Electric Image Animation System 3D Rendering and Animation Software for Macintosh and Windows

Introduction

The Electric Image Animation System (EIAS) is an eminent 3D animation and rendering package. Available for the Mac and PC, with it, you can texture, animate and render your 3D scenes. Extraordinarily, EIAS includes the ability to network render to an unlimited number of computers across both platforms. EIAS presents advanced 'buzz-word' features in an easy to use, no nonsense interface.

EIAS 8

The latest version of our flagship software includes several unique features, several peerless features and plenty of useful treats to compliment them. Full EIAS v8 Feature List. We've overhauled the lighting system to give you access to industry leading tools that, we feel, will not only allow you to create truly stunning images, but they will cut down the time it takes you to create them. Through several innovative features such as Light-Graphs and the newly optimized, and now extraordinarily fast, soft-shadows, we hope to make your life a good chunk easier. This is also the first release of EIAS to include a 'User Pack', a group of features designed, short-listed, and voted for by our users. This has been such a successful project that we plan to repeat it!

In the key-feature overview below, features that are new to EIAS 8 or have been improved with this release, are highlighted in bold.

You can see more details about EIAS 8 by going to the individual Animator and Camera pages. or you can see the full feature list here.

One last note about the new release, here is a collection is EIAS 8 tutorials and feature introductions to get you going with EIAS 8.

Animation

EIAS is extensively used in Hollywood, and, by professional studios all over the globe to create world-class animations for countless productions. It is ideal for all animation: from complex VFX shots to Architectural Fly-throughs.

Key Features

1. Virtually every attribute can be animated in EIAS.
2. EIAS can import animation from other applications via FBX and BVH formats.
3. EIAS can import motion tracking data from SynthEyes and Boujou and MatchMover.
4. Function Curves provide a precise way to animate objects naturally.
5. Straight-forward character animation.
6. Animatable deforms including: buldge, twist, bend, runwave, taper, bezier and many more.
7. Morph editor.
8. Full set of constraints including: Auto Bank, Aim, Geometry, Pole Vector, Auto Look and more.

Rendering

EIAS boasts perhaps the fastest rendering engine on the planet: "Camera". Mind-bogglingly, it does this at the same time as producing the very highest quality output it is possible to get. No anti-aliasing artifacts here!

Key Features

1. Monte-Carlo Global Illumination with Image-based lighting.
2. Render to layered PSD files, compatible with both Photoshop and After Effects.
3. Render to RPF files, compatible with After Effects and Combustion.
4. Area Lights and Light Objects.
5. Exceptionally fast Photon Mapping.
6. HDRI and EXR input support throughout the application.
7. Super-fast blurry reflections.
8. Fast and accurate Caustics.
9. Ray-Traced Volume Transparency.
10. Ray-Traced Shadow Transmission (otherwise known as Subsurface Scattering).
11. Light graphs, providing an easy way to light complex scenes.
12. Buffer Shadows, Ray Traced shadows, both soft and razor sharp.
13. Blisteringly fast "Phong" rendering mode for accelerated speed.
14. Intuitive, high-quality motion-blurring abilities.
15. Unlimited nodes for network rendering making EIAS, in our opinion, the cheapest high-end 3D application.
16. Shaders, EIAS comes packed with dozens of procedural shaders for many effects, from scratches and home-made noise patterns to camouflage and wood.

Ease of use

EIAS is very easy to pick up and use. Everything you need is in plane view, nothing is buried in sub-menus of sub-menus. Windows and palates are not cluttered, and, the veritable cornucopia of settings that 3D brings are structured into a tabbed interface making everything available in bite-size form. With EIAS, you don't need to deal with never-ending lists of esoteric options, you also don't have to tackle a ridged all-in-one window, you can move whichever window you want, wherever you want.

Key Features

1. Tabbed interface that breaks advanced controls down into easily understood categories.
2. Floating palates that can be moved where you want, and, they will automatically remember that position on a project by project basis.
3. Contextual menus provide fast context-sensitive access to most dialogues and commands.
4. Project management tools that allow you maintain even the most complex projects in a simple, color co-ordinated hierarchy.
5. Every major tool in EIAS has an obvious icon attached to it in a tool palate to help you get going.
6. For when you need to be fast, keyboard shortcuts abound to give you instant access to dozens of tools.

Who uses EIAS?

EIAS is a very designer friendly application, it's interface was, in this way, specifically designed for artists. You will find people of many a discipline using it.

Motion Graphics

EIAS is ideally suited to this discipline, EIAS is used extensively to create 'MoGraph' for TV adverts, film titles, channel idents and the rest.

Architectural Visualisation

Advanced lighting tools, plus the fact that EIAS can render millions upon millions of polygons at enormous resolutions mean that this is one of the main disciplines for which EIAS is used. Fly-through animations take no time and hi-resolution stills can be rendered out to look 'razor sharp'.

Product, Industrial and Engineering Visualisation

Known for it's clean, sharp render, EIAS basks in this kind of work.

Print and environment rendering

Photographers, graphic designers, web designers, illustrators, you name it, they use EIAS for everything from set dressing and rendering to back-plates and entire compositions.

3D Matte painting and VFX

This is what EIAS was born for, with it's advanced Camera Mapping, motion tracking abilities and super fast rendering, no wonder EIAS is used in Hollywood!

Integration

There are 3 options for bringing models into EIAS for animation and rendering.

First, the following modelling packages export to .fac - the EIAS model format.

1. FormZ
2. Bonzai3d
3. Silo
4. Archicad
5. Shark
6. ViaCAD
7. Zaxwerks ProAnimator

Second, EIAS is able to import 3DS and OBJ and several other file formats well.

Third, two fantastic applications can translate files from nearly any 3d application for use in EIAS.

On the Mac there is Object2Fact available here in our online store.

On the PC there is PolyTrans, available from Okino.

Training and Tutorials

There are many hours of video tutorials available for EIAS, and many of them are free and are available right here on this site.

Here is a collection is EIAS 8 tutorials and feature introductions to get you going with EIAS 8.

Click here to go to the EITG tutorials page.

On this page you will find a quick-start guide to EIAS along with many other EIAS video tutorials, dozens of PDF tutorials and demo projects to download.

Click here to go to the Paralumino website

At this site you can buy and download many hours worth of EIAS tutorials on topics such as advanced lighting, camera mapping, creating oceans, workflow tips and so on.

System Requirements

Macintosh: OS 10.4 or newer, Mac G5 or Intel processor, 1GB RAM, 32-bit 3D Graphics card with at least 256MB of memory, USB Port

Windows: Win XP/Vista, 1GHz or faster processor, 1GB of RAM, 32-bit 3D Graphics card with at least 256MB of memory, USB Port