topic.
sell me to XSI in your own words! 
No, this is not a comparison between different apps, I DON’T want a fight.
If you maybe migrated from Maya, Max,… tell me why? Are you happy with the current XSI? Your thoughts.
Are you an animator? How does animation work out for you in XSI? And how is rendering (mental ray wise)?
Is this a stable app or does it crash a lot?
Just write what you think…
thank you for your help.
its a very subjective point of view…so give 7.5 trial a go. 30 days should help you get an idea.
plenty of tuts on digital tutors as well.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/mform?id=12421549&siteID=123112
Iam a max based artist, because i was doin a lot of Viz Work. I’ve worked occasionaly in Maya for tv work. I was always amazed by maya and find that max is not smart enough and old.
But the pbm wih maya is its complexity and lots and lots of menus and parameters.
I think that it is a pretty big software, not for small projects or small teams like mine ( Tv commercials)
So i was not satisfied with Max and maya… Then I desided to take a look at XSI.
Iam workin on it since a month, the learning curve is prety easy especialy when you come from maya.
Conclusion:
I think that it is a wondeful software, very smart, every think is close to you when you need it, the UI is not as beautiful as in maya but… OK
MR is better integrated than in maya because its the native renderer, so it makes thinks more consistante and clear.
Very easy to use wich provides speed in your workflow.
For the moment i am very satisfied…But there is only one think that disturbs me:
Why it is not so popular as maya, I dont understand. for me XSI is as good as or even better in some areas than maya. so why it hasen’t the same popularity? espicialy in movies.
May be:
Mel scripting??
Renderman??
Documentation??
Or just a better marketing??
Yup, it’s the fastest program out there and it has the incredible ICE technology !
(watch in HD)
It’s called marketing.
I remember about 10 years ago when Kinetix owned 3d max(or Studio), they had this giant booth at NAB. Next to them was the tiny Lightwave booth.
At the Lightwave booth, there were robots, photoreal jets, realistic water, spaceships being cut in half by lasers and exploding. Movie and TV effects galore. Great stuff.
Over at the MAx booth, they had the dancing baby, which was their pride and joy at the time.
MAx was known as the most used software and had tons of ads, but we all knew that Lightwave was better, based on what was produced with it.
This was not true back then and it’s still not true. People who make these kinds of comments usually have never used anything other than lightwave. It’s comments like these that kept me using lightwave for years longer than I should have. Lightwave is extremely outdated and the only thing Newtek seems interested in updating is the render engine. Their inability to live up to their promises and hafl-assed implimentation of their updates have cost them most of their user base. There is a reason that lightewave is hardly used in the industry any more and it has nothing to do with marketing.
As for the original question (which had nothing to do with lightwave) I’ve been learning Maya and I have to say that I think the XSI interface is much better. I really couldn’t see myself ever recomending Maya as a modeling tool just because the interface and interaction to the tools is so bad. Maya feel like every part of it was written by a different person and no one bothered talking to eachother about how it should all work.
Anyway, as others have said, download the trial version and give it a go. If you have any questions feel free to ask here. Also, don’t forget to check out the video tutorials at http://community.softimage.com/ under the training section.
Not saying its true now…
But back then Lightwave artists were producing cooler stuff. It was pretty hard to find examples of Max stuff that was at the same level as Lightwave. Anyway, I don’t want to turn this thread off track, and I’ve seen you get upset before, so take a pill and relax.
Also, you don’t need to use a software to be able to see the fruits of the artists’ labor with it.
This was not true back then and it’s still not true. People who make these kinds of comments usually have never used anything other than lightwave. It’s comments like these that kept me using lightwave for years longer than I should have. Lightwave is extremely outdated and the only thing Newtek seems interested in updating is the render engine. Their inability to live up to their promises and hafl-assed implimentation of their updates have cost them most of their user base. There is a reason that lightewave is hardly used in the industry any more and it has nothing to do with marketing.
Lightwave’s render engine used to be considered one of, if not the best of all the main packages in the olden days.
As for it being a generally better package than Max, that’s subjective. It may have been better at producting nice looking images out of the box . Its certainly not better than Max now though.
LW has been always relatively crap in the animation area. Thats why there has been a massive influx of LW users to XSI recently.
(To give Newtek credit where its Due… they know legacy LW is old and creaky. Thats why they’re making LWcore. As for how well it does or how long it’ll take, who knows.)
I made the switch from Maya to Softimage. The first time I tried to learn Softimage I was a bit confused and went back to Maya, but then almost a year later I gave it a second go and things started to click.
For the most part, the two programs do exactly the same thing. There really isn’t much that one package can do that the other one cannot. And if your using Mental Ray, then your shaders and render settings are nearly identical.
The big difference really comes down to the layout and interface as well as the fluidity of the tools that are built into the package out of the box.
For a major studio who hires full time programmers to customize and re-build their software and can afford to buy any plug-in on the market, then Maya may offer some distinct advantages and it will be a great asset for you to know and understand Maya’s interface in case you get a job at one of these places.
However out of the box Softimage is entirely ready to go for a smaller studios and individual artists, with a lot of thought put into how things are organized and used by modelers, animators, etc… And for me, while the tools and ideas in both packages are very similar, it’s Softimages streamlined and well organized approach that really sets it apart. Where as with Maya, I always found myself customizing hot keys and shelves trying to get the feel of my workflow comfortable and productive, but with XSI, almost all of the commands and tools I am looking for, are readily available by default.
Some of my favorite things about XSI are it’s default hotkey/interface, the Compound Shaders, ICE, and the powerful but simple to use FX tree.
