Bentley Systems has acquired e-on software, a leader in the creation, simulation, and integration of natural 3D environments, with software development based in Paris, France.
E-on software is widely acclaimed in the digital content creation (DCC) market, where its VUE and PlantFactory products are a mainstay among computer graphics (CG) professionals in the media and entertainment, science, and education industries. E-on’s offerings have been used in the making of numerous blockbuster films, including Minions, Jupiter Ascending, How To Train Your Dragon, Avatar, The Hunger Games, The Avengers, Hugo, and Terminator. Headed by founder Nicholas Phelps, e-on software, operating as a Bentley subsidiary, will continue to develop innovative solutions for the unique challenges of the DCC community.
Phelps said, “For over 20 years, I have dedicated e-on software to creating and supporting the best digital nature solutions. While initially only focused on serving the media and entertainment industry, we recognised in recent years a growing need among architects and engineers to ‘tell their story’ in a more compelling way. We responded to this by leveraging our expertise in visual effects to also create easy-to-use products such as LumenRT that bring quick, high quality ‘movie production’ to the architectural and engineering market.
Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley said, “With our acquisition of e-on software, reality modelling for architects and engineers to capture existing conditions and provide context for proposed infrastructure designs can now be enlivened with digital nature. The natural world is the backdrop for all infrastructure projects and, as individuals, we all experience elements such as trees, skies, and terrains as being intrinsically vital to our quality of life. With the ‘cinematic’ quality of LumenRT environments, every architect and engineer can envision and present his or her proposed design alternatives as they would be experienced in actual operation in nature.”
In 2014, e-on’s LumenRT software achieved a breakthrough in enabling “live” natural environments to be easily incorporated within the work of infrastructure engineers for improved “real-time” design context and for stakeholder communications with life-like qualities. Bentley users are already benefiting from the integration of LumenRT’s capabilities with Bentley’s MicroStation-based common modelling environment for advancing infrastructure.