Still is actually, amazing piece of software engineering. I remember going to Siggraph 2007 in San Diego, where they showcased Moondust, a.k.a ICE to standing ovations. I remember spending time learning Softimage|Behaviour, did some tests, fun but ultimately it stayed experimental. 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 the last version of Softimage|3D, 4.0. 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 that quirky little side program, Softimage|Particle? I loved playing with it even though it really couldn’t do a whole lot. 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. 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. 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. I remember becoming extremely quick with Soft3D, the user interface was so amazingly different from anything else. I remember using a GMX2000 Glint graphics card the price of a decent car just to be able to run a high resolution screen (1600×1200). I spent a lot of time making dinosaurs and that sort of thing in Softimage|3D to learn 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. We’d love fxguide readers to share their stories and work using Softimage over the years too. You can find out more about the Softimage announcement at Autodesk’s site, and also in this in-depth Q&A.
The company has advised these options will be available until February 1st, 2016. All data was built in Alias then ported across to SI, starting with Jurassic.”Īutodesk is offering Autodesk Softimage Subscription customers ‘no-cost options’ to migrate to either Maya or 3ds Max software as they continue to use Softimage in their pipes. The last official animation use for Alias was T2. We never used the Alias forward (animation) system again. We were very impressed and bought 10 licenses running on SGI 420 Indigos. As I was building the rex skin, I was evaluating SI as was Eric Armstrong. “After the first walking rex test that I did in Alias V2.4.1 (forward kinematics),” he says, “we brought in SI V2.6 (inverse kin system). It took about a month to animate the daylight shot of the rex, skinned and walking.”įormer ILM artist Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams, who worked on The Abyss, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park and several other breakthrough ILM pics, told fxguide about his early experience using Softimage at the studio on Jurassic Park: I then rebuilt the data using b-splines (Alias v2.4) then moved all the data to SI 2.6. Says Williams: “Mark Dippe’ and I took a 5 foot Stan Winston model, cut it up, drove down to Cyberware, scanned in the pieces. A ‘chained’ T-rex drawing from Williams used to figure out the joint placement with Softimage units. Many advancements in the software, which became known as SoftimageXSI, were made over time, perhaps most notably with ICE (Interactive Creative Environment). Microsoft acquired the company in 1994 and renamed the software Softimage|3D, before it changed hands to Avid in 1998 and then Autodesk in 2008. Softimage enjoyed a long and beloved history in CG and VFX production, beginning life as the Softimage Creative Environment and used by ILM in many of its early landmark productions. Although there will be a 2015 release of the software – shipping around April 14th – support for Softimage will continue only until April 30, 2016. Today Autodesk announced that Softimage will be no longer. We regret to inform you that the upcoming 2015 release will be the last one for Autodesk® Softimage®.
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