Hi everyone.

I just thought I'd share these two handy plugins for XSI that I've recently started using. They're both made by a guy named Mike Malinowski. Unfortunately I can't link you to his website since it is no longer available (softmonkey.org) but I've got these two plugins up on my Mediafire so you can download them if you'd like (HERE).

XSIGradient allows you to have a gradient background in your viewports, similar to the way Maya looks. You can customize the top and bottom colours however you like.

XSIEnvelope greatly extends and diversifies the tools at your disposal for enveloping meshes to bones. You can easily copy weights between areas of a model, select deformers with a variety of filters, select points based on which deformer they are mapped to, and much more.

You can find those and many more archived here:
http://rray.de/xsi/

Aha. Yes that looks like the place I originally found them. Thanks Ace.

Heh, I remember when I wanted a gradient background in Softimage... Then I started learning Maya in school and realized that I hated it. :V

The enveloping tool sounds super-neat though.

I can definitely understand why some people wouldn't want it. Right now I kind of like it - that may change.