Is Camera renderer suitable for Hi-End world

#1

Hi guys,

I red a lot in this forum about EIAS Camera render engine for Maya. honestly, I’ve tried to see just one job that’s really convice me. What I saw is good but the quality is not actually suitable for high-end commercial. To understand what I’m expecting, is the quality of mental ray, the speed of renderman in a easy to use day by day work. If somebody here can blast my eyes with an animation, a studio work that have truly use the render engine for the specific shot, then I’ll change my mind…

Thanks

#2

And the price tag of EIAS!?..

You might check EITG´s TV/Film gallery section at http://www.eitechnologygroup.com/gallery

Regards
Stefan

#3

Thanks for writing. At this time, there is no direct rendering link inside Maya (via Maya plugin) to Camera. We have interim solutions that allow Maya users to transfer their animations into Animator (our animation package) which then communicates to Camera. Those bridging solutions include FBX and MoCon. Additional tools for transferring data from Maya into EIAS are planned.

Here is an example of those capabilties:

http://www.eitechnologygroup.com/products/electric_image_animation_system

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and reference the work by Johnny Banta.

As for your comment about whether EIAS is “high quality” enough…well that just kinda made me chuckle. EIAS and Camera have worked on so many high quality productions its hard to count them all. You really don’t need to look much further than the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises. ILM used EIAS for the special editions all the way through to Attack of the Clones. Trek films include Insurrection and Nemisis.

#4

Um, this guy either doesn’t know what he’s talking about or
he wanted to cause a negative stir.

I’d like to see what you’ve been doing, as no renderer will help you if you
aint got a clue…

#5

Now now… lets be nice. He may be honestly asking. We have to realize that there are lot of new users out there who haven’t seen what EIAS can really do. Its these new users that have to be won over.

#6

Just wanted to make sure he knew his post sounded a bit contrived…

Keep in mind, he claims to have read A LOT about the camera render engine for maya?

Point me to those posts. There is no render engine for maya from EI that I’m aware of.

#7

Assuming you’ve seen movies, commercials, or TV shows made since about 1991 then chances are you’ve already seen plenty of shots done with EI. Check the credits page on the EITG site - that’s a pretty good shot list by anyone’s standards.

EI Camera doesn’t have the flexibility of RMan, but at the same time you also will get really good and really predictible results right out of the box. Look at the work of someone like Paul Sherstobitoff (http://homepage.mac.com/sherstobitoff/Menu10.html) for example. Camera isn’t $7k per processor and doesn’t need a dedicated team of shader writers to get the most out of it.

And you’ll also never hear anyone bragging about how such-and-such shot was taking over a day per frame to render (Note to ILM about Transformers: impossibly long renders is good? Sounds more like sloppy shader writing)

Bottom line though, Camera only works with EI - it isn’t a render-only system like RMan or Brazil. It’s not really a big-studio tool anyway - EIAS’s strong point is that it can give one-man-shops results that can rival most anything out there, without the need for warehouse sized renderfarms, a department of shader writers, and 15 guys who just write MEL scripts all day.

Someone want to weigh in with a really nice shot here?

#8

Dear mister 3Dart,

every time there is some that claim someone don’t know that is doing make me laught a LOT. I Was directing a VFX post-house and handle a lot of commercial all made in XSI and comp in shake or Flame…Prevouisly I was Flame artist for a while. Yes I red everthing avaible has technical article on the web. Very few thing. Yes me, my TD and my lead XSI artist went to EIAS web site, and yes we all agree that nothing amazing ON THE WEB SITE.

So we are not a competitor that want to say bad thing on EIAS product AT ALL. And 3dart if I show what you are doing, who probably knows a lot more of what I’m saying.

So mister from EIAS, sorry, I heard a lot of good thing in term of quality and speed about your product. Propably the marketing departement at EIAS should make and show the very best work done. Considering the other discussion on this forum, and I was honestly thinking that EIAS Camera was able to render maya scene, as Renderman does. Our problem actually is to find a other solutions to MR for rendering.

We all here work with XSI, witch probably a fantastic product for animation…But for rendering, mental ray is really slow, and the render node are exspensive…I looking for an lternative with my TD.

That’s where all my research start, and the point of my last post.

Hope you guys understand there is nothing personnal here. Just a trully question for the most important aspect of the CG production: Pipeline…

MAthieu

#9

Mathieu,

Fair enough question. I’ve seen plenty of work in the past that would convince you, but it’s not always easy to find.

Brian already linked you with a Maya to EIAS pipeline video by AGRAPHA Productions, and here’s their showreel, which contains lots of top-notch work done with EI:
http://www.agraphafx.com/pages/AGreel.html

Have you seen this one at the gallery?
http://www.eitechnologygroup.com/gallery/image_full/204/

There’s plenty more where that came from. Due to copyright issues, however, much of it can’t be shown on the website.

Jim Mulcahy

#10

Good I hope you “laught” a lot. I on the other hand was slightly offended by how
you asked your question and the timing of it. But I think that can be explained by your lack of control over the english language.

