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Product Review: Softimage XSI 1.0
Softimage. For years those three little syllables rolled off the tongues of 3D artists everywhere with wonder. But then something happened. 3D Studio became 3D Studio Max. PowerAnimator became Maya. And Softimage … well, Softimage remained the same. Of course, it went through incremental updates, with feature additions and interface enhancements, but the core remained the same solid foundation on which hundreds of games and movies have been produced. While not necessarily a bad thing, the "buzz" was with Max and Maya. But there was this word whispered in quiet corners of studios and art departments around the world: "Sumatra." And it wasn't just a request for the intern to pick up some Starbucks. Sumatra was Softimage's oft-delayed next-generation 3D production tool, and it has finally arrived in a big way. Sumatra, now known by the somewhat less exciting name of Softimage XSI, builds on its strong heritage, and adds exciting new functionality. Drawing on the expertise of Softimage while adding the talents of Avid's engineers, XSI is definitely going to turn a few heads. From the moment XSI arrives it screams it's something different. Rather than the limp cardboard most packages ship in, Softimage XSI arrives in a strong particle board box that will easily stand up to the daily abuse it will take on your desktop. Installation is as simple as any Windows product. SoftImage XSI ships with a full copy of SoftImage 3.9 (more on this later), and comes on a total of 6 separate CDs, including Phoenix Tools ParticleSuite and ClothExtreme. Liscencing is equally as simple, once the license is received. Softimage uses the FlexLM system, and can be serviced via a network server or the ubiquitous parallel port dongle. Happily, it did not balk at being included in a chain of dongles for Maya and Max. When you first start XSI, you realize it is not your average Windows application. It appears as if Avid's Macintosh legacy has heavily influenced the interface. Whether it's a plus or a minus for you, the only standard Windows features I could see were the title and menu bars. Even the file dialogs use Softimage's Unix/Mac-blended UI design. This unique UI did cause one minor technical problem: as Softimage starts, it sizes itself to your current resolution -- ignoring the Windows Taskbar. Setting the Taskbar to Autohide seemed to be the best solution. The UI itself is divided into five main areas. By default, Softimage gives you the standard top/front/side/perspective that every 3D program offers. Users can also change these to any number of editors and windows, such as the Animation Editor or Schematic View. Taking up the most real estate are the workspace viewports. To the left is the Toolbar area, which is divided into Modeling, Animation, and Rendering tool sets. This is where you readily access most of your commands. The top is the main menu bar, where you access all the general functions of the program, as well as the toolsets of the Model, Animate, and Render menus without having to switch modules. The bottom contains all the timeline and command line functions. Strangely, this is also where you access all the animation editing tools. I say strangely because it was literally the last place I looked for them while going over the program the first time. Finally, the right hand of the screen contains the Main Command Area. This ominous-sounding control panel contains everything from layer controls and selection filtering to transformation and grouping tools. One very unique feature I have come to love is the concept of "sticky" hotkeys. By quickly tapping a key, you enter into a mode or tool. Tapping the key again returns you from that mode. In addition, if you simply hold a key down, you remain in that tool or mode only as long as that key is depressed. For instance, pressing the "m" key will allow you to quickly grab and move a vertex or CV. Or by simply tapping it, you enter into a true sub-object editing routine. This is much quicker than the standard method of having to enter into a sub-object mode for every little tweak, and I find myself missing it when I'm working outside of XSI. I can't say I liked the interface as a whole, though. It obviously tries to retain the feeling of previous versions of Softimage while adding workflow enhancements and access to new tools. Anyone who has become accustomed to the standard Windows interface will most likely have trouble. However, artists who have never ventured outside of Softimage should have no trouble whatsoever. The other UI element you will encounter most often is the Property editor. The Property editor offers access to every bit of data available on any object. It is organized into "pages" which users can organize in myriad ways, and it is necessary to do so for many objects in order to keep track of the most-used channels on an object. The Property editor is also one of the most convenient ways to access the construction history on an object, called the Operator Stack. Everything you do to an object, from applying a deformer to moving a vertex creates an operator, and can be easily accessed and keyframed through the Property editor. One interesting thing I noticed about the interface is that the actual execution is extremely fast. Flying around fully shaded complex models was a breeze. And playing animations had fully skinned characters updating in all windows, fully shaded, in real time. Whether this is due to the skills of the Softimage engineers or left-over insight from when Microsoft owned Softimage is unknown, but it is impressive. Modeling Softimage has an extensive and robust set of tools for modeling NURBS surfaces. This is a welcome change from the days of Softimage 3.x, where the NURBS modeling features were decidedly subpar. In particular, I found the Curve Net and Continuity Manager to be particularly powerful and useful tools in creating seamless, detailed organic surfaces. In addition, surface fillets, surface blends, bi-rail surfaces and four-sided surfaces provide a complete suite of tools for creating anything you may desire -- using NURBS.
This is where we come to Softimage XSI's largest and nearly fatal flaw. You cannot create polygonal objects of any real use with the program as it now stands. While you have access to a variety of polygon primitives, the only way to edit them is pulling on vertices or using deformers. This is, without a doubt, unacceptable for in-game model creation. This is the main reason for the inclusion of Softimage 3D, which has a full suite of polygon editing and creation tools. In particular, I found their UV editing tools to be quite excellent. Luckily, Softimage XSI can easily import Softimage 3D scenes completely intact, including any polygonal objects.
While using Softimage 3D is quite a powerful solution to XSI's polygonal shortcomings, forcing game artists to learn two programs to create assets is a hindrance to Softimage XSI gaining ground with companies dedicated to Max, Maya, Lightwave, or Mirai. To artists already using Softimage 3D, this should be no big deal, and may actually help in the process of switching to Avid's next-generation offering. ________________________________________________________ |
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Features
Softimage
XSI 1.0
