Autodesk just made the announcement that SoftimageXSI, a premiere, high-end modeling and animation package, will see it's last incarnation in the 2015 release, then is being discontinued.  This is a sad day to many who used this great package to model and animate some of the most fantastic 3D creations the world has ever seen in film and broadcast since the 1990's.  It was the software that brought us MentalRay, one of the most widely-used production rendering engine the world has ever seen, and one of the first render engines to offer multi-layered, SSS skin shaders.  Softimage also featured one of the most advanced facial rigging and animation tools, FaceRobot, and a powerful parametric effects and building system called ICE. 

Autodesk is offering a transition route to Maya or 3dsmax to current license holders.

** http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-softimage/overview**

I for one am sad to see this.  Even though I do not use the software, it was a staple in the CG industry for many years, and I know several people who do some incredible work with it.  There had been speculation for several years, however, that AD had to trim the fat in order to keep profits going, and that having 3 applications that did virtually the same thing didn't make much sense financially.  Not all is lost.  The final version of XSI may likely be good enough to use in production for many years to come, so it's not like we won't see work being produced with it any time soon.  Users don't have to immediately stop using it forever, just because it's being discontinued; they will continue support until 2016.

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