messiah:studio Workstation V messiah:studio Animate

[ThomasHelzle]

The native messiah connection plugins aren't worth it IMO.
I have studio pro which comes with the plugins but I always use PointOvenPro since it is absolutely stable and two ways (so you can bring animation from Lightwave to messiah too). The messiah plugins can only transfer animation from messiah to Lightwave and ignore everything you did to your meshes in LW.
Animate has no renderer at all. You can only animate with it. The messiah plugins work in a way, that you start messiah from within LW, animate your objects in messiah and when you switch back, your animation is already in LW. Nice if it works but you always have to have both apps running, I had a lot of problems with stability in the past and there are other drawbacks.

If you buy workstation and want to render your animation with Lightwave, you will need PointOven. PO "bakes" animation to .mdd files that you apply in Lightwave. Very simple to use, very very stable and connects to 3D Max, Maya, XSI too.

In my opinion, getting studio:workstation and PointOvenPro is the clever thing to do.

Cheers,

[alexfalchi]

Hello guys.
Hi skritter I agree wich Thomas:)

Hi Thomas(hope you ok) ...sorry we have XSI connect plugin?? I really don't found it...I know we have 3dmax,maya and LW....but XSI??!!
well I really work in XSI just for base model, after this I love to animate and render in messiah studio PRO..( i'm in love) but I just import obj.files from XSI or ZB...aniway if we have XSI plugin...is good:)

tanks mate.

Alex

[ThomasHelzle]

The messiah native plugins don't have an XSI connection. Also, the Max and Cinema4D connections are broken.

The latest PointOvenPro 1.4 has Lightwave, messiah, XSI, Maya and Max connections, all of them working perfectly AFAIK. And if there should be a problem, Mark Wilson, the author fixes it blazingly fast. He is the most helpful guy I know and he really cares about his customer.

The cool thing about PointOvenPro is, that you get an LWO importer/exporter for all supported software too, so no need to convert to OBJ anymore :)

Best regards,

[skritter]

Thanks for the replies Thomas and Alex.

So with Workstation (native), you can not get the animation to LW without Pointoven period? That is correct?

So my chioces are....
Animate...for $299 with crappy inhouse LW plugin connection

or Studio + Pointoven $299+$99 to get LW connection...

(But even with Animate I would porobly want Pointoven anywhy?)

Have I got it correct?
Thanks

[alexfalchi]

Hi mate...I agree wich Thomas for studio:workstation and PointOvenPro..sure if you like..but I think is very good.
here you can see the benefit for workstation or professional version :
http://www.projectmessiah.com/x2/pmG_NewVersions_PressRelease.htm
I really don't know workstation version, sorry.. eheh Thomas can really help you:)
aniway I hope this help you:)

kind regards.
Alex.

[ThomasHelzle]

skritter: Yes, that is correct - at least as I see it from my production experience.

But there are people who live with with the "shaky" LW connection of the native plugins because they like the "live" aspect. But for instance, it is recommended from experience to look everytime you save your scene in LW (the messiah scene is embedded into it) at its size, since sometimes messiah doesn't embed its data, then the file is smaller...
I lost several scenes this way and I simply don't want to rely on something that only works most of the time in an area as critical as saving.
There are other problems like messiah sometimes loosing the connection to some objects or mixing them up etc. what means that you may also loose the animation and the setup since that is only existent together with its connected object.
And these problems happen more often in my experience the more complex your scene becomes...
My last project was very poly heavy with converted CAD data and very high poly characters. messiah had no problem with the polycount (~1M and more) and was still quite fast, but the connection was freaking out on me.

With PointOven, I didn't have one single issue so far that would have threatened my work. Mark Wilson originally developed it for Passion Pictures since they needed a more reliable and flexible solution.

But don't get me wrong, I don't tell you "you have to buy workstation". If you aren't interested in the renderer and just want to animate you can get animate and have the plugins and if you want, get PO later.
I just can give you my opinion and that is, that I would buy workstation and PO - 100% :-)

Best regards,

[fwtep]

I did ton of FX for my movie with messiah/LW (shots that required Worley's Sasquatch) and never lost a scene that was connected or had any other connected scene problem. This was over the course of about two years and various versions of LW and messiah.

Fred

[ThomasHelzle]

Congratulations then ...

[fwtep]

Congratulations then ...I'm sorry if it upsets you that some people don't have the problems you do. :)

Fred

[ThomasHelzle]

Fred, I am not upset, I am only jealous! :)

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