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Hey Tomas, You are right. It never used to do this. I always had to re-enter my codes when ever I changed dongles but now it works as you said it does. I had not tried it with 8 before. Then again I just upgraded my 2nd seat to 8 a few days ago. RE this feature proposal... I should test before I post ! :-) Bill

Hi Tomas, I checked and Transform is (standard), Rotation Order (ZXY), Link Type started as free and was changed to custom (lock all but X rotation), Link Alignment Orientation (Z is Z).. No axis modifications unless O2Fact counts. No scripts or constraints. I reverted to an older version of project and left link type as free and issue was still present. I had Turbosquid export the model 2 ways for access to ungrouped parts and another version of the same model does not have the issue right now. It is just that the position of the item I'm trying to rig is so off center in that version that getting it to work would be a lot of trouble. I will try to minimize the project file to the offending part and a contiguous section of the model. See if the issue still occurs and then send it over when I get a chance. Bill

Hi All, I have a project and I'm rigging an aircraft to lower gear open gear doors that sort of thing. I did this last week and had no issues with another model. Today I'm trying to align the rotation to a landing gear door and I open the joint editor and adjust the alignment via translation and that works fine but when I try to adjust the axis angle by rotating the axis of the joint rotation in the joint editor the part I'm adjusting goes flying off of the model. Is this me or a bug? If I have done something how do I correct it? I have been doing this sort of thing for years and have not had this issue before. Could just be the model that I'm using I suppose which was imported via .obj2 fact from a Max model originally. Doing adjustments in the joint editor window is not supposed to change the positions of objects in space. Only their pivot points. Any thoughts? Bill

This is a bit of a weird one but I would find this useful. I have 2 seats of EIAS. This is in spite of the fact that there is only one me here. I switch back and forth between 2 or more projects via KVM. Some require plug ins on one dongle and other projects use just the base program. As a result I swap out my 2 dongles frequently. It would be nice if EIAS could remember more than one dongle so I would not have to re-enter codes each time I swap dongles. Probably not generally useful but it would be convenient for me. Bill

Hey Tomas, Glad to hear I'm not the only one running into this. I had it happen once before in a similar situation where I had a group of pre-animated objects that I was trying to re-time. I have only had this occur 2 times and both times on complex large projects. I'll try to keep tabs on this to see if I can eventually see a pattern. Bill

Hi Again, Well this one has a strange resolution. It just started working again in the project. I can now move those groups of key frames without an error message. Once again I have no idea why it stopped and now why it just started working again. If anyone can think of why this might be happening please let me know. Bill

Hi All, I am thinking this is a real long shot but would it be possible to make a plugin that can bridge the gap between older plugins and current UB Systems on the Mac ? For example. Onyx Treestorm runs on PPC and no longer functions past EIAS 6.5 on the Mac. Is there any way to build a plug-in that can make a bridge for that older plug in ,and others like it, to make it work in EIAS 8 or upcoming 9? I suspect this is unlikely or too complex but it seemed to be worth asking. Bill

Hi David, Prior to the new ownership arrangements of EIAS there was a disagreement of some sort between the former owners, EITG and Ramjac software the owners of Rodeo and Xpressionist . As a result they were not included in EIAS 8. If you had EIAS 7 you can transfer those plug-in files to EIAS 8 and they will work in 8. If not you need to contact Ramjac about licensing those plug-ins. I know that the ParametricSurface plugin uses Xpressionist for some functions. This is probably why you are having trouble with it. I recall a Mr Font from quite a while ago. It may no longer be available as a plug-in .Not sure. EIAS does have a font handling feature built in that works in many cases. There is a list of vendors for EIAS plug ins here: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=186&t=311641 Plug ins that have been developed or improved by the new owners of EIAS are posted on this forum here: http://www.eias3d.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=19 Hope this helps, Bill

Hey Richard, That would be spectacular. I'll contact you via email. Bill

Hey Richard, So I take it that there is no alternative but to build it from scratch if EIAS doesn't like it? I need to use the font because it is in a clients logo. Bill

Hi All, I rarely use type in my projects but I have a project now that requires the use of the font (Helvetica Black). For some reason this font is problematic. I get the error message: " Sorry, the text could not be processed because one or more characters generated self intersecting curves. " I'm a bit surprised that any version of Helvetica would be problematic. Currently I'm using the default settings. Is there a work around for this in Animator? Bill

I have now posted a sample project to EIAS3D's ftp. turning soft shadows on and off will demonstrate the issue. Bill

Hi Dave, One deadline down and on to another :-) I just submitted a bug report but when I tried to upload a sample project neither the ftp nor the http seems to be responding. I'll try again tomorrow to see if the EIAS3D ftp is working. Bill

Hey Scott, This is one of my biggest problems too. I typically have this sort of thing happen with models originating in Max. I usually ask the Turbo Squid folks to break down the model for me prior to converting to obj. This usually works but means that I may have several hundred to several thousand un-named parts that I have to spend significant amounts of time renaming and parenting. On the last TS purchase I had to reassemble tires on a truck that were now in about 30 pieces each. That was just the tires . Of my week and a half schedule for that job I spent a week of it just getting the model ready to use. I'm about to buy 5 really complex models for a job that has a deadline that is only 3 weeks away and I'm praying they will come in smoothly for me. PS.. how does one upgrade their Obj to Fact ? I'm still running version 2.1 Bill

