> I remember opening a softimage 3D asset in the DS timeline, and changing the > texture placement on it, and having it re-render, right there in the editing > timeline, with mental ray - 15 years ago. It wasn’t all that useful, but it > hinted of some very exciting future links between 3D and editing/comp.
Did you dream it? DS never really had that, they always dreamed of having mental ray or importing 3D scenes. In 1997 there was a pre-Sumatra demo shown around where you could create a "3D" clip on the timeline and paint on it, that was built using Softimage|3D. It never passed the prototype stage. At one point a colleague put the dotXSI viewer as a plugin in DS and that was a demo which AFAIK never shipped. You could do basic 3D with the built-in "Marquee" tool in DS - a product Avid acquired - that's it. All of these were OpenGL only. That said, you were able to import Softimage|3D scenes in Eddie and render them in there. > But then Avid drove a wedge between DS and XSI, Avid wasn't smart enough to scheme like that and AFAIK didn't do any such thing. Early on, we couldn't get anything done with the source code constantly changing by another team with their own priorities while we were trying to wind down and ship, so we branched out. After XSI V1.0, it was very difficult to consider merging back because it's emergencies after emergencies, and XSI wasn't made to run inside other application so it took over a lot of things that DS has other ideas for, and there were conflicting changes in both branches. Also their code version was increasingly not portable back to unix, something they don't care about. And it something would lead them to their demise as they couldn't port anything to Mac where Avid wanted to be. And we disagreed on many things. For example, the DS team wanting to control all the UI like the FCurve editor, but wanting to be focus on non-animators, or controlling the architecture of operators to conform it to their vision. So you're trying to make a 3D animation product, but you have to negotiate with another team that wants you do to things for them and their clients. You have to explain, justify and negotiate everything. Same thing for the mixer UI or the rendertree, they wanted to own that, but on their own terms. The principles of DS is that DS provides everything as shared service (ex: the FCurve editor, toolbars, menu, hotkey mapping, etc) and then you can plug your mini-app in it as a plug-in, a clip on its timeline. Only one such third party plugin was ever made, Toonz. In retrospect it's DS that should have been built on XSI, not the reverse - but DS shipped 2 years before XSI v1.0. Because 3D apps have become frameworks, XSI is the one that's the superset, with scripting, expressions, construction history, lots of viewport tools, etc. But in DS team's mind, the NLE market was 100 times bigger and the 3D market is shrinking, so it should be up to the 3D team to follow, not the reverse. Different points of views! In any case, nowadays it's kind of illogical to think of a Softimage as a plugin for a video editing app. The 3D app is going to be bigger and more ambitious in scope than an NLE app that's just got a timeline/compositing/vectorpaint/video capture and text. And in fact, as you know XSI almost has all of that without any help from DS.
