Doing everything with messiah:studio

[chikega]

A:M is a slick program for the price - there are quite a few former A:M guys that now use Messiah - Joe Cosman, Eggington, dfaris, etc...

Essentially there are two versions of Messiah - Messiah:Animate and Messiah:Studio.

M:A is mainly used as a 3rd party character animation program in conjunction with other 3d software - it lacks a renderer. A lot of people on the list use this version - so, this is probably why you hear a lot of discussion of LW, C4d, Max, etc...

M:S is M:A with the addition of a renderer. I'm playing around with the renderer and it looks to be very powerful. I'm actually animating a fresnel effect which is exceptional - I can't do that in Lightwave. It looks like the programmers have really gone out of their way to make this an object-oriented program - so almost everything is animatable. Reminds me very much of XSI in which everything is extremely O.O. (encapsulated, etc...) except the price. There are some things missing like fur/hair etc.. but we're trying to convince Worley to port over Sasquatch ... wishful thinking?

So, it really depends on what you're final animation needs are. If you're looking for an inexpensive renderer to supplement M:A, some have gone with the base C4d ($595 U.S.) or you can upgrade to M:S. - but some feel the renderer is not quite ready for prime time - just yet. :)

[miers]

In your opinion (or whoever doesn't think the renderer is ready for primetime), are the shortcomings addressable in a patch timeframe, or is this something that is another version of the software?

As for hair...is there some way of faking this? It will probably be a while before I need full-blown hair. It looks like A:M will have pretty nice hair in v2004, but I'm not sure it will be ready for primetime for another year.

Thanks for the great reply!

[dfaris]

miers,

I use messiah studio with C4D. I would say if you use studio you can use wings to model and messiah to animate and render. I have not used the renderer yet but have run some UV tests with it. The animation with messiah is fantastic and Joe Cosman has some tuts that will get you up and animating in a day or less. Then you will start digging deeper and deeper into messiah and find all kinds of cool things. The guys at pmg are working on the renderer more and more so it should get faster and faster. Its not slow but should get faster but as I said I have not done any real rendering with it.

If you could manage the base C4D app and messiah animate you would be in pretty good shape from here you could get the add ons for C4D as you need them like shave or the advanced renderer. C4D plays well with other file formats to and it has a real real sweat renderer and you can use shaders from DT with C4D.

You can also join the messiah chat on irc and ask the guys from pmg questions, they are in there all the time along with lots of other helpfull people and a few former AM folks. You can check Joe Cosmans tuts out here http://www.joecosman.com/messiahtuts/
clcik on the CD for more info about each tut

[Swissphil]

It depends on what you want to render miers.
If you want to render hair, particles or fluids, you'll need an external renderer because M:S doesn't render these things (yet). Lightwave or Cinema4D can do particles, but to do hair or fluids or more complex particles, you'd need plugins (= more expensiv)

M:S renderer has great potential, but as there are not so many tutorials for it around and the documentation has not as many examples as in the animation part, you'll also need some time to invest.
There are areas where LW or C4D render faster, in other areas (global ilumination) its sometimes wayyyy faster. And its definitly faster then A:M's render back in version 8.5.

My experience with the folks developing this application is, they deliver what they promise (sometimes not in the intended timeframe, but they do and with a high quality). Support is also great and the discussion is much more open that I ever experienced with Hash. I don't think anybody has ever been kicked off the mailinglist :cool:

just a few thoughts of a guy who gets more and more addicted with it:)

[tangledpath]

So, M:S won't render particles created in M:A?

...Still waiting on my copy :)

[Andy741]

something you may want to consider is purchasing an older version of Lightwave.

If you get an older version that still has endomorphs in the modelor, that might be a plus for you too. Anybody know which version endomorphs first appeared in?

[chikega]

Originally posted by Andy741
something you may want to consider is purchasing an older version of Lightwave.

If you get an older version that still has endomorphs in the modelor, that might be a plus for you too. Anybody know which version endomorphs first appeared in?

I believe V6:)

[tangledpath]

Really showing my ignorance here...but what is an endomorph?

Also, since I'm really playing the part of the stupid user, what is the technical definition of a "null"?

[dobermunk]

Endomorph is a morph target or blendshape that is saved per vertex within the Lightwave .lwo format. By being saved per vertex, you do not have problems with point order and so can edit and change your base model without breaking its 'morphabiity' with the shapes.

A null is ....
.... a point in space. :shrug:
Used mostly to arrange and manage hierarchies, or to add rotational handles or....

somebody help.

[chikega]

Originally posted by dobermunk
Endomorph is a morph target or blendshape that is saved per vertex within the Lightwave .lwo format. By being saved per vertex, you do not have problems with point order and so can edit and change your base model without breaking its 'morphabiity' with the shapes.

A null is ....
.... a point in space. :shrug:
Used mostly to arrange and manage hierarchies, or to add rotational handles or....

somebody help.

... a non-object, a placeholder - it has no-dimensions and does not render ...

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