The implication here is that XSI was tried and it fell short, and
that for that reason it was somehow lacking. Given the number of talented
people using it to good effect who are not only pleased with it but also
produce remarkable work, this patently isn’t true.
I’ve gone into a lot of companies, either as part of the
production team or to help guide them through their changeover to XSI and in my
experience, 99% of the problems encountered by new users come from lack of
familiarity and are resolvable one way or another. But, and this is true of
any software, the demands made of both it and the person driving it are
significant and it requires a reasonable experience to be able to work
with it to best advantage. The number of times I’ve heard the cry ‘why
doesn’t it do this, it’s complete crap’ followed by ‘oh,
it does. Hmmm, that’s neat’ when you show them a better way.
If somweone were to kick off a major production with new
software in either an existing or new studio without having staff experienced
in that software on board no-one would be surprised if they ran into
trouble. So how could one possibly perform a sensible evaluation without
a single experienced person to guide you through that evaluation. It doesn’t
make sense and it surprises me when studios do it. People using new software *always*
blame the software when it doesn’t do what they want, and most of the
time they’re wrong. Having an experienced staffer on hand to guide new
users through the difficulties of learning new software is an absolute must,
both for production and for evaluation, if you want it to be a realistic
evaluation.
6.0 received a bad press. Partially, but only partially, it was
deserved. It was rushed out too quickly with some of its newer features maybe
not tested as far as they should have been. Interestingly, a lot of that press
was on XSIbase, where there’s a large hobbyist contingent far too willing
to shoot from the hip, more often without thinking and with dud ammunition.
Some of the rants on XSIbase were both un-necessary and undeserved and strongly
mask the fact that 6.0 in many respects is a remarkable release, offering new features
and at least one very brave rewrite. Remember also that the response from
Softimage to the issues raised was both fast and comprehensive and now we
have 6.01, which has addressed those issues quite thoroughly.
This is a fine piece of software and it comes with a level of
support and commitment from the company behind it that you don’t often
see these days where costs a being bullied down by a world that wants something
for nothing. I think we shouldn’t forget that in discussions like this.
From:
owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of El
Espiritu VFX
Sent: 05 April 2007 18:33
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: Even Lightwave gets in front of XSI for a Maxwell plug-in
I don't have any 3d Tracking
application, so I asked a freelacer to resolve a shot, and we had to go back
and forth too many times until he could send me a scene that worked in XSI,
while the LW version of the track worked at first time. As I didn't export it
myself I don't know what the issues were.
With realflow we couldn't import particles, only meshes, so we had to export
the camera from XSI just to render a particle pass hiring another studio with
Max to compose it with XSI render. I think now it's ok, but for the time I
needed it wasn't.
For Bodypaint, we had to download the patch for XSI.
Maybe I'm just having bad luck, but all the solutions that work directly on the
other packages always need a workarround or waiting in XSI, at least this was
my experience this last 3 months while testing XSI with LW, Max and Maya
artists trying to do the switch.
Don't get me wrong I love XSI and think it's going in the right path, but I
feel it's always more difficult to have plugins, or connection to external apps
with XSI than other 3d apps.
2007/4/5, Joe Laffey <joe(at)laffey.tv>:
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, El Espiritu VFX wrote:
> Where I work there's people coming from Maya, Max, LW, and me from XSI. We
> all started testing XSI 3 months ago to do a total switch, right now after
3
> month of testing 6.0 nobody supports me on the idea of buying XSI
licenses.
>
> One of the problems is, don't ask me why but XSI is the most problematic
> piece of software when it comes to interconnecting with REALFLOW,
> MatchMover, PFtrack, Syntheyes, BodyPaint, etc... It's always
having to
> find a patch, or twicking something, or having 80% of the features the
> others have, or at least waiting 4 months more than the rest.
>
> Does anyone have the same experience at this point?
No problems getting track in from PFTrack and SynthEyes. (I did have a
problem with SynthEyes and 5.11, but after a couple emails to Russ
Anderson (the author), and then an email to SoftImage support hooking the
two up they resolved the issue and Russ posted a new exporter within
hours. He is very dedicated to making things work.
--
Joe
Laffey |
Visual Effects for Film and Video
LAFFEY Computer Imaging | -------------------------------------
St. Louis,
MO
| Show Reel http://LAFFEY.tv/?e05369
USA
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| -*- Digital Fusion Plugins -*-
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