Wow!   Well It certainly was nice to see the Planet Softimage blog so popular after my first post!  I figured for the sure the number of views would be equal to the number of times I clicked refresh to see if the view counter had increased.  What a way to prove me wrong, 3,500 views and counting!!!   No seriously it's really is great to see the enthusiasm for Softimage at Autodesk and of course on The Area so keep it up!! 

Speaking of enthusiasm for Softimage, mine has me flying to Texas next week for the Austin Game Developers Conference.  I always love going to Austin, such a great city vibe.  It could be the university, it could be the BBQ, MMmmmm... it could be 4th street, heck it could be the bats! (oh wait, wrong bats!!)   But yeah, Austin is great so I'm looking forward to another visit. I'll be at the Autodesk booth of course showing the new release of Softimage 2010..  Hey wait a minute- Softimage 2010?  Hmm... what's this?  Softimage two thousand ten?   Oooooh right, a small bit of news, the new release shipped today!   Wooo Hooo!!  Im sure you have read all about it but if not the new version is wicked fast and includes a sweet new toolset for doing facial animation- it's enough to make you sing Eep opp ork ah ah!!  ;) 

So yeah, 2010 is available now for those of you on subscription, the rest of you have to wait until Monday.  The good news is that a full 30 day trial version will be available Monday as well.  So enjoy the weekend, your new Ferrari will be downloadable soon!   (Hmmm... can I call Softimage 2010 a Ferrari?  Let's test the legal dept and find out!) 

Ok so back to Austin GDC.   Steven, Gary and myself will be showing all sorts of Autodesk software at the show including a little user-group type event Wednesday night at the Cactus Club in Austin.  The event will be from 6-8pm and will features demos of Mudbox, 3DSMax/CAT with some neat new Real Time Shader stuff, then a bit of Maya's new layout tools and of course some Softimage 2010. 

Let me know what you think of the new release, and I hope to see you in Austin!! 
Mark