Interview with Softimage

I had a chance to speak with Kevin Clark of Softimage. Softimage had a busy show announcing the release of Softimage XSI 6.5 for Essentials and Advanced with over 30 new features. These developments are the results of the work over the last 8 months with their various partners including Valve, Lionhead Studios, EA and Animal Logic. Many of the new features were co-developed with their partners to address specific problems and are now included in the product.

Softimage also announced a new pricing structure for their XSI line-up. The entry-level Foundation package will remain at $495. The professional-level Essentials package is increasing in price to $2995, but it now includes Joe Alder Hair and Fur, Syflex Cloth and Physics modules previously unavailable in the Essentials package. With these additions, the Essentials package includes everything a digital artist wants.

The price of the Softimage XSI Advanced has dropped to $4995, which now includes 5 more render licenses for a total of 6 render nodes. This offering includes everything you need to build a small production studio from one box. The Advanced package also includes a Fluid solver, a Behavior module for doing crowds, and the Elastic Reality morphing module. The goal is to make it easy for artists and technical directors to get all the tools they need.

Essentials and Advanced also include the new features released as part of 6.5 including HDRI support, improved SDK, enhanced UV mapping, updated and enhanced audio support for precise audio synching.

Kevin also mentioned the benefits that are being realized from making the rendering API open in version 6. Several new 3rd party rendering offerings are now available for XSI including the Maxwell rendering system, V-Ray and 3-Delight. Mental ray is still included as the embedded renderer. There is also rumors of talks with Pixar to integrate with Renderman, but no announcement can be made at this time.

Softimage Face Robot 1.8 was also announced at the show. This release includes fast integration with Maya and other game pipelines. Many companies balk at the $100,000 price tag for Face Robot, but they don’t realize that this high price tag is the top end price which includes a team of consultants and ownership in the product. Face Robot and its pricing structure are very scalable. It can even be rented for a 2 month project for a reasonable fee.

The benefits of Face Robot make it possible for all game characters to have believable realistic emotional performances instead of just focusing on the main characters. This can be done using keyframing or mocap. Kevin wanted the game industry to know that Face Robot is a unique production tool that brings a whole new level of realism to your game.

The new features in version 1.8 include running inline with the XSI 6 engine. It also works via Crosswalk with 3ds Max or Maya. It has a new shape rig export system to blend shapes and an updated pipeline export that includes auto enveloping. It also ships with 7 new preset head models instead of just the one including different races, genders and styles letting you start out more accurately. There is also a 23-part set of training videos available.

Overall, Softimage has just reported its best fiscal quarter in the past couple of years and feels the company has great momentum. Siggraph is always a great chance to see the various Softimage customers showing off their amazing works.

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