P.S. When you first launch Softimage you get an interaction model option that will actually allow you to use Maya defaults, however if you choose not to use the Maya navigation option, and instead take advantage of the default Softimage interface, it may take slightly longer to learn but you will get more out of the program in the long run. If you choose this route I highly recommend immediately going to File>Preferences>Tools>Camera and turning OFF “wheel zoom” as this will allow you to use the mouse wheel to adjust your brush size when painting weights or using the proportional modeling brush. I also recommend changing File>Preferences>Interaction then click on the “Tools” tab, and check ON both Enable Sticky boxes, one of which is now turned off by default. Both of these suggestions actually used to be the defaults in XSI prior to the release of 7.0
I have maya version two books on my shelf. So I Have followed the application over time, and know the work flow, as in it feels natural. However, I have major issues with their complicated approach to all things. For example they seemed to take pride in the fact that for many versions there was no default lighting and you would need to waste time adding a light to the scene in order to test render an object.
For many versions there were no presets or good default settings for different nodes so you had to spend huge amounts of time tweaking things just to get a result. Now a lot of that has changed but Maya is still not as friendly as it could be for the artist or small studio. Also because they take the most complicated approach to everything when they roll out new features they are full of bugs for the first version or so and not reliable or you need to do too many work arounds so you feel like you are fighting with the software.
Perhaps one reason there are so many mel scrips and plugins for Maya is because users prefer less complicated work flows or write scripts to fill in the many holes in Mayas implementation or lack of implementation. It took them way too long to add things like pelting for textures, and edge loops for modeling etc. Also, they added FBIK from motion builder but to really use it one must download a mel script written by a user years ago that provides ability to pin Fk effectors etc for fbik rig… It is still one of the top downloads on Highend3d.
XSI seems to pride itself on being artist friendly. The application has a work flow friendly layout and the timeline and way you can key attributes could be the best. Things like the motion mixer are mature and very well thought out for example you can add notes to layers or clips for dialogue etc. same thing with the shape manager…both are user friendly and allow grouping as well as a dedicated window for facial animation.
In maya the blend shape window is really rigid and hard to use. Using the blend shape attibute in attribute window is not much better. I suppose a td could use some of mayas new features to create a module for the animator, but unless you have a huge td staff that just does stuff like that its not practicle.
My main beef is the things Maya intoduces are not reliable for the first couple of product cycles, or just too complicated to do things on the fly. XSI seems more like a swiss army knife in that its reliable and works the first time you open it.
Right now I plan to use Maya just because I know it, but my long term goal is to transition to XSI. Maya is very strong application I’m just tired of fighting with it.
Im a longtime MAX user and I tried XSI in the past back in version 5, but it didnt really catch on. Im curious now again now though, so I thought Id download the demo and try it out for my personal stuff.
One thing that Ive heard is that XSI lacks alot of the poly modeling tools that MAX have, is that just rumours or is there some truth to it?
They are very different to begin with.
Where max tends to have a pre-canned tool that only operates one way for nearly everything you can think of, XSI plays more on a strong and versatile framework and a more clutter free interaction model.
You will find some notable absents in XSI coming from max (IE: Shell and measure tools), some available as plugins (shell replaced by tiny thickness), some missing (measure tools in xsi are absent and need to be worked around), some replaced by a more open workflow that you might end up enjoying or not. Some people do and find XSI a better and more flowing modelling app because of it, some people can’ deal with it very well and end up being more productive in max even after they gave xsi a serious try.
Can’t beat personal preference, or sometimes simply bother rewiring your brain around after it worked a certain way for several years 
The approach, speaking more objectively, pays in spades when it comes to animation, character FX etc, suffers when dealing with more design or architecture oriented work.
We’re not talking about a severely lacking toolset or really clunky implementation like Maya’s below average modeling tools though.
I totally agree (why wouldn’t I) with everything you said except the last part about design work.
If you’re talking industrial design or arch viz then you have some points- but come out of the box render time, the XSI pass and override system, while not a “sexy feature” on any list can save some serious time. I think people coming from other applications do not always get that in XSI passes are a hell of a lot more than outputting separate channels with hidden objects. So yeah…set up is a little more…but when the client changes their mind you have a wealth of options with XSI’s more procedural nature and pass/override system than many applications deemed “design/illustration” friendly IMHO.
I just finished another NPR viz project for a client and they (with out knowing it) really appreciated this feature. I often remind them that it makes the front end of a project slightly more heavy…but come “deadline crissis” time things almost alway go more smoothly than they would using another application and they are surprised by the level of flexibility.
Also there often is a request for quite a few things that require XSI’s more procedural approach to things in my work- and I like feeling like I never have to tell my clients “NO” on things they’d like to see (even if it means I sweat it to learn a new approach as the deadline comes near). I guess with MAX you might know your applications constraints more since they are often more black box…but in XSI you almost never say…NEVER (which does cause a lack of sleep though).
Thanks, I did find this MAX to XSI guide here http://www.xsibase.com/users/max2xsi/MAX2XSI.htm that looks useful.
What made me want to look into XSI was that its near-mipossible to rig and animate higher-res meshes in MAX, and there are alot of stability issues and general ‘voodoo’ that comes from layer upon layer of new and ancient code.
Be careful, though, parts of that are quite of of date. These are the major ones I spotted after a quick scan:
What about tear off menus and such that you could take outside the main app window in XSI? I thought that used to be a limitation that is no longer…
All I said was in the context of modelling, which is what I think was the context of the question I was replying to
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