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AFR 3DNY has started an educational publishing division. Can you tell us a little about your efforts? And about your EIU specific products? LE Everything we are doing now is a natural outgrowth of everything we had been doing. First off we developed a number of in-house software to work with EI in our own shop. This included our Fact Model Disk of 1,200 models and HeadGames software for auto lip-synch character work in EI (and later for Lightwave and Maya). We decided to make these commercially available products. In 2002 I wrote the new Electric Image Universe book called "Professional 3D with Electric Image Universe". I was very proud to have John Knoll of ILM and Photoshop fame write its forward. Most of our efforts these days are focused on our new line of 3DNY Publishing educational products. Our "3DNY Graphics Series" of books will kick off in early 2004 with the "Maya | Exotic Tools" book that I am the lead author on, but am fortunate to have contributors with an extraordinary talent pool who are absolutely top notch talent. This series will be available in all Barnes & Nobles, Borders, Amazon.com and other major outlets. AFR And you have some new media-centric titles as well, right? LE We are very excited about our new line of MEDIABOOKS. This is our own technology that creates a fully interactive learning environment on screen. Think of it as the best of a traditional book crossbred with the best of an educational video.
AFR Electric Image has had a long and interesting development path as a CG program. How do you feel about the program these days and where do you want it to go? LE Electric Image Universe has often generated more love/hate debates than it deserved. This has often been the user's own fault for not understanding where Electric Image's strengths exist, and incorrectly expecting it to aspire to a Maya toolset. This attitude largely misses the point. Electric Image Universe is used every day at shops large and small to produce both the simple and the spectacular.
AFR What is key about Electric Image Universe in your mind? LE If you come away with nothing else, keep in mind that Electric Image Universe still has the fastest rendering engine--called Camera--the fastest and perhaps easiest render farm software--called Renderama--and loads the largest polygonal model files. It can chomp through tens of millions of polygons where other 3D apps may choke at a million polys. And it can set up and produce many effects faster and easier than many competing programs. All of this is so important to 3D work that it overcomes many ills. Electric Image does not do everything, and I know of no application that does. Smart people use the appropriate tool for the job and don't sit around complaining they can't cut wood with a hammer. EI Universe is a great, fast and efficient product that can produce 90 percent of the work requested by clients today. That is really good. And keep in mind that the most requested item from any client is “needing it yesterday, something Universe comes closest to delivering on. As for the future, I would like to see a few tools and features added to Modeler, and its stability beefed up. I think Animator's user interface is functional but a little long in the tooth. There is room for improvement for the user's efficiency. Also its OpenGL has gotten very acceptable, but I wouldn't mind seeing more optimization.
AFR Besides Electric Image Universe, what are the key components of your CG pipeline? LE Photoshop for imagery. I am currently looking for additional options in that area, but they are hard to find. For 3D we use EI Universe 5, form-Z, and Maya Unlimited. We use After Effects for compositing/post production work. We use our own HeadGames for any character/lipsynch projects, and the Fact Model disks to quickly populate a scene with models. I occasionally use CyberMesh, Image2Mesh, UVMapper and Object2Fact. Great little products. I have a variety of other applications, utilities and software, but hardly need to touch them anymore.
AFR Architosh has run a number of surveys over the years. Once we asked if Apple should make a Quad Processor Mac. Do you think a workstation with four processors is valuable to 3D studios or should Apple make render-farm technology built right into Mac OS X? LE I am not sure how Apple would go about making render farm technology part of the OS. Each application has its own proprietary system now and this would mean they would be forced to develop a compatible interface to anything Apple would come up with. I have not discussed this issue with any of the developers, but I would think they might not wish to spend their development dollars that way right now. Look at how the Altivec chip still beckons after all these years. Quad systems sound attractive, but I don't know if they have been shown to be worth the expense in the past for most workstations. If that value scale were to tip the other way, then sure, it could be very attractive. What I would like to see are stripped down Apple Xserves. They have things in them that bloat the price and are not needed for a render farm. Give me a sub $2000 Xserve and then I can start racking a nice farm. AFR What are your thoughts on the new 64-bit Power Mac G5's? LE We have been testing a developer version of Panther and have been very happy with it. I have not had the opportunity to use a G5 yet, but from all accounts it sounds wonderful. I have every belief that Panther on a G5 will put Apple back in the 3D game by years end.
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