http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-softimage/overview
I hope they’re putting SoftImage’s ICE tech into something.
This is unbelievable!!! I’m shocked!!! Try to think a big company (but also a small office like mine) to rebuild the entire pipelaine, try to learn a new software etc… I think Softimage users have to do a class-action. Or Autodesk sell Softimage to a different softwarehouse. Try to think if this will happen to 3ds max!!! I will can died!!! O__O All my assets, my time to learn script, plug, software. Also my employees.
And, What Xhaosugroup says about the time they spent to VRay4XSI?!!
I recall seeing this thread recently… :?
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthread.php?76924-And-Vray-3-for-us&p=611946#post611946
I’m actually not shocked at all. You never hear much from the SoftImage camp. I would bet Houdini and Cinema4D have been taking on more new users in recent years than Softimage.
I was going to shed a tear but I won’t. I grew tired of people saying how amazing xsi is/was 
Maybe so, and where is it now 
I don’t know if XSI is cool, amazing, better than Max or Maya. But the Autodesk’s behavior isn’t correct at all! You arn’t able to support all these three amazing software (Max, Maya, XSI)? Ok, sell something.
Now, XSI user are really taken to the ass. Thare are a big/middle company with strong XSI pipeline, so, what so the do now?
The software isn’t ugly or very old. Now realistic justification, reason to kill XSI.
Eh well. I remember when Autodesk bought Softimage and we were telling people that we are hesitant to develop V-Ray for it because we were not sure what Autodesk would do with it. Back then Autodesk went to great lengths to assure us that Softimage will continue to be developed so eventually we decided to move forward. I guess I should have trusted my gut feeling back then But on the bright side, I am very much relieved - we’ve spent much more money on developing V-Ray for Softimage than we ever got out of it. It would be good to put our developers on more profitable projects.
Best regards,
Vlado
Ditto on that Vlado.
Regarding of what Autodesk says, to me I treat companies like that like politicians. You can never trust to what they promise/say All they are concerned is how to make some extra profit
*cough*cough*NUKE and MODO*cough*cough*
Can’t wait for the day I can cut Autodesk out of my workflow entirely.
Even though its sucks for the softimage fanbase and studios who build that tool into their pipeline. I wonder if with announced changes to the max team we will see any of the more prominent features from softimage going into 3ds max like ICE for example. Now that I wrote it down the thought already feels silly.
It was only a matter of time unfortunately. I don’t know why they took on so many 3D programs. I always get nervous when a bigger company takes control of another piece of software. Their focus becomes more spread out and you get slower, messier, less important updates. I hope this doesn’t happen with the Luxology/Foundry merge. I don’t know much about Foundry but Luxology has always been good to me.
BTW, +1 for modo. I’m glad I’m not the only one wishing V-Ray comes to modo.
I remember reading last year sometime that Autodesk were looking at putting ICE into Maya. Back then I thought… …there goes Soft.
Have been worried about Max for a while, the only thing that gave me hope was Autodesk signing a deal with Oleg from orbaz to update pflow.
But that doesn’t really mean much I guess. I just hate the way they give nothing away about future development.
I’m very happy Vlado said they are re-purpose the programmers… glad you guys don’t fire them !
Why would we fire them, it’s hard enough to find good programmers as it is… and it’s not like we’ve run out of things to do
Best regards,
Vlado
I’m not surprised at all. I think we all saw this coming as soon as AD purchased it. It caused a huge uproar at the time and for good reason. AD has chewed up and spat out a very slick piece of software - one that, I found, had possibly the best workflow system across all the main 3d packages. I very much hope that ICE and some of XSI’s better tools and workflows might make it into max but I doubt it - I think any features will be absorbed into Maya, if at all, and the already very obvious split between max and maya will be further exaggerated. DesignViz/ProductViz? Use Max. Animation/Film/VFX? Use Maya. It’s kind of been that way for years now anyway. Perhaps a more focused production system at AD will benefit us…
I remember using XSI for my very first architectural visualisations. The integration of Mental Ray into the XSI UI was, and is, amazing. Far, far, far better than any other renderer I’ve seen integrated into a 3D package and that includes Vray. The whole Q (Render Region) thing was pretty revolutionary and the way that MR was used properly throughout the entire UI was superb. Really fast, high-quality renders and the whole Render Tree system was just so slick to use and so flexible. I loved the whole node-based system.
I even went to one of those Softimage XSI London Usergroup meetups, met Christoph Shinko and co. and picked myself up an XSI hoodie and pin badge! I must see if I can dig them out…
Yes, and they completely neglected the part where people might want to use other renderers. From the three packages, Softimage has been the most difficult to integrate into and it was obvious that it was not really designed for it.
Best regards,
Vlado
This is very true, although I think that might have been to the benefit of XSI itself. MR’s integration might not have been so good had it been more opened up to 3rd party renderers like Vray. MR’s integration in max is kind of ok but nothing like XSI’s was, perhaps for this reason. Swings and roundabouts.
TBH, the best parts of Softimage were the referencing system, the “file structure” and its meta-data making for easy attribute transfers, and the animation/rigging tools…oh and the possibility to configure one viewport to view the mesh pre-skinning, and one while skinning in t-pose and a third with full deformation on the mesh. Made character work a lot easier. My guess is these features are not ever going to be transfered to any other AD package (Maya, forget about Max…)
The whole ICE thing was pretty awesome too, but hopefully they are salvaging the concept and duct-taping it onto Maya at least. We won’t be seeing this in Max at all either I guess.
PS: I hate Autodesk 
3dmax will die soon or be reduced to a way to render disgusting bloated revit files IMO
You are expecting a software company to sell their product that has the potential to directly compete with their other products?
I didn’t even know XSI existed anymore!