supernovavfx

its been a while since I've seen anyone ask so I might as well be the one. Could we have a general idea, or tease or anything about a new version of EI. We know your working hard and as fast as you can.... I'm hanging in here supporting EI 100% professionally and would appreciate a little bit of a roadmap for the coming year. Thank You, and everyone here have a prosperous and safe 2015 Scott Novasic

what are you trying to do? Ei handles .psd .png and other files nicely now. I use AE which see's ei's native format fine render out png. Its what I'm doing now in place of the old EI format.

fabulous work. I love all of it especially the fabrics and refridgerator. beautiful!!

very nice.

just beautiful moments throughout what I had a chance to view!! wow. Id love to know how you did a lot of things I saw... tremendous!

actually... the creative director gives me all the show times once I make the master. I design the end plaque large enough to handle the longest times given. I lay out all the showtimes in adobe illustrator on one large master page per show. I make a png file out of it in photoshop. And paste it onto the plaque. Then go into my texture window and simply drag the texture to reveal the next time... and so on and so on. Each time I send the file to renderama. So ill que up about 10 or 11 times... like Tonight 5pm Tonight 6pm Tonight 10pm Today 5pm Tomorrow 5pm etc etc etc.... thats the work the csd does for me so i dont have to worry about spelling and we have a master to refer too. EI is so fast that I was able to que up dozens of these pretty quickly, render them out and then cut them together in AE ( there own in house people could have done it as well but the CSD liked me doing it for them ) so i set them up in AE and rendered those out very fast as well. Thats the "Factory Work" we would call it... :) Its more fun designing and making the masters... doing all the versions is definitely animated "Factory Work"

https://vimeo.com/111080107

thank you... super clean is a nice complement. The broadcast work I do tends to demand that type of precision. At times I find some of it visually 'boring' so I decided to try and incorporate a lot of glass edging into the clean environment to add a level of complexity that is subtle but, to me was just the right amount of 'busy'

thanks... those random lines are representing the different train systems routes in Chicago... I wish I had the audio they used... really fun 'disco style' - song called the 'groove line ' its funny because when I've stared at them all lined up one after the other I've gotten a bit of vertigo...

I put up a link to some of it on the post where I announced that I was nominated.... Tomas has seen one of the dozens of animations entered for the overall look. WCIU. Very tough competition in the Chicago Midwest region... thank you all.... :)

In no way do I want to sound critical of EI... but there really does not seem to be an 'easy' depth of field solution in camera... I admit I'm a simpleton with this... I just one to pick a distance from the camera to the area of focus... then pick the 'size' of that area of focus.... period. I really want to incorporate more of that in my work but I'm somewhat confused on these work arounds. Fingers crossed on the next V of EI.

i have not done Broadcast TV work in years but my old CSD from Fox Chicago, now with WCIU hired me in January to work with him to re do his entire stations look and about 2 hours ago... I watched on TV as we won. Category 23 Animation, Art Direction Graphic Design... I did 95% of the animation... probably roughly 75% of the design... and an in house artist did some of the last minute add ons. RARELY does one artist do something this large alone... but this came pretty close to that. All rendered in EI with some 'frosting' on things in AE... but the music and everything else was just great. I could NOT have done as much work so fast with any other software! Thank YOU EI Team for helping ME look good!

i guess its just odd having resolution not be 'relevant' WHY list a pixel count if its not a tangible 'usable' pixel. The tech behind the iMac screen was explained as powered differently than were used too. Its not just a video card powered experience. The display has some added tech I wish I could remember as I type this... but if you watch the video of the keynote they go into how it powers a number of things helping the display along so the card is not lifting all the pixels weight. Just using analogy there.... but I'm sure it was something. Not just the card pushing all of that. An external monitor pretty much HAS to be pixel for pixel what id be expecting. The retina thing is just mucking up things LOL I wish I could just install a copy of ei onto one in the store to see... oh well... it will be interesting to see the results.

nice... but thats only 4k unlike the iMacs 5k.... I'm still not sure if my question ever got truly answered... CAN or WILL EI shrink down to essentially half size on that iMac display revealing essentially twice the interface space... room for palettes and more. My other app is AE and adobe is on top of that.... I LOVE EI and Tomas and all are working so hard... so I'm not going to be too sad if the app does not work in an Hi Dpi mode... ill deal with it. Lots of interesting choices ahead... thats for sure... :)

I understand your point maher.... but what gets confusing to me is that the resolution is adjustable. My browser lets me drag certain things larger and smaller. Same with text. Some of the interface elements are just boxes and lines... thats fine at half size. I'm doing bullet work with thousands of pieces that I've found really valuable to have the ability to grab individual chunks and alter their characteristics... that gets very time consuming. I think we agree... what I WANT is for twice the data to be available at half size. THEN... I can maybe up the resolution some. The control panel appears to have 5 separate 'stages' so I would not have to be totally at half size. Having that option makes the iMac extremely portable for me as well which, as a full time freelancer is huge. thank you for all your insight... the 2 monitor thing has always been the way to go... just seeing what CAN be done... thanks

