New Commercial done in Messiah.

[chikega]

Very nice job! A very fun and creative piece. Kudos!!! On a mac too! :thumbsup:

By the way, I'm about to do my next magazine cover with messiah ... I believe it's ready for primetime - the latest SSS features and stability, along with Paul and your work have given me confidence. It'll be a work in progress posted here. Stay tuned. :)

[AlexK]

Great animation Billy - as always. :buttrock:
Once again the guys on IRC came through for me. _rush123_, AlexK and Erwin Zwart pretty much saved my butt with the rendering. A lot of that was rendered on Alex's Mac! And that sucker was as fast as my X2 4200+ !!! The beginning and end frames only took a few minutes to render but towards the middle it was closer to 10 minutes. If I had known that I would have dialed in a few settings a bit better but by the time I realized it was too late. The #messiah3D community renderfarm rules. THANK YOU!:bowdown:
Anytime buddy! :applause: The #messiah3d community (kind of like a subspecies of messiah users) is just way too much fun, not to help out. (And that way I get to do at least some messiah renderings once in a while. Well, maybe that will change now with the Intel Macs. Then I can sneak in Messiah in our Mac based company. :D )

By the way, all of you Messiah users out there are welcome to join our little live club. Gary, we can help you out with rendering, too. :deal:

If you don't know how to connect to IRC take a look at this site http://www.irchelp.org/ and the pay us a visit at irc.freenode.net in the #messiah3d channel.

[dobermunk]

Billy: very cool!
At the end the camera path makes the satellite objects move a bit oddly in "camera space" but everything else is great. Hope they keep coming back!

David

[Gyuru]

great work, way to go :applause:

[Wegg]

Hope they keep coming back!

I'm working on another one now. :-)

[PaulNewman]

Hey, excellent work wegg! I like it all round. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

Looks like an ideal piece for messiah. Rendering was probably a breeze. EDIT: whoops...I missed that piece about 10 minutes a frame. Wow! Why so long?

The simplicity of this work is refreshing to me especially after working with the heavy detail and long render times of my sequence.

Keep up the excellent work and thanks for sharing :)

[Suricate]

Nice - as always! :thumbsup:

[timnhe]

Great work Wegg, very nice animation!! :thumbsup:

[Gitch]

Hey Will, real nice job on the animation as always.

You do great work!!

[Wegg]

Wow! Why so long?

I tend to just crank things up till it gets to a render time that I'm comfortable with in the time I have allowed it to render. I always try and test the beginning and end just to be sure. But. . . for some reason when the blue L stands up near the camera the times just shot up. 6X AA, Level 10 on the GI and two bounces probably had a lot to do with it. :-)

[chikega]

The quality of the soft shadow settings seem to affect render times significantly as well. What are your Soft Shadow Quality settings .... probably 5? And do you mean GI Samples as being Level 10? :)

[Wegg]

The quality of the soft shadow settings seem to affect render times significantly as well. What are your Soft Shadow Quality settings .... probably 5? And do you mean GI Samples as being Level 10? :)

I had the Soft Shadow Quality set at 10, GI Samples was at 8. Wasn't at my workstation when I wrote that.

Setting at 5 did speed up the render significantly in the super duper scientific test I just did. . . but you can see this little outline of where the shadow begins and ends. It just doesn't blend as nicely as with the higher settings.

[rush123]

Great work as always Wegg, :)

Once again you are proving that you can use Messiah render in production. Great work. :thumbsup:

R

[Wegg]

<Here> (http://www.eggington.net/%7Ewegg/BigGuysSound.mp4) is another one in the series. The client is loving them and wants to do 4 more. Yay!

[AlexK]

Brilliant as always Billy. :applause:

I just love it how you prove those nasty ranters wrong. :love:

Hey ranters, why not do something with this nice piece of software instead of ranting all the time? :twisted:

[dobermunk]

Congratulations, Wegg! Its only a matter of time before they want a feature film! :thumbsup:

whispered p.s.: are there poly-smooth artifacts at the poles of the ball?

