EIAS Review

#41

Good arguments. I agree with you Paul that a new EI killer application is needed. Tesla, hopefully, can be that killer app…and while a lot of good renderers exist on the market today, I still believe that the desire for Camera exists. Its the one thing mostly remembered by ex-users and its the one thing still talked about today.

If Camera is no longer of value, or just can’t compete, then essentially we’re stating that there is absolutely no reason to purchase EIAS anymore. Why not apply the same logic to Tesla? There exists a number of fine independent modelers on the market today, why craft a new one? I find this “defeatist” thinking and can’t be our position unless we just want to throw in the towel.

All of Brad’s development dollars, as of late, have been pumped into two primary directions. Tesla and Camera. Animator has been getting updated by default. However, eventually Animator will have to catch up to modern applications as well or its animation duties will have to be passed to Tesla. Once Tesla is on board, Animator will be the weak link. So, how do you address the weak link until its fixed? Well, my thought was to open access to Camera via a more universal format. But perhaps not.

As for who will take a big risk on EI again? Well I remember just a short time ago that many chuckled to think that C4D could compete against the big three but yet here it is. Hollywood and the film industry is strange sometime. Its very quick to get angry and loves to blacklist you, but in true LA fashion, the moment you start to provide something Hollywood really needs, all of a sudden all those people who you thought didn’t like you anymore come rushing back as if nothing ever happened.

The studios will take a risk on EI again as long as EI can bring the goods. But the studios are a pricey girlfriend to have. They love to be woo’d and showered with expensive gifts. Is the price you pay to get the recognition of your product’s capabilities on the big screen. Its that exposure that brings in the big bucks.

#42

I don’t think I, or anyone else, was stating that Camera has no value - it just isn’t the hot commodity it was 6-7 years ago when it would have been the right time to open it up.

Camera is a good render but it’s quality isn’t night and day anymore over some of the competion - it will do it’s job and definitely has it’s strenghts. Possibly if I stated Camera is crap then you might bring up the defeatest comment:-) but that isn’t the case. I just don’t think people will be scrambling to incorporate it into their workflow without a little more visable stability happening with EI.

Bringing out Tesla will be lots of work - initially it will be the ones familiar with EIM who probably will be interested. It’s got a great interface and talks with EI/Camera perfectly - if you are an EI user and Tesla becomes a little more forgiving than EIM was then it’s a no-brainer.

Tesla will be a tougher sell to the Rhino and Modo crowd.,but if done right it will find it’s place.

Anyway, I’m not here to complain about EI or Camera - I really hope Tesla takes off, makes lots of money which is spent in fresh development. I’ll continue to use it for it’s strenghts.

#43

As for who will take a big risk on EI again? Well I remember just a short time ago that many chuckled to think that C4D could compete against the big three but yet here it is.¨

From my point of view there is a lot of mographer going to C4D and you can see many shops using C4D everyday more. Around the world.
But this animations can be done in any app out there is just fashion. I have at work C4D is a great app but is not easy to use.
Anyways, i prefer using EI anytime, i dont imagine C4D for a film project.

Great news for EITG

#44

It’s not that but a matter of scale: that Camera is no Mental Ray-grade render engine doesn’t mean it has no value at all, obviously. It simply is positioned accordingly (not incredibly workflow-friendly product ideal for small shops yadda yadda). The same goes for C4D, Modo, and any other 3D package around. That is not a defeatist attitude. It doesn’t mean that things have to stay so forever, anyway: actually, I don’t disagree with the idea of opening Camera to other apps, at all. But there are two levels to it:

-Exposing current Camera’s capabilities to other host apps: automatic translation of models to FACT+Image+Shaders (or being able to accept theirs, which would mean implementing some very peculiar ones in a per host basis), providing shader placeholders for EIAS’, making Camera as transparently multiprocessor and network-aware as possible (it ought to be able to deploy slaves itself), etc. Sell it as a veeeery nice render engine (I am not being sarcastic here: it just is such), probably by means of lots of evangelism and good will, I am afraid. Etc.

-Redesigning Camera to be as malleable and intricately workflow-friendly as MR and PRman. I am not so sure that’s worth the effort beyond what EI’s particular needs would demand. To battle such giants Camera ought to become both incredibly fine-grainly tunable and unique enough for lots of eyebrows to raise. One can aspire to anything, of course, but is EITG truly interested in entering that arena short to midterm?

