Animation companion for Modo 202?

#5

Thanks again, Khurrum.
I agree with what you said… that is my understanding(though less educated than yours) about the field as well. And indeed, “Right tools for the right job”.

I am still a bit divided though - the main thing being cloth. And for me, well, I would hate not being able to dress my characters. I read several threads last night on creating cloth with Messiah. And it seems like a very big issue still. Clothilde in Cinema’s Mocca-module on the other hand gets high praises in reviews. Note I wrote “reviews”, haven’t combed the forums for user opinions on that yet. May be that there is no such thing is a good & easy to use cloth engine in existence. But I won’t know it’s usefulness and true capabilities until I test them myself, I suppose. Need to dress a character, animate it and see what happens. Same thing with Messiah, I need to test it quite a bit before moving forward.

From financial and workflow-point of view I would really want Messiah to be “the” animation tool for me, to cover all areas of animation. Rendering is just a plus.

Thanks for the long post, I don’t mind :slight_smile: I better get into studying and testing. Too bad responsibilities like work interfere :wink:

  • Sleepy
#6

From a price standpoint, I would also suggest either Messiah, or XSI Foundation. I own both. Personally, I like software that navigates & mouse clicks similarly to the Operating System you are using. Messiah just had too wacky an interface (in my opinion), which was the killer for me.

XSI Foundation is fantastic, and the cloth it comes with is better than Lightwaves (only thing I can compare to). The Renderer is REALLY good (though complicated), and the animation capabilities are deep. Be prepared to study though. There are so many ways to do things using this software, I get confused sometimes on the best approach. I upgraded from 4.0 to 5.0, but I’m holding off on version 6-- 5.0 does everything I need it to do.

#7

just wondering if there was any news on Modos animation …

#8

Hey HarverdGrad, thanks for the suggestion and info.
I am still considering XSI also. The technical aspects of it scared me 4-5 years ago, but it may be easier now. And for sure it has better cloth than Lightwave - most animation software do, probably :wink: Anyway I will know where to go after running through the demos for some time.

Brenly, as far as I know animation is still a long way in coming to Modo. News, peeks into new stuff and such on Luxology forums mostly advertise the coming sculpting tools. I guess they will make Modo first the “all it can be” software in modeling&sculpting&texturing&rendering and then, maybe, go for animation. But that is just my take.

#9

that sounds good … Id like to see Modo become the absolute no1 modeller first before taking on the animation giants …

#10

I would disagree. 1. The Renderer is fine, it’s just a little slow on GI stuff, but it’s still a good renderer. VRay isn’t all THAT great so don’t bank on it. But I suppose it depends on what you do.

The Muscles in the Mocca Module are not that great. Theyre still kinda primitive at that point. Nothing like a Maya system. But overall it’s not that expensive. It’d be like 1000 Euros for Cinema + Mocca 3. If you didn’t need Cloth, you could get by with Just the Core Package which is like 684 Euros I think.

Just thought I’d point these things out. Good Luck in your search.

#11

Xfon,

Thank you for the info and pointers. Yes, I know the prices and most discounts I can get.

Regarding the muscle-system… could well be that I’m just a victim of good marketing from Maxon :wink: Good to know they are not that special - also a little bit sad. I can’t compare to Maya, got no experience there and really I’m still only begun testing Cinema. I’ve done muscles only in Max(with CS) some years ago and some tests in Lightwave. Messiah:Studio seems to have solid ways to muscles.

Whatever I go for I would need cloth or a very good work-around.

Anyway this is a long process… searching and experimenting with demos.

-Sleepy

#12

Well i would suggest the first pipeline, ie Modo + C4D…but at this time, have u tried the C4D modeler set ? no one can imagine what it has become by time, fast and accurate…give it a REAL try…
…for the muscle system it’s at its beginning and can’t be simply compared to Maya or whatever more affirmed…but works good, easy to set up and the Mocca 3 set responds better…
…for the renderer it definitely needs a revision, just for the GI (which is anyway good) while on the other aspects it has a wonderful balance between time and appearance…
Bye bye

#13

Cheers OneDeadPixel. No, I haven’t truly tried C4D modeler set yet, just played around. Will do more later, probably. But as I found Modo’s approach very appealing and also rest of it to my liking and easy to get into, and as I ordered it a few weeks ago, I reckon Modo will fill modeling&texturing part of the pipeline for me.

Thank you for all the info on C4D, good to know. I am still considering C4D for animation. The decision making process will take some time, I’m sure.

#14

Have you looked into Carrara 5 Pro? I know it is from DAZ, but it is a great program and has a number of features. It has a limited modeling, but with Modo it would work great.

