ElectricImage shows spark - Electric Image's ElectricImage 2.8 Early Bird Edition animation system - Software Review - Evaluation

For high-end animators and broadcast and film professionals, ElectricImage Animation System has long been a reason to buy a Mac. Electric Image Inc.'s high-end 3-D animation and rendering package has proven itself in everything from broadcast commercials to feature films.

We tested the Early Bird Edition of ElectricImage 2.8, which comes with online documentation and sells for $7,495 (the broadcast version is $2,495). Version 2.8's startling number of new animation and rendering features is worthy of much more than an incremental version number, but the program's interface could be further streamlined.

Changes to the software begin with a reworked interface. All ElectricImage dialog boxes have been redesigned to consolidate the program's myriad settings and controls. Longtime users might feel a little lost at first by its tabbed dialog boxes, but the new design makes it easier to access settings with fewer clicks.

ElectricImage's Project Window has been dramatically reworked. All objects now include an Animation check box that lets you specify that an object can be animated, preventing you from accidentally setting a keyframe for a static object. New selection features include Selection Sets, which let you specify different sets of objects that can then be selected with a single click.

But the Project Window's most important addition is the Function Curves editor, which provides an entirely new way of editing animation information for any object.

In earlier versions of ElectricImage it was not possible to edit the x, y or z vector of an object individually. And because an object's velocity was based on the composite of these axes, it was hard to make precise velocity adjustments without changing an object's position.

The F-Curves editor provides separate curves for each axis of any object property, making it simple to create complex animations with few keyframes. The ends of an F-Curve can be set to Hold, Repeat or Oscillate, streamlining the creation of repeating motions such as a spinning light on a police car.

Electric Image has done a good job with its F-Curves feature. While the capability has long been available in such high-end programs as Microsoft Corp.'s Softimage, Electric Image is the first company to provide this level of editing at this price point.

Skin and bones

New animation tools include a Bones feature that improves on the program's Inverse Kinematics function by letting you place chains of bones within an object. When the bones move, the object automatically deforms and bends. This feature, combined with the precision of the F-Curves editor, finally gives ElectricImage some serious character-animation power.

An Object Morphing feature automatically creates a morph between two objects of equivalent vertexes and polygon counts.

Electric Image has added a wealth of texture-mapping improvements to Version 2.8, the most significant being the capability to apply an unlimited number of maps of any type to a model. In addition, a completely reworked Materials editor provides new controls, including the capability to vary the opacity of a texture.

ElectricImage finally has Clipping maps, stencil-like maps that let you punch shadow-aware holes into an object. Version 2.8 also has a new Displacement Map, which (unlike a bump map) actually changes the geometry of an object.

Texture management has also been improved. Child objects can now inherit textures from their parents, and textures can now be saved to disk.

The new Master Materials feature lets you create a material object that you can link to models. Like style sheets in a word processor, simply changing the original texture automatically retextures all attached objects.

Unfortunately, Master Materials provides a good example of ElectricImage's occasional clunky interface. Master Materials appear in your Project Window as objects. To apply the material to an object, your instinct might be to drag the material on top of the object you wish to texture (or vice versa). Instead, though, you must select the object you want to link to the material, select the Link to Material tool and then click on the texture. The program's reliance on these modal tools is a leftover from the early days of the Mac interface, and it is long overdue for improvement.

Finally, ElectricImage's new Procedural Texture facility lets you apply fully animatable procedural textures to any type of map. The program ships with a nice array of procedural textures - including a Cel shader that lets you create a traditional cel-animation look -and boasts incredibly fast procedural-rendering speed.

As if all this weren't enough, the company has also added good Depth of Field controls; improved Lens Flare controls; and the capability to apply a glow to any type of object, not just lights.

We received a number of bug fixes during our testing period. Though we found some new oddities that have yet to be patched, Electric Image has been consistently good in updating the software.

Although there's no program on any platform that can match ElectricImage's incredible rendering speed, we'd like to see improvement in the program's screen redraw. Having to animate complex projects as bounding boxes feels awfully clunky in this age of G3 processors and 3-D accelerators.

Conclusions

Despite these complaints, ElectricImage 2.8 looks to be a great upgrade. Regular users of ElectricImage should be very pleased with the program's strong new features and the reworking of old ones. If you need powerful, film-quality 3-D, ElectricImage is still a reason to buy a Mac.

Electric Image Inc. of Pasadena, Calif., is at (626) 577-1627 or (888) 736-3371; fax (626) 577-2426; http://www.electricimage.com.

Beta Preview: ElectricImage Animation System 2.8

ElectricImage Animation System 2.8 Due: Q2

Electric Image Inc. List price: $7,495*

Hits: Function Curve editor; new texture mapping features; interface changes.

Misses: Not enough interface changes; screen redraw too slow.

Too soon to tell: Bugs need to be fixed; performance.

*Broadcast version, $2,495. Users who purchase the Early Bird Edition will get the final version free. Upgrades from Version 2.75, $399.

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