Well it's officially here... trade show season!   I left sunny Los Angeles a few days ago headed to Montreal to work on some demo material for the upcoming Game Developers Conference. GDC is the first major trade show for us of the year so I figure a trip up here was in order to learn some new features and record some videos for you all to look at. Hopefully many of you are able to make it to GDC this year as I have some pretty cool new stuff to show you in the next release of Softimage! Yup, it's also that time of year again too, new release time!!! I can't go deep into details yet but there are a lot of really great new updates coming along, especially with ICE, Face Robot and you folks with Nvidia cards. Actually, an entirely new paradigm in rigging will be unveiled at the show that was architected by Phil Taylor. Many of you know him as the creator of the 3DS Max plug-in known as CAT or as one of the chief developers of Softimage ICE.  A couple days ago, Chinny and I took Phil out for a few pints of beer at a pub and brought along a video camera to record a little conversation about this new paradigm. I'll hopefully get it edited in the next few days and post it here on the blog. It was a really good conversation, one that every rigging TD out there should watch, Softimage user or not... Well at least that's how I remember it, I did mention we had a few pints right??

Walking around the halls here at 10 Duke Street (aka, Autodesk HQ) in Montreal I learned a few other really great tidbits of information. Guess which 3D application blew by all sales expectations- really impressing everyone here at Autodesk? Yup, Softimage! Even with the economy not quite back Softimage kicked some serious butt. In fact, the momentum that Softimage has right now internally is so great we are going to be adding quite a few developers to the team over the coming months... Obviously more great news!! I know a lot of people had concerns when Autodesk acquired us but honestly, things are looking really bright!!  I sincerely want to thank all of our customers right now for continuing to support Softimage and for keeping the faith!  All is certainly well.

Ok, so I wrote this like 2 days ago but I didn't get a chance to post it and already I've flown home, attended the American Cinematographers Society awards show in Los Angeles and now I am on a flight to Las Vegas for Autodesk's "One Team Conference." Good grief!! I was really hoping to edit that video on the flight home from Montreal but the jet noise made it impossible to hear anything so instead I worked on some Visemes. Visemes? Whats that?? :) 

The day I arrived at the office.  What's this white stuff that falls from sky!??!

PS, Hopefully you like the thumbnail of Sheriff Roscoeeeee P. Coltrane Gooooood  Neewwwwwwwsssss  :)