SOFTIMAGE XSI London User's Group

Oye geezer... I went to this presentation last night given by my friend Jordi Bares, and his colleague Jan Walter - both of The Mill. They were showing off the Mill's proprietary pipeline (which Jordi and Jan have developed) that allows a seamless rendering solution for XSI with not only Mental Ray... But PRMAN, Air, and 3DLight!!!

Anyway, the whole philosophy was really interesting, and a very appealing one because they have managed to alleviate some key technical issues - and I love them for that!!! You work as you would normally in XSI using Mental Ray, setting up the scene, gathering (or referencing-in assets) and working with the Render Tree using Mental Ray as your visualizing tool. Then as you approach final rendering you begin to make the hard decision about which elements of your shot are better handled by what render engine. Huh? Yeah, no kidding. You are about to "choose a renderer." And basically, (because I don't really understand how they did it) you don't have to worry about shader parity, or anything because they have developed a "set of 16 matched shaders" which will be nearly identical in all the renders!!! Anyway, the cool thing is that you can just work artistically, incorporating whatever tools you like (XSI, Massive, etc.) and the use this XtoR exporter to sort out your rendering issues when the time comes, thus alleviating the necessity of getting locked into a particular way of working from the get-go due to the fact that "you will eventually be rendering in PRMAN" (or whatever renderer). Pretty hot off the wizzle shnizzle. This was easily the most interesting rendering demonstration from a "pure user value" aspect I have ever scene.

Here's a link to some photos from the evening. As you can see the SOFTIMAGE XSI London User's Group isn't shy about admitting that there's a little booze fueling the creative fires. Not that that's out of place in Soho, UK!!!