Still factory-sealed copy of the Softimage|SDK Trance’96 CD.

Includes hits such as “Ambulate” and “Kaboom”.

GDC 1997

Theme: STONE FREE – Create any game you think. Think what you want.
Stone free is a rebellious attitude of confidence and freedom

Create any game you think: Softimage has the capabilities help create any game you can think of
Think what you want: With Softimage you do not have to limit your imagination

GDC 2000

Themes:
Softimage Sumatra: Animation redefined
Softimage|3D 3.9: Production proven, 3D workhorse
XSI Viewer Tools: Art pathway for interactive media

GDC 2001

Theme: Innovate. Create. Collaborate.
Softimage games tools offering: Softimage provides a complete, open toolset for game creation that lets users pick and choose functionality to integrate with their existing pipelines and custom engines:

GDC 2004

Theme: Better Faster XSI

GDC 2006

Themes:
Characters at work, characters at play
Getting into characters: building performances for Next-Generation Productions.
All about being the leader in innovation

GDC 2007

Theme: Play Together

GDC 2008

Theme: ??? I don’t remember ???

GDC reel from 2002. Video quality is a bit low, I known.

If the video doesn’t load here, you can see it here.

BTW Autodesk at GDC 2011

Things have changed a little over the last decade or so.

Back in 1999, we had Sumatra/XSI 1.0 running on a Toshiba Tecra 730 CDT laptop (Pentium 150mhz, SVGA Color 12″ display, 144MB RAM, 3.7kg).

Fast forward to 2011, and we have Softimage running on an 11″ Macbook Air (1.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 11.6″ 1366 by 768 display, 4GB RAM, 1.07kg).
Update: On the Macbook Air, Softimage is running under bootcamped Windows 7.

1999: Softimage Sumatra running on a Toshiba Tecra 730CDT laptop

2011: Softimage 2012 running on an 11" Macbook Air

Another pic of Softimage on my Macbook Air

Someone on the XSI Mailing list asked about the old “10 reasons to try XSI”, which was published back in 2007 I believe. I managed to find a copy.

And here are some other top 10 (or 9 or 11) lists:

I started at Softimage back in 1995, a few years after Jurassic Park. But everybody in Montreal knew about Softimage and Jurassic Park; I remember my neighbours were sooo impressed when they found out where I worked. It was always nice to be able to say I worked at Softimage (or at Microsoft). People [outside the industry] knew those names. In contrast, few people knew “Avid”, and most people don’t know the name “Autodesk” (I usually have to mention “Autocad”).

Behind-the-Scenes Photos of ILM’s Greats: Jurassic Park
(Thanks to Alan Fregtman for the link)

Appropriately enough, given that Jurassic Park gave Softimage’s reputation such a boost, our main meeting room in the 3510 St Laurent Softimage offices was named “Jurassic Park”. (Other meeting rooms were Jumanji, Casper, and Reboot.)

Chinny (now the Softimage technical product manager) in Bejing for the launch of XSI 1.5 in 2001.

Note the running shoes on the guy in the “mongolian” costume.

That looks like Chinny behind the monitor.

I saw the TV ads for the Vanilla ICE Project for the first time last week, hence this post…

Tuesday August 12th 2008, Softimage held its Nice ICE party at Club 740 in downtown Los Angeles. 3000 people packed into the club where Vanilla ICE performed!

XSI list ice ice baby party thread.

Video on youtube