Tesla seems to be EITG’s midterm way out of stagnation, although I hope we are not reading a bit too much in it and deluding ourselves there: I guess EITG is investigating doing sort of a NewTek/Luxology remix here. For now, if Tesla is to pull a Modo and grow from a rich versatile framework plus a first modeler implementation to a fully-featured animation package (which Modo is not yet), we are talking a few years until we get it up to Animator’s capabilities (and I would be extremely pleased to be proven wrong here).

One thing I think should be pointed out is that neither a Maxon nor a NewTek are considering “opening their Cameras”: independently of how one likes or dislikes their render engines, they don’t seem to be the key to their successes but what and how one can feed them models and scenes. That is, how good their modeling and animation capabilities are.

#45

Thinking about all this, I believe publicity still is the key issue: I am not talking ads and reviews, which matter, but this kind of exposure the Modo guys do so well (that Brad Peebler seems to be everywhere at once, as if his Plank constant had gone crazy :smiley: ): conferences, blogs, interviews, etc. They seem to do lots of evangelizing. I guess it is a funding and manpower thing, and I wonder how EITG could emulate that.

Tesla ought to provide the opportunity to do a salvo of that in certain circles.

#46

Hi everyone…

Sorry if I came across as too extreme. I have a tendency to want to polarize things into either/or positions. Of course Camera has value in its current incarnation, but in the spirit of competition, I also have a tendency want to see Camera back in a leading position. I’m tired of loosing market share. So, as Paul suggested, we shouldn’t argue about Camera’s value…but rather to continue finding ways to improve EI’s position. More publicity, of course, is always a good idea. But always ask yourself this question. What is it, exactly, that EIAS offers that makes it a viable choice over its competition? If nothing specific comes to mind then that’s the problem.

From my vantage point, Camera seems to be EIAS’ strongest asset. Its renderings stand up against nearly anything currently out on the market. However, the only route to Camera is through Animator (and potentially Tesla). My thoughts were, if more access to Camera was available, it may allow access to new potential markets for EI, even though this should have been done 5 to 7 years ago. Since EI wont license Camera out, the only other alternative is to provide new access points into Camera (aka, by passing Animator until Animator is either fully retrofitted or Tesla takes its place).

#47

Brian you are doing a great job being an evangelist for EI. Level headed and have the production experience and know-how to back up ideas presented. I can’t fault your thinking what-so-ever in your desires for EI to succeed.

It is a good product and continues to be a sound tool …and helps many make a living in a very competative field.

#48

maybe Brian or someone else can enlighten me as to what percentage of 3d packages roughly exist at ILM and other “hi end” houses vs ALL other users in the world market.

My thought is, most companies have a goal they set out there to hit. Is EITG’s ‘goal’
to get as many new seats of EI and Tesla sold as possible to slightly hopefully increase market share and becoming a profitable company?

Or, is it to add hi end ‘hooks’ into the program that make it potentially begin to appeal to the BIG houses in LA? (or is that Tesla’s job. A trojan horse into these facilities, hmmmmm)

I selfishly (being a vis effects and mograph guy) feel the mograph\effects market is a lot more attainable earlier. You dont need to make a lot of excuses for EI to a mograph user. With a few more features and some publicity, EI is, and will be an even MORE attractive alternative to cinema in THAT playing field. Huge market of users. Throw in the large number of people that use Zaxwerks for 3d because of its simplicity, and market\explain\BUNDLE pro modeler with EI – and explain how they can continue to make their models in Invigerator than export them to EI and get a true hi end
looking scene without a large learning curve. People don’t like to ‘throw away’ skills learned. I learned EI from Zax, now years later he creates Invigerator and other 3d ‘lite’ tools because there IS a huge market for it.

I see it now… EI evolves into the killer entry level/bridge mogragh alternative to cinema featuring more Hooks into AE, Ease of Use, Speed, render quality AND price.
Maybe changes its name a little to reflect this EIMG maybe. (MG - motion graphics)
maybe V8 probably V9

While this is happening, Tesla grabs people for its hi end from the ground up architecture.
and stability. V2 and V3 of tesla add and improve on rendering capabilities and then BOOM! Animation capabilities enter the fray and all the coding - scripting - and accesabilities Brian and others want for the Big Houses will have matured after 3 versions
into a stable rock solid modeling and animation package commanding a higher pricepoint
and giving a whole new generation of young 3d centric animators a REAL alternative to the Mayas of the world… or just another cool tool to own…

A guy can dream a little can’t he? (i’d own both : )

#49

I’d really like to see some resources to appeal to the Motion Graphics guys, some reference material, demo or tutorial to show around: explaining diferent means of producing and importing models, Animator’s ways, a few very relevant plugins, multilayering output, After Effects and MoCon, some speed tests (actually, lots of speed tests to wow the crowd), etc. Wouldn’t be nice to have some longish videoclip explaining all that at EITG’s site for us to spread the link around?

