bone setup easy??

[tOd]

Not even close. Ive used both. I use messiah all the way.

[sebek27]

motionbuilder lets you import only FBX FILE FORMAT ??

[jipe]

motionbuilder lets you import only FBX FILE FORMAT ??
There are FBX plugins for Maya, Softimage, 3d Studio Max, Lightwave, Cinema4d, and other programs such as wings3d, that allow you to transport scenes and characters between packages (and into/out of Motionbuilder).

is bone setup as easy as in messiah if you use motionbuilder ?
Motionbuilder is pretty much only focused on animation - Kaydara provides the FBX plugins so you can model, bone, and weight your characters in your package of choice, then bring them into Motionbuilder. If you bone the model according to the specifications (biped or quadraped), Motionbuilder can automatically create a virtually unbreakable rig with full FK and IK. Motionbuilder also has effector pinning, which means you can freeze any part of the skeleton at any time (it's awesome!). MB has minimal tools for weighting skeletons (assiging vertices manually), because it figures you will do that in the previous package in your pipeline.

Messiah has an amazing bones system, with default deformations that work really well and a host of ways to tweak it. It does have an Auto Rig, but I have no experience with it - it seems that MB's full FK/IK has an edge, especially with the effector pinning, but maybe someone with experience animating in messiah can give you some info.

I'm starting to wish that I had both programs (or a combination of the two - a FBX plugin for messiah would be awesome!).

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