Ok, I´m an old timer regarding Lightwave but know very little on Messiah. All what I know comes from playing with the demo I got around here.
I´m going to make a cool project and it will require quite a lot of character animation, and SPECIALLY I want to make a cool rig for the characters (there are several but all of them look quite the same, so the setup would be exactly the same as well).
Let me say I know my way regarding LW setups and I feel right at home using all the fancy stuff including expressions and similar features.
Now, I would really prefer to do this completely in LW as it wouldn´t require learning anything new, but I´m afraid a few things make me lean toward using Messiah. Please give me your opinion on the following and feel free to correct any misconceptions you find here:
1- The character welds a sword. It´s two handed, but occasionally he might go single-handed…always single-handed with the same arm.
I want to animate the sword from a control null at the base and force the arms to follow, so I was thinking on using IK for one arm, and IK/FK blend for the other and parent both goals to the sword´s base control null, so that when I move this null both arms follow, but I can deactive the IK for the IK/FK arm so that for those frames that one won´t follow.
Another way for doing this might also be using dynamic parenting for the “rebel” arm´s IK goal (parent/unparent to the control null) instead of IK/FK blending.
All this sounds like it should work nicely, but in my opinion both FK/IK blending and dynamic parenting are not very responsive features in LW. FK/IK blending solutions I´ve seen so far don´t look nice at all, and Parenter is the devil, specially with IK involved around.
2-As I´m going to spend quite a lot of time with the character I want the setup to really shine, so I could show off a bit when the project´s done. Armatures really look like the best way to show off with a cool setup :deal:
3- Expressions evaluation speed might be (or not, not sure yet) an issue.
4- I will need to load a video at the background for reference, and maybe (not sure) occasional rotoscoping animation.
5- I will need some soft body dynamics. Not really something brutal, but some motion for the lower end of the cloak of the character (not really a cloak but wide trousers) and also a couple of cords at the back of the character. Something similar to a hair braid or pony tail but less “important” for the character. I will need collisions for both of this. They are pretty secondary, so really I wouldn´t want to have to animate them manually…it would slow quite a bit the process.
I don´t know how efficient soft body dynamics are currently at messiah.
6- Super fast OpenGL is surely not going to hurt 
7- Rendering will be done in LW. No doubt about this.
So…your opinion? I go for Messiah, or do I keep my faster work flow in LW (faster because I would have to learn Messiah) even with the limitations? Any problems I might find at Messiah that you could anticipate?