Hey All, I'm working on a project and have an animation built with morph targets. I need to copy and retime that animation through out the shot a number of times. I was doing this with great success until a few minutes ago when upon trying to move the group of keyframes I got the following message.(See image) Now I assumed that I must have done something wrong since I had been successfully doing this for a while with out issues. I went back to a group of keyframes that I had successfully moved before and got the same error. All of a sudden I can't move any more groups of keyframes in this project. I saved the project and went to an older version of the same project and was able to still move the key frame group with out issues. What did I do to make this project no longer allow me to move groups of keyframes ? Is it something I inadvertently toggled? How do I switch it back because now I can no longer move more than a single keyframe at a time in this current project and i don't want to revert to the old project cause I'd lose hours of work. Any suggestions? Bill

Hi All, Sorry that I don't have time to test this further (On Deadline) but camera crashes when I have an anisotropic shader and soft shadows in EIAS 8. If I turn off the GI soft shadows it renders just fine. May be worth looking onto this if it has not already been reported. Bill

Hey Steadicam, Too bad about Reel Motion. It was a great solution. I had hoped that it might have been picked up at some stage for further development . I had heard that there was something in the works at some point but it seems to have fizzeled out. For fish tailing , burn outs and rolls it could not be beat. I used it all the way up to EIAS 5.5 . You can move the files up from 2.9 or 3.0 where the plug in was natively functional. Once the nulls were created you could move the data forward. I have not tried it since 5.5 but I imagine as long as you can move animated null data forward it can still be done. Problem is that it is not easy cause you have to go from Mac OS9 to OSX and then through all the versions of EIAS to get it to where you need to use it. Not to mention you need to take your set/road and car proxy back to EIAS 2.9/3.0 to do the sim in the first place. Very challenging. So maybe the new EIAS team could explore this again ? I think NLights was the one looking into it before. Rick Baltman would probably allow it if it were up to him. Bill

Hey Tomas, Sorry I missed your reply. I forgot to check the email response on this post. I am using a Intel Mac and I downloaded the latest version from the Northern Lights web site. I'll try your sample and see what happens. I'll let you know soon. Bill Hi Tomas, Your sample is working here. Not sure why the one from Northern lights did not. My own attempts got an error message like the above. I then downloaded the sample project and got the same results so I assumed there must be something wrong with the plug-in. I'll try again from scratch tomorrow and see what happens. Thanks for your time and the sample file. Bill

Hey Ian, Got RSMB but I often find it has a lot of issues specially when vectors cross or when the blurred part is in tight quarters with static items. Some times it works really well and other times it is a mess and I'm not always in the mood to do a lot of roto. What do you think works better Nuke or RSMB since I think both are using optical flow? I have read that some software is able to do it but I think from what I've read about it is pretty high level stuff in Renderman or something in house. I think it used something like cached vectors. Anyway it was worth a try asking just in case there was a trick to get it to work. Bill

Hi All, Just in case there is a method that I'm not aware of , is there any way to get motion blur on a child cycling animation? I know that it is not actually moving and is in effect replacement animation but if there is a method in EIAS it would really be useful. I tried multi-frame blur but found that nothing resulted from my test. Thought that it might work since it is taking separate frames that should each be different enough to force a blur. Nada! Any thoughts? Bill

Hi All, I'm trying to set up a tank model in pathfinder using EIAS 8. I have done this before successfully in earlier versions of EIAS but it has been a while. I tried to use the sample project from Northern Lights to check the setup and I get this error. see attached. I should add that when I got the same error on my fist rty I went to Northern Lights and downloaded the most recent version of the plug in to make sure that I was current. Moving the time line usually results in a repeat of this message followed by a crash of EIAS. Is this a bug in the Pathfinder or EIAS? The project is the Tank sample from Blairs web site. Note: the installler reads as V 2.0.9 in spite of the fact that the plug version reads as 2.0.8 Bill Dempsey

Hey Tomas, Thanks for the reply. I figured that was probably the case but since things are moving quickly these days I decided that I had better ask first before turning down potential work. Bill

Hi All, Pardon this silly question but has anyone explored the options other than camera to render an EIAS animation? I have a client who wants me to do some texturing and animation for him. A basic animation cycle. For some reason he needs to render it on his own render farm with some other software. I suspect the final project is in Maya or Max but I do not know. Unless I can give him something he can render in his own system I will have to turn down the job. This is where I suspect FBX out would probably come in handy. Has anyone animated in EIAS and sent things out to render in Mentalray, Renderman, or other? Bill Dempsey

Hi Igors, Sorry for the delay in my response but things have been a bit busy over the last week or so. In answer to your questions : 1.) 5 area lights were created. 3 in the ceiling roughly color balanced to fluorescent and 2 over the counters roughly color balanced to tungsten. These are standard area lights with their dimensions matching those of the light sources that were modeled. All 5 lights had an intensity of .5 . All lights have quadratic falloff . The under counter lights were angled out slightly for better effect. I chose not to use light objects to keep it simple. A slight glow was added in the render to the diffusers of the lights. 2.) Photons were baked in database. Each ceiling light had about 100k photons. The under counter lights each had about 50k so aprox total of 400k total photons. I'll see what I can do about that map. 3.) GI setting was 500 rays primary and 0 secondary. color tolerance of 2. Area light ray count was set to 200 for primary and 50 for secondary. No block distance was used since the Area Lights were positioned just under the fixtures. 4.) I rendered tests in a variety of sizes and render times varied based on resolution. I just rendered a test for time and got 16 min 51 seconds but I seem to recall times of 11 to 14 minutes depending upon the angle. This render time was for a 1280 X 720 HD frame. I'll need to trash the baked map to get a time on that but I recall it being under 10 minutes and possibly under 5. Additionally at this time the project has the following stats. 5 lights 1023 groups 16 materials 3 shaders 21 textures 425,343 vertex 286,011 polygons. During render in camera the following stats read. 6 shadows 47 textures 38 reflections 965 groups 486,192 triangles 1,728 quads Bill

Thanks all, Monday, I'll do that because at some stage I'll need to add cool looking stuff. Bill