Render your project on time and under budget
When it is time to apply surface materials and textures, light your scenes, and animate your models, no program delivers like the Electric Image Animation System. It was created from the ground up to have the workflow and the quality you need to get your projects done on time and under budget!
EIAS’ Animator has been used in hundreds of Hollywood blockbusters since 1991, when it was first introduced. With the rapid improvement of computer technology and other revolutionary changes in the software market, our newest version, EIAS 5.5, is available for only $499 (upgrade). Comparable applications can cost more than ten thousand dollars.
Why EIAS’ Animator?
EIAS’ Animator delivers the essentials better than anyone. Most animators agree that there are critical sections in a 3D program that are most important to successful design. Most notably: texturing and materials, lights, deformations, function curve editor, character animation, and the ability to handle MILLIONS of polygons.
Project Window
You can reorder items and change the hierarchy in the Project window by dragging objects. This can be used to alter the layout of the items in the window to suit the needs of your project. It can also be used to control the order that Camera maps are projected. Cameras at the top of the Project window list have their maps projected first. Cameras at the bottom have theirs projected last.
Texture Sequences
A folder filled with numerically sequenced Image files (or QuickTime compatible files) can now be used as an animated texture map. Many products render numerically sequenced files. Now Animator and Camera can uses these files directly. There is no longer a need to combine them into a single QT movie first.
New Plug-ins
Mr Nitro2 is an enhanced version of the original explosion plug-in. You can extrude the elements that explode to create chunks of material. Strength maps can be used to control the behavior of the explosion and separate timing controls are provided so the explosion can run forwards and backwards in the same animation.
Mr Nitro 2Xpressionist 2.0 is included with EIAS 5.5. This is an advanced version of the original scripting plug-in. It runs under the Mac OS and Windows operating systems. New features for this plug-in include a built-in text editor, support for external editors, a greatly improved user interface and the ability to compile scripts directly to machine code for fast operation. Changes have been made to Animator to enhance the functionality and workflow of this extremely useful and powerful plug-in.
New Deformations
Three new deformations have been added to Animator: Circular Wave II, Runwave and Magnets. Circular Wave II and Runwave can be combined to create simple ocean water effects. Circular Wave II has controls to fade by distance and to smooth the waves. Runwave is a noise style deformation system that displaces geometry. Magnet deforms are a variation of the existing bones deformation system. Magnets can be used to pull and push on geometry to create muscle and other character effects.
New Deformation Controls.
You can now turn on or off individual deformations or deformation regions for each object in your project. This greatly simplifies the task of creating complex deforms that require many regions. You can just turn on the part of the deform you are currently working on temporarily eliminating the rest. You can also copy and paste deformations from group to group This feature was greatly desired by customers that were creating different objects that all had to deform similarly.
Light Gels
You can apply a texture map to Illuminators in Animator 5.5 to automatically color the lighting based on the map. This feature allows better light color and intensity matching between background plates and the objects in your scene. Lightprobe images can be applied to the Illuminators as well. The deep color format will be converted to 24-bit color by Camera, but you can use the existing libraries of probes on the Internet. The Display Image window in Animator can be used to select an exposure level in a lightprobe. This gives you the ability to control the exposure if you don?t want to leave it up to Camera.
NPR LiteNew Shaders
Eleven new shaders have been created for EIAS 5.5. The NPR Lite shader is a non-photorealistic shader that give your objects a pen and ink or charcoal drawing look. The shader comes with a variety of material presets. The Lonelywave shader can create ripples and bumps on the surface of an object.
The Simplewave shader displaces geometry and includes reactive controls. The SpKiller Shader allows you to prevent specular highlights from appearing on the back side of transparent objects for a more realistic ray traced effect.
A Gradient shader with up to twelve color keys is included. This shader has a variety of detailed controls and a very nice interface. A more advanced version of the Cammo shader comes with 5.5, Cammo2. It has more color regions and controls for the noise functions in each of the regions. Finally reactive versions of the BumpyNoise, Crumple, Eroded, FractalNoise and Rust shaders have been created. These shaders allow you to control where and howthe shaders are applied using another texture map or vertex colors.