I know that I must seem to some like a Max freak; Im not, I only know it partially but I have created some fantastic Grass with its particle systems using instanced objects and bend modifiers. What has shocked me, while learning Softimage, is how much ISN'T in the software that I took for granted in other less expensive and, what some industry proffessionals would deem, low-end packages. I know that Soft is a very powerful package and has some world-class tools but it has some terrible omissions that haven't even been corrected in the Xsi software. For instance, how can I weld two or more points together? I don't want two points to actually exist in the same place, I want to actually merge them into one. I can do a lot of edge and vertex adding and removal to get what I desire but its very tedious. Secondly, I want to integrate particles in my scene and have those particles as solid scene objects, like a group of fish or blowing grass. Xsi can do it to some extent, but not without heavy scripting. Does anyone else know of any tool or method that seems really useful and yet isn't integrated in Soft or Xsi?