Advancing EIAS for Motion Graphics means marrying EIAS to AE, Photoshop and such, so it would be really nice for EIAS 8 to adopt a few simple very practical AE ideas such as Easy In/Out and other keyframe-related contextual menu commands, inline group renaming, etc. Having AE supporting the Image format natively since so long ago is a big psychological win here.

EIAS’ weakish spots there (no showstoppers but rather irritating) are model importing (you need either a modeler that produces good FACTs such as EIM, ViaCAD, Invigorator. Form•Z?, or a third party plugin such as Obj2Fact); no out-of-the-box fully featured particle system; and I’d say having no Illustrator-to-Shape plugin to feed Mrs. Bevel and others profiles to extrude, revolve and things.

(Question: what does C4D output when producing multilayer footage for comping in AE? Numbered PSDs or a Quicktime movie for each layer? It is just that I did my first Layer Shader-heavy project and found After Effects to really suffer when dealing with numbered Photoshop files. Next time I’ll convert each layer into a movie. Ideally one would have a Shader Layer able to compile Image or Quicktime movies per layers instead of PSDs, too)

#50

Well in the very early days of c4d, prior to XL5 there were plenty of demos about, given away free with magazines. You could use the demo indefinitely without it crashing every few minutes. (I remember EI demos crashing continuously) At that time the render seemed very, very fast for a raytracer- that’s why I bought into c4d. Obviously at the time, and in my opinion, neither EI or formZ were doing what I required.

Martin K

#51

Maxon was very smart in the ealy years - got a crash proof demo out to everyone. Had a render with modeler in one interface and a very fast raytracer…and available for the mac. Built a large and very vocally enthusiastic user-base.

I purchased my copy too, way back, and quickly learned that the speed didn’t make up for the lack of quality and much of the program was/felt half done but it was stable and if one wasn’t too demanding it was perfect.

I just contacted Maxon US last week to see what it would cost to upgrade from V7.3 and what the future might be in a few months with the Advanced Render module…Siggraph was always a time for a new release. Not too excited to spend $1000 to get Vray4C4D when I probably wouldn’t use C4D too much. I use V7 a couple of times a month for the occassional thing and thought maybe I should get current again.

Well, I was informed that too bad…V7 does not qualify for an upgrade path??? And the sales person I talked to really had no clue about anything in development. He told me that once development is finished he will be informed/briefed on what the new version can do. That kind of shocked the hell out of me! What, there is no passion or burning interest in what new tools were in development?? While I’ll probably update somewhere in the future, my conversation sure left a bad taste. It sounded like I was speaking to some sales rep at the “Future Shop” or “Walmart” and really had no interest or interest what it was he was selling. I guess Maxon has gotten big, fat and definitely now a ‘corporation’.

#52

juanxer,

I tried with Paralumino’s plugin lineup to exceed and replace the Invigorator workflow and nearly succeeded. However, the Igors refused to tackle the illustrator issue. I wish I could get them to do that because sales of our products would have probably doubled. If you were to utilize all of our products together, you’d have the closest thing to MoGraph on the EI side. The additional animation channels really make our geometry products unique.

Meanwhile…write the Igors. Express your desire to see the Paralumino lineup expanded more.

#53

after using EI for 5 years now and making a living with it for over 2 years, i have to say that having tesla morph into an EI-on-crack would be a sight to behold. my only apprehension is that tesla won’t have the easy to use interface that silo has.

if i’m lucky, tesla will be like silo, but with nurbs capabilities.

i also second Scott’s request for the ability to use EPS files as extrusion sources. and what would really save me hours of time is if the text model generator in EI would make quads instead of long skinny triangles so i don’t have to retopologize them in silo.

imagine having to re-topo “american society of plastic surgeons”, there are 16 discreet letters in that name…

without this getting too much more off topic. here’s my 2 cents on EITG’s strategy for the future.

