Wow, E-Frontier buys Amapi Pro

[Patrick210]

"The announcement will come out shortly, but e frontier has bought
Amapi Pro from Eovia Europe along with the developers. We are not
sure at this point what conflict this may create, but we want to
assure everyone that DAZ will approach this in a professional manner.
We will let the community know if this poses any kinds of issues
moving forward.

Regards,
Bob" This is from Bob Stockwell of DAZ




Hey, are you going to be working back there again Thomas?

[Arsenic]

The war has begun between DAZ and e-frontier... I won't surprised if eon-software join to e-frontier to achieve that. War of megacorps, just like a cyberpunk novel...

[graphinc]

I think it's a very good news as we can hope more qualities for 3D programs only if the publishers have to "fight" with strong competitors even if actually Shade is not a direct competitor for Carrara (but it could be one day)

Cédric

[tonytrout]

Doesnt give much certainty to my purchases now does it. The higher end apps are starting to look appealing

[Teyon]

e frontier has proven they can keep a product going, while giving it major updates (transition from Poser4 to Poser5 for example). I guess Eovia Corps. is dead? http://www.eovia.com takes me to Daz.

[Corndog]

Teyon.. Are you surprised at anything DAZ does... They suck

I respect them like I do a politician ( two thumbs down )

[juanmanuel]

I for one have more faith in e-frontier taking Amapi to new heights than in DAZ with Carrara and Hexagon, but this is just a personal opinion. And the synergy looks quite promising.

[JakalDesign]

I find that odd considering that they already have Shade in their product lineup.

[philebus]

Well, Shade hasn't been a great hit with Poser users (at least, not outside of Japan), partly because it is primarily a spline modeler. Amapi does polys very well and so should, if they bring back the cheaper Designer edition, hit it off with Poser users and directly compete with Hexagon. E-frontier is really fighting back with this move. They are a way off from competing in the content market but this goes a long way to counter the DAZ purchases in the market they are experienced in.

[polistra]

Let me be the first to congratulate Eovia on being purchased by E-frontier!

And let me be the first also to suggest changes in Amapi Designer that
will help it to co-operate with Poser.

Three changes would do the job:

1. Never re-number vertices. The soften/bump tool is the worst offender
in this respect. I don't know what algorithm Amapi uses for this tool, but
it seems to sort the vertices. Even when doing a sort, it should be
possible to 'carry through' the original vertex numbers and restore them.

2. Poser and Amapi use 'Group' and 'Material' differently.
In Poser, the 'g' paragraph in the OBJ file actually becomes a body part
or a 'Prop'. Each body part can have several different material zones
('usemtl' in OBJ file), and the material name can be shared among many
body parts. Amapi's Rendering room does a good job of setting up
material zones for export, but Amapi erroneously treats 'usemtl' paragraphs
as separate pieces when re-importing. Amapi needs to separate the
ideas of material and group more consistently.

3. Unfortunately, Amapi's Grouping tool sets up two-part 'g' lines that Poser
can't read. Worst of all, Amapi's Grouping tool changes the names of
the pieces within a group. This makes a lot of unnecessary work.
When I temporarily 'chain' several pieces together to move them or
scale them, I have to rename each piece after ungrouping.
The simplest fix would be to change Amapi's Grouping tool so that
it creates a temporary 'chain' entity WITHOUT CHANGING THE NAMES
OF THE PIECES. This 'chain' would not be saved in the OBJ file.

[Patrick210]

Hard to say if they will pick up on Amapi Designer. It was killed in favor of starting new with Hexagon, and another NURBS line with Amapi Pro.

[AlainK]

I still don't get this special attention given to Amapi. At $700+ price, I'd prefer to buy Rhino especially now that version 4 is about to be released. It's exclusively NURBS but I can always use Hexagon for poly/subd modeling. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm wondering what makes Amapi different.

[Sarissi]

Originally Posted by Teyon

Not cool, Bob. We folks under NDA with e frontier were asked not to mention it yet. Still, it's great news for us (us=e frontier and Amapi Users). E frontier has proven they can keep a product going, while giving it major updates (transition from Poser4 to Poser5 for example). I guess Eovia Corps. is dead? http://www.eovia.com takes me to Daz.

Wrong version transition on Poser. After Poser Pro Pack, EGYSYS in Germany bought Curious Labs, and came out with the Disaster of a release called Poser 5. EGISYS went out of Business. e-Frontier bought Curious Labs, and then released Poser 6, which still has its issues after two Service Releases.

