Jeff Knapp

That has historically been one of EAIS' best features—3D matte "paintings." Just look back to the film "Gladiator" where EI was used to recreate the Coliseum or the particle effects for the nuclear bomb effect in "Terminator 2." Both were early, groundbreaking uses of CG in film. The there was also the "Rebel Unit" at ILM, led by John Knoll, that used EIAS as their main 3D package for the "Star Wars Episodes IV-VI - Special Editions" and for the USS Enterprise model for a couple of the Star Trek movies. I am REALLY looking forward to EIAS 10. I am really hoping the you guys have succeeded in bringing it into the 21st. Century — both features-wise and UI-wise. I have been using Modo, C4D, Maya, Houdini, and 3DS Max over the years and the only two that I have actually grown to enjoy using have been C4D and, especially, Modo. But, I cut my 3D teeth on EI and I miss it. There were many reasons, both technically and feature needs, that I had to switch from EI over the years but, I really would love to come back to it. Here is a "must have" list to get me to come back: Camera: 1) Fully multi-threaded. I have 32 Ryzen Threadburner cores in my computer, need I say more? 2) A fully modern render engine that includes GI, ray tracing, radiosity, ambient occlusion, full set of render passes, output to 1.0 gamma workflow, and can save to all of the common output types — especially 32bit OpenEXR — oh, and fast rendering or/co-rendering would be a very welcome bonus (I have a Titan RTX in my box). 3) Modeller needs to be able to, at a minimum, let me build both polygonal and Sub-D models and be able to import and export to the common file types in use today. 4) We need a robust and modern shader that can handle all of the kinds of shading in common use today — everything from good, noiseless subsurface scattering to clean reflections, blurry reflections and refractions. 5) Finally, is there anyway to dump that old, 1980s-looking UI and use today's Mac and Windows native UI elements? I know you guys have struggled quite a bit since you rescued EI from going under. And I know your development team is quite small so, I quite understand the long delays and slow addition of new features. But, I do have hope. I learned 3D on EI and have always loved using it.