Montreal-headquartered animation software provider Softimage, a division of Avid Technology, has released Softimage|XSI v.1.5, an update of its flagship product, and it has done so quickly – anything to get rid of the stigma of having a ‘1.0’ out there.

‘A 1.0 of any software product is suspect in the market,’ explains Michael David Smith, xsi product manager. ‘People hesitate to use 1.0, and, as with our competitors, we saw our adoption rate relatively low. We shipped [1.0] so we could get it over with and get on with things.’

Smith adds that the new version of Softimage’s end-to-end 3D solution provides its customers with several elements missing in 1.0. Those customers are divided about equally between film, video and broadcast users and the gaming and interactive industries. The architectural, medical and industrial design niche markets also carve up a piece of the overall pie.

According to Smith, Softimage was the first company to create an interactive artist tool for 3D content creation over a decade ago, when the market was traditional film and broadcast media. With the arrival of game consoles, Softimage found another huge customer base, especially in Japan, which has a huge game-content industry.

Perhaps the biggest breakthrough in the history of the company – and in the history of 3D film effects – was Jurassic Park (1993), whose photo-realistic dinosaurs were created with Softimage software. Smith feels the quality of animation has not changed since then as much as the streamlining of the creative process. He also believes Softimage remains strong in film and broadcast largely because xsi’s rendering technology, mental ray from Berlin’s mental images, is among the best available.

‘Whereas in the past mental ray functioned as a standalone you plugged into, xsi is now the only application on the market where it is seamlessly integrated,’ Smith explains. ‘All of the plug-in nodes are centralized in one space, and it’s interactive. For example, you draw a rectangle over any part of your work at any time, and it renders out just that part that you want to see.’

According to Smith, the next milestone in 3D animation will be the successful creation of a cg human for a movie or tv show. Companies such as Global Icons and Virtual Celebrity have been trying to do this by re-creating deceased film stars in 3D.

‘There were a lot of legal and moral issues associated with that,’ Smith comments. ‘Ultimately, if we could have convincing cg humans in movies it would cost a lot less to make them. Whether that will happen and when is still a question mark, but people are definitely working towards it.’

Smith says the major drawback to photo-realistic cg humans is the myriad tiny details in our bodies and faces that are noticeably absent in digital representations.

‘There are thousands of little muscles, twitches, creases and hair follicles that need to be simulated, but because there are so many and they’re so subtle, we have to find ways to simulate them automatically, otherwise it would take much too long to create,’ he explains. ‘But we are seeing more and more tools that allow us to build behavior into a character.’

London’s Mill Film applied the notion of giving cg figures their own motion characteristics on a broader scale on the Ridley Scott epic Gladiator. Softimage|3D, the company’s longstanding modeling, character animation and rendering system, enabled the f/x house to create a digital crowd of 50,000 in the Roman Coliseum out of 30 flesh-and-blood extras.

‘It’s financially unfeasible to animate each one of those 50,000 people,’ Smith says. ‘That’s a situation where you would use that kind of behavioral crowd simulation.’

The Wesley Snipes action flick The Art of War, shot in Montreal by local director Christian Duguay, is another film that employed Softimage|3D. Montreal’s Hybride Technologies used the system to turn the city’s ibm building into a Hong Kong skyscraper, as well as re-create flying bullets, a parachute jump, and the film’s climactic fight scene.

Softimage counts various other Canadian companies on its beta list for xsi, including Montreal’s CineGroupe, Vancouver’s Electronic Arts and Mainframe, and Toronto’s TOPIX/Mad Dog.

Smith says Softimage’s focus with xsi will continue to enable animators to produce more work faster and at higher quality. The company’s other strategy, which it has embraced from the start, is to make its tools accessible to more people.

‘Softimage came into being because the only 3D applications were such that you had to be an engineer to use them,’ Smith notes. ‘It’s becoming less and less technical. For us, xsi represents a leap forward with a high-level interface that hides the [technical] complexity in the production process. That way a lot of work can be done without having to deal with complex, minute 3D detail, and with less intensely trained people.’ •

-www.softimage.com