I am not sure unlicensed users can access the forum, so here is a little info:

Solid Iris has 'announced' (well... they mentioned it on their forum...) that they are now working on an integrated solution of the softimage plugin. Not much info by now, but most likely without ICE particle and strand support (as Thea cannot render particles).

For those who wonder what Thea is: Thea is a physical accurate unbiased and biased render mainly used for architectural and product design. It is quite nice with a bit different approach to shader editing and an impressive feature list when it comes to physical accurate rendering. A plugin exists for softimage, but it is still in kind of beta.

Always wanted to try this but when it comes to softimage plugins are always in beta, forever, which is a bit frustrating. Arion/octane/thea/ been in beta forever.
Good news nonetheless

It's GREAT news but I don't expect to see it until next year at the earliest.

I think I spotted particles on the Thea Render roadmap somewhere so there is hope. Strands can still be rendered in Thea but have to be transfered as geometry (which can result in massive file sizes).

Anyway, good news. I can't wait.

i hope this integrated plugin will make everyone forget about the exporter. i have very little time to work on the exporter so it stayed in 'beta', but i wanted to have something for softimage users to help when using thea in the long run it didn't provide much benefit over obj export for many people.

their will be a new developer, one which will have more time to devote to development than i ever did. looking forward to it