#15

Well this was a suggestion mostly based on my usual workflow and so i told you…i was a LW user for some years, and only from version 8 i re-discovered C4D…so, now i’m usual to its feeling and even i’ve deeply tried Modo i can’t leave C4D again…but for the animation side i can suggest it without doubt, esepcially now at version 10 which has gained some real benefits…
One thing that i can add is that you have to look further every software’s capabilities…try to find something that can exchange datas with other software for almost every aspect in a comfortable way…so is animation and compositing which are crucials…a software with an astonishing animation set has also to give you possibilities to export animation tracks and sequences that can be used in compositing softwares without banging your head.
Bye

#16

btw, if you are on a budget, you can use either blender or milkshape to animate. both are free and support importing .fbx files.

milkshape:
http://chumbalum.swissquake.ch/ms3d/index.html

blender:
http://www.blender.org/

#17

OneDeadPixel
Thanks again. I agree with your thougts on what’s important when picking the software. Yes, I intend to test quite a bit before buying. Will take some time.

Madgodz
Cheers, I do appriciate.

I’ll look into Blender. Milkshape’s interface gave me the shivers, and I only used it as a go-between getting some models from SiegeMax(Gmax) to Modo. Well, maybe shouldn’t say much before futher testing. I do plan to invest some funds to the animation tool, it has to be good, so the budget is not sooo much an issue.

#18

Blender doesn’t support FBX. Milkshape may have FBX support it isn’t really suitable as an animation tool. You can use Blender for serious animation work and it is being used in a feature animation as the only tool used for animating, modeling, rendering, etc.

People need to read the requirements - requires cloth and muscle animation. Blender has cloth. For the muscle - none of the muscle solutions for any of the software given sounds like what he wants. XSI, Cinema 4D, Blender or Messiah can fake muscle ‘okay’ but I don’t think any of the four will do things like skin sliding and automated volume preserving muscle contraction.

LetterRip

#19

Blender bones actually can do that, it´s turned off by default (LR, you should know better :slight_smile: )

#20

Just a suggestion I was thinking about, talking about including modo into a work pipeline…

I guess implementing animation into modo is a hard work to do, and maybe we’re not goint to get that soon, so I think it would be a great feature for modo (in the meantime full animation is not added in modo) the ability to read MDD and/or Point Cache files, the option to import camera animation from any other software, and maybe (the previous two features would be more than enough for me) a basic timeline to add/remove keys (to animate cameras and lights)
So, modo (modelling, UV, texturing, etc…) + Any other soft (animation) + modo again (lighting and rendering).
Of course effects like particles, etc… should be done in another package, but, wouln’t be great to at least render animation in modo? (and with no need to learn rigging and animating in it).
I’m not an modo owner, just checked the demo (and I’ve worked in a place where they used it), and I think it’s an amazing piece of software. It’s just the fact it doesn’t have animation capabilities what makes me wait to buy it.

anyway… just think it’s a good idea… :slight_smile:

#21

Jacobo3d
Interesting idea and good, I agree. I too would enjoy lighting and rendering an animation made somewhere else in Modo. The idea has been presented before at Luxology forums, I think. Perhaps you should add your support for it there.

LetterRip & Apollux
Thank you for the detailed info. Sorry for the very late reply.

Yes, my requirements are varied. I’m not looking for all bels and whistles though. Skin sliding and such would be nice, but what I really want is a comfortable to use, stable and fast enough animation software - including cloth and muscle. And if things like cloth have to be done with tricks, I prefer the tricks to be easy and functional.

Maybe Blender then. Still haven’t looked into it but will in coming months.

#22

[b]Sleepyghost

[/b]I’ve suggested that idea to Luxology, and it seems like there are good news about it for the next modo version (and even more :)).
For now, there’s a plugin called Frame Runner that reads MDD files into modo (somebody just told me that when I’ve suggested the MDD thing in the Luxology forum… I didn’t know it :))

#23

Thanks Jacobo3d. Sounds interesting and, well, very good. I didn’t know about the Frame Runner, either. Sweet :slight_smile:

#24

I am afraid that there is no easy, fast and comfortable to use cloth (not to mention muscle system) software avaliable in off-the shelf aplications, especially cheap ones - except if all you need to make are waving flags and bicep demos, then anything will do. The best thing which you can buy is syflex (which is pretty close to what you described as fast and comfortable) and lately maya ncloth. As for muscle, Michael Comet cmuscle has good opinion and I’ve heard good things about Max’s CAT plugin, but never tested it myself.

If you just want to rig and animate your model, XSI Foundation will give you best bang for the buck, but rigging in XSI didn't change much since version 4.0 (which is good thing). Anyway if technical aspects of rigging scared you before, technical aspects of muscle and cloth simualtions/rigging will be a nightamre for you.. on top of rigging.

I think what you need is some sort of Max's biped or equivalent plugin.