t4d wrote:Hirazi Blue wrote:t4d wrote:
CAT was purchased for XSI softimage yet ... seems all AD customers got was a free plugin for MAX ?
AFAIK & IIRC CAT was never acquired by Softimage for inclusion of the plugin into XSI. CAT was very much a Max plugin. Again, AFAIK & IIRC, CAT was mainly acquired as a means to employ Phil Taylor, who apparently came to play an important role in the development of ICE (Kinematics?).
so the Current Softimage autorigger is Better then CAT ?
( I have played with Cat in Max and I would personally say I WISH CAT was in softimage.. the IP is own by all the same company ?? )
well that's old story, in 3d Studio Max there is no that much of ready-made stuff for developers (except when it comes to renderers), but also there is no that much of limits. So only feasible way seems to be literally "great" plugin, together with in-compatibility with anything else. Early CAT was some kind of champion in "his own way", it had it's own system of bones, solvers, even animation editors. That is, somewhere around 2005, for exporting to games, it was generally easier (even for one man band) to do any special animation task in Softimage, then export it back to Max standard bones.
Once Softimage bought CAT, people (in Max community) believed it was only to kill it. Today, CAT is a third separate system (standard bones and Biped are first two). A bit better integrated, but I don't think it's developed anymore. Looks like a sedative, enough for Max people only to believe that they have something.
Of course it's better than XSI auto rigger from 2003 or like, but compared to GEAR or Anzovin's products for Maya (or whatever is Maya fashion for this autumn), I don't think so.