Yes, very much so. Several continuous years of working has been invested in our skinning support. We have very strong internal and 'smart' conversion of skeletons and skinning weights. We support the import and export of envelopes (otherwise known as 'mesh skinning' outside of the XSI domain) to/from other 3D packages such as 3ds max, Maya and DirectX. - Updated: October 19, 2007

Yes. We have spent several years cloning the best aspects of the animation engines from 3ds max, Maya, XSI, Softimage-3D and Lightwave so that our core software can import, retain and export the native animation data of these 3d packages. Our core software handles Bezier/TCB/Linear keyframe interpolators, and quaternion/Euler/Angle-Axis rotation types. Cross conversion between all these animation methods is transparently handled by the core software. - Updated: October 2, 2007

If you wish to import and convert texture mapped NURBS objects from SoftImage to other file formats then you will need to convert the NURBS object to a mesh object first. As an explanation, a NURBS object has a built-in "uv parameterization". This implicitly defines the uv texture coordinates for the NURBS object. However, most people will override this and apply a SoftImage texture projection to the object (planar, spherical, cubical, etc.). In order to properly move this texture projection override to other file formats you need to convert the NURBS object to a mesh object inside SoftImage. This will allow the texture projections and their associated uv coordinates to flow through the PolyTrans mesh pipeline. PolyTrans can import and export pure NURBS, but it will use the uv coordinates created from the NURBS surface itself. - Updated: October 2, 2007

PolyTrans can read in SoftImage .hrc files directly, as well as directly inside 3DS MAX or Maya. If you wish to import from a SoftImage database (which contains the animation, lights and cameras) then you will need to obtain a copy of the "softimage/3d/bin/rsrc" directory from a Softimage owner. This directory contains the SoftImage resources and is required by PolyTrans to import databases without a local copy of SoftImage. The same is true if you wish to export to a SoftImage database. - Updated: October 2, 2007

One of our customers has devised an interesting system to move data between Softimage XSI and Maya, under XSI program control. He has XSI invoke Maya in command line mode and then uses the MEL scripting interface to PolyTrans-for-Maya to import or export Softimage .hrc files directly. The Windows user interface of PolyTrans-for-Maya does not need to be used in such cases. Please refer to the MEL scripting interface in the PolyTrans-for-Maya online help system. - Updated: October 2, 2007