SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.4.2 sets a new standard in real productivity. By giving artists and developers greater access to the most advanced content creation tools in the industry, XSI v.4.2 dramatically accelerates any pipeline. With a superior workflow and unprecedented interoperability within the Avid CG family, SOFTIMAGE|XSI is the smart solution for studios of every size. Click here to download the PDF containing all the powerful new features in XSI v.4.2. SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR v.2.0 in Advanced SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.4.2 Advanced now includes SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR v.2.0, the first scalable, fully programmable crowd simulation and behavioral animation system. Behavior incorporates a complete Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with visual state-graph editing and an embedded debugger.  Anything created in XSI v.4.2 Advanced can now be easily transferred using the new Behavior export tool. Behavior further increases productivity by making the rendering of almost unlimited characters even easier with a direct pipeline to mental ray.  More about Behavior   Compositing and Hybrid Vector and Raster Paint In Essentials Previously available only in SOFTIMAGE|XSI Advanced, resolution-independent, node-based compositing and paint for both Linux and Windows are now available in SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.4.2 Essentials. In addition to unique 2D/3D workflows and an integration with Render Passes in XSI, other key features include retiming with the Animation Mixer, 2 and 4-point 2D Tracking and Stabilization, read OpenEXR and HDR formats, 60 Programmable Brushes, and vector-based shape types that include Bezier, B-Spline and Polyline. XSI v.4.2 also allows you to mix and match images in different size and bit depths and to use magic wand, rectangular and elliptical marquee, and lasso stencils. In XSI Essentials, you can mask, merge and clone across multiple image sources with relative frame offsets.   Character Development Kit The renowned character creation and control tools in XSI are now accessible to all animators with the new Character Development Kit (CDK). The CDK includes all biped and quadruped guides and rigs as well as a Dog Leg rig. The CDK offers an updated spring-based tail-maker with simulation caching and profile editing, as well as control splines for deformations. These high-level creation tools make building sophisticated rigs faster and easier for everyone. GPUSurfaceFX2 Now natively integrated, GPUSurfaceFX2 has been completely rewritten for workflow simplicity, high-performance, and robustness. GPUSurfaceFX2 features seamless continuous tangent generation, normal antialiasing, automated DirectX and OpenGL result previewing, and the most advanced Normal and FX map generation available that fully exposes the mental ray® shader pipeline.   XSI Rendering and  mental ray v.3.3 SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.4.2 puts powerful rendering at your fingertips. XSI Rendering includes mental ray v.3.3 and features such innovations as motion interpolation with late shutter-opening for high-speed motion blur. In XSI v.4.2, you can quickly preview Final Gathering lighting using fast look-up, ensure artifact-free results with precise photon volume accuracy control, and interactively render and tweak everything, including the fast rendering of true Sub Surface Scattering.  Extensive memory management options and view dependent Final Gathering generation make rendering complex scenes faster and more efficient. XSI v.4.2 also includes shadow map enhancements and detailed shadow maps. With the rendering in v.4.2, you can render .EXR images, do 16 and 32-bit rendermapping and easily generate normal maps with enhanced GPUSurfaceFX2. Whether using the powerful XSI render passes or accelerating your renders with up to 8 free tile-based distributed Satellite render tokens, XSI rendering does it faster and better than ever.    Construction Modes XSI has a unique structured operator stack that allows you to control the evaluation order of modeling, deformations and shape animation. As a result, you can make changes to the base geometry or the final result at any stage during production, and all changes can propagate attributes, such as textures and UVs. In addition, merging or symmetrizing objects also preserves shape animation. After deforms are applied, you can also apply smooth painting and polygon reduction with controllable levels of detail.   AAF/MXF HD for Avid Editors XSI v.4.2 offers AAF\MXF, AVI and QT output options for the Avid DNA family of products and now MXF HD formats as well as 10-bit media. Together with integrated support for Avid Mojo® output, XSI accelerates productivity by allowing the examination of any view, render region, or animation directly on an external monitor using direct render and output to external devices.     Alienbrain Studio Plug-in Working more productively requires smooth and predictable interoperability between pipeline tools. The new Alienbrain Studio plug-in for SOFTIMAGE|XSI gives astonishing control over huge data sets and complex pipelines. A dedicated layout, browser setting and automatic understanding of the Alienbrain database are some of the key features of this new plug-in. In addition, XSI provides multi-workgroup capabilities and an enhanced reference management system that allows multiple animators to offload or reference the same animation sources simultaneously.      Custom Display Host The Custom Display Host (CDH) is a powerful framework for hosting custom viewers or custom applications as views in XSI. For increased productivity, a game engine or foreign application can easily be embedded into XSI with only minor modifications because the CDH allows for interaction between XSI and the custom application. In addition, the CDH API allows the hosted application to receive and filter events as they occur in XSI, and the custom view can modify XSI scenes simultaneously.   UV Unwrapping UV Unwrapping automatically creates artist-friendly, manageable UV islands. With connectivity tabs and island healing, UV stitching takes only seconds. XSI also includes precise visual feedback and selection of UV samples for easy UV selection, as well as automated Cubic Texture Mapping.   Animator Audio tools New non-linear audio synchronization tools and controls are designed as part of the timeline-based editing framework.  New direct seek and real-time speed controls give sample level playback and precision.  With new markers for phonemes and emotions and waveform display in the animation editor means lip-syncing gets done faster than you can say “home time”.   Material Library Material Libraries allow all materials and shaders to be shared between objects, as well as libraries to be shared between scenes. Material libraries are sources that are easily deployed via contextual menus and the Material Explorer.  This new system reduces memory use and scene complexity and can be easily edited with instant visual shader feedback as a shader view.   Reference Animation Work with thousands of actions without the overhead.  Action sources can now be saved externally and shared between scenes.  They can be offloaded at any time or referenced from an external file.  Multiple animators can all use the same source simultaneously.  New clip relations can help control retiming. Clips can also be partially offloaded giving astonishing control over huge data sets.   Foundation Character Rigging Standard biped and quadruped character creation just got easier in XSI v.4.2 Foundation, with a new streamlined workflow.  In one place you can access all your rigging guides as well as generate film quality rigs.   The video clips above are a very small sampling of a vast series of videos designed to guide you through the powerful  features in SOFTIMAGE|XSI. Hundreds of these videos in a collection of DVDs are available in the Softimage Store.