XSI 2.0

[devdoka]

@@They changed it them because in order for me to re-up my contract when I purchased it, all I needed to do was fax Journey Education a new signed agreement and a current course schedule showing 6 credit enrollment. No cost whatsoever.

Ooops! the info I gave was for ATC licenses, not students. You're right, students do not pay maintenance, only upgrade fees for new major releases.

Check the web link for the lowdown.

Matt

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Matt Lind
Animator / Technical Director
Softimage certified instructor:
Softimage|3D
Softimage|XSI
speye_21@hotmail.com

[belinus]

In reply to:
Ooops! the info I gave was for ATC licenses, not students. You're right, students do not pay maintenance, only upgrade fees for new major releases.

Well, if they're gonna screw me, I'll see about just getting MR 3 and let Maya use it.

[devdoka]

@@Well, if they're gonna screw me, I'll see about just getting MR 3 and let Maya use it.

The only person screwing with you is you. The student license is a steal - $500 and no maintenance fees for a top notch animation application.

It'll cost you more to get mr with Maya as A|W does not have control over educational pricing for mental ray. Therefore, youi'll have to get a student Maya license and follow up with a professional mental ray license which will cost you an extra $2,000 for one CPU. So, let's see, $500 for XSI with mental ray on 2 CPUs, or $2500 for Maya and mental ray purchased separately for ONE CPU.....hmmm, it seems you'd screw yourself on this one. Remember, if you go Maya, you don't own your license.

How long have you been using XSI? 6 months? You should have a bit of patience and realize that things don't just happen overnight. Especially when working with a v1.x product. XSI v2.0 is on it's way including revamped documentation, so just hold your horses.

Matt

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Matt Lind
Animator / Technical Director
sofitmage certified instructor:
Softimage|3D
Softimage|XSI
speye_21@hotmail.com

[johnnymech]

Not to make this post any longer then it is but... Journey education really screwwed with me. I signed up for the XSI student deal ( Which I personally agree is a steal price at 499$) It took them lazy ahem 2 months to send me the dang box and on top of that they left out the dongle in which case i waited another week for.... then with the update i waited another 2 months. I only recieved everything after I sent a complaint to the BBB. Real fun experience I tell ya. On top of that they wouldnt extend my license for the three months they sat on there butts staring at my cds. So yea the price is a steal ,and like someone mentioned , McDonals income could support it but watch out who you go through to get it...sheesh. Id write a nice complaint to someone who I knew who cared, but at least the basic license is still running for me.

L8ers
RaiThioS

[fredc]

In reply to:
Not to make this post any longer then it is but... Journey education really screwwed with me. I signed up for the XSI student deal ( Which I personally agree is a steal price at 499$) It took them lazy ahem 2 months to send me the dang box and on top of that they left out the dongle in which case i waited another week for.... then with the update i waited another 2 months. I only recieved everything after I sent a complaint to the BBB. Real fun experience I tell ya. On top of that they wouldnt extend my license for the three months they sat on there butts staring at my cds. So yea the price is a steal ,and like someone mentioned , McDonals income could support it but watch out who you go through to get it...sheesh. Id write a nice complaint to someone who I knew who cared, but at least the basic license is still running for me.

L8ers
RaiThioS

Typical reseller behavior. I have found if you annoy them, by calling constantly they tend to move quicker, just to get you off their back. If they give you a date, you call them on that day, then you call them the next day, and the next and the next. They are going to tell you, not to bother calling, they'll call you instead. You just keep on calling and simply apologize saying it is very important to you.

