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 Softimage announces XSI v3 Posted by: amigo
Source: Softimage PR
Date: Tue Jul 23 2002
Softimage Announces SOFTIMAGE|XSI V.3.0 At Siggraph 2002; Beta Testers Report Major Productivity and Performance Enhancements With New Version.
SIGGRAPH 2002
SAN ANTONIO, Texas--July 23, 2002--
Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID), today announced version 3.0 of the SOFTIMAGE(R)|XSI(R) software.
This latest version of the industry's leading 3-D nonlinear production environment is already receiving praise from beta testers worldwide for its performance, workflow and feature enhancements across the complete range of integrated modeling, animation, simulation, rendering and compositing toolsets.
Driven by the requirements of the world's most advanced and demanding film, game and broadcast production pipelines, this latest version of the SOFTIMAGE|XSI software offers artists and developers across all industries the ability to work interactively with significantly larger data sets, giving them the ability to work with more complex characters in larger numbers, more static scene elements of greater detail, and more effects of greater complexity. This new release also includes powerful new features and toolsets for expanded creativity, increased efficiency and accelerated productivity across the full range of production workflows.
Coinciding with the release of SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.3.0 software, is a new crowd simulation toolkit that introduces digital character choreography and direction to the 3-D effects industry.
The toolkit is a sophisticated behavioral animation and crowd simulation system that incorporates full-featured behavioral scripting, visual state-graph editing and dynamic motion synthesis.
The new crowd simulation subsystem, already used by top animation and effects companies in the industry on films like 'The One', 'Napoleon', and 'The Scorpion King', offers a production-proven, high-performance and interactive simulation pipeline for automating behavior for interactive objects, such as flocking, swarming, or 3-D characters in a crowd. With these new features, users can quickly build simple to highly sophisticated multi-object animations involving up to thousands of characters for pre-production visualization and direction to final production, while maintaining the ability to tweak and perfect the results at any time.
"When Softimage showed us the new crowd tools, I decided right there and then it would be the platform for us," says Jason Barlow, lead character animator at R!OT. "We used it in 'The One' to help us realize the vision of director James Wong for a scene involving 1,500 prisoners, all CG, with different behaviors. We had talked to all the other vendors out there and no other platform could have done the job and in the short time we had. We also used the XSI crowd subsystem on 'The Scorpion King', where we saved a lot of time and money and were able to keep actors and stuntmen out of harm's way."
With SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.3.0, Softimage continues to drive the art of character animation with new cutting-edge additions to character construction and setup, such as options for quickly generating fully customizable, film-quality biped and quadruped set-ups and rigs. The SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.3.0 system provides additional flexibility, higher levels of interactivity and simplifies the creation of sophisticated characters. These new tools are also perfect for smaller shops that previously could not afford the investment necessary to develop such high quality characters.
Users of the SOFTIMAGE|XSI software v.2.0, like Digital Illusion Studios, have already experienced reductions in production time of up to 40% compared to other competing 3-D products. With SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.3.0 system, users will experience even higher levels of creativity and productivity benefits, with across-the-board performance improvements, including an average 94% reduction in time for typical polygonal modeling operations, an average 31% decrease in time to perform typical deformation operations and an average 53% increase in animation playback speed on typical production scenes.
Jordi Bares, animation director at Mill TV in the UK comments: "The performance and speed of XSI version 3.0 is spectacular. The memory management is far superior to anything else I have seen and the standard workflow is much faster and less memory intensive compared to other products. Version 3.0 also has a new sophisticated algorithm for the subdivisions, and better skeleton setup tools and character tools. This new version of XSI has so many new goodies that I've been staying at work far more hours than necessary every day just to see them in action!"
