#Elastic Reality HERE
9 messages in this thread
Elastic Reality, Inc. will shortly have a section in this forum…we are
providers of high end special effects technology across four platforms and have
considerable experience in professional film and television production.
Our namesake product, Elastic Reality is the most advanced warping and morphing
system available. The flagship of the family is available for Silicon Graphics
workstations. A brand new, and very powerful member of the family is Elastic
Reality for Windows. Versions also exist for Macintosh and Power Macintosh.
If you went to the movies this summer, you've seen Elastic Reality in action.
Forest Gump, The Mask, The Shadow, and Wolf are just some of the feature films
released this summer contained Elastic Reality produced effects.
On television, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Northern Exposure, Home Improvement,
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and many other productions include Elastic
Reality effects.
With that said, I'd like to introduce myself (Perry Kivolowitz) and Jason Cross
to you. Jason is a member of our technical support staff and will be mainly
responsible for answering questions around here. As for myself, I'll be on from
time to time to see what's up.
Perry
Perry,
Its great to see you here! I'd like to say that I recently got Elastic Reality
(a couple of days ago), and it works quite well. In fact, I like it a lot
better than its "ancestor", ADPro on the Amiga (I'm an ex-Amiga person).
However, there are a few things I'd like to see…are they possible?
* FLI/FLC support soon. Pretty important.
* More converters, like in Adpro. Y'all always made the best coverters.
* ANIM support would be really nice for us Amiga refugees…so we could
at least get our old stuff out of the old box.
* How about auto-detect of overlapping edges? Better yet, how about
some kind of looping mode where adjustments are automagically made, so that
overlapping edges are avoided…
Otherwise, a very happy customer. Transjammer is really nice – kind of like the
old AniMagic on the Amiga, but nicer.
Jonathan
Jonathan,
Thanks for the message and your sentiments! On to your questions:
FLI/FLC support is coming shortly. We'll post it here once our section is
formally opened.
More converters are very likely. As you know we have one of the largest
arsenals of quality conversion routines around (for imaging formats that are
important to video and film professionals). Already HIIP (that's the licensable
portion of Elastic Reality which handles all of our imaging needs) already
offers more than 20 important file formats.
Amiga ANIM support is possible, but my suspicion is that it would have very
small appeal. I'll put it on the list and its possible we'll do it.
Avoiding overlapping edges is pretty straight forward when you understand the
principals behind Elastic Reality's warping technology. The short course is:
When two shapes in the same roll overlap, you'll asking the pixels at the point
of overlap to go to two places at the same time. This can't happen. Unless of
course, you select Jigsaw mode which will happily send the same pixel to any
number of places at the same time.
Thanks about TransJammer…at nearly 70 topical, sophisticated effects
(actually more like 400 different effects when you figure in the "variations")
it represents a real easy way to give animations a more professional look.
Perry
Perry,
I just saw you talking about an animation package called "Elastic reality" (or
is it your company name?).
Is it possible to get any information about this prg? I think I read something
in a different forum and I'm searching for a new 2D Animation package on PC
platform for more than 25 years now…
(no more Deluxe Animation)
Thorsten (I use Bernhard's account).
Thorsten,
Elastic Reality for Windows can indeed be used for many animation purposes.
It was designed to be a warping and morphing system but its power and
flexibility have allowed it to aggressively cross into other areas.
Elastic Reality is unique in that it is a shape-to-shape special effects
system. To use it for animation, outline the object to be animated and then
duplicate that shape. Drag the duplicated shape along the path and motions
you wish the original object to follow, and turn ER loose.
It allows objects to pass in front of, or behind, other objects (under your
control, of course). And its matting and compositing capabilities are
extremely robust.
Elastic Reality has been used a great deal in the stop-motion and cel-animation
businesses. Examples include the Coke Sun commercials, the belly dancing Ritz
crackers and the limbo dancing Triskets commercials. Elastic Reality was
also used to repair a botch in the making of Nightmare Before Christmas but
in the end, the powers-that-be decided they liked the effect of the botch
so the "fixed" scene did not appear in the finished film.
Elastic Reality for Windows is a true 32 bit application (and runs wickedly
fast considering what it's doing). It will run under Windows, Windows NT
and Windows for Workgroups. It carries a list price of $495 and comes with
TransJammer, a WYSIWYG dve generator.
Jason
ERI Technical Support
Jason,
sounds great. Do you have a distribution site in germany ?
I would like to have a look on the program.
Thorsten
Jason,
I've got ER for Windows and it's just an outstanding program. Nothing in the PC
arena comes close. Two questions though. First, have I missed something or does
it not do field rendering? Right now, to make my animations just a little
smoother, I bring the sequential Targa files generated in ER into 3D Studio
Video Post and then render with field rendering on. Second, as you say, <Drag
the duplicated shape along the path and motions you wish the original object to
follow, and turn ER loose.>. While true, and quite powerful, just try to create
any sort of smoothly curved path; a circle, figure 8, etc. Difficult to
impossible. There should be a way to create or import and then edit bezier
curves for paths. This would make it a truely potent animation tool.
Not that I'm knocking the product. It is amazingly good (and fast). Aside from
its morphing/warping abilities, it's the best digital video editor/generator in
the PC market (I may have to rephrase that once I see Premiere 4.0, but it's
certainly true right now).
My two cents worth,
Andrerw
Andrew,
Thanks for your comments. Your point about the need for finer motion
path control is well taken and is being worked on, as is an internal
provision for field rendering. For now, interlaced frame building must
be done in another program.
As for TransJammer (the dve generator), we're super excited about it
and we're just getting started when it comes to providing pre-done
effects for people to use. In fact, we're really looking forward to
using this forum as a venue for people to upload their own effect
creations for sharing with others.
Please feel free to upload any TransJammer effects you might create.
When our own section is finally set up (I'm told it should be any day)
we'll move uploaded files to our section.
Thanks again, and your points are well taken.
Jason
ERI Technical Support