16 and 32bit float output?

[JKVisFX]

Hi. I was an EIAS user from some years back. Been using Modo and Maya for a while and am now learning Houdini. However, EI was always my favorite. Camera was always, to me, a very "pretty" renderer with a nice, filmic-like quality to it. It was not difficult to get good looking renders out of it like it can be with Mental Ray for example.

I would love to be able to come back to it but, right now I cannot due to two particular issues - 1) no multi-threading in Camera (though I understand this is being addressed (at last!). and 2) no 16 bit or 32 bit linear gamma workflow and floating point image output. 32 bit OpenEXR files containing linear HDR image data are pretty much the standard now in compositing pipelines and that is what I need to output. What's the word on the possibility of getting this in Camera? (I would love to see you guys dump the Image file format altogether and output standard formats such as OpenEXR and PNG files instead.)

I would also love to see you support Collada and Alembic file types for getting 3D data in and out of Animator. It would be especially useful to me to be able to go from Modo to Animator or Modo ->Houdini ->Animator.

In short, you guys need to convince me why it would benefit me to re-invest in EIAS again vs. staying with a Modo/Maya/Houdini workflow.

[Tomas Egger]

Ola JK,

“Hi. I was an EIAS user from some years back. Been using Modo and Maya for a while and am now learning Houdini. However, EI was always my favorite. Camera was always, to me, a very "pretty" renderer with a nice, filmic-like quality to it. It was not difficult to get good looking renders out of it like it can be with Mental Ray for example.”

- Im glad you like EIAS like us.

“I would love to be able to come back to it but, right now I cannot due to two particular issues - 1) no multi-threading in Camera (though I understand this is being addressed (at last!). and 2) no 16 bit or 32 bit linear gamma workflow and floating point image output. 32 bit OpenEXR files containing linear HDR image data are pretty much the standard now in compositing pipelines and that is what I need to output. What's the word on the possibility of getting this in Camera? (I would love to see you guys dump the Image file format altogether and output standard formats such as OpenEXR and PNG files instead.)”

- Camera 9 is totally MP and 64 bits now, “The beast” :)

- 16/32 bits output are planned, but only after EIAS 9 release.

- EIAS 9 reads OpenEXR (ILM), We will made OpenEXR output available together with 16/32 bit output, make more sense.

- EIAS 8 render PNG frames and we did some extra additions to this theme, but we will provide the info in the EIAS 9 release.

JK, We are really in focus to make EIAS more and more powerful, fast and robust as soon as possible.

“I would also love to see you support Collada and Alembic file types for getting 3D data in and out of Animator. It would be especially useful to me to be able to go from Modo to Animator or Modo ->Houdini ->Animator.”

- Btw: Our new import system made us really happy.

- We have some extra info about this theme, but I cant comment right now.

- I read about Alembic from ILM, we didnt have time to look futher on it, we are running like nuts here. :)

“In short, you guys need to convince me why it would benefit me to re-invest in EIAS again vs. staying with a Modo/Maya/Houdini workflow.”

We are working really hard with lot of care because we always loved EIAS, I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks a lot

Tom