Stefan, re-reading my post, I'm not sure I was totally clear about modeling. I'm not sure if this puts us back in agreement or not, but to clarify, what I meant was just that most pipelines have a reasonable degree of choice in which package they use for modeling. I don't spend much time modeling personally so I'm not qualified to comment on the capabilities of the different packages. From what I do know I fully agree that losing XSI is a hit in this area. For me, it's a hit in every area, just due to how I can make use of ICE pretty much across the board. Not to mention the rest of the tools and the operator stack. I think part of why I glossed over modeling is that I think users who want to will be able to stick with XSI for modelling a little longer in that area than in, say, lighting, where things have to be more consistent across the studio.
I would also say, I think my comments don't really at all capture the needs of game studios. We're all more alike than we are different, and I consider us one user community, but as far as my personal experience, I'm definitely coming at this from a primarily commercials/features point of view. Not sure if your a games guy or not, but I'm just realizing that's a broad category of people who are likely not as antsy as me about getting a new scene assembly tool :) Now I'm truly going on a tangent, but I would also imagine that a scene assembly tool that exports to Arnold would also serve as a good framework for collecting, prepping, optimizing, and exporting game assets :) You're basically exporting things to a "renderer" after all. > @Andy J.:Thanks for summing it up so nicely and comprehensively. I need to > disagree on the modeling part though. Even in XSI I miss a lot, especially > in terms of symmetrical modeling and sculpting. There is huge potential for > improvement in any existing application out there. > >
