EIAS 7.0 Preliminary Feature List 10/27/2007

#21

Can I get an Amen, brother…

#22

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

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

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

I would sum up broadcast design with the following specialities:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#23

Brian,

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

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

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

just my 2 cents,

Peter

#24

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

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

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

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

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

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

#25

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

I’d be happy to see those features.

#26

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

#27

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

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

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

                        Blame the fact that some EI CA has reservation about paying for an upgrade with no CA features? While they compete for budgets with a EI against "NEW", up and coming CA tools in high development cycles? It's their fault that EI CA people has to extend themselves financially to get CA skills,  and  work comes twice as hard as Production suits? I support EI CA "ReadyRigs" Video Tutorial DVD because it's difficult enough learning CA in an app you already use (EIAS)... not to mention learning MAYA!!  Nobody who wants to do CA, just jumps into Maya. The learning curve is far greater than other CA apps. 
                        
           Seven years ago, I left a cushy corporate EIAS production job to reinvent myself for the next elevation of 3D in CA. EI pull the rug on it's CA modeler and CA Tools, and left this former college adjunct professor (pratt, new shool, bridgeport) and corporate production 3D dept head scurrying for solutions. It's a wonder I survived after that fiasco. Even after I floundered up to the surface in my hometown, small CA studio here in Buffalo wouldn't accept my years of EI 3D "managerial level of production knowlegde. It's was my hand drawing skills that allowed me to even intern "for free" at the maya studio. 
                        
                        I just hired 3 EI animators who managed to survive "the EI CA drought" no...sanction. The deliverable are tomorrow. Without this newly formed "unsupported team of EI Animators"  which I dubbed "VEIT"  Virtual ElectricImage Troopers, my deadline would have produced another lone EI dead soldier.   Instead, they ROCKED my deadline, the Rig and the animation. And we can handle even bigger projects. Based on their OWN dedication to EI CA. 
                        
                        At the same time, I hired out my associated IDEA 2007 awarding production studio in NYC. (CA with FBX) The files we had to use were 550 mb to 750 Maya mb. With our EI skills, we literally "nabbed" a High End  production that was made for Maya. Or so we thought.
                        
                        EI lacked the "common production tools" to import the "textures".  To this moment, EIAS as production tool fails in the "MOST COMMON" of basic features.  Importing textures from one industry standard file to another. EI failed as a production tool...No, as a competitive High End production tool and we had to go with another render app for "Basic Hard Body Surface Rendering". You can't remap textures on 1000+ import model. To this day, there's no basic import texture feature.  
       
       Had it not been for Ramjac, (Patrick and Jens) working over the week to upgrade Obj2Fact 2.1.3.   The CA budget would have gone to Maya animators as well. 
                        Right now my client is loving my EI CA work, and this is my first project that I can PAY other EI animators outside of my associated NYC studio network.
        
        Supporting ElTG, is not just buying it's upgrades. It's supporting the community that use the app with work, pay, tutorials and support as well not just my own pocket. EI not supporting CA hurts Production people as well. I'm both CA and Pro. Right now CA is better half of my growing business. I support production teams with CA rigs and animations so they can do more extensive production bids.

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

                   "THIS HERE MONEY WAS MADE FROM EI Character Animation"

BTW… EI RULES!!!

#28

BTW,

   I'm working CA in v7 on a UB is worth it. Moves almost in RT and I barely do preview. 
 
 Like working in Maya. 
   
   11 Gb RAM, Quad Core 2.66 ghz. Dual 30" Displays.
  
 What gets me is  EI CA people have been coming up with so many solutions on their own. There's very little work that you guys have to do to help us meet our goals. It's the small things like "FBX texture import" that will help both CA and Prod work.
 
 Anyway...sorry for the rant. Fresh battle wounds oozing from handling Pro and CA work at the same time. Both still need common production improvements. 

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

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

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

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

CA artist are growing in many ways.
 
OK. back to biz.
#29

Alonzo and Brian-

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

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

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

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

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

#30

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

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

#31

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

#32

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

Cj

#33

CJ… I’ll clarify.

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

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

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

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

#34

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

Cj

#35

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

#36

Hey,

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

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

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

Tomas

#37

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

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

#38

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