In EIAS’ current state…no I don’t think the price comparison is fair either. The application is out of date, lacks modeling and decent character animation technology and its interface is vintage 90’s. Unless you’re looking for really good renderer, but you don’t require heavy integration into an existing pipeline, EI is only ok for some.
At this point, my relationship with EI is pretty much non-existent. The Igors have let me (and the rest of the community) know that my opinion on EI’s development is pretty much a moot point. So I’m gonna call it like I see it. So here goes.
As I mentioned, v9 will be the litmus test for the new company. They’ll need to prove that they can enhance the product, offer a proper means of distribution, take care of the dongle situation, marketing/pr, handle money flow and customer support. That’s a lot to throw onto any new company. The thing is, they can’t really lower the price at this point because I’m sure they’re having to absorb a lot costs associated with taking this venture on. Not to mention that they had to pay EITG something for the technology in the first place. If v9 is a flop, where will they find the financial resources to continue? Sure they can continue on sweat equity, which might actually get them to v10, but you can’t sustain that forever.
On the positive side, the Igors have a lot of pent up frustration and a lot of talent to do something about it. I no longer know what the road map looks like, so I have no idea where they’re going to take the application. I get to be as surprised (or disappointed) as you guys are. I just hope that they don’t keep marching down that same old tired premise of enhancing camera.
v9 will likely have lots of strong goodies. They’ll need to prove that in order to impress the remaining faithful and score new customers. They’ve hinted at some of those goodies like a 64bit camera and multithreading. So that’s good to hear. But that won’t be enough. Animator is their key to survival.
The other good thing they have in their back pocket is a number of already written technologies that they could infuse into Animator while they work to improve its infrastructure. A v9 loaded with every Igors plugins would be a good gesture. But my guess is they’ll avoid doing that as much as possible.
Hopefully they’ll find a way to pull an ace out of their sleeve.