I wish to add something to this discussion.
Last October-November, XSI 5.0 came out. Everything appeared to work
fine with my tests, so I started to deploy it with the rendering team
at the studio. To soon find a show-stopper issue with Linux (something
broken with relative paths). That made me furious (some may remember
my nuclear email), and because of that problem we got stuck with XSI
4.2.
I initiated a call with support, trying to resolve the issue. I
provided lot of details about the problem, how to reproduce it, but we
did not made significant progress.
However at one point I got the chance to let developers know about the
problem. So I wrote a lenghty description, prepared test scenes with
cases that would trigger the problem and cases that would not, and
went as far as doing a 10 minutes Camtasia capture to show and comment
in realtime the symptoms. Thank God, Softimage fixed the problem for
XSI 5.1, and I will gradually deploy it over the next few weeks,
starting with the rendering team, down to the modeling team.
My point is that if you want something to get fixed/improved, you'll
have to fight for it. Softimage (and any other) have their own road
map and priorities. And to do this fight means providing repro steps,
scenes and other related data, detailed explanations of what you did
and did not, your observations, and finally to make sure the right
people in the company get your material. Some problems are obvious and
easy to fix, others are much more complex and hard to pin down. If I
had not put all this effort into bringing Softimage to fix my problem,
there are chances it would have made it to XSI 5.1. "Apocalypse" would
be an understatement of my mood if such a thing would have happen.
It's very tempting to point a finger at someone when things go wrong.
But if you don't go the extra mile for Softimage, I don't see how
Softimage could go that extra for you.
Cheers
Bernrad
On 4/2/06, Wayne <w1343(at)comcast.net> wrote:
> Perhaps for those smaller jobs you could just use 4.2 maybe? Just a thought.
> I know it sucks not being able to use the latest version, seeing as how you
> are paying maintenance and all.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of
> Rainer Schmidt
> Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2006 10:49 AM
> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
> Subject: Re: 5.1 Download now
>
> "bit of a bold statement isn't it?"
> Yup, not politically correct. But consent usually rises out of dialog and
> controversy. Your points are well made and I do not dissagree. But to expand
> a tiny bit on 'shoddy'... If it is posible that I can crash an application
> in a way that it does not even say goodbye or if I can lock it up with a
> data import then that module has been implemented shoddy. I'd wish it works
> like the rest of the tool with which I have ZERO, NADA, NONE problems
> whatsoever. Unlike other apps I pile up left and right on my way. Specially
> the modeler... you can only pry that one out of my dead hands. And the
> FX-Tree... and MR/Rendertree... and... you get the point.
>
> Only in case of the few hundred .obj I imported and have to import into XSI
> I have experienced majorly three variations of problems which I will not
> repeat as I already sound like a broken record. I dropped those problems
> into the support hotline as severe and all I get for month now is that
> 'someone' is working on it, without results (yet).
>
> I really agree that V5 is a major step forward. But for me personally, I
> have lost three (small) jobs because it took me wayyyyy to long to bend the
> .obj straight. I am refering to the corrupted UV problem, and the inability
> to automatically assign textures to the objects while reading the .mtl file.
> All known issues, nothing fixed, and no replies, no estimations.
>
> I read them with V4.2 and that works. However, the .xsi exchange creates
> other problems... In the moment I cannot win without a pretty weird
> application chain through which I have to pump and fiddle every second mesh
> I am dealing with.
>
> Enough... point made. When the weather is getting a bit better I'll take my
> plane up to Montreal and aquire a status in person ;-).
>
> Now I have to go and play with .obj again.... grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
>
> Rainer
>
>
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