Just posted this, let's hear some more! I remember seeing "Godzilla was animated with Softimage" in the end credits of Godzilla in the 90's, I remember feeling all warm and fuzzy just knowing about it. I spent a lot of time making dinosaurs and that sort of thing in Softimage|3D to learn more. I remember using a GMX2000 Glint graphics card the price of a decent car just to be able to run a high resolution screen (1600x1200). I remember becoming extremely quick with Soft3D, the user interface was so amazingly different from anything else. Middle click menus, double-, triple- and even quadruple clicking keys for shortcuts on the keyboard, left, middle and right mouse buttons being used for various smart context sensitive tasks. It still blows my mind when I remind myself that X C and V letters themselves actually sort of resembles graphic representations of scaling, rotation and translation tools, respectively. I remember baby-sitting a render all night long just because MR would crash every 5 or so frames for my first large commercial production, 750 frames of hard earned PAL frames. Went to bed at 9am. I remember that quirky little side program, Softimage|Particle? I loved playing with it even though it really couldn't do a whole lot. I remember the first buzz on Sumatra, and even though XSI 1.0 wasn't really ready and I started off a bit reluctant, by v1.5 I was flying.The render tree seemed intimidating, yet curiously inviting, and it turned out to change everything about how I worked. I remember the last version of Softimage|3D, 4.0. RIP old friend. I remember the blazingly fast SubD's in XSI 3.0 (I think?), suddenly you could modify amazingly detailed subdivided objects in real time, the mayans stood by watching in awe. I remember spending time learning Softimage|Behaviour, did some tests, fun but ultimately it stayed experimental. I remember going to Siggraph 2007 in San Diego, where they showcased Moondust, a.k.a ICE to standing ovations. It was simply HUGE. Still is actually, amazing piece of software engineering. I even remember the amazingly simple licensing where you just pressed a button inside XSI to get an updated license file, it was all connected and working.
Then there was Autodesk. Thanks for all these years Softimage, you've always been my favorite tool - nay companion. On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Andy Nicholas <a...@andynicholas.com> wrote: > Hi guys, > I just got contacted by Ian Failes from FXGuide. He's looking for people > to add > their stories about Softimage to his article. > > You can add a comment here: > > http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/remembering-softimage/ > > > Cheers, > A >
