Softimage XSI foundation - go for it! We have switched / are switching to XSI from LW at work, just got loads of those boxes and stuff.
We did VERY hard and objective test run that had all the major packages before we decided what should be the next modeling / animation package after LW which have shown it's limits to us during these years... and although price was not an issue here the fact that XSI is pretty cheap after the recent price cut didn't hurt for sure!
XSI modeling and animation are top notch, and it has for example DX8 .X exporters that would allow to get boned character to Blitz (after converting the .X to .B3D).
I still like LW as a modeler, but XSI will be way better once I learn it properly, because it's a non-linear tool meaning that I can go back and change things... think PS layers or MAX stack here. And LW's animation tools have always sucked, but XSI is a dream if you need to animate things. It has even built-in character tool that generates "humans" that are perfectly even mapped for you - and if you want to have slightly or full elephant head to that character just use the slider to do so :) And it has loads of ready-made bone rigs that really work.
Did I say that I liked XSI very much?
We did VERY hard and objective test run that had all the major packages before we decided what should be the next modeling / animation package after LW which have shown it's limits to us during these years... and although price was not an issue here the fact that XSI is pretty cheap after the recent price cut didn't hurt for sure!
XSI modeling and animation are top notch, and it has for example DX8 .X exporters that would allow to get boned character to Blitz (after converting the .X to .B3D).
I still like LW as a modeler, but XSI will be way better once I learn it properly, because it's a non-linear tool meaning that I can go back and change things... think PS layers or MAX stack here. And LW's animation tools have always sucked, but XSI is a dream if you need to animate things. It has even built-in character tool that generates "humans" that are perfectly even mapped for you - and if you want to have slightly or full elephant head to that character just use the slider to do so :) And it has loads of ready-made bone rigs that really work.
Did I say that I liked XSI very much?