[Wegg]

yea. Sub-D stuff. Would have been real easy to fix. But then. . . when I looked at pictures of beach balls. . . gues what!?! Same thing. So I left it! HA HA!

[biliousfrog]

nice work wegg....when I looked through the images I thought that the letters were going to taunt the satelite by throwing the dish to each other while he ran & jumped & tried to get it back....it seemed a bit strange that the satelite just stopped when the dish was removed but I guess that I just had a pre-conception of what I thought would happen. It's really well done, congrats

[stooch]

Brilliant as always Billy. :applause:

I just love it how you prove those nasty ranters wrong. :love:

Hey ranters, why not do something with this nice piece of software instead of ranting all the time? :twisted:

go ahead...

[AlexK]

go ahead...
Well, for one. I am not one of the ranters. ;)

And second, I am working in a Mac based environment since March, which leaves me kind of out of the loop as far as Messiah productions are concerned. :cry:
But before, I did post projects, too.

Apart from that I am still very active as a support person for everyone who asks, as Wegg and rush and others are able to confirm.

[svintaj]

Hey ranters, why not do something with this nice piece of software instead of ranting all the time? :twisted:
Hey ranters on us ranters, just because we don't post our work here doesn't mean we never create cool things with Messiah! :rolleyes: I have definitly spend much more time with Messiah than "ranting" around here! And when shall you fanatics understand that enhacing Messiah would be a good thing! :shrug: I would not call Messiah production ready, and I'm still waitng for the software I payed for 2001! Face it there is still no Develop, or am I wrong, NO :twisted: It was a big dissappointment that PMG didn't released the "final" version of MessiahStudio at Siggraph2006, I really thought they would. :hmm:

And Alex don't take this to serious, it's definitly not about you, peace! :beer:

/ Svante

[dobermunk]

Okay - don't make Wegg stop the car!

Everyone wants improvements to messiah...
Ales is just reacting to comments like "I wouldn't call messiah production ready".
Just make your comment more differentiated, that's all. We all no its not up to hair, volumetrics and out-of-the-box NPR.

But it's renderer is being used in productions, successfully - and its aniamtion module, despite flaws, is more than production ready.

[AlexK]

And Alex don't take this to serious, it's definitly not about you, peace! :beer:

Hey svinta, no offence taken. :beer:

I was - as you quite right put it - just ranting about the constant ranting.

If great work is done, I am all happy. But there is more then one guy on this forum, that just seems to see the bad sides. That is what drives me all crazy.

How can someone honestly say that Messiah is not production ready when it is obviously used in production? I call these people liars and rightfully so. It might not be ready for feature film production or photorealistic production, but that is also just an opinion, as even that is not true as Messiah was and is used in both.

And when shall you fanatics understand that enhacing Messiah would be a good thing!
Nobody denies that there are still bugy things and that there is a lot of room for improvement, but that is not a show stopper.

But as David put it:


Just make your comment more differentiated, that's all. We all know its not up to hair, volumetrics and out-of-the-box NPR.

But it's renderer is being used in productions, successfully - and its aniamtion module, despite flaws, is more than production ready.

I couldn't agree more.

[Wegg]

Thank you for all your kind comments on my animation that I worked hard on. ;)

[DMack]

Hey svinta, no offence taken. :beer:

But there is more then one guy on this forum, that just seems to see the bad sides. That is what drives me all crazy.



Ohhh, I hope I'm not that guy! I definitely rant sometimes but I do try and do it in a constructive way and with the best intentions......

You've got me all worried now!

[AlexK]

Ohhh, I hope I'm not that guy! I definitely rant sometimes but I do try and do it in a constructive way and with the best intentions......

You've got me all worried now!
I aimed at no one specific DMack, no worries. But the fact that it made you think is at least a sign, that there is hope. :D

No, as the typical Messiah ranter likes to put it. You know I love you all guys and that is why I rant about you. I still have hope. :twisted:

[ThomasHelzle]

Cool animation work Wegg! :thumbsup:

And all that other blabla about production ready or not: If it is ready for YOUR production, it is all fine, like Wegg is showing and preaching.

