CGTalk - Noob Questions

Leebre

11-23-2004, 06:23 AM

Ok, I feel really stupid asking this because I know it will be obvious...

I dl'ed the demo and started working through the "Start Here" section. Right off the bat, where it says to pick up the t-rex's foot and move it around like in the animated gif, I couldn't do it. In the gif it shows the foot being moved freely in the x and y axis but I could only get it to move along one axis at a time. My question is...how do I get it to move freely like in the gif?

Also, it said "make sure it says 24 in the fps box." I was perplexed because I coudln't see anything in the box. Then I noticed that none of the boxes had numbers...even the motion boxes for xyz, hpb, etc. I'm assuming that has to do with my ATI 9800?

Thanks for putting up with a green horn.

Suricate

11-23-2004, 08:00 AM

Hi Leebert,

no need to feel stupid :). Many things in messiah are different from other packages. In most cases, they are better, in a few case they are not. Using the edit sphere is one of the less intuitive things, there have been many discussions whether the edit sphere should be abandoned. To accomplish what you want: 1. First make sure the original project:messiah coordinate system is active:Click onto the 'Coord Sys' button in the lower right until it gives you a message like that. 2. Clickto on any translational channel on the edit sphere (the little 'X', Y', 'Z' buttons) 3. Click onto the middle of the sphere, there should be a little 'M' with a yellow circle around it. Now you should be able to move the foot as you want. In the docs, there is a chapter on the edit sphere, there are many more options you can choose from.

About the text disappearing in the boxes: messiah is VERY OpenGL intense (that is part of the reason why it is so fast). Generally ATI cards don't play too nicely with OpenGL in general and messiah, nVidia cards are better (though there are some glitches as well). Maybe have a search here in the forum whether there are any settings that get your graphics card going.

Despite of the initial problems: Believe me, messiah is really a great program.:thumbsup:

Leebre

11-23-2004, 10:47 PM

Thanks Suricate...I found a previous post where someone had my exact same card and said that enabling "Force 16-bit Z-buffer" fixed the text display problem. I'll try it when I get home and see. Messiah does seem to be a great program though, based on all of the work I've seen.

I've currently got an educational version of Cinema 4D but I am getting close to doing cg commercially so I am in the market for an app. To upgrade my C4D license will cost me about $1500. But I'm mainly interested in character animation and it is rather weak in that area. A messiah:Stuido 2 license is $995, plus it's reason for existance is CA and it has an awesome renderer. I could get m:S2 plus the AoN plugin for less than upgrading my license of C4D so I'm leaning towards m:S2.

Leebre

11-24-2004, 04:56 AM

Yup...forcing 16-bit buffering did the trick. Playtime!

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