Be specific people, There's also
DS, which is a
DV Editing studio, and
XSI, |3D's you nger sibling.
SoftImage|3D is an excellent 3D
modeling and
animation studio by
Avid Inc.
For a
period of about 3
years, both SoftImage and
Mental Ray were property of
Microsoft, until Microsoft recently sold the
Softimage division to
Avid.
The
software features 5
basic modules:
Each module is
basically a
different set of menus, as the
UI has a
vertical menu along each side, the left being
functions, and various
options affecting
objects,
paths,
materials, and various
tools. The right affects
objects in the scene, such as
translation,
cameras, and
selection.
Model:
The model module gives you options that allow you to modify the
shapes of
objects, and their
structure. It includes a
highly useful
polygon editor, by means of
raycasting and/or
tags. It also allows you to affect such
things as freezing any
transformations, so they don't
screw with you later when animating.
Motion:
This is the
module where 90% of the
animating takes place. Here you can define
paths for objects that you
created in model, or edit the
fcurves, which is the basic
principle of motion in SoftImage|3D.
Matter:
Giving
everything textures and
colors takes place here. There's also a
little bit of animation in here, if you
explore enough.
The basics of this module give you the ability to alter the
base color of an object, its
reflectivity,
transparency, and various other features. Also is the ability to apply both
2D and
3D textures.
3D textures allow you to apply textures that occur throughout the object, sort of like a
wood grain, or
marble. It exists in all 3 dimensions, and can move that way. A good example of this is that a 3D texture can move in the
Z axis, giving you an
effect of
rippling water. By
rendering some of this on a
flat surface, you can get a nice animation of dots moving in and out. In the resulting
2d rendering, it looks like
rings expanding in and out, and
warping. But when brought in as a 2D texture,
accompanied by a
script, it can be animated. By applying the script as a
bump map, you can get quite realistic rippling water. By then moving the object you've textured slowly, you get a nice stream.
Incidentally,
rendering is handled in the matter module. It offers various renderer
choices, depending on your version of Softimage. The
Extreme package comes with the default
SI Scanline renderer, and the
Mental Ray raytracer (which the softimage UI caters to).
Actor:
Actor is where
physics and
bones/
structure come into play. Basic
features of this module are the ability to create
skeletons, apply
skins, and
weight points. Also are the ability to create bounded objects, apply gravity and other
deformation effects, such as warps and
detonations.
Tools:
Here are basic proofing tools, such as a
flipbook that allows you to preview an animation from the freshly rendered scene, model
processing tools that can prep properly built models for use on a
nintendo64,
playstation, or even
sega saturn (replaced now). Also included are tools for
processing finished scenes(
MakeMovie+) that allows you to produce
compressed video.
That's just a light
overview of the modules, each one in the box has what
amounts to it's own book (of varying thickness).
Database and Files
Softimage has an interesting way of managing scenes. Instead of like
3D Studio Max and
Lightwave, Softimage keeps
everything in a scene stored in a large
database (a fancy name for "a bunch of folders in another folder that hold files"). The databases must be linked into a user profile, this way you can
restrict and manage database access and
permission (on Irix it may be easy, but on NT it's a bit thick).
The UI for softimage is itself is created entirely of GL objects, so any upgrade of the CPU or video card, 3D performance wise, will affect and improve the speed of the program.
The NT version of the program itself is only
minimally modified from the
Irix version (all the
database and file
management are straight out of unix, UI wise, so it's like jamming a square peg in a round hole on NT), mostly what was
necessary to get the program to execute on NT. All the rest was probably just
recompiled for x86 and modified slightly to support GL, which is then wrapped to
OpenGL, then to hardware, which is why the x86 version tends to be a bit slower than the Irix release.
Softimage is written and maintained in
Quebec, therefore it is not Soft
IMAGE, it is Soft
Imaage (long a, you know. It's
french canadian).
The future:
From what I can tell, the
future of softimage|3d itself may be
limited to the Irix platform, or other
Unices, should they port it. The future of softimage on NT may lie in |DS and |XSI.
A little info about how I know this. I attend North Pulaski High School, in Jacksonville, Arkansas, of all places. The class, called EAST, or Environmental and Spatial Technologies, which originated in Greenbrier, Arkansas about 5 years ago. My class, a second year east-class, got its hands on 2 copies of 3D Extreme ($30k a pop!), and the EAST administrators manged to get Tim Horne to teach a week long seminar on softimage, from modeling to rendering, which I had the fortune to attend. As of a few weeks ago, we got upgrades for our 3.8 workstations to 3.9.1, which redesigned the UI slighly, fixed many bugs, and sped things up a bunch, and also got our first copy of XSI in. At last check, we still don't have a license key yet, so once we get that working, I may node it!
The EAST project can be found at www.eastproject.org
be warned though, they tend to be a little Windows/Microsoft-centric, I believe a couple of the higher up administrators nearly had a stroke when they heard a friend and I were running Linux on a box in one of the classes (their opinion, the box is school property).