I only know that I am not "messiah ready" ;-)

Cheers,

[PaulNewman]

For some people messiah is production ready, for others it's not.
For some jobs messiah is ready, for others not.
Some production pipelines rely on messiah and for others it just won't work.
Some studios will benefit from messiah's tools, others may find other tools better suited.
Politics may resist messiah.
Prior Investments into other toolsets may resist messiah.
Client demands may call for another workflow.
Current and future desired skills may define the package chosen.

But all this is true of any other 3D app.

Technically there are many apps that are "production ready" by definition of what was used before in commercially produced projects, even Bryce and Poser if you like. So there exists a subjectivity about what is production ready. Many productions are made by one-man studios who are willing to go with less main-stream apps. Others go with the big apps perhaps because they are more risk averse and want to rely on something with a track record. It's simply different strokes for different folks.

I'd agree that messiah is production ready since I'm using it in production (per this basic definition) but I won't agree that messiah was ready even for what I'm producing at the moment (messiah was fixed during my production). messiah seems a great tool of choice for what Wegg is producing here. Were there any show stoppers Wegg? Doesn't look like it. The right tool for the right job. And as Thomas said about me using messiah on my stopwatch project: it's a risk, and he's right. I'm not that risk averse and I had a backup (Lightwave) which I could have fallen back onto had the showstoppers I had not been resolved.

So yes, messiah is production ready - YAY :thumbsup:
And no, messiah is not production ready - AHW :sad:

As for the ranters, let those testing and using messiah rant, because it is justified, messiah needs a lot of work. But let those same people also rave about what's good here. Bring that balance and things are fine. Let those sitting on the sidelines not testing messiah just keep quiet. No use theorizing about something you don't use and no good bashing something based on perceptions rather than experience.

The people I take serious around here are the guys using and testing messiah. That's real and most things they say out of expereince is relevant, good or bad. Personally I'm not prepared to rave about messiah in all aspects since that would be a lie. But messiah is a good app, nice GUI, rich with some good features, nice renderer, etc., etc., etc. As a generalist app, messiah is not there yet, very rough around the edges right now.

So yes, messiah is production ready - YAY :thumbsup:
And no, messiah is not production ready - AHW :sad:

[ThomasHelzle]

Paul: Nobody could say it better and more to the point. :thumbsup:

Cheers,

[chikega]

Wegg, another great job - it's wonderful.

I have to agree with Paul concerning messiah being both production ready and not. :)

[Wegg]

PaulNewman: I guess what I don't really get is . . . at what point does a tool switch over to being "production ready" without the stipulations? I mean. . . Messiah can do so much that others either flat out can't do. . . or have a very hard time with. And the same goes for the reverse. I have to use Lightwave all the time for different jobs. No way around it. Messiah just can't do everything. But there is so much I can't do in LW and have to switch back over to Messiah. Two great amazing tools that I use to make a living. Others would argue that ZBrush is THE answer to all texturing needs. I personally can't stand it and consider its interface and workflow to be highly counter productive. But I wouldn't hesitate to call it a "production ready" tool because of all the amazing work I see done with it.

Why does messiah:studio get the bum rap?

I think your with me though. Lightwave is your "backup" just like it is mine. No need to stress when you have a backup is there? And for me. . . Messiah is my Lightwave backup for effects and "looks" I just can't pull off in Lightwave. They make a fantastic pair.

[ThomasHelzle]

It is hard to argue with the high priest, but here it goes anyway:

1.) It is very much about the kind of problems you encounter.
In messiah, we often have problems in the absolute basic area. The latest updates did break Antialiasing, before we had the highlight problem - each were fixes to one thing that broke something else. Both were fatal. We have some parameters that aren't saved in almost every little update. It often takes several patches until a new feature even works halfways decent (copy material over another material still loses some stuff... in the first iteration it lost all connections...)
We still fight with interface navigation and the edit sphere. Custom preferences are at a minimum.
There are still problems with triangles in subdivided meshes, displacement works ONLY with subdivided objects, no Ngons, no Edgeweighting, no weightmaps...

