I hear CAT rocks... but whether it's more able than Motionbuilder or not (and whether it gets integrated into XSI one day) will determine if I end up using it. It's certainly cheap compared to MotionBuilder though ;)
I've had no issue with 3rd party tools... but anyway, although Max has had the earlier start, XSI's popularity is growing rapidly. Max isn't bad for modelling work, but compared to XSI it's just clumsy and slow. Granted, XSI isn't the best for accurate work, but its interface will bend over backwards to accomodate you, while using Max is like fighting with ten years of UI options that have been shoved to fit in whatever space could be found at the time.
As far as games work goes... you can build your game engine into XSI, and then use it to edit your levels realtime. Last time I checked, Max was nowhere near being able to do that ;)
XSI has almost no support in games and using third party conversion tools is no fun.
I've had no issue with 3rd party tools... but anyway, although Max has had the earlier start, XSI's popularity is growing rapidly. Max isn't bad for modelling work, but compared to XSI it's just clumsy and slow. Granted, XSI isn't the best for accurate work, but its interface will bend over backwards to accomodate you, while using Max is like fighting with ten years of UI options that have been shoved to fit in whatever space could be found at the time.
As far as games work goes... you can build your game engine into XSI, and then use it to edit your levels realtime. Last time I checked, Max was nowhere near being able to do that ;)