihood dependent on flexible tools with full access to several genres but so is the mainstay of 3D industry and any successful company and tool in it. If youre company do only one thing it means "Outsource".

It's not about one discipline (mograph or CA). A 3D tool has to be reconfigurable and verstile or it "defaults" to one or two specific tasks. In the film industry EI could handle Matte painting, camera maps, previs and titles as a closed end "system". EI defaulted to mograph with Play who tried to would drop out product and architect. It didn't work then, it won't work now. I don't even understand how people who think that could work when ALL 3D tool currently in the market are CA tools. It just doesn't add up.

Anyhow, the closest thing to a "core" change is Tesla. Then maybe vertex addressing or mesh will enable several other functionality that need to be competitive successful 3D tool like UVs editing. UV texture is not just a CA thing, it's all 3D objects.

Let's not be so subjective to our own individual needs. If you make a living only on mograph good for "you" but there are several genres that EI or any 3D must maintain in other to survive. One of my best paying clients is BMW and "hard body rendering" for huge amounts of data. Until Apple starts to deal with the "CORE" technologies of 64bit, no 3D app on the Mac is going to be much of a contender...not even Maya. (again because of Apple not addressing CORE 3D workstation issues)

[3DArtZ]

Id say if you want to become somewhat envious... stop by the cinema4d home page...

[juanxer]

Thinking aloud a bit:

-Without Tesla, EITG can't promote EIAS as a full solution for any segment of 3D, no matter the practical ways around it: it simply doesn't look good enough. So OK: Tesla comes first for marketing to be able to work at all. The problem is that it seems it will arrive real late (yes, we understand the issues involved, after Brad's explaining and the Trolltech/Nokia news, but... argh!).

-Even if Tesla was there, if dealing with .AIs is just as it was in the old EIM then it is not the most comfortable tool for quickly turning logos and text into groups. The Paralumino plugins were more practical. Getting Trestle to import .AIs was the last piece of the puzzle needed there.

-Paralumino wasn't successful enough with its plugins. OK. My feeling is that it was the result of a bit of everything: no .AI support in the technical side, some marketing issues (including naming: I still have to Google their names to tell which one was what and how to spell it), and simply being in the EIAS boat. What could be changed for reviving them being a value proposition? Mmm. I don't know. I do know that I would have bought Trestle if it had .AI import in an instant, just for feeding profiles to Mrs. Bevel, which I already had. Also, I just didn't get to know them well from a "flying logos" perspective. But now it wouldn't be about helping to sell the plugins but making the plugins help sell EIAS.

-The Igors' attitude is absurd: their reasoning would dictate all EIAS-compatible geometry-deriving plugins out of the market. After all, if you have a modeler you don't need to generate geometry from inside Animator, at all, do you?


Well. Once again, all has been said about it. So... What about a little dirt about these new sekrit Shaders? :)

[AVTPro]

Thinking aloud a bit:

-Without Tesla, EITG can't promote EIAS as a full solution for any segment of 3D, no matter the practical ways around it:


-Paralumino wasn't successful enough with its plugins.


You got it.

Without a mesh editor several genres are inefficient, like changing text object in EI, or vertex weighting for skins.

[AVTPro]

You forgot Gustavo, Lance,

and Me.

I use EI yes but I have moved to Maya and Zbrush.

What people don't understand to say you know "character animation" is a "catch word".

Even if a client doesn't need it, it's good PR to say you use it.

Same with Maya, it's trade buzzword as a selling point. Say Maya, they will listen.

To say EI does CA even if it's not the greatest is a selling point.

[Veehoy]

Go ca tools, So EI is ready to conquer video games.

This feels so pointless with such oldschool thinkers who claim to know the intricacies of mograph. Just a flying logo! Right guys.....

Sort of OT but isn´t calling CA tools videogame centric and claiming that mograph is just a flying logo the same thing? :curious:

[scottfox]

All this discussion is a healthy thing. I can see where various people are coming from.
Most of us, I feel hang with EI for 2 big reasons. 1- camera 2- camera (2a - speed)
.....
Brian, saying that you would love to have EI have the CA tools in large part because EI has
CAMERA to render those images. That say's a lot. As a business owner, im sure a smooth transition to EI would save a company many thousands of dollars in 'Cost of ownership'
Price \ Quality 'ratio' is one of EI's biggest advantages over Cinema and others.
In this global economy, keeping our overhead low is a big help.
.....
lastly, someone mentioned Cinema going all out for CA users as a reason EI should.
This proves my general point, Cinema has ALREADY secured its mograph reputation
in the industry. It makes total business sense to try and go after a market you dont have
much of AFTER your app has established itself. All I have argued is that EI as an application
is MUCH closer to being a mograph monster on the hi end, than it is to being a CA 'monster' at the hi end. I thought it makes sense to secure that large group of users 'like cinema has' and build CA tools ON TOP OF that solid base. EI does not have time on its side, so I felt the fastest way to be able to draw in new users was to beat cinema at its own game. I mentioned new users as a huge market for EI, NOT because EI is a 'low end' 3d app. But because EI Is THE fastest, most powerful, most affordable easiest to use 3d application on the planet. You get Ferrari render quality for the price of a Chevy. Thats very enticing for people new to 3d. Sadly, as i have said before, EI has built a pretty good mograph house thats taken years and then stopped before putting the roof on. So work on the garden in the back? (CA) NO, finish the roof so you can sell the house! THEN go at that garden\landscaping full speed ahead....

