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

As you can probably tell from the name “Subscription Advantage Pack”, any Softimage customer on Subscription gets the Subscription Advantage Pack (SAP).

If your Subscription expires within a month of the SAP release, you’ll still be able to download the SAP.

If you purchase Softimage with no Subcription after the SAP, you don’t get the SAP, you get 2011SP1.

Why aren’t Lagoa and Matchmover mentioned on the Softimage SAP page? Is this omission ominous?

If you ask me, most likely that copy was written when the legal stuff was still being ironed out. I don’t think the omission means anything. You’ll notice that Lagoa is still mentioned on the AREA and on the Autodesk youtube channel (where you can see all the 2011 SAP feature videos).

But Lagoa and Matchmover are still in at the time of this posting. Since it hasn’t been released, there’s always some possibility something could happen, but right now, all I know is that they are still in.

btw, the friendly URL for the Softimage SAP page is autodesk.com/advantagepack-softimage. These advantage pack pages are for us at Autodesk to send out to customers when we tell them the SAP is available.