Subject: SoftImage NT (was games)
From: Jason Hough <[email-masked]>
To: Multiple recipients of list <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 18:50:42 -0500

On Wed, 17 Jan 1996, Sultan Ghahtani wrote:

> AHHHH! Well if Microsoft is going into the graphics arena then it will be 
> very intersting. Will it be available for win95 I wonder?

I dont know what the plans are, but I read a review in 3D Design magazine 
of the NT version. It's basically a staight port from the SGI version. 
Very little effort was made to make the interface comply with Windows 
standards. Also, it relies heavily on OpenGL, so unless MS is going to 
put out an OpenGL library for Win95, I doubt you'll see a version.

The rest of the article basically said that the NT version is a big 
memory hog, and rather slow even on a Pentium Pro with 64mb RAM (speaking 
strictly about the NT version specific stuff, the program is identical to 
the SGI version).

Most of the people I talk to who use SGI's for Animation all say the same 
thing - SoftImage is great for character animation, but very poor on 
rendering quality and shader options. I've never heard of anyone using 
*only* Softimage for 3D production - it's usually in conjunction with 
Alias or RenderMan, or both. 

Anyone noticed that 3D Design says very, very little about LW3D? I think 
thats a shame. Especially since there are a number of full-page adds for 
LW related stuff in that mag. Seems to me it should get a little more 
attention.

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Jason Hough [email-masked] <http://www.qualcomm.com/~jhough>
Project 4gen (PC shoot-em-up): <http://www.ax.com/dindia>
"Despite the name, food stamps are not edible." - Scott Adams
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