I was suckered into buying XSI Foundation twice, so thats the version I am discontent with, its the version this entry is about.
My main gripe with them is resumed by the title of this entry, they don't sell you the software, they rent it to you.
Each year, you have to buy it again if you want any bug fixes and new features, but even this rental scheme is probably not their intended approach.
No, it seems that the real purpose of having a low budget version of XSI is to hook their customers into buying the next tier in their product line as it has been shown by the recent announcement of XSI 6.5.
6.5 is a paid minor upgrade, announced merely 8 months after the release of version 6.0, so higher tier customers are also renting the software.
The thing is, there is no XSI Foundation 6.5, I guess the new features wouldn't have made it into Foundation, so no need for the upgrade to cover it... but what about the bugs?
Oh yes, there is plenty of bugs, and more are introduced when a feature thats included in Fnd depends on a part of a feature thats not in there (for example in 4.2 removing a bone from a character guide would render it useless for creating a rig, but this was never taken care of), so this new version, to me, sounds like Fnd users will get even more neglected, at least until about January or February when they release XSI 7.0, and I'll be asked to fork another $400.
I really had it this time, and unfortunately, there are no low budget versions of 3DSMax or Maya (probably a good thing though), so I guess I am going to Blender, its interface may suck (seriously, SHIFT+MMB to pan the view? who though of such uncomfortable combination for such a common action? I am referring to the fact that most mice nowadays have a wheel for MMB, and those aren't really a joy to click, much less keep pressed while holding a key and dragging the mouse, ALT+SHIFT+LMB is no better either), but at least I could fix the bugs myself if the owners dragged their asses.
