WHD Posted January 14, 2010 Report Share Posted January 14, 2010 Hi All, Over the past several years I've been involved in projects that require me to work with others. Most use something other than EIAS. This creates all sorts of issues when it comes to asset sharing. Projects need to be broken down carefully to avoid disasters. The FBX import that was added several years ago has helped a great deal in making this sort of work more feasible. What has frustrated me is the lack of FBX export. Explaining to clients and producers that I can get stuff in but not out is becoming frustrating and is cutting me out of projects. Please include FBX export and (any other file sharing functions) that will help to permit assets to move smoothly both in and out of EIAS from other programs . The more smoothly we can talk to other programs the more likely EIAS will be integrated in company's pipelines. As a sub topic the most pressing issue for me has been import and export of camera moves to and from other programs. Syntheyes tracking software while used only occasionally is my hero when it comes to export support. It would be really cool if we could have that sort of export flexibility. Looking at the other requests that have already appeared here improved and simple file sharing appears to be a really important issue to most folks. Bill Dempsey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cj_ Posted January 15, 2010 Report Share Posted January 15, 2010 Hi All, Over the past several years I've been involved in projects that require me to work with others. Most use something other than EIAS. This creates all sorts of issues when it comes to asset sharing. Projects need to be broken down carefully to avoid disasters. The FBX import that was added several years ago has helped a great deal in making this sort of work more feasible. What has frustrated me is the lack of FBX export. Explaining to clients and producers that I can get stuff in but not out is becoming frustrating and is cutting me out of projects. Please include FBX export and (any other file sharing functions) that will help to permit assets to move smoothly both in and out of EIAS from other programs . The more smoothly we can talk to other programs the more likely EIAS will be integrated in company's pipelines. As a sub topic the most pressing issue for me has been import and export of camera moves to and from other programs. Syntheyes tracking software while used only occasionally is my hero when it comes to export support. It would be really cool if we could have that sort of export flexibility. Looking at the other requests that have already appeared here improved and simple file sharing appears to be a really important issue to most folks. Bill Dempsey Would love to see further integration of FBX also... But, I may be a little off, is FBX still a current format? or are there newer formats being used? Cj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KurtF Posted January 15, 2010 Report Share Posted January 15, 2010 Collada may be a more viable format moving forward. FBX makes sense for somethings. Perhaps we could have both? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Posted January 15, 2010 Report Share Posted January 15, 2010 FBX is still the standard interchange format for the big apps. Collada is also quite powerful of course. FBX is something we'd also like to see improved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Northern Lights Posted January 15, 2010 Report Share Posted January 15, 2010 Here's the problem: Everyone seems to think that FBX is the Rosetta Stone of 3D but it's not. FBX has some things in it that EI doesn't and vice versa. You're pretty much guaranteed to lose something in the translation. That equals bitching and increased support costs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardJoly Posted January 15, 2010 Report Share Posted January 15, 2010 Right but any bridge to other packages is also a blessing. The RealFlow Plugin comes to mind... And yes, like most things we don't have full control over, they bring their share of bitching... Improving interchange is still essential. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monday1313 Posted January 15, 2010 Report Share Posted January 15, 2010 Yeah, I'd be happy with a bridge that I have to watch my step on rather than having to go miles to find another place to cross.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WHD Posted January 15, 2010 Author Report Share Posted January 15, 2010 Hi All, I recognize that not all 3D apps speak the same language and that it is likely that some things will be lost in translation but the more options we have to translate with the more likely we are to get across what we need to have to do the job. Another animator and I spent the better part of a day getting a shot out of 3DMax and into EIAS with the existing FBX import. After we figured out what she had in her file that was problematic in the translation and removed it we were successful. Ultimately that we succeeded was all that mattered. I'm all for other translation methods .Collada and any other robust format that might come along as well as direct bridges to other applications. I also recognize that every time other apps upgrade it is possible and likely that something will appear that may lead to problems. Maybe we should try to have a format exchange database that lists the features that will not translate from other apps so that we can be both informed of limitations as well as know what to tell collaborators who use other apps the features not to use or to remove prior to translation. Bill Dempsey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monday1313 Posted January 15, 2010 Report Share Posted January 15, 2010 Maybe we should try to have a format exchange database that lists the features that will not translate from other apps so that we can be both informed of limitations as well as know what to tell collaborators who use other apps the features not to use or to remove prior to translation. Bill Dempsey That's a really good idea! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apu Posted May 10, 2010 Report Share Posted May 10, 2010 Count me on this one. I'm planning on doing a 3D short film with other people, that uses Maya. I'm considering on doing it all in Maya (the problem is that I don't know it, so I'll have to learn) because if I do it on EIAS, I'll have to do it on my own. I think is important to bring to EIAS the option to export in FBX. OK, some things may get lost in the translation, but we sure will have something to start from. It's like this simple example, I'm from spain, english is not may native language and I'll probably have said a lot of things wrong in this post, but I can bet my @#$% that you have understood what I ment. I don't know if its technically complicated, but if other programs have the ability to export to FBX, why EIAS don't?? Is a license problem? Why is this not a EIAS feature? Anyone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Northern Lights Posted May 11, 2010 Report Share Posted May 11, 2010 More recent versions of the FBX SDK supports Collada which is potentially very cool. At some point, we'll need somebody to provide some Collada test files to play with. But here's where life gets interesting. The version of FBX currently in EI goes back to 2005. Over the weekend I tried dropping in the most recent version from earlier this year. There are over 130 compile errors and most of them sound like "No such function exists" or "such-and-such is undefined". That means Autodesk made major changes to FBX in the past five years so there is a lot of work to be done and that's just to get what we had working again. Exporting is a big unknown at this point. There are many aspects to consider. Think about all the things you can have in a project. If memory serves, dealing with heirarchies was the biggest pain to implement. A project like this could take several months if you had a dedicated person working on it AND plenty of people to really test it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomas Egger Posted May 11, 2010 Report Share Posted May 11, 2010 Ola Blair, Thanks a lot for your explanation... Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apu Posted May 12, 2010 Report Share Posted May 12, 2010 Thanks for the explanation. I know it must be difficult and time consuming, but from all of the propositions and ideas to be implemented in future versions of EIAS, I think that this is by far one of the most important. Think like this. Imagine you have photoshop and that all the things you do in photoshop don't work in other programs like after effcts, EIAS, etc... Right now is very uncommon to use one program to do everything. There are some programs that are better on some things, others are better in other aspects, etc.... We need be able to export EIAS to other programs. If I'm asked to do a project were I need a character animation with hair, clothing, etc... I will not be able to do it in EIAS at all, and I'll have to do it entirely in Maya, Houdini or whatever. But wouldn't it be great to animate your character in EIAS, export it, run the simulation, bring it back, render it in Camera....???. I know I'm bitching all the time about this issue, but my recent experience about being able to animate my character in EIAS and export it to relflow and doing this simulations there and bring it back and render it in Camera, felt sooo good, and it felt also like it was the way to go. If we isolate ourselves we will end up pretty much alone. By the way Blair, is it possible to bring .sd files from realflow to EIAS?? Thanks for listening Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Northern Lights Posted May 12, 2010 Report Share Posted May 12, 2010 That's all well and good in theory but you always lose something in translation with 3D stuff. If someone wants to dig up the latest RealFlow file formats, I'll take a look. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apu Posted May 12, 2010 Report Share Posted May 12, 2010 I find your realflow plug in extremelly useful. Now that Rodeo is out of EIAS, if we were able to import .sd files would mitigate the lack of dynamics simulation in our program. Specially when it comes to simulate objects being moved by liquids Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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