Editing Electric Image Animation System (section)

==History==
'''Electric Image, Inc.''' was initially a visual effects production company. They developed their own in-house 3D animation and rendering package for the [[Apple Macintosh|Macintosh]] beginning in the late 1980s, calling it ElectricImage Animation System. (To avoid confusion with the current product with its similar name, we will refer to this initial incarnation of the product simply as ''ElectricImage''.)

When the company later decided to offer their software for sale externally, it quickly gained a customer base that lauded the developers for the software's exceptionally fast rendering engine and high image quality{{cn|date=July 2020}}. Because it was capable of film-quality output on commodity hardware, ElectricImage was popular in the movie and television industries throughout the decade. It was used by the "Rebel Unit" at [[Industrial Light and Magic]] quite extensively<ref>{{cite web |date=9 May 2024 |title=The Digital Road to The Phantom Menace: The "Rebel Mac" Unit |url=https://www.lucasfilm.com/news/digital-road-rebel-mac/ |website=Lucasfilm }}</ref> and was in use by a variety of game companies, such as [[Bad Mojo]] and [[Bad Day on the Midway]]{{cn|date=July 2020}}. However, only these high end effects companies could afford it: Electric Image initially sold for US $7500.

EIAS has been used in numerous film and television productions, such as: ''Cliffs of Freedom, Piranha 3D, Alien Trespass, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Daddy Day Care, K-19: The Widowmaker, Gangs of New York, Austin Powers: Goldmember, Men In Black II, The Bourne Identity, Behind Enemy Lines, Time Machine, Ticker, JAG - Pilot Episode, Spawn,<ref>{{cite journal|last=Duncan|first=Jody|title=With a Little Help From Our Friends|journal=Cinefex|date=September 1997|volume=71}}</ref> Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, Galaxy Quest,<ref>{{cite journal|last=Duncan|first=Jody|author2=Estelle Shay|title=Trekking into the Klaatu Nebula|journal=Cinefex|date=April 2000|volume=81}}</ref> Mission to Mars, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace,<ref>{{cite journal|last=Duncan|first=Jody|author2=Kevin H. Martin |author3=Mark Cotta Vaz |author3-link=Mark Cotta Vaz|title=Heroe's Journey|journal=Cinefex|date=July 1999|volume=78}}</ref> Titan A.E., U-571, Dinosaur, Terminator 2: Judgment Day,<ref>{{cite journal|last=Duncan|first=Jody|title=A Once and Future War|journal=Cinefex|date=August 1991|volume=47}}</ref> Terminator 2: Judgment Day - DVD Intro, Jungle Book 2, American President, Sleepers, Star Wars Special Edition, Empire Strikes Back Special Edition, Return of Jedi Special Edition, Bicentennial Man, Vertical Limit, Elf, Blade Trinity, and Lost In Space.''

TV Shows: ''Evil, Invisible City, Shinning Girls, Lovecraft Country, Rising Dion, Legion, The Strain, The Librarians, Falling Skies, Revolution, Breaking Bad, Alcatraz, Pan AM, The whole Truth, Lost, Flash Forward, Fringe, Surface, Weeds, Pushing Daisies, The X-Files, Alias, Smallville, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Babylon 5, Young Indiana Jones, Star Trek Voyager, Mists of Avalon and Star Trek Enterprise.

Electric Image, Inc. was always a small company that produced software on the Mac platform and so never had a large a market share. [[Play, Inc.]] purchased Electric Image corporation in November 1998. The first version of EIAS released under the Play moniker was version 2.9. Play later released the 3.0 version. This was the first version to run on Windows, and to mark this move, Play renamed the package '''Electric Image Universe'''. 

In 2000, Dwight Parscale (former CEO of [[Newtek]]) and original Electric Image founders Markus Houy and Jay Roth bought back the original company from Play Inc. On September 19, 2000, the company bought back the shares of Electric Image from Play and set about to recapture the product's former customer base. The new company released version 4.0 and 5.0 under the Electric Image moniker. Then due to a licensing problem with Spatial Technologies, they dropped the Modeler program from the version 5.5 release, and renamed the package back to Electric Image Animation System.

Versions 6.0 and 6.5 were subsequently released with vast improvements to the rendering engine and OpenGL performance. Version 6.5r2 added FBX file importing capability. 6.6 added [[Universal Binary]] support and finally drops support for Mac OS 9. Version 7.0 brought Multi-Layer Rendering, Image-Based Lighting, Raytrace Sky Maps and Rigid Body Dynamics. The version, 8.0, added Photon Mapping, Fast soft shadows, area light, Quadratic light drop-off, EXR and 16bit image input support, Displacement Sea Level, new Weight maps tools, much workflow enhancement and Renderama improvements.

In 2009, EITG began negotiations to sell the intellectual property rights of ElectricImage. On January 12, 2010 it was announced that Tomas Egger, Igor Yatsenko, and Igor Ivaniuk had become the new owners of EIAS. Known collectively as "The Igors", Igor Yatsenko and Igor Ivaniuk had been EIAS's primary software developers for many years. They released version 9.0 in November 2012, followed by version 9.1 in June 2013.