It was October 1999 and I was still a student, researching for a college or university that would teach 3d graphics. I´ve heard all about maya and such and such movies being created with it. Then life as it had it, took me to Spain. There I found a training center. The guy told me: you have great skills with 3DsMax, would you consider Maya (€16.000) or Softimage (€11.000)? I asked: what movies have been made. I saw the list, and also the mayor animators / producers the teacher had contact with. He told me: Softimage is the wave of the future. I enrolled.
At first It was very hard to go with so many buttons. I studied guides and the rest it´s history. Great support of the community (xsibase.com, edharriss). Since then I need not look back at my decision. Until today I feel comfortable that the software delivers. Thank you guys (si-community and mailing list). David R. On Wednesday, March 5, 2014 8:06 AM, Arvid Björn <arvidbj...@gmail.com> wrote: 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 >
