EI needs to acquire more users and keep the ones its got… I don’t know whether it can aqquire new users from other high end CA apps very easily, but can it also compete with other apps that hobbyists or ‘middle of the road’ dtp graphic designers might buy. These latter type people would be looking for an all in one application that doesn’t cost too much, (although c4d isn’t really an all in one program, it used to be fairly cheap). EI is really a specialist rendering application. Its extremely unlikely that modelling tools will ever be included in Animator and I’d have thought It’d be a waste of their limited resouces to go up this path. Much better to bundle something like Silo and produce GOOD documentation on how to use it- for those totally new users.
Also, for new users, Animator should have its interface redesigned. Forget all the ‘techno correct’ way of changing parameters, (like the camera aperture scale) and design a consistent to use method of things being 'off or ‘on’ on a scale of 1 to 100, small or big, 1 to 100. They need to get away from the ethos of, 'sometimes when we say ‘right’ we mean ‘right’, BUT sometimes we actually mean ‘left’. Sometimes we mean neither… As I remember this sort of stuff went through the TripleD shaders as well.
One reason c4d caught on was not because it was good quality, but because it was so easy to use, (mostly). I don’t say EI is hard to use, but there are confusing elements.
Assuming EI can keep its current users, its big problem is getting new users. It’s really a marketing problem, getting the product into the head of new potential users. Unfortunately EI and also c4d, don’t seem to have the ‘shop window’ that Maya, XSI and Max have. All things being equal, (and I know that things, as far as animation go, probably aren’t equal in all apps), the visual quality of work you get out of all these apps is mostly down to the operator. This aside, the perception one gets, from looking at user galleries for both EI and c4D is that the work is largely amatuerish and mediocre. This obviously tends to reflect badly on the product. EI need to get the very best work into adverts in magazines like 3D World and to have some kind of profile on sites like CG Talk. Paul S was a great ambassador
for EI, and for what EI could produce, in the right hands, at a time when EI really needed it, unfortunately and unbelievably he was hounded of the postforum, no doubt busy enough with commisions…
Martin K
) but the expresions on the faces are crucial.