Well Softimage is in dire need of a new hair system so why not take this stuff?

Yeah, that is true. I guess it is wishful thinking on my end, but my logic, I think does work the best if Autodesk wants to sell more Suites. I am just saying for the first year or so, then bring it to the other 2. I highly doubt that putting this in Maya first is going to sell more Suites, if that is what Autodesk is aiming to do. Anyway, I guess with this article and the recent departure of most of the Softimage team to the newly created Maya VFX team, I think one can put the pieces together on what they might be working on next. I just wish it was for Softimage...

I don't think so. Since the arrival of ICE and strands it isn't too hard to come up with your own hair solution. I'm currently on my way to do so and I must say it comes along quite nice. So I'm not a computer nerd.

Though you are right, as not everyone wants to/has the ability to look into ICE, a basic hair solution in ICE would be nice. But Melena and Kristinka are there. Why don't you go for them?

also, there is another hair system on the way:
http://vimeo.com/41125869

but i really like that idea of putting the cool stuff into Softimage first to make all those Maya and Max users buy premium or ultimate suites it makes perfect sense from autodesk (greedy) point of view

I am pretty familiar with ICE but building a hair system with it seems pretty cumbersome to me.
First - you don't have any proper styling tools. I like the styling tools the original Softimage Hair has - this is one of the biggest pros of it.
Furthermore, you cannot generate strands at rendertime with ICE - you have to generate and simulate all of your hair in the scene, which
results in massive performance loss.

well, if 'render time' means entire strand generated by renderer, Let's say, something like King Konger for 3delight, nothing in out-of-the-box SI can do that. It's only about viewport display, and ICE equivalent of 'render XSI hair in viewport' is 'particle display' property, automatically attached to any ICE point cloud.

Of course, would be great to have XGen implementation in Softimage, but.... definition of 'artists friendly' by Disney... does it means the same from forum life, 'I want it simple, even on the price of poor final result, even I can't show anything well done with that simple', I don't think so. I'm pretty sure, Maya users will have chance to enjoy the complexity.

Regarding Kristinka Hair, as it is already mentioned in first post, usually I have some free time during June or July. So , for this year, general plan is:
1: refining of existing stuff, simpler and more efficient interface here and there, a few new nodes. Let's say, version 3.1 or so ( current is 3.0).
2: tutorial. Nothing spectacular, more like all exact steps to get some particular hairdo.

Cheers

with the new custom tool sdk, i think this is possible now.

Yes I thought so too when they introduced the new SDK - problem is that it will probably take quite some time to implement this.

I just read an interesting post on cgtalk that sounds directly related to why Autodesk hasn't released xgen yet... Infringement of Joe Alter's patent.




Yeti Fur will not be sold in the US
“To avoid a potential ongoing and expensive legal dispute with Joe Alter respecting the scope of his patent, Peregrine and Alter have executed a settlement agreement in which Peregrine has agreed not to sell or license the Yeti plug-in to users located within the geographic boundaries of the United States until his patent expires.”

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=1048283&page=1&pp=15

The "Alter vs. Disney" case seems to already have been settled:
(Quoted from here)

No mention of the kind of settlement, obviously... Quoting Joe Alter directly:
(Quoted from here also)