So fair enough, I apalogize for suggesting that you don’t know about rendering.
But my response can not be totally unexpected, as your post reads as a negative spin on software that is conveniently timed with the release of the upgrade. A typical manuever to
put a negative spin on the realease.
EIAS Camera in the right hands is totally capable of high quality commerical rendering.

If you have ever seen any of the star wars movies(just one of many movies its been used in), then you’ve probably seen it.

#11

And in the wrong hands, it still looks amazing. Compared to other 3D packages, EI Camera has beautiful renders out of the box. With the ability to be EASILY adjusted for better results.

Cj

#12

Ok,
have you tried the following links, since you mentioned Renderman (or a Renderman compatible Renderer?) and working in XSI:

Affogato XSI Rendering Translator:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/affogato/

XSIman V1.0:
http://www.graphicprimitives.com/

Hope this helps you!

Regards
Stefan

#13

yes, every post or article i red say the same: original setup are well-done…Result is good enough.

let’s says it does good and could be the right choice for us.

we need to make some test.

thanks no offense 3darts

#14

Ho I’ll forget, tanks Stephan for the links…

#15

Hi Mathieu,

Camera is by far faster than mental ray, yes. On the other hand it is not as full fatured. It always depends on what you re looking for. If you had an idea of what features you need for rendering it would be easier to answer. The EIAS community is small. So its a bit hard to find “mind blowing” renderings. But in the end its always the artist who did the image. A reflection layer will not be very different between MR and Camera. So you somehow need to explain what you mean with “high quality renders”. In example antialiasing in Camera is increible fast and definately one of the best and “highst quality” in the industry. This may not sound as a biggy but it is, once you get used to the fact, that as an EIAS user you rarely even think about it.

Jens

#16

Forilou,

I’m sure 3dArtZ doesn’t take offense now that you’ve made your point clear. EIAS users tend to be a bit sensitive with their product because of the amount of flack we’ve taken from other applications’ users over events that occurred within our program’s history back in the 90’s. Because of these events, EI fell behind the R&D development curve and has always been playing catchup and has had to fight a negative company image. Meanwhile as numerous companies dropped EIAS from their pipeline in the late 90’s because of lack of significant development, those users that stayed had to put up with constant badgering from those other users on why we would choose to stick with what they thought was such a “inferior” product. We still put up with it today.

Yet we’re still here…and with each release we continue to catch up and provide tools that match and exceed the competition with greater ease and cost efficiency. The work in the EIAS gallery, imo, is quite exceptional considering that most is being done by single individuals rather than large studios or vfx houses. VFX companies that still use EIAS like Agrapha obviously show that EIAS is fully capable of high end material. ILM’s usage of EIAS all throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s also testifies that Camera is no lightweight.

But I’m sure that doesn’t really satisfy your curiosity. I understand your position and I’ve designed several pipelines while working at ILM, Sony, and Digitial Domain myself. I wish I could tell you that Camera works with Maya and XSI directly, but unfortunately it does not. There are several efforts being made within the EIAS to bridge that gap, but for now in order to access the rendering capabilities of Camera, you must go through Animator via FBX and that probably generates a considerable amount of unnecessary hoops you must jump through and that’s never fun for a pipeline designer. However, if you’re looking for an application to act in a supporting role EIAS could be a very good solution by rendering dedicated digital sets and mattes similar to the way ILM used EIAS within their matte and Rebel unit departments.

#17

Thanks you I really appreciate your time. Yes we are designing a pipeline to run a lot of different project. Time rendering is a major issue. Because TV production goes HD in a near future, I’ll need a strong pipeline and improve the render time. We can’t afford a too heavy pipeline with three different package and renderer, and deal with compatibility issue all day long.

For us, it is XSI for modeling, rigg and animation.
Maya for texture and lighting (or particle) and rendering of course

Because there is no other fast renderer in XSI, less avaible artist, less compositing integration like maya-toxik that we use, less render engine developper, I need to implement Maya in the pipe at the and of the process…

anyway thanks a lot for your help and time

#18

No problem.

Personally I think EIAS v7 will be a tremendous rendering step forward for us and we’ll be in a nice position, from a rendering point of view, to handle HD output. As far as broadcast is concerned, EIAS is a great application and a perfect choice for that market.

Version 7.5/8, which we’re starting on now, is planned to be focused on enhancing the animation capabilities within Animator. A complete look at character tools and other animation advancements are planned. Keep us on the backburner. I have the feeling you’ll be taking another look at us again soon.

#19

Hi guys,

We plane to make a project with a Realviz movimento for capture high quality details on facial human. (movimento is a mocap tools based on tracking method) we want to explore different package, in fact two. I have a look once more on EIAS web site, and the price performance of the product question me a lot. More I see, more I thing it can be usefullfor full CG animation work. You all know my interrogation that I droped here. So we want to test XSI and EIAS on a mocap pipeline. I thing there is someone of EIAS can provide us related test, or info. Hi there a cloth tool in EIAS and Air too.

So I thing the best way to judge is to test it, right?

#20

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