Electric Image, what 's your take on it?

Ok, guys, first of all, I have never really trued any 3d modeling in my life before wedsnday , so my points in the different software packages might be negligablebut...I recently just noticed that after installing Mandrake Linux on my pc(dual booting now), that it comes with blender, after toying with it I became interested in the whole medeling and CGI thing. Now I am in no position to pucahse any software package now, I'm gonna stick with the free stuff untill I know that I'm interested enough to shell out the cash.

Now, after all that, myquestion
beign as I'm on a buget(or will be) I'd like to try and get the best nag for my buck. Know I always see questions here pertaining to 3dsMax or Lightwave, what I never see mentioned is Electric Image. I looked on their site and was pretty impressed(for a newbie that is) with what it offered, and also for the price. I mean that price is probably better than i could possible get 3dsmax even with a student discount or something like that. Is there anything Electric Image is not suited for? Is it just more difficult? Or just simply not as popular becuase it hasnt caught on? I figured that scince we got a rather large amount of people here who seem to know very well what thier doing in CGI that maybe they would be able to offer some opinions on this!

Well thanks to all of you in advance!

 

You can get Lightwave 7.5 with Bryce 5 for $395.00. Student discount of course.

Genesis technologies

 

yea, I just finished looking and I can get Electric Image with student discount for $240 which Is VERY resonable, especially for my level, in at least a few months tho...
but any reasont why one should or should get Electric Image? Other then this rather attractive pricetag. I always suppoerted the "yuo get what you pay for" line, but does it have a place here, or does this software really excell past the others? and is cheaper becuase it's not popular among consumer?

 

If you happen to have seen Duality, or a little known film called The Phantom Menace, they both used EI, Duality in its entirety and TPM for the podrace scenes and shots of the Queen's ship (and more that I can't remember).

On top of that, dvGarage sells the 3D Toolkit, a fully-functional edition of Electric Image (v2.9 functionality) along with invaluable tutorials on all aspects of 3D modelling, surfacing, and animating, for only $299.

Best deal out there for us, IMO.

M. Scott

 

I think the reason you see 3dSM and Lightwave more on the baords is because they are more well known, and they also seem to be readily available for download.

The DVGarage deal on EI is very very good. it might be a bit more money than you have, but if you really want to get into learning the software take the time to save a little more.

I don't think you will regret it.

(Hey, and Alex, if you read this, where is my Composite Tolkit! )

Pete

 

Plus you can download a free fully working 30 day trail version of Electric Image over at DVGarage and use the software while you save up for it.

If you haven't already gone there, check it out. It's THE place to learn Electric Image, and really does explain pretty well everything you need to know.

There are actually quite a few 'closet' Electric Image users on the boards, but I suspect, becuase of DVGarage - and the low price, you don't get so many threads entitled 'How to I animate a sphere in EI?' becuase we learn how to do that stuff over there

 

Good point Daft!

And I'm sure 30 days is more than enough time to save up $300.

Pete

 

Isn't the 3d Toolkit only $200 if you don't get the reflection or surface toolkit?

 

hmm, cool! I think I'll get the demo and if i'm sereous about it I'll look into getting the student discounter version in a few months! Thanks for the replies guy

 

the majority of the podrace was done in Maya, with special regards to the crash dynamics.

 

the majority of the podrace was done in Maya, with special regards to the crash dynamics

Yeah, but rendered through EI, to my understanding (not RenderMan).

M. Scott

 

Its funny cuz by just saying go watch TPM doesnt really help.. since ilm doesnt just solely use ONE program.. but many.. so at any one point the cg could have been done by any number of programs

 

Odd, I figured Macho would've been here by now, absolutely BURSTING with Electric Image praises...

Maybe he fell down somewhere?

Regards,
Kai

 

The majority of the podrace was done in Maya? According to this:
http://www.starwars.com/community/askjc/david/askjc20010601.html
they just added Maya for Ep. II.

 

man all ya'll are taking my jobs DvGarage is the one place to learn CG...once you go through the dvg tutorials and become fairly proficent in EI you can adapt that into every other program, you just need to learn the new tool names and tools how they work differently...hey cant a guy goto universal studios the day after his birthday O i just remembered dont buy the 3dtk until sometime in sept, they are coming out with a new version that is supposed to fix some of the bugs.