[scottfox]

veehoy, cute. However, my statement was sarcastic and one brief partial sentence at the end of my topic which was about mograph. The flying logo post chose to go into detail in its
stereotyping throughout its post. not quite equal.
....
If you read my comments in full (i know they can be long :) I dont dismiss CA tools, I just wish they would be done AFTER finishing the mograph stuff.
....
I can certainly get emotional, but I actually do care about this stuff. If I offended any CA animators, I am sorry. I have stated that CA artists are Uber talented in this thread. I do not have the talent to do what good CA guys can, I admit that. Im not sure I can show more respect for the craft than that.

[Vizfizz]

Your analogy is flawed Scott. It takes all disciplines to build a house that lives in the same neighborhood as the Big 5. Arch vis, mograph, illustration, industrial design and CA are all necessary to complete the house. Landscaping, while pretty, is more akin to marketing. It's needed to sell the house but it's not the house itself.

Any market by itself, whether it's ca, mograph or arch viz is just a trailer house in this multi story neighborhood.

That's where EI says it wants to live so you can't ignore what the homeowner's association (the users and industry) say is necessary to live there.

Edit: I can see the logic of trying to complete one task at a time when building a house, but that's not a good idea. You don't run the electrical or plumbing after the house is built, you insert it while you're building it. Same with CA. You can't just wait until one discipline has everything it needs done for it by itself. Its the same problem we're dealing with upgrade after upgrade of Camera enhancements.

[Veehoy]

veehoy, cute. However, my statement was sarcastic and one brief partial sentence at the end of my topic which was about mograph. The flying logo post chose to go into detail in its.......
Not taking sides here, only pointing out that apparent similarity. :)

[ediris]

I will like to see:

Stacking windows
Fluids
Soft Bodies
Add animation channels into the viewport
Snapping,Align,Distribute,Drop to Floor
AI import
Point Level Editing
Nurbs Curves
Instancer,animation of instances,various types of distribution of these instances
Multi Shading

Well just to mentioned a few.

[scottfox]

Brian, your logic has always been flawed by the its lack of urgency in the simple SURVIVAL of EITG as a company that you have. I may agree with you in a generic sense, but you like many others on this thread fail to think of EVERY issue in this puzzle. My logic is solid for a company on the brink of going under. Its that simple. Please keep to the issue and leave me PERSONALLY out of it. Then ill do the same. Attacking me does not prove anything much less your points. You of all people should know the financial situation EI is facing. Its business suicide to be so scattered in your approach to your product! PERIOD end of friggin topic. Too many people here are playing with the houses money here. In the real world, EI needs to get to next MONTH, not next version. And frankly any more talk about CA is selfish an narrow minded if you truly care about EI's immediate survival....

Ediris --- AMEN my friend, GREAT suggestions!!

It does seem that EITG's lack of programming talent is guiding its decisions on WHAT is upgraded so maybe where all just spitting into the wind here......

[scottfox]

from talking to Brad directly as many times as I have, I make my comments based on
honest and frank concerns and issues EITG has. I can't reveal specifics as much as it pains me that so many toss out selfish desires without truly caring about the people investing the money to keep the business alive. As I said before, the lack of business sense of so many
artists leads them to take jobs in corporations much quicker than it does get them to go out on their own. Im beginning to think these threads may cause more harm to the product than any good. They are improperly weighted and informed in their influence.

[Vizfizz]

Well Scott you're right in one thing. These kinds of threads do very little to help the promotion of the product. But its not due to being "improperly" informed as you suggest. The industry survey URL I provided a few entries back shows the significance CA is playing in the animation industry. Its the #1 growing sector listed. (#1 Games, which ultimately involves CA, and #2 Feature Film Character Animation. Additionally motion capture is listed as being the number one trend - also CA related). But as with any survey or poll I suppose its possible to think its inaccurate or incorrect...but its certainly better than any anecdotal evidence that you or I can provide from our individual experiences within our respective fields.

Our impasse here is due to individuals' inability to engage in these kinds of conversations without getting their ego involved. I'll admit I'm not immune, but I don't go about accusing people of trying to destroy EI. (But you wouldn't be the first to say that about me Scott)

As long as anyone sees artists who support the CA and advanced animation effort in EI as being "selfish" or instigators of some plot to injure the survivability of EITG needs to really re-think that position because its very dividing and its simply not true. You wanted to know why you don't relate well to your peers Scott? It really shouldn't be much of a mystery to you.

Thank you everyone for your input on these subjects. Its definitely time to close this thread. Its no longer productive...and as much as the "drama" may be fun to read, its time to close this one down. As with product comparison threads, its probably a good idea for us to restrict feature request threads in the future.