EXTON, PA — Bentley Systems, Incorporated (www.bentley.com), here, which provides comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure, has acquired E-on software (www.e-onsoftware.com), a leader in the creation, simulation, and integration of natural 3D environments, with software development based in Paris, France. E-on software is known in the digital content creation (DCC) market, for its Vue and PlantFactory products.
The company’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.
"For over 20 years, I have dedicated E-on software to creating and supporting the best digital nature solutions,” says Phelps. “While initially only focused on serving the media and entertainment industry, we recognized 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 and creating easy-to-use products such as LumenRT that bring quick, high-quality 'movie production' to the architectural and engineering market.
"I am thrilled to join Bentley Systems to explore and extend these avenues together. Bentley is a fantastic company that shares our passion for technological excellence. It will be a great home for e-on software to thrive in. We gain access to a highly qualified user base, substantial resources, and new distribution channels that will allow us to walk boldly into the future and produce ever more exciting and versatile natural environment simulation and integration products, putting Hollywood movie quality into the hands of engineers and artists alike, around the world!"
Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley adds, "With our acquisition of E-on software, reality modeling 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 modeling environment for advancing infrastructure.
"I have spent my working career advancing the quality of 3D representations of infrastructure,” says Bentley Systems’ executive vice president Ray Bentley. “But there's always been something missing — the ability to immerse designs within their dynamic context and natural environments, conveying their operational and aesthetic qualities. With LumenRT and our recent acquisition of Acute3D 'context capture' software — which automatically generates 3D 'reality meshes' from digital photographs — we can now enable all of our users to readily take advantage of 'enlivened' reality modeling!"