I don't use Lightwave as an example since it is 5 years behind the pack in the meanwhile, but if you look at other packages, you find yourself dealing with very good solutions in the basics and the problems you encounter are generally on a much higher level of sophistication.

It is 2006 - I'm simply not up to the task of dealing with problems solved in 1985 already.

2.) And I am not up to the task of dealing with developers not testing their work or thinking through the consequences.
Honestly: How many renderings from Fori have you seen? I count 1 ("one", that whitish head).
Can you imagine doing a renderer without rendering it to death? I can't.
Even for just my shaders I did thousands or millions of renderings...
I am sure he is a cool guy, but I feel that lack in every pore of messiah.
Certain things are NOT POSSIBLE to get wrong if you use/love what you do.

3.) I can deal with a company that does little communication in a case like Adobe. They mostly know what they do and deliver new versions in a regular manner and most of the time those are decent. Sure there are single things that make you crazy (still no additive layer mode in Photoshop CS2, no "recent files" in InDesign CS2, absurdly bad buffering in After Effects 7... what the heck ...) but the stuff works very reliably in total.

messiah on the other side NEEDS user input like crazy, since there is so much wrong with the tool in the above mentioned basic areas.
To not communicate is impossible for pmG.

So:
Not production ready in my book means, that I am not willing to deal with groundbreaking parts of the software getting broken in a regular manner and fixes breaking another end of it.
I am not willing to leave out huge parts of the software just to work around all the problems like you are.
Believe me, I use a huge pile of software. And no other tool gives me such a feeling of dancing on VERY thin ice in every single area.

I find Paul is very clear and honest and keeps a good balance.

Your posts sometimes seem to me like someone trying like crazy to walk through a minefield telling everybody that he is just fine and enjoying the sun.

I see no point in that.

But people are different and that is the best thing about them. ;-)

Cheers,

[stooch]

haha you guys are like Ying and Yang.

I have made money with messiah and find it production ready. Are there annoyances in messiah that cause me grief? of course - i dont know of any program that lacks in the department!

I think right now, I trust messiah for CA and rigging. I dont trust its SBD solution and I need hair for character work. I think the render engine is very nice but there are ALOT OF NICE RENDER ENGINES!!!

anyway broken record. im sure PMG knows all of our complaints and they are working on it. I certainly dont share in the whole notion that they must tell us what they are doing every step of the way. However i wouldnt mind a little update every now and then, like hey guys we are working on this and that, dont expect anything just letting you know... etc

Im afraid that with too much negativity, we scare away these kinds of posts. So i will resign myself to constantly checking this forum daily, with hopes of seeing an update to play with.

[svintaj]

Don't you guys think ILM ever used a beta software in their productions? Should only that matter make the beta production-ready? :shrug:

When you are in a production you have to work fast and fluidly, every tool you have planned to use must work when you get there. There will often be tools you never had used before, but you can't afford to find a little bug with a supertight deadline!
Even if you often can find a workaround, it's a bad option, cause you are waisting the production-time and have to skip other cool details. Or worst of all, you may pass the deadline!
So, in the end your production will suffer...

I have used Messiah in production several times, but only when I have had a very distant deadline. I love to use Messiah in more "real" work and I will, if the deadline allows it!:thumbsup:
I have a pure hate-love relationship with this software, it makes me feel so schizofrenic!:argh:
If PMG worked on the "right" details, it could be a Sweet Love!:love: :drool:


...Ohh... and Wegg, I did like your animation! :thumbsup:
I'm sorry for starting this debate in your over all positive and creative thread!:blush:
(It's just hard to keep quiet when you feel: "No, it's not right", you should know :p) :beer:

/ Svante

[dobermunk]

my take is: you're all right.
Again, its a question of differentiation. I work mostly with the animate module. Its "production-readier" for my purposes than LW and even XSI. Because of the way my brain works and the software.
The renderer: I'd love to do some visualization work with it, but haven't had the occassion to do so lately. Want to play, but too much on the desk. I look with great interest at the work being done by others. When I have tried myself I have found myself quickly running against one wall or another - but I've never committed the time necessary to really get into it. So my ability to judge it is liited - I do see that it requires a novel way of looking at somethings.