bring out tesla to show off camera, have EIAS move towards a motion graphics position, add in a particle system that is predictable…(dante is useless to me if i can’t predictably render over a network, maybe someone who has mastered that wild horse would care to post a demo on how they did it…) between that and rodeo, that’s a pretty rounded capability set. then work in all the animation capabilities of EIAS and add robust CA tools to tesla but have it be a high-end version (maybe call it Faraday or something). and sell that at a higher price point that EIAS user’s can upgrade to if they need it. normalize functions like network rendering and interfaces through out all 3 for seamless(kinda) transitions and learning curves and project files(where possible) as users grow into each new app from the other…

and stop the global warming thing too…

okay, now i’ve gone too far…

#54

“i also second Scott’s request for the ability to use EPS files as extrusion sources. and what would really save me hours of time is if the text model generator in EI would make quads instead of long skinny triangles so i don’t have to retopologize them in silo.”

How far does Silo go in retopologizing long skinny tris? Do you have to manually edit each and every or is there some sort of global ‘auto’ command. Tell me there is an auto command…I need that so bad.

#55

Paul…trust me I know. Illustrator import was the biggest battle I fought with the Igors on Trestle. I lost. They state Illustrator import needs to be done by the host. I suppose with Tesla that might happen, but even if it occurs inside Tesla you’re still dealing with a static source once it comes inside Animator. I think that was their excuse for saying they didn’t want to deal with it or that it was outside their current experience and didn’t want to learn it. If Trestle had illustrator import compatibility, the other geometry modules (Scrim, Swage and Bebel) would become considerably more valuable.

If we want Illustrator import in Animator (ala invigorator) the best method in doing so is convincing the Igors to make it happen within Trestle.

#56

Silo has no "auto command for this, but… Blender has a command to convert tries into quads.

Regards
Stefan

#57

Quote Vizfizz
I tried with Paralumino’s plugin lineup to exceed and replace the Invigorator workflow and nearly succeeded. However, the Igors refused to tackle the illustrator issue. I wish I could get them to do that because sales of our products would have probably doubled. If you were to utilize all of our products together, you’d have the closest thing to MoGraph on the EI side. The additional animation channels really make our geometry products unique.

There is a lot of companies wanting to get another solution for motiongraphics,i know is not the big shots companies but there is a lot of business in these area. Specially in Spain where CG film making is done every now and than.I will like to see EI running the mograph business once for all.

#58

yep, that’s right, you have to manually edit each one…

time to get an internet petition for the igors going…

we want EPS!
we want EPS!
:slight_smile:

#59

Last time i checked (pre v2) Silo’s topology tool was really meant for chraracter design and organic forms in general, wouldn’t be much use here.

#60

I was hoping I had missed something in my search for the perfect type/design tool.

I usually use EIM/Rhino to Max via nPower Power Solids - PSolids has the ability to retopologize nurbs into quads - so when-ever I have some heavy design forms which are beyond being filleted I run them through that and then do a SubD on the quads. Most of the time this works…looks great too.

I personally think there is a huge design and motion design market untapped by anyone…especially design. THIS IS WHERE TESLA COULD HAVE COMPLETE DOMINANCE!!!

I do lots of work with designers who don’t want to use Photoshop anymore to churn out tacky looking 3D type and logos. They want the next step or steps up from there. No-one has the toolset EI now has to market to this huge market. I still can’t believe no-one had attracted this crowd.

Most of these guys know Illustrator so EPS and .ai is absolutely manditory. MANDITORY!

Look at EIM…total breeze to use for design (if some of the quirks are handled)…with the knives and booleans. No-one has these tools and they are so what designers are looking for.

If EI actually concentrated on the graphics crowd…still images and mograph they would have very little competition.

This means Illustrator import, absolute first rate bezier toolset, ability to extrude and draw bevels with .ai or eps files with second to none control. Filletting toolset on par with Concepts Unlimited (forgiving) and bullet-proof booleans.

EI is so close to the perfect toolset for this market. Yes, it’s not as sexy as character work but put out a total breeze to use toolset with Camera quality rendering at a killer price with a second or third level upgrade path. There are 10’s of thousands of designers who would buy and use a simple, yet total pro application for their work.

There is money to be made here and a whole market untouched. I think Maxon tried to do it but their toolset is so lacking (except of the curve editing) - sorry any C4D lovers but that’s just my opinion.

I’m still in a little disbelief that no-one actually has an invig quality+ toolset built into their 3D app.

Anyway, I’d buy it and make a bundle, painlessly working on less-than-sexy meat and potatoes design work.