what going to happen when LW8

[lmilton]

I'm not sure what kind of answers you're expecting. You know as much about L[8] as everyone else. And you know it hasn't shipped yet...

-lyle

[EWolf]

Every time a new version of Lightwave is announced three things happen:

1) Newtek says it has finally beefed up the character animation capabilities of Lightwave.

2) Everyone believes them and posts questions about whether messiah is necessary any more.

3) When it finally comes out everyone plays with it for a little while and realizes that it still doesn't match messiah.

Then Newtek repeats step #1 with a new version announcement and it all begins again.

The guys at pmg are doing a great job and Lightwave can't catch up without a complete rewrite.

-=EW=-

[Andy741]

the thing i like about m:a is that they don't just add little features like a Batman utility belt. the thing is designed from the ground up for character animation. anything new that gets added, changes a paradigm in your workflow rather than adding a new feature. at least that's what I'm hearing.

[ljilekor]

true.

[Julez4001]

So just use Messiah:)

[MoodyB]

Originally posted by pelos
whats going to happen with the relese of Lightwave8?
are the tools better than messiah? is going to be a update for messiah with something new?

Same as what always happens. Both will have their own unique advantages / disadvantages and then its down to user preference over which one fulfills their needs best. It'll be easier to do setups / animation in LW8 than before ( thankfully ), but it still wont be as fluid a process as it currently is in Messiah....

The example videos on www.flay.com of some of the FX features look pretty nice, but the UI / workflow to use them is horrid to say the least ( at the moment anyway ).

[pelos]

i know, i also think that messiah have an incredibly power but ther is no much info about it, as tutorials scenes, as you can compare to LW also the forums for Lw and messiah, the numbers of post is diferent (i dont mean the #, i mean the speed of new post an coments the participation of the people) lmilton, you are right i dont know actualy what to expect for an answer,

[Panikos]

According to the expressions-video, and the intentional slow tempo due to the tutorial nature of it, it takes at least 2 minutes to write an expression.

In 2 minutes in messiah I can shoot a documentary video :)

[dobermunk]

whats going to happen with the release of Lightwave8?


We'll all quit the profession as the tools will enable highschool dropouts to do more quickly and more creatively what we have until now done.

I've already sold my computer and am writing to you from a hut in the Antilles ;-)

[hartcons]

Supposedly Messiah Animate can pipeline into apps other than lightwave ...

Personally I'm trying to figure out the best choice for character animation:

1. get messiah animate to go with lwave 7.5
2. get kaydara motion builder
3. get maya
4. wait for lwave 8
5. get c4d8 (with the mocca plug-in)
6. get hash animation master (killer bean 2)

[BNicolucci]

If your just looking to learn right now, download the free Maya PLE and get to it. There are tons of free tutorials out there for it.

If your looking to do work right now, then the choices become more difficult. Are you looking to work somewhere or do you plan on doing it yourself? If it's for someone else, then Maya goes to the top of the list again. It's a very sought after skill set. And don't let anyone tell you it's unusable for a one man operation. It's not nearly as difficult as people say.

Personally I have been really enjoying the heck out of Messiah. My main app before this was Animation Master, and I think Messiah beats it.

Outside of choosing C4D (not up to the other apps for character animation), I don't think you can make too bad a decision.

[dragonfollower]

I agree. I just recently got hired on as a video game animator and had to learn the animation side of Maya in a DAY! I was extremely intimidated and was afraid that I wouldn't be able to do it. Well, I did it. Maya is not nearly as overwhelming as people will tell you. At least not on the animation side of things. And, regardless of what others say, it's not JUST how good of an animator you are, especially at smaller companies. If you know Maya, many more doors will open for you. But, that said, being a good animator is still MOST important.

Messiah:Animate has all the things you need to do character animation. Personally, if you're doing freelancing or just trying to learn animation I would go with Messiah/LW; or Animation Master.

The downside to AM is that the modeling capabilities (at least in my experience) aren't as good as LW.

The downside to Messiah/LW is that I like the animation workflow in AM better (though Messiah's capable of the same kind of stuff).

But for my own stuff, I use Messiah and wouldn't go back to Animation Master unless its modeling tools drastically improved among other things.

-Brian

[Stoehr]

Originally posted by dobermunk
We'll all quit the profession as the tools will enable highschool dropouts to do more quickly and more creatively what we have until now done.

I've already sold my computer and am writing to you from a hut in the Antilles ;-)

LOL!!

[pelos]

i know that messiah can write a expression in 2min. but where to find material, (beside the tutorials that come with the demo)

[Geco]

Originally posted by pelos
i know that messiah can write a expression in 2min. but where to find material, (beside the tutorials that come with the demo) http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=81276


http://tinyurl.com/uiqz

[Panikos]

The benefit of messiah is that you learn it once, you use it many.
I was lucky to get the debut LW-messiah plugin one day before public release. It was the one of the best software my money bought ever.

The demos will show you the way, but you have to walk alone.
I was in the same situation like you once.
Now I can build excelent rigs and setups with 500 expressions.

:buttrock:

[MoodyB]

Originally posted by Panikos

Now I can build excelent rigs and setups with 500 expressions.


And if you tried using that many expressions in a LW setup, you'd need an eye transplant from using its expression interface before you'd reached 50, never mind 100 :)

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