Passive aggression can be a strong tool. )

Urp

[johnnymech]

Oh I know what you mean... I could probably even NOW call that darn Journey ED office in texas and theyd know who i am. It wasnt until the BBB complaint I filed got there, then they acted... and that got them to send me the cds within a week... What a pain though. I suppose if i payed the full 12k or whatever Id have it hand delivered by some avid reseller with wings. I wait for that day =o)

RaiThioS

[belinus]

In reply to:
Not to make this post any longer then it is but... Journey education really screwwed with me. I signed up for the XSI student deal ( Which I personally agree is a steal price at 499$) It took them lazy ahem 2 months to send me the dang box and on top of that they left out the dongle in which case i waited another week for.... then with the update i waited another 2 months. I only recieved everything after I sent a complaint to the BBB. Real fun experience I tell ya. On top of that they wouldnt extend my license for the three months they sat on there butts staring at my cds. So yea the price is a steal ,and like someone mentioned , McDonals income could support it but watch out who you go through to get it...sheesh. Id write a nice complaint to someone who I knew who cared, but at least the basic license is still running for me.

Actually, your license will expire one year after SoftImage sends it to you. Journey doesn't control it. You submit to SoftImage your dongle ID and where youp urchased it, they verify purchase and process the request and then e-mail you the key. The key expires 365 days from the date of the e-mail.

[fredc]

In reply to:
I suppose if i payed the full 12k or whatever Id have it hand delivered by some avid reseller with wings. I wait for that day =o)

Nope. ALL resellers are like this. No matter what product or even market you are in- resellers drag their feet.

Urp

[johnnymech]

In reply to journeyman -0- I called softimage support directly to get my license because of further complications with getting journey ed to do it in a timely matter... the issue with the time delay i mentioned was being ripped 3 months on getting to have 1.5 in a timley manner. .... Sure 1.0 was great but hey I payed for updates not to watch my license tick away while hackers everywhere else had it before me... Man that boils a few eggs right there.

RaiThioS

[wolfinger]

In reply to:

[quote]
In reply to:
I suppose if i payed the full 12k or whatever Id have it hand delivered by some avid reseller with wings. I wait for that day =o)

[/quote]

Nope. ALL resellers are like this. No matter what product or even market you are in- resellers drag their feet.

Urp

Damn right they are! The quality of service of our Avid rep dropped to just about zero once the package and maintenance contract was paid for, and no new deals were to be expected for a while. Last I heard of him he said he'd contact me in good time before our maitenance contract expires. Well, I think if it hasn't expired already, it's about to, and I haven't heard from him since. You'd think he'd have sent the damn offer already, especially since it's not like the maintenance contracts are free or anything, so he's got money to make here. Damn foo!

[belinus]

In reply to:
It'll cost you more to get mr with Maya as A|W does not have control over educational pricing for mental ray. Therefore, youi'll have to get a student Maya license and follow up with a professional mental ray license which will cost you an extra $2,000 for one CPU. So, let's see, $500 for XSI with mental ray on 2 CPUs, or $2500 for Maya and mental ray purchased separately for ONE CPU.....hmmm, it seems you'd screw yourself on this one. Remember, if you go Maya, you don't own your license.

I happened to check MI's website, according to press release, MR 3 will be integrated into Maya 4.

[devdoka]

@@I happened to check MI's website, according to press release, MR 3 will be integrated into Maya 4.

At extra cost. You have to purchase the ray licenses separately from Maya. Mental ray as a standalone solution isn't cheap (at least $2K) and does not have educational pricing (or at least none that I know of).

Also, "integrated" doesn't mean the same thing in Maya as it does with XSI. mental ray is compiled into the XSI binary for quick feedback and data sharing. The Maya solution is more like the Softimage|3D -> mental ray integration in that data is streamed from Maya to mental ray across binarys. Yes, mental ray is integrated into the Maya GUI (when installed), but it is not part of the same code base and therefore will incur overhead and have certain limitations inherent to such a setup.

Finally, you won't have all the same shaders or interface to deal with mental ray from Maya. No toon shaders, no rendermap, etc.. You'll still get the base library of phong, blinn, lambert, etc, but the rest will have to be developed by you or acquired from a 3rd party developer. Something to think about if you're dependent on any particular shaders.

Matt

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Matt Lind
Animator / Technical Director
Softimage certified instructor:
Softimage|3D
Softimage|XSI
speye_21@hotmail.com