Montreal-based software company Softimage has announced a new education program to meet rising demand for animators. The new program allows students and educational institutions to learn Softimage XSI, a leading 3D nonlinear production environment and its related software. As part of this training initiative, softimage.com now features an expanded job and talent section to match trained animators and employers.
The new Student and Teacher program offers a permanent non-commercial license of Softimage XSI software at an introductory price of $495. This version of the product includes high-end advanced tools, such as realtime shaders, compositing, hair, batch rendering, particles and subdivision math — many of which have been used to create effects seen in films such as Spy Kids 2 and games such as NBA Live 2003.
The new package also allows qualified educational institutes to purchase Softimage/3D software for $99.50 per license. The student version comes with documentation and training material. The more comprehensive Softimage Production Suites is available for $1,500. Students and teachers who bought pre-version 3.0 versions of the program are entitled to free upgrades of the academic versions of 3.0 when it is released.
Softimage is a subsidiary of Avid Technology. ILM, R!OT, The Mill, Blue Sky Studios, Mainframe, FrameStore and many of the other industry heavyweights use Softimage for their animation work. For more information about the new education programs, visit www.softimage.com.
