Ian, please realize that we envision this products potential FAR BEYOND just existing EI users.  They are great and we need them, but most of them have already chimed in positively about these tools in our very long postings here and on cg talk.
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Brian and I see a huge market of Broadcast Designers and Mograph artists using zaxwerks for 3d currently.- Designers who use illustrator in their sleep and want to ‘go beyond’ what zax can do with his $495 tool.  They still want the ease and workflow of illustrator to 3d.  But would much rather have access to EI’s great features of raytracing, transparency with refraction, lighting options, texture options (although weak in EI they are still better than Zax) Cameras speed, render passes and more logical animation tools.  If we have AI import into trestle.  These designers would have an easy step up to ‘real hi end 3d capabilities’ with the ease of .ai importing.  Most designers do not have the time or patience to learn a full fledged modeler when they FIRST begin in 3d.  Ive said to Brian that this is sort of 3d with training wheels.  For the new (NON 3d specialist), user.
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I can sell and market this with my contacts to 100s of thousands of users every day or two. (unique visitors) I know how to speak to pros in my field.  And given their choice right now between Zax at $495 with all kinds of limitations to $2500-$3500 for Cinema 4d which has a complexity many beginners to 3d struggle with, not to mention, if someone wanted to spend money “dipping their toe” into 3d beyond Zax.  EI+Paralumino with ai import and a few tweaks coming in ROUGHLY around $895-$995 can be really appealing to many budgets.  Suddenly EI has found a beautiful nitch it can claim to ITSELF!  Do you see why I am so excited about this!  The beauty of it as well, is that it takes nothing away from EI that all of EI’s current users need to do.  It adds to it, but does not take AWAY from it.
Its a win win with a HUGE potential upside that a nerdy guy like me can push and market the dickens out of.  Combine that with some wonderfully generated content from these tools I would use for advertising and promotion.  And I am just so darn excited.  I can already see a very simple headline for an ad.  “From Adobe illustrator to THIS!  with a chosen knockout image.  Im telling you that simplicity will be extremely attractive to a huge new set of artist.  And we dont have to “dumb down” animator in any way.  The fact that it does NOT have a modeler directly in the app actually works to our favor on this, because this simplifies the interface to a new user.  Open up cinema or maya and take a look at their opening screens.  Very complex for a beginner.  EI does not have this to confuse a newbie.  Again, its a win win.  Hi end ei users can use these or not, with Tesla, they will have the hi end modeler they have been waiting for.  And at the same time, I/we can push the heck out of EIMG (EI Motion Graphics or sparks or whatever we call it.  This is the end of the project I am most useful discussing because I live among these users.  They would definately check out “From Illustrator to THIS!” maybe followed by “the #1 illustrator powered 3d application for Broadcast Designers” :):)

Hello, gentlemen

We can only sorry about this thread (same as others) became “a local kitchen scandal” ;-( Of course, you can talk, talk and talk and we’ve no idea to silent you. But it seems more and more obvious: no any concrete result(s) will happen from your talk. We like Scott’s energy, but, alas, we see it cannot be used constructively. We must avoid Scott and Brian.

Bye

Brian? Why.

Scott and all,

I will try to be a bit constructive here. It seems that you have a serious business plan for marketing Animator to 100s of thousands Mograph people. That is really good. It is just not the right place to communicate about it. Please talk to Brad. He is the man with the $$$. If this turns out to be a good deal for him it may result in an EITG decision to better support AI and in an investment in programming ressources to do so. This would be the “normal” way I think to approach something like this.

What I have learned during my actual work with programmers is, that you always should listen what they really say. I know the feeling when you think that there is this ONE feature that definately needs to be done or the world will collapse. In many cases I have learned that what seems logical for myself may not be logical for a programmer. That does not mean that the discussion is over, but that one should always listen, make suggestions and work on a solution rather than to dictate one - I personally think that a direct AI support in Animator would indeed be alot better than in a plugin. And I can see that the Font tool in Animator indeed has much of the functionality that would be needed to do this - its is already a spline importer that can tesselate splines. So, it is rational and logical to use this as a starting point.

So, lets go and make Brad decide. Holes in Trestle woul be a next step.

Jens

Hi Jens, did you respond to brian as well?  We are talking about the same product.

These forums are where we can get a buzz going on a topic.  I agree programmers
look at things differently.  So to keep this happy and positive, which I am right now.
we are not appealing to them.  We are trying to appeal to Ian, to Brad, To Matt and
to the wonderful EI users.  This process will have an end to it, but were not quite there
yet.  Things are in motion to some extent.  But public/user opinion and support means
a lot to EITG.  We have spent countless hours preparing presentations (Brian), concepts and
goals.  All of this is with the BEST INTENTIONS for EIAS as a product now, and in the
future.  I was wrong getting caught up with the Igors, I am sorry I did.  I needed to
focus on the wonderful possibilities this could bring to EI and the huge new market of users we could market
and sell it too.  Given EI’s promo budget (very little to none I believe) we offer a very
compelling plan too make EI marketable to a huge new group of animators.  I can promote
it to more users than EI has EVER reached before. (for FREE!) Thats a price Brad can afford.
This is not just a plug in.  Its a quantam shift in thinking that is very exciting for EI
and the community.  We ALL benefit when EI sales go dramatically up.  Our plan
lays out in some good detail how and why.

These posts are my right as an EI user.  If someone does not agree with this, they dont
have to respond, but please be fair.  We will be done with this process eventually. 
I dont want to bother anyone too much, but we put so much of our hard work into this
we cant stop until we are as clear as possible to Brad and the guys