Messiah Features V MB

[chikega]

Hey Skritter,
I have MB as well and to put it into a nutshell, MB is great at *automation* - but messiah allows *innovation*. In other words, messiah will allow you to create custom rigs like birds, Dragons, spiders, mermaids, etc... MB automation is limited mainly to bipeds and quadrupeds - you can create custom in MB rigs but with a bit more difficulty. This subject has been covered a number of times in the last few years.you can do a search on this topic in both this forum and MB ... here are a few to whet your apetite. :)

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104028
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=106679&highlight=messiah+Motionbuilder
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=169394&highlight=messiah+Motionbuilder
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=70222&highlight=Motionbuilder

If you're new to CA and rigging in general, then I can't recommend Joe Cosman's CD's enough. Yes, I know, another expense in adddtion to PO that others have mentioned. But like PO, Joe's rigging concepts are applicable to just about any CG app. They are much cheaper than when they first came out ... Get them!

http://www.cafepress.com/messiahtuts/533502

[ThomasHelzle]

... and now let me guess what your next threads will be called: "messiah VS XSI", followed by "messiah VS maya" and finally "messiah VS The flying Torch"! Oh what fun we all will have :bounce:

Just kidding - couldn't resist >LOL<

Cheers,

P.S. A lot of people miss the documentation the comes with the demo: right click on the File Tab in messiah->Launch Docs...
... and please don't ask me why it is hidden there ... :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

[crossbones]

I'll take blame for that one Thomas, I talked fred tepper into using roboHelp....gosh I miss the old html docs.....:banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead:

[ThomasHelzle]

No, you got me wrong - I think the new help format is much better than the old one (remember the horrible useless search function?) - I use HtmlHelp for my own plugins too - but to place it in a right-click-menue no newbie will ever know is there without the helpfile is outright stupid. I don't know how often this topic came up and still isn't improved upon.
Since F1 - the standard for Help - is taken by a function I think I haven't used for years, other good and more obvious places have to be found.
Putting it in the normal file dropdown too would be a first step.
But look at my plugins: every interface has a help button on it and even takes you to the correct page in the helpfile - which is very easy to do with HtmlHelp and standard as of today. And I didn't even have Robohelp but only the free HelpCompiler from the Microsoft SDK...

Whatever - Everybody knows it but only pmG can change it.

Cheers,

[skritter]

Thanks for the replies Guys.

With MB I like the way you can transfer animation from one character to another, even at a different scales, and the animation blending in MB is brilliant. How do these things compare in Messiah.

[Wegg]

Thanks for the replies Guys.

With MB I like the way you can transfer animation from one character to another, even at a different scales, and the animation blending in MB is brilliant. How do these things compare in Messiah.

These things can be done in Messiah but they aren't nearly as elegant. I think a major reason for that is the fact that Messiah is so free in the way you can create your rig. . . that there is no universal biped rig that you can apply scale values to when trying to get a walk from a short character onto a taller one.

Blending of animation in Messiah is also very usable. I take advantage of this feature all the time for repeating secondary animation. Breathing. . . tapping. . . flapping etc. Setting it up can sometimes be a brain teaser but once you have it all working it is very powerful.

One thing Messiah can do that MB can't is skip any weight mapping you would need to do in new characters. For instance if you have a great rig for an average sized character and you build another one with similar proportions. . . you just swap out the mesh in Messiah and with just a few tweaks it is done. No need to paint a single weight map in the host app!

[JoeCosman]

motion builder has always been an interrim program for my uses(other coworkers have it, but only to edit mocap data in and out of maya.) it has alot of features useful for editing Motion capture, like re-plotting curves to their own rig for editing, or smoothing out jitters in the data,but other than that, I'm afraid the rest of the program is lost on me. I would use it to get motion from one proggy to the other via FBX, but there are more things you can accomplish with some messiah experience.

there is room for both in a pipeline. i.e. bake out frames from Messiah through LW, export baked frames to FBX, edit in Motion builder, take into maya. but why do that when you could hook Messah into maya and animate right from there?

hundreds of ways to do things, there are. what is your goal? to expand your talent into another area, or just make your current methods easier to implement? are you trying to be as diverse as possible with client's needs?

just be careful not to spread yourself too thin over too many packages. its best to stick to 1 or 2 great ones, and know most of the tools, than to get 3 or 4 and know very little of any.

-JoeC

[chikega]

Joe speaks the truth about spreading one's self too thin ... I'm guilty of having done that in the past. I was the master of none. :)

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