Eureka 3D

[peppe]

Anyone ever use this?

The new name is MAXXedia and are using PC as the old system.It can handles 20 layers but not in the same way as Catalyst.Two type of banks that can be crossfaded.

A cool thing is that it has a Waveform generator that can make "ripples" and "Waves" in realtime and you can add textures or clips on the surface and light refraction/specular light on it.

It works like this: a 3d room and your output is the camera(s) and you add
3ds files that can be rotated and manipulated with sound or textures.
A plug-in will later be made for importing custom 3ds model or text.
Smoke can be added (fractal noise?)

3 dv inputs that has about same performance as Catalyst.
thats all I know right know........

[samsc]

It works like this: a 3d room and your output is the camera(s) and you add
3ds files that can be rotated and manipulated with sound or textures.
A plug-in will later be made for importing custom 3ds model or text.
Smoke can be added (fractal noise?)

.

but is it effective from a graphics pov?

these lighting people dont understand they are working in a graphical medium.
if fx dont work visually or dont look good they are worse than useless.

sometimes its as if the last 30 years of post-production, and the whole history of film-making and broadcast graphics never existed.

have they got to the stage to realise its not about 'cool fx'?

[peppe]

but is it effective from a graphics pov?

these lighting people dont understand they are working in a graphical medium.
if fx dont work visually or dont look good they are worse than useless.

sometimes its as if the last 30 years of post-production, and the whole history of film-making and broadcast graphics never existed.

have they got to the stage to realise its not about 'cool fx'?

I think NOT,but I can be wrong! The old Eureka had a UI that made me crying, this is not so much better.It had the speed and cool stuff but did not understand antialias or anything that had the word "quality" somewhere.
But it was fun and loaded with "cool fx"

I think their business is fx and effects,not artistic design and hard work, I see Apple released Garageband and everybody can be musician,thats the story but maybe not the truth.

Still they listen and try to satisfy designers with smooth replays of clips and smooth and slow movements of objects and other stuff that often is critical,also the EX1 is what I was told almost the same thing as the old Eureka but with better performance and quality,(have not seen it yet).

But often the showbusiness is about effects,is it not?? It is up to us to keep the quality in the design and art!

[Spam Butterfly]

Maxxedia doesn't look like it has a lot of 'real time' control. Too much fiddling around with the GUI - not much control from the console.

I spoke to a dude from Case - the guys who make it - who said that the old DMX spec was a problem for them. It was really designed to be run on the Case, which can only handle 28 parameters in a fixture or something. It was horrendous to write the library. Zillions of channels across several fixtures.

What I did like was a cuelist control, so you can run the Maxxedia without a console.

Another media server where the software guys jerk off on Open GL - not what is useful to the end user.

Hugh

[Martin]

This is how i see it as well. All the new mediaservers (martin, VL) focuses on 3D effects, virtual lighting and other strange things that i would think will not be used that much in real life.
EX1-hardware looks great though..

[samsc]

This is how i see it as well. All the new mediaservers (martin, VL) focuses on 3D effects, virtual lighting and other strange things that i would think will not be used that much in real life.
EX1-hardware looks great though..

Hardware would look great with horns on it.
Kindof like using a sledgehammer instead of a nutcracker.

I mean the problem is no harder than a playstation....
And these guys need 350lbs of gear?

You can do this on a playstation/xbox.

What do they think the games industry is built on?

Its doing much better stuff than all these dodgy 'media servers' including catalyst.

The guys doing games are the geniuses.

This stuff is shite in comparison.

[Spam Butterfly]

Hardware would look great with horns on it.
Kindof like using a sledgehammer instead of a nutcracker.

I mean the problem is no harder than a playstation....
And these guys need 350lbs of gear?

You can do this on a playstation/xbox.

What do they think the games industry is built on?

Its doing much better stuff than all these dodgy 'media servers' including catalyst.

The guys doing games are the geniuses.

This stuff is shite in comparison.

The playstation and X-Box are great examples of custom PC boards which use whizzy Open GL. However, these systems are designed with a certain amount of longevity - unlike the PC boards you buy off the shelf. Don't forget - these systems compete with current PC's - not bad when you consider that an X-Box is essentially a 733Mhz Celeron with a bit of extra cache and an custom Geforce 3 video chipset. The difference is that developers will code to use every ounce of power out of these things, in much the same way as developers used to in the Atari/ Amiga days (I was always an Amiga man - Atari's are for small girls.). Don't forget the Amiga, with it's custom graphics chipset, was the heart of the Video Toaster...

Hugh

[veldeman]

Maxxedia doesn't look like it has a lot of 'real time' control. Too much fiddling around with the GUI - not much control from the console.

I spoke to a dude from Case - the guys who make it - who said that the old DMX spec was a problem for them. It was really designed to be run on the Case, which can only handle 28 parameters in a fixture or something. It was horrendous to write the library. Zillions of channels across several fixtures.


Hugh

For my 5 cents...

I had the chance to play with the Maxedia beta system in Februari on a Corporate show in Belgium, and I must say it has all the 'real time' control you need on the DMX part. Being able to see what you are doing in the GUI is very inspiring when you create something.
Compared with the Eureka3D this Maxedia system is much more then just an 'effects box for lighting guys'. The Video people loved what I could create with the original footage they gave me to play with for the show. They coun't believe what I could create in a few seconds. They said they have to render long time to make something similar. And it was created 'on-site' while we were programming the lightcues.

The Eureka3D had too many channels for the Case to handle yes. They divided the channels into several fixtures. But isn't that the case on other media servers systems? I see no difference in that... the VL system that I saw at Frankfurt goes up to 250 channels or something? They made 15 fixtures. The VL-system looks like a copy of the old Eureka3D system.

[samsc]

The VL-system looks like a copy of the old Eureka3D system.

so what is the difference between the maxedia and the Eureka 3d?

which are the features that one actually uses live-- as opposed to preprocessed?

[veldeman]

I'll try to explain a bit, but it's difficult to write down.

In fact both systems are more then a 'video server', since they do a lot of real-time effects with the used media.

The Eureka3D system had basically 2 layers, a background and a 3D object layer. The background and/or object could have a texture. BMP or Video file with basic color effects or sound effects. The camera view could be moved real-time in 3D and zoomed in etc...

The Maxedia goes much further. I looks like these guys in Belgium learned a lot from the previous system. Maybe that's why they changed the name of the product?
You have now 2 x 20 layers real-time in a A & B mixer.
On each layer you can modify the 3D camera, color, texture, effect, 3D object etc... and add real-time effects on them.
When you make something in the A or B mixer, you can then X-fade between them. Like you have 2 machines in one.
It's difficult to explain, you have to work with it before you realize how powerfull and smooth the images are.

The main difference in one sentence between Eureka3D and Maxedia:
Eureka3D was good for Clubs for effects, the Maxedia blows away even video pre-production companies.
I heard yesterday a story were a pre-production company in Germany lost it's deal for a TV-show this week.
Because the Maxedia did more artistic images then they did for a lot of money...