Softimage Xsi: Maya vs XSI

Hi Guys ,


I am not trying to start a flame war here. I just want to know this:


since so many animators prefer softimage , can you tell me whats the difference between the animation tols in xsi and maya?.


i have been using maya for some time now , and i am quite happy with the animation tools , but if xsi has some significant features in animation i would love to go get a training of it or something.


If any of you used both maya and xsi can you please tell me what your opinions are.


Thanks in advance.

I don't know Maya very much but I think that XSI is animation designed - especially character animation. The tools are great. Non linear system helps a lot. Now in 2.0 we've got IF/FK blend and other cool features. If you want to test it what stops you - order a non commercial version for 3 months and try it for a while see it for yourself.
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Will animate for food.

I've worked with Softimage|3D for 3 years before starting with the first version of Maya...I still like it but i don't have the time to play with it. I have also used XSI 1.5 for a year and although I use Maya more extesively mainly because of my job , I have to say that the animation features and the nonlinear animation implementation of XSI is slightly better than in Maya.

As I always say, there's no winner here...it all depends on the hands of the animator.

thanks man,


Guess i'll stick with maya than. since there are no big advantage differences between the two. I just wanted to hear real world feedback on the two softwares because the product brochures are generally misleading. Hell on paper Blender looks better than maya and softimage combined .


Happy keyframing everyone


A|i

I am a straight up animator, and I prefer maya. I did 2 years of heavy character work in Soft . Then I did maya straight for a year ands a half. Ovet the last 3 months I've been working in xsi, and I really am not as excited about XSI as I am about maya. The workflow in maya is much smarter to me. Nonlinear is nicer in XSI, but That part isn't really animation to me. Things like the keys being visible and editable in the timeline make maya much more intuitive, and most important --faster. See where the problem is instead of guessing. ALSO.. Things like undo. I had a big problem in soft3d with not being able to undo things, and although you can undo most actions in XSI, during animation I found that If you have auto key on (I always do) undo only undoes the keyframe. That pisses me off because the object stays rotated or translated untill you move the playback head. You have to undo twice, once for the keyframe and once for the transform. I hope I don't sound like I think I do. XSI is still good, but I prefer maya. But- if soft XSI can beat maya, I'll switch as fast as I did from soft3d to maya.