Don't expect much information out of e-Frontier, since as a Japanese Company, they do things in greater Secrecy than Governments do.

Oh, e-Frontier already has a decent financial interest in e-onsoftware.

[dooki]

Hey Alain,

Been with Amapi for a long time. Back then it was a lot cheaper and was worth getting it. I'm with you on this one. Rhino is much better. I take you're a designer? I could always whip out a quick volume study with amapi. Anything deeper (in my opinion) and I find myself doing a "rhino" work-around, and I end up on rhino anyway.

Since Hex I've kinda dropped amapi for polys. The only real plus for me is that amapi still runs a MAC.

-Dooki

[philebus]

I think that $700+ price was for the pro version, the Designer edition was quite a bit cheaper but was discontinued in favour of Hexagon. If I remember correctly (I've only used Amapi 6) Amapi does nurbs, splines, and subD. Hexagon took a lot from Amapi's toolset (right down to the icons) and put it all in a new package for character modelers. I don't doubt that we will see a return to the Pro/Designer split (as seen in Shade, with a similar price point for pro) that will compete with Hexagon. Having the same team that built both Amapi and Hexagon in the first place will give e-frontier a nice advantage. I don't doubt that the Carrara team are up to the job of maintaining and advancing Hexagon but they have to familiarize themselves with a program they didn't have a hand in creating whilst maintaining Carrara at the same time.

[Arsenic]

Originally Posted by philebus

I think that $700+ price was for the pro version, the Designer edition was quite a bit cheaper but was discontinued in favour of Hexagon. If I remember correctly (I've only used Amapi 6) Amapi does nurbs, splines, and subD. Hexagon took a lot from Amapi's toolset (right down to the icons) and put it all in a new package for character modelers. I don't doubt that we will see a return to the Pro/Designer split (as seen in Shade, with a similar price point for pro) that will compete with Hexagon. Having the same team that built both Amapi and Hexagon in the first place will give e-frontier a nice advantage. I don't doubt that the Carrara team are up to the job of maintaining and advancing Hexagon but they have to familiarize themselves with a program they didn't have a hand in creating whilst maintaining Carrara at the same time.

I agree with that, especially what is in bold in the quote. I never understand why DAZ didn't want the french team to pursue Hexagon development...

[philebus]

In fairness to DAZ, I wonder if they could realistically afford both teams. I would think that they had to make a choice, a difficult one but I guess that Carrara was more important to their immediate business interests - it does have an increasing user base from Poser users, more I think than Bryce.

[AlainK]

Originally Posted by philebus

In fairness to DAZ, I wonder if they could realistically afford both teams. I would think that they had to make a choice, a difficult one but I guess that Carrara was more important to their immediate business interests - it does have an increasing user base from Poser users, more I think than Bryce.

I doubt that they can even afford to pay the Carrara team. I'd guess that at the moment DAZ is not making that much money out of Hex and Car. They're probably feeling the pinch of their mistake in giving Hex away for mere 30+ dollars. No, it's not cheap developing apps.

[AlainK]

Originally Posted by dooki

Hey Alain,

Been with Amapi for a long time. Back then it was a lot cheaper and was worth getting it. I'm with you on this one. Rhino is much better. I take you're a designer? I could always whip out a quick volume study with amapi. Anything deeper (in my opinion) and I find myself doing a "rhino" work-around, and I end up on rhino anyway.

Since Hex I've kinda dropped amapi for polys. The only real plus for me is that amapi still runs a MAC.

-Dooki

Maybe it's the bad review that I've read somewhere a few years ago about Amapi that turn me off completely. It illustrated some strange mesh that is sometimes generated. Things that are not found in Rhino. I've tried the latest version (demo) before Eovia was bought by DAZ. I found that it's not as stable (in my machine) as Rhino. I could see that is had extra goodies that NURBS apps didn't have, but I could trade that with stability.

See, this seems to be the main problem facing the Amapi/Hex team: bugginess or instability. Although they have great, innovative ideas, they can't seem to fix the bugs completely. I'd suggest that they fix these first before moving on. Then offer the present version for a reasonable price.

[mayito7777]

Wonder what is going to happen at the end, I believe the best days for Carrara, Hexagon and Amapi are gone.