Wegg's concern is that people get scared away from experiencing what messiah is, and I can follow that. Any software is ultimately the sum of its user base, and messiah's isn't all that large.
Jow Cosman's tutorials ("Rigging 2" and "Mini-Tuts2" just arrived) remind me of how incredible the messiah toolset is. Joe's incredible work reminds me that I need to break it down and understand the individual variables before I tackle the whole. After MiniTuts, I'm gung-ho to try the soft-bodies again!!

In the end messiah is a tool, and we use it cause it works for us, or we don't because it doesn't. Wegg's work (getting back to his thread here) inspires me to get my butt into gear and get to where he is with it.

[ThomasHelzle]

Yeah, I am really fine with posts telling someone who asks about messiah that it is a cool little app, especially for fast and simple CA and has a nice renderer to play with too.
No argue here.

What I don't understand: Why telling people that it is just perfect for them equal what they ask for? I wouldn't do that neither with messiah, nor Lightwave nor XSI or any other tool in existence.

For animation, using an app with external modeler is fine, since your main work is animation and you don't change the model all the time. Again, no argue.

But for design or architecture like in one of those latest threads, you need to do a lot of modeling in parallel to rendering and need good ways to move, arrange, find, see or randomize objects.
You may have 1000 materials in an imported scene, may have to fix bad geometry from CAD apps, position textures in space very exactly, may need to single out objects very fast to work on them, have a fast way of finding good camera positions... etc.
Nothing where I would say messiah shines in.

Sure I tend more to dissing messiah and that is bad in some peoples views, but the pure glorification is even worse IMO. Leading people into wrong expectations means repeating what pmG did 2000 already in an unbeatable bold way and did later again with autorig and quadrupeds etc.
Why copy that?
That drove away more people than anything I could ever say.

Sorry, I just don't seem to get it.

To me this look like shanghaiing users.
That doesn't work or hold.

Stubborn, am I not? ;-)

Cheers,

[dobermunk]

Leading people into wrong expectations ... drove away more people than anything I could ever say. Sorry, I just don't seem to get it.

You do get it. And you're right.
And I'm happy that 1) your criticism has been more productive
2) Taron has been reacting to it
3) you guys are talking again.
It makes my favorite app better!


Stubborn, am I not? ;-)

Yep. I wish you were on the messiah team!
(Now THAT'S something to envision ;-)

[ThomasHelzle]

Yep. I wish you were on the messiah team!
(Now THAT'S something to envision ;-)

Hahahaha ROFL That would be fun - Monty Python meeting the Marx Brothers or something like that. With the heated discussions you would be able to melt the remains of the poles rather quickly LOL

BTW. Did you get my last email regarding your XSI License?

Cheers,

[Wegg]

I think it is pretty easy to find odd things in software.

In lightwave. . . try and render an un-triangulated complex organic model with a hard raytraced shadow. You get major artifacts. This is something that has been around for as long as I have used the program and has never gotten fixed.

But with Messiah. . . just last year everyone thought it was a must to have render layers. You would have thought it was holding everyone back and that after they fixed just that one little thing you would see a glut of new renders.

I'm still waiting. Actually I dont' think anyone has EVER used it. I know I haven't.

I personally think the REASON I'm still waiting is because everyone out there is "keeping their eye" on these conversations and will try Messiah when people like Thomas are happy with it.

But people like Thomas will NEVER EVER EVER be happy with their software. They are self professed perfectionists. You can see it in the quality of the documentation they write, software and work they produce. Really tight stuff. pmG doesn't run that way. Its more like Newtek and most other software I have ever used. Good. . . but a little sloppy with some things. Lots of little itty bitty things that if you sit back and take a look at the whole of your production. . mean very little.

