3DNY EI Uber Bundle

The new EI Uber Bundle contains not only material from the previous mediabooks, but also lots of new material. Therefor this Uber Bundle is both for beginners and advanced users. That is because some tips and tricks are right under our nose, we forget them easily. Moreover, and that is what I sometimes encounter myself, the solution of a little problem is often simpler then we think. EI Uber Bundle includes EIU Modeler MediaBook, the EIAS Character Animation MediaBook, Headgames EI, 1200 Models in FACT format, Lawmaker, the Parametric Modeling tutorial for EIAS, and the entire EI Tutorial Repository from 3DNY.ORG. It is NOT a 5 min egg... :-)

Besides that this bundle contains all mediabooks, all EI Tutorial collections has been added too. This is especially nice for those how want to study the setup of exsisting project files. Sadly I noticed that older applications have been included aswell. This means you need Classic (MacOs 9) to run the applications, and I say sadly because they were very usable back then and I would like to see some of them return to work again nowadays.

New material has been added. And straight forward I would say that the new material by itself is worth studying. Most material is in pfd format, sometimes supported with project files. The five main categories are: Anatomy of Lighting, Car Crash Dynamics, EI Compositor, Glass and optics and Material Editor Secrets.

Anatomy of Lighting With a office cubicle Lance explains how real world lightning and various artificial lighting set up works. He breaks up the required lighting into more understandable pieces. Step by step Lance takes you through the process till the whole office is beeing lighted. A bright day for employees :-) Car Crash Dynamics This short tutorial is about how we can learn by observing the real world, and take advantage by real world ergonomics to create a dynamic car crash. Again the process is taken down into little steps to make the theoretical more practical. A sample project is included.

EI Compositor I was stunned when i read this tutorial about EIAS beeing used as a kind of After Effects (Adobe™). Material map, Camera Map, lighting projection map and rotoscope tools are the main tools used for composition. Although it is not laid out in a way we might want, it is indeed a usable feature. For some of use no need to buy a expensive composite application. Just follow Lance's tutorial on how to us EIAS for compositing an image.

Glass and Optics Three tutorials are about glass and optics. Fast radiosity effects, fast refraction effects and making glass. All three tutorials are with nice sample project files, so one can study the set up of these kind of effects. Fast radiosity is what we all want, and now it is easy and real fast to make, to a certain degree off course. Fast refraction is more complicated, as one need After Effects to complete the images. Still it seems the fastest way to create refractions.

Making glass We all are aware of the Glass Shader from Konkeptoine. Apart of this great shader, making glass in not as complex as one thinks. Lance takes you through the material editor and explanes how you get that specific glass look and feel. At the end of this tutorial a note about refraction. Take this into account and you will be ready for your next glass project...

Material Editor Secrets Two short tutorials and a long one about Material Editor. The two short ones are in fact poster like tutorials. They tell about reflections and occlusions and the other one is about the standard EI shaders. The Material editor tutorial is over 55 pages and tells all what you need to know about the material window. As bonus a short hair tutorial is included. Lance explains every aspect of the material editor, and ends with a lot of Tips and Tricks. The next section is about the difference in mapping with textures and Procedural shaders. The most remarkeble section is that about the negative-Z mapping. Although I read about it in the EIAS manuals i did not see a practical use for Neg-Z. Well, Lance give me a practical use for this feature. Why did i not think about that earlier?

More great ideas come along when one reads this Material Secrets tutorial. It reads like a 3D thriller, and a great twist at the near end made my eyes open wide. To name a few: solving Cylindrical maps, Cylinderical versus Spherical mapping (with polar distortions, whoooow), 360 degrees photography, Projection maps and World coordinate mapping.

Well, lots and lots of stuff to consider and think about. Lots and lots of project files to open and study by yourself. Indeed a must have for all EIAS users, beginner or not, this kind of 3D thriller you must read!!!

Robert Jan Kila