Lots actually some shots in TPM were fully made in Electric Image. Example is the queen ships(done by alex).

An other example of EI is the icicles in titan AE(also done by alex)

Just noticed dooku's post, nope most of the podrace was made in maya on Ep. I. The article you are refering to is the animatics or the rough animations made in pre-production which alex lindsay worked on. Do you really think someone would hand animate all those tiny little pieces?

but remember Program matters not, on the artist the results depend, mmmmm (I love that line carl

 

heh macho u missed my point

whenever i want to see something soley done by EI thats the only answer i get.. i dont get to see OTHER THINGS beside TPM and OTHER THINGS besides some movie.. i want to see actual origional stuff .. u know what i mean? not just what's been in the movies.. but something someone that's worked on some of those movies has made in his/her spare time as kind of something random to do .. like in my gallery i have a buncha stuff i made randomly for the heck of it.. thats the kinda stuff i wanna see

 

John Knoll's pet project right now is a completely accurate representation of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon -- all based on actual telemetry data. He's been working on it in his spare time (what there is of it) while working on Episode II -- the results will eventually be made public through a few different outlets... The whole thing is being done in EI. I've seen a number of shots... and it's completely amazing work.

'Course, it's John Knoll...

 

i really didn't read your whole oringal thread lots, i have a bad habbit of not reading everyones posts. I think i know sorta what you mean. Here are two examples, i think paul's work is more what you mean

Paul Sherstobitoff
and
etereae studios

rive, do you know if John Knoll did the opening crawl in EI also? At ves he mentioned he did it. And is that appollo lander you mentioned the one featured on the gallery at the EI site?

 

The majority of the podrace was done in Maya? According to this:
http://www.starwars.com/community/askjc/david/askjc20010601.html
they just added Maya for Ep. II.

nope.


watch this:

ILM customer reel: Mummy, Wall Street, The Phantom Menace

it actually goes in depth about the pod race in the last half of the movie. 22MB mov.

 

rive, do you know if John Knoll did the opening crawl in EI also?

No idea.

And is that appollo lander you mentioned the one featured on the gallery at the EI site?

Haven't seen the one in the gallery. Link?

 

at the electric image website, on the front page there is a little yellow robot, above it says artist gallery. Click that goto Visulization in the upper left corner the first one called "Eagle"

 

That be the one.

 

Well, I have my own opinions about the claimed use of Electric Image's in Phantom Menace above but your question at the top isn't really about any of that.

Your question is 'what's your take' and 'why isn't it more popular'.

I can't really give you my take, however part of the reason why Electric Image is where it is today goes something like this :

Early 90's, it was the fastest Phong renderer around (not a ray tracer), and the first working CG app on a personnal computer (Mac 68000), while everything else was on SGI and expensive. (softimage, the fastest ray tracer, was 100K$)

With regards to the modeler, mac designers with little 3D background like it because it had beziers a few more things like freehand, but it was and still is unsual.

Then they were bough by Play. A company founded by ex-Newtek (hardware, not Lightwave) people, arrogant young men out for quick cash and fast sport car, hoping for an IPO after their video hardware's first release to make them rich and then quit.

(Get it? Angry people leave Newtek to make a competing video product, buys EI to make it their own 3D logo maker, as Lightwave was for VideoToaster)

That finally blew up a couple of years ago, after years of high burn rate. The remaining people from EI had bought themselves out of Play just in time before the mothership blew up.

All this amounted to years of distraction and neglect.

They are also famous in the industry for publishing in the media an appaling Open Letter to Georges Lucas, complaining about the lack of credit for The Phatom Menace. Well, guys, there is this ban about talking about ILM behind-the-scene details before the movie is released... (and Georges doesn't owe you anything - or talk about software..).

This letter was typical spit-in-the-face-of-clients-face Play attitude. (They were famous for having their pin-up Kiki Stockhammer tell the crowd 'broadcast sucks! we're much cooler!' to sell their video solution .. to broadcasters) That sent quite a wave in the industry, burning bridges.


Ok, now this post is too long

 

whoa....thanks tho! I still seem pretty set on buying it in a couple of months

 

Check out this persons work. He uses Electric Image.

Looks pretty good to me