Siggraph

At the beginning of their Monday afternoon press conference, Marc Stevens, vice president and general manager for Softimage, announced with a smile that the Montreal-based company had gone on a buying spree and bought Autodesk.

While no one took the bait–Autodesk is many times the size of Softimage‘s owner Avid, with a healthy balance sheet to boot–Stevens was reacting to that day‘s news that Autodesk was the one going on a buying spree with the announcement of its plans to purchase New Zealand-based Skymatter Limited, the developer of Mudbox 3D modeling software. (Somewhat similar to Pixologic‘s Zbrush software, Mudbox enables 3D brush-based modeling; users can sculpt organic shapes in 3D space with brush-like tools.)

Although it plays second fiddle to Autodesk‘s highly popular Maya 3D modeling software, Softimage wasn‘t ceding any ground–according to Leonard Teo, the company‘s product marketing manager, Softimage|XSI supports Mudbox‘s high-density 3D models better than either Maya or 3ds Max.

Third party software support was indeed one of the strategic moves that defines the most recent version of XSI debuted at the show: for the first time, new Version 6.5 will support some six different render engines beyond its built-in mental ray renderer.

Interoperability in mixed-tool pipelines will be key to the success of XSI going forward, since few houses exist solely with one set of tools. It‘s especially key when a not-as-popular package goes against hot-selling products too. Expect to hear more about Softimage‘s Crosswalk initiative (designed to seamlessly transfer XSI content into and out of previously established 3D pipelines) as well as its support for Collada standards (this a widely-supported XML-based digital asset exchange schema designed to transport data between 3D content creation tools).

Softimage is rejiggering its shrink-wrap package contents, pricing, and marketing approach too. While XSI|Foundation (now described as for the ‘3D enthusiast‘) keeps its $495 price, Softimage|XSI 6.5 Essentials (‘for the artist‘) goes from $1995 to $2995, while Softimage|XSI 6.5 Advanced (‘for the studio‘) decreases to $4995. Essentials now bundles in Hair and Fur as well as Syflex Cloth (these added packages now price at $2700), while Advanced includes Behavior (crowd and behavioral simulation) and five added batch-rendering licenses. “It‘s now cheaper to buy another Advanced seat than to spend the money on separate rendering licenses,” says Teo.

Here‘s a good deal for the alert shopper: buy today‘s Version 6.2 of Essentials for $1995 before the September 7th price increase and get the upgrade to Version 6.5 for free. (Version 6.5 as well as the just announced Face Robot 1.8 ship this fall.)

Other features of interest in Version 6.5 include HDR (high dynamic range) rendermap support; additional SDK APIs; UV editing enhancements (2D image data on a 3D model); and enhanced audio support.

Softimage, founded by Daniel Langlois twenty years ago, is entering a new stage of its development, with fiscal tremors at its mother ship Avid adding to the pressure of an increasingly competitive graphics production environment. Stay tuned.