does anybody out there use xsi? i'd love to hear more about it. heard about it from an online friend. I'm thinking about buying it but just wanna hear more b4 i invest my money

The question is, why do you want to purchase it?
What purpose would it serve? I am assuming here that you currently run some other 3D app

Drixie

I am a Softimage XSI user and I will give you some info on XSI based on 12 months of intensive usage. XSI is an all round application but the strongest point of the app is character animation. I am not sure there's any app that can knock it off the table in that department and believe me I have used applications like Lightwave and dedicated character animation app like Messiah Studio and many more. XSI allows you to handle huge amount of polygons with ease. The node based shader is something to die for if you can get over the initial intimidation (yes,it could be intimidating at first sight). The learning curve is surprisingly not as steep as it was touted especially if you have previous 3D experience. Coming from Lightwave it took me just two weeks to start rigging and animating. About 80% of the character animation in my last short 'Enemy of the Rising Sun' was done in Softimage XSI.

There's nothing I can tell you here that's not been said in the numerous XSI forums. The bottom line is if you do a lot of character animation, you have absolutely nothing to lose by purchasing XSI. It has built in Mental Ray but if you don't want to use that renderer, you can always export your animation to your favourite 3D app for rendering using PointOven. I can't say much on the modeling side of XSI since I model with Modo or Lightwave and them import the Lightwave objects with all the morphs intact. XSI has a powerful shape manager for facial animation and it is pretty easy to use but I don't use it since XSI supports lwo.(Lightwave object) import with all the morph targets intact for facial animation.Heck, XSI 6.0 comes with a new feature that enables you to move your rigged character with all the bones intact to Max or maya, which simply means you can rig your character in XSI and continue the animation in Maya/Max or you can rig in Max/Maya and bring it into XSI for fine tuning and animation.

Go ahead and buy XSI at least buy XSI foundation to begin with ($495.00) if character animation is your concern. For everything else, you are not really missing out pretty much, XSI particles suck, the rendering is pretty fast but Lightwave still beats it to pulp. If you're already modeling with another app, you are not really going to find too much 'wow' factor in XSI modeler (IMHO).

Word of advise: If you are going to buy XSI, disregard everything Microsoft or Avid has to say about Windows Vista and run your software only on XP until they have fixed all the open GL and other issues in Windows Vista.

gee. thanx for the xsi lecture bro.

its only newbies to computers that use vista. to me, they are beta testers

lol. I have been flamed for advising people into graphics and animation to avoid Vista. Good luck with the XSI, man.