Little render artifacts on high contrast highlights?!? I have seen them. Reported it to pmG. . . got a response. . . and I moved on.

I don't copy many materials from one to another so. . . haven't really run into that but if I did I'd report it. . . probably with a few examples and explain to them why I needed it in my production and just trust them. They have yet to fail me.

The guys at pmG came from a major production house and know what it is like to be under a deadline. There HAVE been show-stoppers for me. Even in this animation I just did there was a big one. I camly zipped up my project, sent it off to pmG's support and within 24 hours they had figured out what was causing the issue (In this case it was me pushing a Flex Motion too far and causing one of the bones to fly off into outer space and cased the software to crash on render.) and two mouse clicks later everything was back to normal and I had it on Blackbrd's render farm. (Thank you again dude.)

Please do not stop pushing the software and finding these things. But also please take the issues with the weight they deserve. Artifacts on intense contrast highlights are NOT grounds for suggesting people not use Messiah in production.

[ThomasHelzle]

Hahahahahahaha.

This is getting more and more funny.

So now I am in a tight position. Either I can publicly announce that I am finally happy with messiah and the day after we will see thousands of renders, because only about 5 messiah users are up to think on their own.

Otherwise I will have to live with the knowledge that I am personally responsible for the failure of pmG to get their tool into the world of CG.
DNA, Passion Pictures and all the others were just reading what I think about some of those "minor glitches" and changed their whole pipelines because of that.

"interesting" views on the world you have...

Best regards,

[dobermunk]

Hahahaha ROFL That would be fun
DeathMatch Coding ;-)

BTW. Did you get my last email regarding your XSI License?
I think. Or have I missed one? I've been wanting to check the current price and get in touch with the reseller. Argh. Too much to do...
.... but I'll get to it.

edit: WOW. So much can happen before I get around to hitting "send"!
Death Match forums! Erm, maybe we should leave this thread to Wegg's film?

[Wegg]

So now I am in a tight position. Either I can publicly announce that I am finally happy with messiah and the day after we will see thousands of renders, because only about 5 messiah users are up to think on their own.

Your taking this as an insult when that wasn't what I intended. You have to admit. . . That when people consider using Messiah they aren't finding it in a magazine. It is by word of mouth and that usually leads them to forums like this. So they take the time to see what the general feeling is at the moment while trying out the demo. And because you are a prominant user people DO hang on your words.

Yes people SHOULD think for themselves but they don't. They let others do the thinking for them and because of that we should watch what we say in public forums if we want messiah to increase its user base. I know you hate that but its for the greater good.

Other software companies pay tens of thousands of dollars pimping themselves in magazines and advertizing to do the thinking for people. We don't have that with pmG. So all we have is the "word of mouth" kind of advertizing and. . . to the average Joe. . . your "vibe" is very negative. I THINK it is because you run a tight ship that you are unable to tollerate your software being rough around the edges. This taints your opinion on anything to do with messiah overshadowing pretty much everything that is really great about it. Its value, power, speed, unique techniques etc. . . all are overshadowed by tiny render artifacts and a sometimes inconsistant development path.

Otherwise I will have to live with the knowledge that I am personally responsible for the failure of pmG to get their tool into the world of CG.
DNA, Passion Pictures and all the others were just reading what I think about some of those "minor glitches" and changed their whole pipelines because of that.

I don't think I implied that at all. If I did I'm sorry.

But. . . DNA had left the pmG camp long before this little section of CGTalk was even around. People from Passion have been known to hang out on IRC on occasion and they all hold messiah dear to their harts. But . . . as smart people should. . . use the right tool for the right job.

[ThomasHelzle]

No insult taken - I was making jokes, not real statements ;-)

Cheers! :-)

[PaulNewman]

just last year everyone thought it was a must to have render layers. You would have thought it was holding everyone back and that after they fixed just that one little thing you would see a glut of new renders.My stopwatch project currently relies heavily on the render layers (I take it you are referring to output buffers which pmG fixed?). Perhaps we're not talking about the same thing, but anyway, glad they fixed it, doing good stuff with it.

