Influence Objects in Messiah?

[Sil3]

Originally posted by ToFu
I'm a Maya User and do High-poly character stuff.
While Maya gives you many options to rig the character, things getting really slow down when working on the heavy model. So I'm thinking about purchasing the Messiah:animate and here are some questions.

1. Does messiah has 'influence objects' feature? (or Alternative)




Yes, it´s called Spherize, take a look in the messiah scenes that came with it, look for Spherize_Muscles.fxs
With a proper setup and a mix of Spherize and Muscle Bones you can even achieve that "Sliding Skin" effect.

2. If certain rigging or animation features are not in messiah but in my 3d app(maya), can I add and use the rigging that I created in maya after basic animation done in messiah? if so, how does it work?


example)
a) a character with complete rig and has maya's bone setup with or without the weighting.


Maya Bones will not port to messiah

b) export to messiah and re-setup the bone and rig the character


Yes u must rebuild the rig in messiah

c) finish animation in messiah and send animation datas to Maya


Yes, but only the mesh deformation

d) use my existing maya's rig to fine tunning the deformations or tweak the animation

No, at the moment only the deformations are exported, meaning that you only get the deformed mesh. Theres is a away actually to use Maya Bones to drive the animation, but it also means having to make 2 rigs with messiah Null´s (locators) driving Nulls in Maya wich would drive the Bones. This takes time to setup and you will not be taking the advantage of messiah SmartBones, wich of course would be a shame :p

Hope it helps

[fwtep]

Originally posted by ToFu
I'm a Maya User and do High-poly character stuff.
While Maya gives you many options to rig the character, things getting really slow down when working on the heavy model. So I'm thinking about purchasing the Messiah:animate and here are some questions.

1. Does messiah has 'influence objects' feature? (or Alternative)

It has similar features. But what specifically do you want to do? There might be better features in messiah that you might not explore if you're just looking to "match" the features of Maya.

2. If certain rigging or animation features are not in messiah but in my 3d app(maya), can I add and use the rigging that I created in maya after basic animation done in messiah? if so, how does it work?
You can't really add to the rig in Maya except with a lot of work. But really, why would you? The connection is live, so changes you make in messiah will instantly and automatically show up in Maya. While you can "bake" the deformations if you want, the best way to work is with the live connection, so it's not like you're locked into anything once you're in Maya.

The main reason most people get messiah in the first place is because rigging and animating in their host package isn't as fast or powerful or easy. So their host package becomes just a modeler and renderer (if they have messiah:animate) or just a modeler only (if they have messiah:studio).

Fred

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.