KurtF

Nice explanation of Euler vs. Quarternions and how to set up hierarchy's to avoid gimbal lock. http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/workflow/the-naked-truth-about-3d-rotations/

+1. Depending on the coding, I would love to see this integrated into EIAS. Fluid sims combined with ultra fast rendering- that's a winning combination.

Felix, Tomas, glad you enjoyed the animations. It seems even short films made by smaller firms are becoming very rich with detailing and cinematic camera movement. Tomas, good luck on your music video. Keep us posted with 'making of' and 'behind the scenes'.

Glad you liked these Richard. Here's a discussion on making RUIN - https://vimeo.com/35399437

Have found 3 really amazing CG animation videos on the net recently. If you haven't seen these yet, I thought I'd share them for inspiration and amazement! RUIN - https://vimeo.com/38591304 MEET MELINE - https://vimeo.com/10471831 and THE CHASE - https://vimeo.com/38247727 All are highly detailed, have wonderful camera movement, physics, and outstanding animations. Thanks.

Here is a link for research into a method of muscle deformations. Possibly this could be implemented into newer versions of EIAS? http://cg.skeelogy.com/research/simplified-muscle-dynamics.php Thanks.

Glad folks found it useful. As for EI - we'll see how development proceeds under it's new management. Tomas hinted (when posting on another thread) that Major changes had been made. Hopefully some of these changes are to improve Animator's code base, allowing for future development and modernization. That's my hope anyway.

Fairly extensive article from FX Guide on CG destruction. Covers the Bullet physics engine as well as other techniques, plus which FX houses are developing their own custom solutions and pushing the leading edge. The Art of Destruction

The bulk of the information in this video relates to compositing, not 3D. However, several minutes in the presenter does some Amazing things with the function curve editor in Fusion. http://vfxpedia.com/images/SwingingDoors_Medium.mp4 It would be nice if EIAS would have adjustments like these available for it's function curve editor. There is a "Shape Box mode" which is like a 2D Free Form deformation tool. Very handy to achieve natural motion. There is also a "Time Offset mode" which allows scaling the keys to avoid overly mechanical looking motion.

Hitfilm looks like an After Effects knockoff with similar capability. No scripting yet, but particles, masks, layers, and all the rest are built in. Priced at less than half a seat of After Effects. http://hitfilm.com/ Thanks for the heads up on Coda and Hype, I'll give those a look.

Maybe some Animation features? Really. Anything. Throw us a bone here.

Don't know about your settings, but I was able to cross my eyes and get the overlap. The depth looked good, even with about a two inch wide image.

Maybe this one then: iDough Looks basically like Sculptris (to me) with adaptive tessellation. There's also this tree creation app: TreeSketch Lots of goodies available now for iPad. Someday maybe a virtual camera controller for EIAS?

Looks like the Woody3D is a development platform to add that kind of functionality, tree generation and rendering, to your own app. So a 3rd party developer, or EIAS 3D, could buy a license, develop an EIAS plug in, and sell it. Don't know how much effort would be required to do so however. But there are some possibilities there. Especially since Onyx has had trouble with the Mac OS being a moving target.

Congratulations Richard- I'm sure every one is very proud. Hope Daughter, GrandSon, and all are doing well.

After World War II there were some books available on how to read, or interpret, aerial recon photos. They listed standard sizes for roadways, door and window heights, other standard measurements. These, coupled with some tools, allowed a person to create fairly accurate maps. Now- I didn't see any of those reference books listed when I tried to search. I guess with newer, modern techniques of surveying, along with the software, those old techniques outdated.

Hello Felix, all, This is my hope as well. Five upgrade cycles that focused completely on rendering was a huge mistake. Future development of EI should strive for more balance, to turn EI into a full featured, well rounded software package.

Very nice. Definitely something for EI to aspire to.

Very nice Scott. I like the smooth movement of the camera over the landscape. The final camera position shows lots of nice details, the fisheye clouds moving, the puff of steam from the pumping mechanism, a burst of fire at the top of the large ring. Pretty sweet how the doors above the conveyor swing open for each game piece. Of course - everything is just so shiny!

I know- the thread title sounds terrible. But it's a technique for rendering that Pixar has developed that's been used now in several feature films. The Igors are rendering geniuses, so if anybody can make sense of this and get it implemented into EI, they'll be the ones. Here's some links: Pixar White Paper Abstract 3D Delight Implementation I'm sure there's more available. This technique is more suited for Animation, as it renders quickly (though perhaps not as accurately) and thus works when you've got hundreds or even thousands of frames to create. Thanks.

Ola' Tomas, Igors, Ian, Richard, and all. No one else has mentioned it, so I want to say thank you for the recent newsletter highlighting development of EIAS. It was nice to get communication from EIAS 3D. The new model import sounds like a much needed, and very useful improvement to Animator. It will make day to day use of EI more fun and productive. Thanks again, and keep up the good work.

Ola' Tomas, the Igors can answer best about HyperDeeper. It's listed as an EI plug-in on their old web site: Endless Scroll down, it's on the lower right side. Thanks.

Nice tip, thanks for pointing this out. Also - happy to report that a Windows (64 bit) version of Ramen is up and available. The developer continues to move forward porting some OpenFX filters to work in Ramen, including the defocus filter from Blender: defocus Node Looking good for the freelance compositor who needs node based compositing.

Definitely Quicktime Pro. Well worth the $30.oo to purchase. Best way to go is to render out an image sequence, which is exactly like a movie, just one, single frame at a time. Then import the image sequence into Quicktime Pro and convert to .mov, .avi, or whatever you might need. Reasons this works the best: in case of a software crash, re-rendering only has to happen from the last, finished frame. If a crash occurs while rendering to Quicktime (or other movie file) you've lost the whole thing. Also, a single frame can be opened in Gimp or Photoshop for retouching, there's better quality with less compression for stills. You've got a lot more flexibility down the line. If you start with a movie file, your downstream flexibility is limited. Hope you and your brother enjoy 3D with EIAS.

Some folks have reported having good luck with this companies products: http://fxhome.com/ They're sort of After Effects lite, for folks on a budget. Ramen is a free, open source compositor. However, it's currently only on Linux and Macintosh, and requires you pull down the various source code libraries and compile it yourself. I am keeping an eye on Ramen's progress, as it looks like (for me anyway) it could be just the solution I've been seeking. http://ramenhdr.sourceforge.net/index.html