Character animation question

[Andy741]

The current web site for c4d is the best site I have ever seen for any animation software ever. It does an excellent job of showcasing the features of c4d. I don't really like project messiah's website. I'm mentioning this because it's easy to judge the software by its website. Definitely get both demo versions for c4d and messiah:animate. MA does offer the ability to animate a face with bones. I have been going through MA's tutorials for a couple days and it is beginning to grow on me. I haven't really gotten to the tutorials in c4d. I am really biased though since I already own Lightwave 6 and Lightwave is the first animation program I learned; Animation Master the 2nd. From what I've read ma looks like a better character animation tool than mocca.

My advice is to test them out and see which one grows on you and don't make a decision until you've done that.

Also something you may not have thought about is xsi. You can get an xsi exp version for like $20. The watermark isn't bad and it looks totally doable for a demo reel. Here's a pic of it: http://www.cgfocus.com/articles/Softimage_EXP/1.jpg

and an article:
http://www.cgfocus.com/ArticleDetails.cfm?ArticleID=202

[Andy741]

I just reread your question. My bad, I misunderstood. I didn't realize you were choosing between Lightwave and c4d to go along with Messiah. Still, I would get the demo of c4d and see how you like it compared with your experience of Lightwave.

[wuensch]

Do NOT go for c4d and Messiah--yet.
Pmg has no working Messiah connection for c4d R8.
Thats a sad fact.
they keep promising but they dont deliver.
As a matter of fact, with MOCCA in C4d R8, I dont need Messiah.
It is relatively easy to copy the facial bones setup from messiah (study with the Messiah demo) in C4d with standard bones and an Expresso-expression that simulates Muscle bones (there is an example with the Expresso--samples).
I have done it and I am very happy with it.
Messiah works better with Lightwave.
But it has nothing like soft IK.
It has some advanced features for powerusers that are really nice and an incredible speed.
Its a nice tool.
But it is far from completed, especially if your hostapp is not Lightwave.
In a non-LW pipeline i would be very careful with it. (Hope they work on the connection soon :-(
Olli

[Western3D]

Thanks, Olli -- and thank you, koon69 for bringing this up. I was using Messiah's plugin, and was able to get my model into Messiah, but from there I was having trouble trying to do much with it. Now I know why.

It's a shame that M:A doesn't work for release 8 yet, since I have a project that would really benefit from its Soft Body Dynamics for cloth and I don't have the Physics module for C4D yet. Guess now I'm just going to have to break down and buy it.

On the other hand, it seems like MOCCA's Soft IK is really powerful -- albeit more complex to set up than M:A's rigs appear to be.

[dAfTiE]

Olli,what about Fabian's bone tools plugin?
not really gotten a chance to play with it yet,
but it has a feature called muscle bone :)
Sounds like it might be of some use.
Like I said tho,I haven't tried rigging anything with it yet,
mostly because I haven't booted windows in a while :)

Here's the description from the site:
Fabian's Bone Tools provides two expression-tags,
one that allowes you to use a bone as a muscle and one that fixes a bone chain to the points of a spline or vice versa.
All settings can be edited from a non-modal dialog. For more information have a look at the documentation.
And here's the link to the documentation (http://www.studio-fabian.de/Images/downloads/newPlugs/BoneTools/Manual.html).

It's available from http://www.studio-fabian.de

[AdamT]

Just a note to say that I totally agree with Ollie's comments. Also, don't buy Dynamics if your reason for doing so is to animate clothing. Dynamics' collision detection is *not* up to the task. Unfortunately there's really no solution for doing clothing simulation in Cinema. Maybe Poser 5? But I don't know if there's a Cinema plugin for P5 yet. Anyone?

[JIII]

hmm if your wondering about poser and cinema ask at renderoisity everyone there seems to own and use poser with every program possible.

[Western3D]

Curious Labs's plugin for C4D is still only for P4 with the Pro Pak, and also only with release 7. P5 users and release 8 users are currently left in the dark (although CL has said that they will eventually do an updated plug-in). So it's going to be a while yet before that option is available for clothing simulations, too.

Hmm, who's going to do it first; pmG or Curious Labs? I actually have my money on pmG. My last correspondence with the folks at CL was about a bug that I'd encountered. Their response pretty much translated to, "I don't care if you sent us an image to prove it, what you say is happening isn't happening. But something unpredictable could happen. Someone needs to talk to the developers to see if this unpredictable behavior is intentional." I only hope that their developers are more on the ball than their customer support...

I guess that for now, I'll just have to look for ways to fake the clothing simulation. Either that, or wait for a workable dynamic option.

[MJV]

I think it's pretty rare when a company will flat out lie and swindle customers to make a buck, which is exactly what it appears to me that pmg did in the case of their supposed Cinema version. As I see it, pmg's reputation is ruined in the Cinema community, and with Kaydara now on the scene, we can just wait for the doctor to pronounce them dead.

[anobrin]

Originally posted by AdamT
Just a note to say that I totally agree with Ollie's comments. Also, don't buy Dynamics if your reason for doing so is to animate clothing. Dynamics' collision detection is *not* up to the task. Unfortunately there's really no solution for doing clothing simulation in Cinema. Maybe Poser 5? But I don't know if there's a Cinema plugin for P5 yet. Anyone?

Of course No one should get C4D Dynamics for clothing simulation
i just heard from the head of the project team at curious labs that the cloth
simulation feature of poser5 wiil be exportable to C4DXl when the updated plugins are released

but so what !!!!:rolleyes:
Poser5 is a hodge podge of unstable third party modules
poorly tacked on to an Old oudated core application that is NOT hardware accelerated(ignores your highend graphics card,no openGL) , does not conform to windows or MAC interface standards,
and has Higher hardware/ram requirements than MAYA complete:annoyed:

if you need simple clothing animations(wind blowing/reacting coat tails,skirts hair)
then get lightwave3D

if you need truly stunning cloth simulation like those seen on "kimino" in starwars AOTC, than get MAYA complete.

Certainly dont bother with poser5!!! :thumbsdow

[dAfTiE]

Haha...man,I HATE myself for doing this,
because I just find all these threads soo freakin silly...
But did I just hear an LW user complain about another app pissing on all known GUI standards??
AHAHAHAHAHAAAHHAA :)
Man,that's some funny stuff:)
My guess is that NT wouldn't recognize the MS or Mac style guides if they came over and bit their noses off :)
Other than that,I pretty much agree with ya,anobrin.
Poser is pants,Lw has decent cloth simulation,
and maya has even better cloth simulation,
and maxon dynamics isn't a cloth simulation program at all.
As far as I can tell,it was never meant to be either,
but that might just be me.

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