Glad your showstopper got sorted. That says a lot of pmG. Restores some good faith right there.

PaulNewman: I guess what I don't really get is . . . at what point does a tool switch over to being "production ready" without the stipulations?I suppose when a client wants a chrome sphere and your software can deliver at TV res and they broadcast it. I don't know. I don't think you can get away from the stipulations, since each situation IS unique. But I'd say the quick answer is "messiah is production ready."

Why does messiah:studio get the bum rap?As Thomas said, a lot of basic stuff just not there yet that should be there, and that just sucks - gives messiah a bad name - really. It's like "Yes you can do this and that with messiah, but the guys report struggling with these small things. If those small things aren't really where they should be, then I'm doubtful."

We all know that with most apps there are die-hard guru-types that can milk an app for all it's worth. Taron is like the apex of this. But the average user wants to see other average users doing that. Do they see that here on this forum? I'm not so sure.

I think your with me though. Lightwave is your "backup" just like it is mine. No need to stress when you have a backup is there? And for me. . . Messiah is my Lightwave backup for effects and "looks" I just can't pull off in Lightwave. They make a fantastic pair.Sure, I'm with you, Wegg. If more blokes took a chance on messiah like we have in production (you more than me) then things would be moving along nicely. But it's a risk we are taking and many people just don't like that - not in actual production and especially not on deadlines. We need to respect that. They will respect messiah once all these issues are addressed and the forum here is buzzing with non-guru-type users also realizing the benefit of messiah in production. What you are doing with your messiah work is spear-heading that. Others should follow. Keep up the good work :thumbsup:

[Wegg]

I think. . . with great power. . . comes great confusion and "can't do the simple things" is something people start to associate with their experience.

Thomas mentioned some of the things that are pretty wack. Not being able to displace triangles, no N-gons, no edge weight control etc. What the @#$@#$ is up with that!?! I am in full agreement. BUT. I think a lot of that stems from its Lightwave/metanurbs roots. Can't really do much about that.

Then there is fur. My big pet wish. But thats hardly a "basic".

When you pop a model into lightwave and open up the surface editor. . . it seems to be all dumbed down for you. And Messiah mimics that perfectly.

But with Lightwave. . . (until the new V9 that is) THATS ALL YOU GOT! You could trick gradients to do cool things but there was no "shader-mode" type thinking that you get in most other apps. So when people complain that Messiah can't do the simple stuff. . . I'll bet thats what they are fighting with. They are used to their tricks they learn't in LW and can't see how those tricks work in Messiah. Even though they DO. Its just not as obvious.

If people are coming from other packages. . . its the things those packages make simple that Messiah doesn't have that cause THEM to think Messiah can't do the simple stuff.

For me (avid Messiah user). . . Bloat, Melt, Shperize, Setup Mode etc. are the "simple" things in 3D and if I were to hop over to. . . XSI for example. . . I could rant away in their forums and start trashing XSI for not being able to do "the basics".

Am I making sense?

[stooch]

yep and then you will trigger a whole crusade of XSI users bitching about the gimbal lock... lets not start that lol.

[ThomasHelzle]

I continue to disagree about the importance or views on "basics" :-)

Another example:
I don't know many users who think the editsphere is a good idea. Are there any?
This is a constant over the last 6 years.
I personally don't know any other 3D app with such a clumsy manipulator.
Now with such an extreme bread and butter basic feature, that you have to work with hours and hours each day being weird and very far from the standards without giving you much (if any) added value back for relearning, people get a funny impression even from the demo.
"If even something that simple is weird, how about the rest of it?"

So now we have old users mostly not liking it and new users being confused anyway.

I don't think it can be the old - more or less frustrated - users job to excuse such things or sugarcoat them to get some new users on board who may never really dig into it in the long run since they just don't feel comfortable with the app in the end.
We had hundreds of them already.

You may be willing and able to work around all those things.
You know all the do's and don'ts...
Others don't.