Maher... thats a matter of taste... if I can double the resolution and everything is half the size on my 5k iMac I would do that when working on EI or AE projects that have hundreds and hundreds of elements. Big time saver. We each have our levels of comfort visually... I totally respect that. I just would like the OPTION to go to that resolution and view twice the interface elements - at half size - than I could before. I hope that is what this really is. Paul... please share your info on that awesome machine you ordered!

https://vimeo.com/106768622 here is a link to some of the work that was nominated...

after doing more research... it seems like the app has to support or enable something called HiDpi the question is not does EI run on Retina... is it a HiDpi app or not? I can't just install EI on a machine in the apple store or id test it myself...

thanks guys... I guess I still dont know. Maher... if you could maybe tell me if your able too work at full resolution in EI. Let me maybe mention a 'for instance' and see If I can get an answer. on my 2560x1440 screen My EI animation timeline which we all know stacks things VERTICALLY... can 'show' approximately 80 lights, objects, cameras etc etc etc.... than i have to scroll to see more if my project has more than 80 things. ON A RETINA DISPLAY in EI 9.1 can I NOW roughly show about 160 lights, objects, cameras etc etc etc... vertically? Twice the pixels matters at that level related too a much more convenient working environment. The less I have to scroll the faster I can work. I can also work in a ONE monitor environment and not a two monitor set up. If all the retina display is, is a sharper image... than that is nice but not really worth it to me. More pallets and more data entry screens I can have up and not hidden the better. I guess the answer lies with Tomas.... does EI support Retina FULL resolution? or does it scale EI?

I'm looking at the new 5k iMac... but if EI has any limitations interface wise with that screen I can't consider it. I know everything is essentially 'half size' but apple allows a scaling option and this would give me the screen room I need for all my windows and palettes. I read some apps dont 'work' with Retina and that made me nervous. Scott

this discussion is what I was hoping for. I do motion graphics but am venturing much farther into other areas and want to hear what people use... what works... what doesn't.... etc etc... so far GREAT responses... very helpful... I'm taking notes and checking out sites... I initially need to figure out how to make an island with any type of foliage around it that has 2 ominous peaks at the center of it... rock like... tons of room for interpretation and no super closeups needed.... close... but not down in the weeds.... gonna fly over water - into island and down in-between the peaks where a bunch of other stuff exists but one step at a time... any fog or environment is free game to help me pull this off. I see some cool stuff out there but I can not tinker with models as well as others can... I need maps to be easy for me to decipher or already exist etc.... a futuristic landing strip with abstract geometry on the sides is another challenge I may need to attempt. I could tackle that one alone... but mountains and 'foliage \ greenery' seems above my pay grade.

I dont have much experience buying models or importing OBJ vs FBX etc etc. If anyone could give me what they would buy and in what formats.

Kurt... you are the man!!! I'm just starting to get "addicted" to these as graphic moments in my animations and naturally pushing way past my knowledge level and off a cliff!! LOL I got the project in question handled... one other interesting fact that I found when I MANUALLY duplicated an object, say 1000 times, that is calculates it just once or something like that... super fast simulation.... which at times I may manually create little walls or shapes for 'debris' but that proxy thing sounds interesting. I use pro modeler for all my modeling and their new 'shatter' model then export it has made a novice level modeler like me able to get 'pre cut' stuff into EI ready to simulate.... lots of fun and bang for the buck to clients. thank you all for prompt responses. Sadly, it does sound like animator may be my roadblock simulation wise until its 64 bit. IF I understand Tomas correctly. If I can't simulate it... i can't get to the render part obviously...

I'm mega swamped with production work now... a good thing. But I'm happy to help share my results when I can. Anything to help us use EI to its fullest. I think one question I can't answer but maybe you can right now is simulation based. I had EI error out when a simulation seemed too complex... I had to lower the number of "pieces" the model was cut into, to get the simulation not to bomb EI. my guess is I hit a memory wall, but no error message produced... the app just quit. as I have only 32... but I have no way of knowing if thats true or if you all can answer the question... does having 64 gigs of ram vs 32 allow you to process more complex simulations or is memory not an issue. Thank You.

LOL... we spoke about this months back Tomas... I went SSD very early. I have the OWC Thunderbolt product with an internal SSD raid and an internal HDD raid... set up as 2 volumes... a great product... and with my iMac I went even more 'daring' I have the newest super skinny one... and a local company 30 minutes from me in California - Extreme mac I believe their called... they tell you to buy the iMac with just a normal 1tb hdd... they remove it... and made a kit that connects to the internals directly... just like the new mac pro does... and then they found room for 2 'bays' inside this insanely thin mac... so for less than half of what apple charges... I have a 2 TB INTERNAL SSD RAID!! apple does not even offer that and its 'direct' connection is just insanely fast... only mac pro owners 'get that' speed. Its addicting. --- so your running the best mac pro made! how cool. I was concerned about the processor speed when tasks were forced into single processor - 2.7ghz I believe... I WISH you could say more... are the video cards part of the rendering solution in future releases or can't you say?? apple just discounted the mac pros 15% (refurbs) so for about 7k I could get that 12 core... but I can't find any speed EI related comparisons... 4core 3.7 vs 12 core 2.7 50% faster would be nice... 70% and i would go mac pro... otherwise the $2500 Imac is a great speedy bargain... I could get 2 of those... VERY happy and excited to hear anything about what you are all up to with the next version... I personally appreciate your work more than words can say. :)