Softimage didn't license from pixar and the tessellation and creasing implementation are not the same. On the maya side, it's been co-developed and licensed from pixar and fully compatible.
On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 7:49 PM, Raffaele Fragapane <raffsxsil...@googlemail.com> wrote: > Pixar's SDS "technology" has been licensed from everybody and their dog for > years, actually. > Thanks to some patents granted on creasing it was either doing that, or > risking litigation, or offsetting whole sets of features from the way they > would have looked in PRMan. > > In theory only the RR semi-sharp creasing algorithm is patented, and some > vendors worked around it with different methods, but it's always been > slightly ubiquitous and many bigger fishes decided not to risk it, or simply > to align to PRMan's look for those, and license away. > > Soft has had the same Pixar licensing note forever, and Houdini could render > creases in SDS in PRMan for ages, but not in Mantra, due to the same patents > (RR SS creasing). Air, 3Delight and MRay work around it with different > algorithms. > > This new openSubD stuff is really interesting, I do resent they had to go > for the MS open source licensing though (MS-Pl I think), but it seemed > unavoidable given the collaboration, and all in all it's not too bad a > license anyway.
