CompuServe Messages

<<SoftImage is by far the best animation package I have ever used or seen…>> Jim, for me, Softimage is, without question, the buggiest piece of software I've ever seen. In the last two years, I've gotten it to crash literally 3 dozen times. I can be doing something as prosaic as changing the texture on an object, and BAM! it blows me right out to UNIX. The damnable thing about it is, when Softimage *knows* about these bugs, they can't seem to fix them without creating new bugs, and when we (Sega's 3D dudes) point out repeatable bugs that we've seen for *weeks*, the Softimage guys say, "Huh… You're the first people to ever show those to us." They've *got* to be kidding. If Microsoft is doing a "straight port" of the code to NT, heaven help them. I'm astonished as to how ILM or other big effects house can actually do production work with software this fragile. (I also haven't said anything about tutorials that are about 10% the length of 3DS's and of SI's hidden and counter-intuitive features for which you need trained SI operators to teach you.) Everyone I've ever spoken to about Softimage agreed that you simply cannot learn this software from a manual — you have to have an experienced user teach you. <<…there is a reason this other [SGI] stuff is expensive.>> Yeah — it's because, up until now, the companies have been able to get away with it by suckering high-end users ("if it's expensive, it's got to be good!") There's also a reason that Microsoft just cut the price of Softimage to 1/3rd of its original cost — because they are discovering that they can't get away with these ridiculous prices any more. (An effects supervisor at ILM told me that he simply cannot get management to look at low-end 3D platforms, completely for political reasons — ILM has spent millions on SGIs and Softimage, and no one is willing to admit that they might've wasted all that money on a bad decision, nor suffer the PR flack with the strategic partnerships that would result.) The *only* software advantages Softimage has over 3DS are IK with function curves, working on spline-based models, and ray-tracing capability (which, SGI's notwithstanding, can boost rendering times ridiculously.) These features will undoubtedly be available for 3DS users in the not-too-distant future. On the other hand, there's an enormous number of things I can do with 3DS and Plug-ins faster (even on a PC) and better than on Softimage. If Microsoft did a straight port of Softimage, feature for feature, and sold it for the same cost as 3DS, it would still be less capable software overall — and frankly, I wouldn't waste my money. One final note: remember Intuit and Quicken. All of Bill's money and all of Bill's men still couldn't sell MS-Money… — Jon