Another example: ZBrush is a fantastic tool, but a huge amount of people never got comfortable with the handling and workflow. Now Silo 2 is in Beta and suddenly everybody is able to just sculpt away because it is soooo easy.
In the long run, I see myself abandon ZBrush and instead use Silo if it develops like that.
Workflow and ease of use is everything.
It is the tool AND the artist.
Why should a good artist bother with suboptimal tools?
Why waste time with basics?

This stuff IS extremely important. Really.
I am not a "perfectionist" with my shaders and docs because I have nothing else to do or are a maniac, but because I want to solve exactly the problems people have with software and docs.
And it works, it is possible and it is fun.
I don't want people to waste hours and hours and hours just to find out in what situations or combination a tool does work or doesn't.
That is MY job if I call myself a developer (and I don't even think of myself as one).

I am a 3D user for many many years and I get annoyed and angry when I see all that sloppiness, because I had to stay up all night over and over again because some programmer didn't do his homework.

I don't want solutions to showstoppers just under deadline-tear-your-hair-out circumstances after using massive pressure or begging.

Sure each software has bugs, but you can feel the difference between bugs and "oops, I didn't think of that or didn't ever try the feature myself I just integrated"...

Clearly I can't change anything about how messiah is developed.

But the problem pmG has is 100% selfmade.
There is no way around that.

Best regards!

[AlexK]

I don't know many users who think the editsphere is a good idea. Are there any?
This is a constant over the last 6 years.
I personally don't know any other 3D app with such a clumsy manipulator.
See? This is exactly the kind of comments that made me write my initial post. Just because you and a lot of others think the EditSphere is not optimal doesn't mean you have to make such statements. Especially when you leave out the fact that there are obviously users that like the manipulator the way it is (first post (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=2937301&postcount=7), second post (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=2939704&postcount=10) ) - and saying you didn't know that doesn't count, because you wrote something on the same thread. By the way I am not defending the EditSphere here, because I am not too hot on that either. I used the example to make my point.

I hate how some generalize in here. Just because it doesn't suit ones workflow, doesn't mean a basic feature is not there or broken. If that is the case, zBrush is not production ready and useable for me at all, because I always swear at those stupid shortcuts and the interface design.

I am with PaulNewman on this one. Sure Messiah sucks in some parts but shines in others. Not everything is intuitive or works as expected. But moaning all the time drives away as much potential users as features or bugs that possibly don't suit everyone.

And adding two posts later that is was a joke doesn't really help either. Remember this is a textual medium where sarcasm and jokes translate very badly. We had these kind of missunderstandings before.

[dobermunk]

I don't know many users who think the editsphere is a good idea. Are there any?

I don't know if I can say its a good idea, but it doesn't bother me. What bothers me is Shift-toggle-channel activatioN!! (Have i mentioned that yet? ;-)
In fairness, the team has adressed the feedback with at least another attempt to make you happy. Its not like the edit sphere has been stubbornly tabu the entire time. And the pmG team will certainly adress it further. Don't lose faith.

[PaulNewman]

Very lively thread, guys. It seems to have now come full circle.

And now back on topic: Wegg, how's the next commercial coming along?

[ThomasHelzle]

Alex: So I am looking forward to your next full messiah production. :p :thumbsup:
Reality has it's own way of proving some points in my experience.

Over and out - sorry for the bandwidth.

[Wegg]

PaulNewman: We are still working out the price on the Suddenlink stuff. But there are plenty of other projects I have lined up. Wee!

I just wish any one of my clients would give me the time/budget to produce something as fleshed out as your sports gig. Man that looks fun.

[PaulNewman]

PaulNewman: We are still working out the price on the Suddenlink stuff. But there are plenty of other projects I have lined up. Wee!

I just wish any one of my clients would give me the time/budget to produce something as fleshed out as your sports gig. Man that looks fun.It is a nice project and I have enjoyed it despite times of intense frustration. I looked at a semi-final render and comp this morning and the whole thing is now finally together and I'm pleased with the results. This project had many facets to it and is rich in detail. I'm pleased the client went with the concept and the result. I'll most likely do a final presentation tomorrow and then final render.

[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.