thingmaker

Will there be any maintenance updates to address the screen redraw issues with EI8?

Tomas, I am also seeing this issue. The screen goes black when grabbing the header of any window. I have tried alternating the drawing engine between software and hardware. No change. I reinstalled the EIAS 8 Lion Patch to be sure but the screen still turns black. Is anyone else using Mac OS 7 or 8.1 and Not having the blackout problem? Using a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB graphics. OS 10.8.1 -Derryl

Richard, if you are on a Mac you can reassign which app is the creator. Find one of your graphic .img files, then press command & i or right click and select 'get info'. Then go down to 'Open with:' and change from DiskImageMounter to Animator. Also just below that, select 'Change All..." to fix all of your other Animator files as well. -Derryl

I have installed the "EIAS Component for Quicktime" from the Telegraphics.com website in the user/library/quicktime folder and restarted but am still not getting a preview using Quick Look. Does anyone have this working correctly Using Mac OS 10.8.1?

Great news! -Derryl

Is there a way to globally change the scale of a project? For example, I have several projects that I need to size upwards. Originally since I had models that were very small and very large in the same project, I created everything to actual size. One EU unit = 1 meter. The problem is that some of the models are comprised of many pieces that together are only 4cm long. I have since discovered that quite a few plugins and shaders don't work at that size due to rounding errors. I have tried to parenting everything to a null and enlarging it by 10,000 or so in scale but some plugins such as Placer Deposit don't honor the scaling even with 'inherit' selected. Is there a way to scale globally? as in just move the decimal points over 4 places for the whole project? Thanks. -Derryl

Does anyone know if Instancer is still available? The link above doesn't work and I tried to contact CJ through his website but the email bounced back. Thanks. -Derryl

Richard, you could have fooled me, your english is excellent! What I was trying to achieve was a 'wave' of spheres that I could control. In the first image is the basic effect I am going for. I was able to do it using one sphere and locating it on each vertex with Placer Deposit and then warping the mesh/plane using deformations. This method kept the spheres from distorting into ellipsoid shapes. http://www.4dmaze.com/images/other/wave/ The image upload simply does not work for me. The jpeg file is only 144k. This is what I get: Error This upload failed Used 786.53K of your 500K global upload quota (Max. single file size: 7MB)

Hello, does anyone know of a way to distribute objects on a grid (say the vertices of a plane)? For example if I create a grid of spheres in Formz,etc. and I bring it into EI to create a wave effect, it distorts the spheres. It seems it would be much easier to create a simple plane distort it and then apply the objects to the vertices afterwards. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks. -Derryl Sorry, no example. I guess neither the 'attach files' nor the 'Flash advanced uploader' are working.

Here is a free set of green-screened people: http://xoio-air.de/2012/greenscreen_people_01/

Tom, I am using Mac. I do not have OBJ2FACT. On the creator's website http://www.ramjac.com/obj2fact/obj2fact/purchase_o2f.html if you go to purchase it, it points to http://eitechnologygroup.com/ which of course does not have anything regarding this plugin.

Here is an example of why I ask. Most other programs export to .obj. So I started using ZBrush 4 but have yet to get a single .obj to import into EI no matter what I have tried. Even a simple sphere gives an error: "File Format Error: Unexpected token in .obj file" I did a search of this site, this error doesn't come up. Someone must be using ZB. No offense meant, but extolling the virtues of EIAS 9 doesn't help the current situation as it isn't available or even have a shipping date. Still using EI 7 & 8. Thanks.

Since EIAS imports many different formats, is there an advantage to using FACT over other formats such as .obj? I ask since there are many modeling programs and some do not export to FACT, also many existing models not in FACT. Just curious what problems to anticipate if I remove converting to this in my workflow. Thanks. -Derryl

Ha, I love the article where Jobs is talking about the Mac but he says what they have down the pipeline in R&D is going to be great... "In time there'll be a fully portable Mac. 'I want to put Macintosh inside a book in three years, or before with a flat screen display, mass memory chips.. It's very small, uses less power. The whole thing might one day fit into a shirt pocket." 3 years? More like 25 but he did do it.

Tried again, still gives the same message.

Hello Tomas, I tried sending you a PM but it says 'The member Tomas Egger cannot receive any new messages'

One example is State Maker by Northern Lights. http://www.eias3d.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=91 It was fixed in 8 but no update was (or will be) released.

Will there be an update to v8? It's been almost 2 years since this post so I am assuming not. I sent in a couple bug reports and it is frustrating because plugins that worked in 7 and then not in 8 because of new bugs. Is all focus now only on 9? Thanks.

Nice!

Good news for anyone like myself that has moved to the Lion OS on the Mac but laments the loss of being able to use older software that requires Rosetta (like Modeler). Now VWare Fusion 4.1 allows you to run 10.6 (Snow Leopard) in emulation. For $49. it's a cheap way to keep those older irreplaceable programs without having to boot up a drive with an older system. -Derryl

Good news for anyone like myself that has moved to the Lion OS on the Mac but laments the loss of being able to use older software that requires Rosetta (like Modeler). Now VWare Fusion 4.1 allows you to run 10.6 (Snow Leopard) in emulation. For $49. it's a cheap way to keep those older irreplaceable programs without having to boot up a drive with an older system. -Derryl

Thanks Richard. Yes, I looked at EXR2Mesh but as bw commented, it doesn't do spheres or cylinders. Really a shame CyberMesh is gone. The nice thing about how it works is you just open the grayscale and move the controls until you get the depth of hills/valleys you need, then export. Finished model. But in EI, it's endless fiddling with the bump and then the displacement which needs dense dicing throughout the entire model. It's just less intuitive for experimenting. So much good software gets left behind in the rush to create new OSes. I am on the Mac and it happens with every OS upgrade. They always say contact the developer but sometimes they are gone. In the case of Cybermesh, the problem was success as John Knoll is one of the busiest people in Hollywood, he would probably fix it but it would be pretty far down the list. -Derryl

I get that too, but if you click on the video background image it plays anyway...

Does anyone know of a good alternative for Cybermesh the old photoshop plugin from John Knoll? It was extremely useful (and quick!) for creating real geometry spheres and landscapes. Am really surprised at how hard it is to find a similar product. Sometimes bump maps just don't cut it.

Thanks Tomas, I will try that. Can you suggest a good HDRI tutorial? -Derryl