As you’ve probably heard, the Autodesk Entertainment Creation Premium Suites include Softimage and some new interoperability technology that allows users to transfer ICE effects into Maya or 3ds Max.

I recently had a chance to check this out when I was asked to give a quick training session to the Maya support team.

Long story short, the way it works is that from Maya you can send geometry (via FBX) to Softimage, and Softimage sends back ICE effects (particle effects or deformations) via nCache. There’s plugins in both Maya and Softimage that care of the details, so in Maya you simply select some objects and click Send to Softimage (or Update/Add if you want to add new objects to an existing scene). In Softimage, you create the ICE effect and then click Update Maya, and the ICE effects are cached out and the Maya scene is updated to use the cached effects.

http://area.autodesk.com/userdata/static/ibc10/pr/Autodesk_Suites_Premium.pdf

Autodesk Softimage software, featuring the Interactive Creative Environment (ICE) to help in the creation of more sophisticated effects that can be integrated into Maya and 3ds Max through new ICE interoperability technology…

http://investors.autodesk.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=117861&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1452020&highlight=

Featuring sophisticated cross-product integration, the Premium Suites also allow users to transfer Softimage ICE effects to Maya or 3ds Max with a simple menu click.

http://autodesk.com/entertainmentcreationsuites

Export ICE effects … to Maya for greater flexibility