"Through its extensive capabilities and rapid rate of development, SOFTIMAGE|XSI has become the market trendsetter for professional 3-D applications," says Michael Stojda, Softimage's managing director. "With version 3.0, our industry-renowned 3-D nonlinear production environment, SOFTIMAGE|XSI, has once again set a new benchmark in the industry for productivity and creative power. By converting to this new version of SOFTIMAGE|XSI, users will be able to gain a competitive advantage and realize a quick return on investment through the ability to produce richer and more visually sophisticated results in less time."
Highlights of the many new features of the SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.3.0 system include:
Interactive rendering in the SOFTIMAGE|XSI software has taken another leap forward with new features including tools for working with HDR (High Dynamic Range) images and the integration of mental ray(R) v.3.1 technology. Dramatic improvements in quality and speed, combined with the overall quality and integration of the rendering toolset, maintain the XSI software rendering as the market leader for the intuitive, interactive creation of images of unsurpassed realism.
The fully integrated dynamics simulation environment in the XSI v.3.0 product includes multiple enhancements to its industry-leading hair and fur dynamics tools, as well as groundbreaking enhancements to the 'Advanced Particles' system.
Fully integrated compositing allows artists to save more time than ever before. New features such as animatable rotosplines, Cineon format support, film grain tools and retiming tools continue to broaden the number of applications that can benefit from the ability to complete compositing functions effortlessly directly within the XSI software.
New tools for games artists include enhancements to the industry-leading real-time shader tools, support for programmable Microsoft(R) DirectX(R) real-time shading effects, a DirectX CustomView, and Platform Development Kits (PDKs) for Microsoft XBox(tm) platform and for Sony's PlayStation(R) 2.
The SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.3.0 software also includes new versions of the XSI Viewer, the Viewer SDK, the XSI File Tool Kit (FTK), the dotXSI(tm) file format, a new C++ API for the XSI SDK, and tighter interoperability with Avid products, making it more accessible to a wider range of users and production pipelines.
Pricing and Availability
The SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.3.0 system is scheduled for release in October 2002. Customers purchasing a new license or trading up to SOFTIMAGE 5/8XSI on or after July 15, 2002 will be provided with a no charge upgrade to version 3.0 when it releases.
As an added bonus, all customers purchasing a new commercial license, upgrade, or maintenance contract (new or renewal) for the SOFTIMAGE|XSI system by September 15, 2002 will receive a free temporary license, valid until November 16, 2002, for SOFTIMAGE|XSI BatchUniversal, Softimage's acclaimed processing and rendering solution combining Softimage and mental ray technologies for Discreet 3ds max, Alias Wavefront Maya, Side Effects Houdini and Softimage systems. For more information on the SOFTIMAGE|XSI software, SOFTIMAGE|XSI
BatchUniversal or to receive a maintenance quote, please visit the Softimage web site at www.softimage.com.
About Softimage Co.
Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc., is an industry leader in 3-D animation, 2-D cel animation, compositing and special effects software, designed to address the demands of the film and commercial/broadcast and games/interactive industries. SOFTIMAGE|XSI software, an integral player in Avid's Make, Manage and Move Media(tm) strategy, is the flagship product offering from Softimage. It is the industry's first 3-D nonlinear production environment providing animators and digital artists the freedom to make professional animation, visual effects and games - from major motion pictures, to cartoons and commercials, to animated content for video games and Web sites. Softimage is proud to count amongst its customers: ILM, R!OT, The Mill, Pixel Liberation Front, Blue Sky Studios, Hybride, Mainframe, Janimation, Quiet Man, PSYOP, Cinepix and Framestore. The Softimage product family is designed to help users innovate, create and collaborate throughout the production process. For more information about Softimage visit www.softimage.com. For more information about Avid visit www.avid.com.
(c)2002 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Product specifications and availability are subject to change without notice. Avid, dotXSI, Softimage, XSI and Make, Manage and Move Media are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Mental ray and mental images are registered trademarks of mental images GmbH & Co.KG in the USA and some other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
Related Links: Softimage website
Softimage|XSI 3 features overview
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