 | | | XSI & Maya compatibility | XSI & Maya compatibility 2005-04-23 - By peterb
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> Hello everybody. Hope I did not get in the wrong place but I was trying to
> contact the support from Softimage and after 15 minutes I could not find a
> simple e-mail address where to address my questions. So hopefully somebody
> here could help me out with some answers.
support@(protected) would be the support for existing customers.
but what you really should do, is contact the proper sales office
according to the softimage website that would be Avid Technology Europe, out
of Pinewood, UK:
http://www.softimage.com/corporate/sales/salesoffices/default.asp?location
=salesoffice&search=country&code=RO
have them send over someone to discuss your needs.
or even better:
contact http://www.cg-soup.com/whatwedo/
these people are very well placed to consult animation production pipelines
that involve XSI to some extent.
they can give you much more to the point, and unbiased information of XSI in
production, and even help you setup a pipeline.
> We are working on an animation feature and we would like to buy quite some
> software packages. Since Maya is very expensive we don't have the budget
to
> buy a licence for each station so we are having a look into Softimage
> Foundation now. My main concern is if the models ( objects and
characters )
> are fully compatible with Maya ?
exporting geometry, with UVs and textures from softimage to maya should be
pretty straightforward.
I've allways used .obj (the XSI exporter is a bit slow for heavy geometry),
and it brings over all of the above.
.fbx and .xsi are also formats to be investigated.
both allow for so much more than just geometry, but it ll depend
on the exporter/importer/format version what features will be supported.
.xsi export is more complete going out of XSI
.fbx import is (I suppose) more complete going into Maya.
> Or if there is needed any plug-in to convert between formats is there any
> compromise in the middle? My point is we woud like to do all modeling
> in Softimage and the rest in Maya .
Dare I say that this doesnt sound like the best idea.
Modelling is probably not going to be the biggest part of your workflow.
Animation setup/rigging, creating and applying textures and projections,
animation itself and rendering will probably be the biggest portion of the
work, and in all of those you might find that XSI is very well positioned.
Arguably better so than Maya.
For FX still has its weaknesses, and Maya is rather well served.
> change since I hear some artists prefer softimage since they say it's
better
> but after al I think this is like choosing between Mercedes or BMW. The
> workflow was planed initially for a complete Maya setup but I am trying to
> find a more affordable way. I would really appreciate any advice on the
> compatibility issue between Softimage Foundation and Maya . ( I would dare
> to ask if there is any way to export UVs or animation settings to maya
????
> hmm) Thank in advance, Ovi
>
All I can add: please dont take my word for it.
Just check out some of the animation feature productions recently or
currently in production on XSI,
some moving over to XSI in the middle of their production, quite a few
choosing to go for a complete XSI pipeline.
and most of them not out of budgettary considerations, as this was when XSI
was more expensive than the competition.
a good place to start would be:
http://www.softimage.com/Community/Xsi/Mag/CS/default_v5.asp
http://www.softimage.com/Community/Xsi/Mag/Cs/default_v1.asp
http://www.softimage.com/Community/Xsi/Mag/Cs/default_v2.asp
http://www.softimage.com/Community/Xsi/Mag/Cs/default_v3.asp
http://www.softimage.com/Community/Xsi/Mag/Cs/default_v4.asp
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