fantomaz

I could not find the christmascard from EI anymore, too long ago, but look what i have found: Alex

Somewhere in my museum of old apps and Macs there is an postcard from EI, it came to christmas and showed a caravan with a chain of lights between the caravan and a tree nearby. Must be 15 years ago or more, i will have a look :rolleyes: But the next press release (and release of V9 of course) will be much more of confidence to all of us... Alex

Memories, deep inside my brain - somewhere, very deep.... It was in 1989 when i was finishing studying IndustrialDesign and one of my teachers came to me, asking me to do some graphics for VW at his newly founded company. So i did, graphics, lots of graphics and more graphics (Freehand 2.0) One of our customer at VW came to me with a very special idea, he asked me if i can do a shot for a film he was doing for VW. It was a new technic to open a door in a car and, if it were possible, do a virtual visualisation of a crash of that car. The only computer in these days, which were perfect for doing cg-stuff were Macs and i had heard about some software for making professionel 3D on the Mac was a software called ElectricImage Animation System. The rest was easy: EIAS 1.0 for around 10.000$ a new MacIIFX with 8MB Ram and a 80MB HD for an other 10.000$, a NuVista Videoboard for getting Video out of the Mac and a DiaQuest board for controlling the Sony AnalogDraw. All in all around 60.000$. Much cheaper than an Evans&Sutherland System for 100k or a Symbolics for 150k... Ok, the shot for VW was a big success and from then Ei was my main tool. Only the years when Ei was "at PLAY" i took a look at ArtlantisRender and c4d, did some jobs with it and came back to EI when PLAY left the stage and Ei became again independent. Now i am too old to learn an other software and hope that the next release will have mousescrolling in the project window. Remember: the projects back in 1990 had around 20-100 models in the window, now i have often 200-5000...and i am not getting younger. So i have not so much time left to scroll through those windows without mousescrolling ;) work hard, render fast, retire young (who did this sentence? We should give him a medal and after that we shoot him to the moon.... ;) ) Alex edit: here is the shot for VW: http://www.volkswagen.de/de/Volkswagen/video.html?v=iLyROoaf8MTt

I like cars :)

Hi Paul, when you sell the PowerBooks and the MacBookPro and the Cube you should earn enough money to buy a Octo Mac plus Ram (maybe used). He will be much faster in rendering than all your old Macs together. Another benefit is: you only need one 'powercable' and one networkadress and make min four other people very happy with a used mac :rolleyes: I tried some month ago the same here, but the rendertimes of these old machines are so slow that i stopped the experiment very soon. Also the noise of the G4 was so loud, i cant imagine that i worked with these machines years ago everyday and everyday. Alex

Happy new year everyone! May the force be with us (and other things also...)

I wish you all, where ever you are, happy holidays! Greetings from cold snowy Germany Alex

Cool render and nice website (car-)navigation for this effect! Is there 'Wired-HiCon' on the brake lights? It looks like a bit... Alex

Hi Tom Modeler dont delete these items, they are still there (in case you need them for other actions), you can delete it, but you dont have to. When you created the circle for your sweep, make sure its only made of wires. In case you checked the little boxes: 'make surfaces 2 sided' and/or 'fill primitives' (in the dialogbox for 'Circles and Ellipse') you dont get a wire... Alex

Hi Tom, your circles are faces, if you uncover them it works. (the 'uncover tool' in the tab: face editing). Alex

Hi Joe, no problem, just install Rosetta from your original OSX-DVD or download it from Apple. Its an OS environment for the SnowLeo to execude old application code like it used in PPC (G5). Alex

EI is everywhere :) Found at a local Hardware dealer (a sort of a tradeshow) in my hometown:

One thing was very impressing to me: without any settings in the software or elsewhere on the mac, my 3dconnexion spacenavigator works like magic :) Thumbs up! Alex

I like it (both, EI and ...) ;)

Mmmmmhhhhh, cars and EI <- i like it :) Great work, really. How much polys are in the scene? (around, not exactly...) Alex

Good find! Thanks! And the price is a 'high' as 6 boxes of cigarettes :) Could not resist (since i dont smoke too much these days). Alex PS: we should have a special corner in the forum for such postings :)

Totally agree. But what to do? We have no such tool for EI, there is no such tool in general for 3D (on the Mac), the learning curve for Maya, c4d and other is horrible and so on. So the only thing we can do is: give life to this thread here, so that Blair sees that there is interest in such a tool for us users. I am in the need for such a tool! And i am talking about a tool that is usable for many of us, not only the handful of people who has a (working dongle) copy of Reelmotion. Maybe Blair can tell what he have paid for the code and someone like me is willing to buy from Blair so that someone with knowledge of making such software tools can finish a new version of Reelmotion or Blair can give the code to sourceforge.net so that the community can built a dynamicstool not only for Mac...or...or... If we dont talk, nothing will ever happen. But without humor its only half the fun :) Alex

Ok, let me see what i can do :-)

@Blair Is there something we can do to support/aid you to built the new REELMOTION? I would give a lot to have an App which runs on IntelMacs native :) Alex

:):):) Cool!

My workaround for postscript fonts: • Type your text in Illustrator or Freehand • Save it • Export it as Illustrator 5.5 file • Import the file in EI-Modeler via "Import Postscript" • extrude it, bevel it, make what ever you like with it • export as fact • import in Animator This way you have much more control over the geo than the import text in Animator. Of course its a bit more "work", but its worth. Alex

@Blair and all Let me talk about 3D and Cars and EI As far as i look back in the CG industry, there are lots of animators (pro and semi and hobby). Everyone in the whole world is affiliated with cars, everyone in the job need one and, i am sure, everyone has one. When it comes to 3D, most people in this industry have something to do with design or with engineering or have their education built on it. So, sooner or later most of us wanted to see their own car in the computer inside their main 3D app. If you ask me what is one of the main killer feature for an 3D app -> my answer is: it has to do with cars. When we look back in EIs history and all the beautiful images and renderings done with EI, then you can see that everyone did sooner or later a job with: cars, all kind of cars, in all flavours that are thinkable, big, small, one-wheeled, two-wheeled, bigfoot, with trailer, without trailers, trucks, tanks, you name it.... It is because one of the main motors of our world is movement and movement with cars. Its in everyones head and it looks like it will be there for the next decade of movement even when we dont burn benzin in the next generation of cars instead of using electricity to move. So please, lets respect this world motor and give us a good carsim, i am sure that it will not hurt any tree and not the air, but i am also sure, that all these animators outside will use it and make good animations with it because its in our heads. Alex

Hi Are the windows blank? Are the window rulers "infinite"? I had a similar prob sometime ago, but there was no solution to fix it with a shortcut or so. What i did to fix: Load the initial project, do a "save as" quit open the new project and merge/import the first geo or prj "do a save as" quit open the new project and merge/import the next geo or prj "do a save as" quit . . . and so on. Everytime look, if all goes well with the windows, geo, etc. When the problem occurs , you now know what had cause it, because of the step-by-step way. Hope that helps Alex

>You know what I think about Reelmotion... < Not only you Tomas.... :)

It would be soooo nice to have ReelMotion... But everywhere you ask for it: "no, i have it anymore and dont remember where i put it" is the answer. Too bad. You guys, who have a working copy of it, are some lucky ones! Much better and much more cool would be: to have a nice car sim in Animator... Maybe some day. Sorry to hijack this thread. Alex