The Electric Image Animation System (EIAS) is a 3D computer graphics package published by EI Technology Group. It currently runs on the Mac OS X and Windows platforms.

Electric Image, Inc. was initially a visual effects production company. They developed their own in-house 3D animation and rendering package for the Macintosh beginning in the late 1980s, calling it ElectricImage Animation System. (To avoid confusion with the current product with its similar name, we will refer to this initial incarnation of the product simply as ElectricImage.)

When the company later decided to offer their software for sale to others, it quickly gained a customer base that lauded the developers for the software’s exceptionally fast rendering engine and high image quality. Because it was capable of film-quality output on commodity hardware, ElectricImage was popular in the movie and television industries throughout the decade. It was used by the “Rebel Unit” at Industrial Light and Magic quite extensively and was in use by a variety of game companies. However, only these high end effects companies could afford it: Electric Image initially sold for US $7500.

EIAS has been used in numerous film and television productions such as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Daddy Day Care, K-19: The Widowmaker, Gangs of New York, Austin Powers: Goldmember, Men In Black II, The Bourne Identity, Behind Enemy Lines, Time Machine, Ticker, JAG - Pilot Episode, Spawn, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, Galaxy Quest, Mission to Mars, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Titan A.E., U-571, Dinosaur, Terminator 2: Judgement Day - DVD Intro, Jungle Book 2, and Lost In Space.

Electric Image, Inc. was always a small company that produced software on the Mac platform and so never had a large a market share. Play, Inc. purchased Electric Image corporation in November 1998. The first version of EIAS released under the Play monicker was version 2.9. Play later released the 3.0 version. This was the first version to run on Windows, and to mark this move, Play renamed the package Electric Image Universe. Play was never a greatly successful company, and so Electric Image Universe stagnated during the time they owned it.

In 2000, Dwight Parscale (former CEO of Newtek) and original Electric Image founders Markus Houy and Jay Roth bought back the original company from Play Inc. On September 19, 2000, the company bought back the shares of Electric Image from Play and set about to recapture the product’s former customer base. The new company released version 4.0 and 5.0 under the Electric Image moniker. Then due to a licensing problem with Spatial Technologies, they dropped the Modeler program from the version 5.5 release, and renamed the package back to Electric Image Animation System.

Versions 6.0 and 6.5 were subsequently released with vast improvements to the rendering engine and OpenGL performance. Version 6.5r2 added FBX file importing capability. The current version, 6.6, adds Universal Binary support and finally drops support for Mac OS 9.

Market Positioning

The existing customer base for EIAS favors it for its fast renderer, its high output quality, and its camera mapping features. The tool set lends itself particularly well to hard-surface animation/rendering and other forms of non-organic tasks. It is most popular with architects and visual effects artists for TV and film.

EIAS’s primary competitors in the integrated 3D package space are Autodesk with Maya and 3D Studio Max, Avid with Softimage|XSI, Maxon with Cinema 4D, and Newtek with LightWave 3D.

Components

The Electric Image Animation System is not a single program, but rather a suite of several programs designed to work together. Each of the primary programs handles a particular part of the production workflow:

Animator

Animator is the EIAS animation program. It can directly import 3D models in the Lightwave, 3D Studio, AutoCAD, Maya, and Electric Image FACT formats. (See also the Transporter section below.) In addition to animating models, Animator allows you to set up rendering settings. It efficiently supports the animation of very geometrically complex projects.

Camera

Camera is the EIAS rendering program, known for its speed and high image quality. As of version 6.5, it supports ray tracing, Phong shading, scanline rendering, anti-aliasing, motion blur, caustics, radiosity, and global illumination. Camera outputs to Quicktime and EI’s own Image format. The latter is directly supported by Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop.

Renderama

Renderama and Renderama Slave compose EIAS’s distributed network rendering system. It allows for the rendering of a project to be distributed over a network’s computers (i.e., for the formation of a render farm). It supports both single and multiprocessor computers, taking advantage of all available processors to distribute the workload. It also supports rendering across platforms (e.g., Windows, Mac OS 9, and Mac OS X).

Transporter

Transporter is a standalone program for converting 3D models from one file format to another. Primarily, it exists for importing models in formats that the other EIAS tools cannot import directly, and for exporting models to other formats. For instance, in EIAS version 6.5, Animator supports five of the most popular model input formats, while Transporter supports 29 formats. Transporter can export a model in one of 14 different formats, most usefully the Electric Image FACT format preferred by the other EIAS components.

Modeler

Modeler saves its files in Electric Image’s “FACT” file format for importing into Animator (see above). It supports ACIS modeling, “ÜberNurbs” (EIAS’ subdivision surfaces modeling technology), LAWS (based on parametric formulas) as well as Boolean operations and other modern modeling tools.

Modeler last shipped in Electric Image Universe 5.0. As a result, users of EIAS 5.5 and newer use a third-party modeler instead. As of this writing, Electric Image recommends Nevercenter Silo for this purpose. Form•Z from auto•des•sys is also popularly used as a companion for EIAS.

Other Information:

• Developed by EI TechnologyGroup, LLC.
• Latest release 7.0.1 / February 2008
• OS Mac OS X and WindowsXP
• Type 3D computer graphics
• License Proprietary
• Website www.eitechnologygroup.com

Electric Image Animation System

Tags: EIAS, Mac OS, Newtek, Windows

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