Exporting animation

#1

Hi everyone, I curious as to why messiah does not support exporting animation. no animation is exported 3ds files. As far as i know connecting to different 3d apps doesn’t work anymore (at least with max 9) and mdd files export only the mesh deformation, no bones!. I’m really trying to avoid learning to use biped in max, since it is a pleasure to animate in messiah. I know 3ds is owned by autodesk, but maybe Messiah 3.1 hopefully supports FBX or maybe collada. Am I missing something here? Is messiah used in the game industry (not for cut scenes, but for model animation)? thanks in advance for your reply

#2

PMG made an attempt with directx output but never never quite finished it. Collada would be a great asset. But from the response to you query I would surmise that creating animated characters for games and or simulations is not what PMG is focusing on. Personally I would be happy to see a BVH exporter … making animations in Messiah is alot of fun, we could work in Messiah, export the BVH to almost any other program then attach and weight your model then export out to a directx or collada and import into your 3d engine for use.
Or PMG could add Collada or even fix the directx export… or penguins could become roller skating chartered accounts.

David C

#3

Use PointOven for 3dsmax

#4

Mdd does not deliver weighted skinned models with bones.
Thats what is required for 3d game engines.

David C

#5

I think pmg wants Messiah to be recognized as a stand- alone animation app in it’s own right hence the concentration on the rendering and surfacing in the last release and lack of connectivity it now has with other apps. Sorry to say lightwaves ca is starting to look attractive again.

#6

Bones and motion can be read directly from the fxs files in messiah if you’re a TD working with games, and bone weights can be saved directly as well, as ASCII files.
Thus you could convert the fxs and weight files to whatever you need in the game engine by simple text analyzation using for instance a python script.

Another problem is of course that if you want to take files made in messiah over to another application including the whole skeleton/motion/constraints etc, you need to find and use constraints in each application that are equivalent, and you’d largely miss out on messiah’s deformation capability, which is why most people use mdd’s to bring it over to different apps instead.

The problem with the connectivity is that for each build of Maya, Max etc, you need to change and recompile, as the plugins are not backwards compatible, which is a bit of a drain on pmG’s time that would be better spent elsewhere, especially when most of the studios using messiah with different applications use mdd’s instead of the connection. That’s presumably the reason they made it open source anyway. If someone wants the connections working with the later versions of the various programs, it’s now freely available to compile for themselves.

-edited out stupidity-

#7

Lightwave is my main app so of course I am happy if the CA tools get stronger. I (as with others) was quite disapointed with the v3 release because it focused entirely on rendering and surfacing. I now realise that the Messiah development is entirely linked into whatever big production that comes along - Andys Airplanes for example.

Oooo minus 1000 karma points! How shall I sleep tonight :wink:

#8

Hmm, you’re right actually, I’m sorry I slagged off that statement so quickly.
Let me reason that instead:
I work with lightwave every day too!
The stuff they’ve done in animation there lately IS better than what they had, but in no way form or fashion would I say that they are starting to look attractive compared to what I can do in messiah! It’s the very beginnings of something, but if you take a deep look, it is definately not there yet.

#9

I think that’s entirely correct, and to some extent, rightfully so. Big production testing is by far the best way of improving a product you see. Walker and Autorig also came out of the needs we experienced there, even though they were developed after. The animators were spending a lot of time doing walking/talking shots. I personally animated a 25-30 second long shot where the characters were walking and talking and it was bloody hard. Spent way more time than I wanted to. After that I got inspired to make Walker, here’s a little test that I made purely with expressions back then: http://www.usefulslug.com/development/experimentalwalk_845.avi

From start to finish, we rigged yeager for nearly 2 months! Just to get all the things the animators wanted in there. In the end he was a bit of a mess to animate, but gradually the lessons learned got cleaned up, and now most of them are there in AutoRig v2.

And now you guys can reap the benefit from all that time spent in heavy duty figuring shit out mode for just $100. That only barely covers the time to program it, let alone figuring out everything.

Similarly with the development by Fori, they had to get the renderer truely up to snuff so the thing could get done. Again, all the users reap the benefits and don’t have to contribute particularly much to the thousands of dollars it takes to develop advanced features like hair and GI…

So if anything that particular fact is something to be thankful for.

#10

Right now I’m working in a studio in London showing them how to use messiah. They’ve traditionally been a Maya + LW studio, and what they’ve said after my few weeks of simple demonstration of what messiah is currently capable of I think says it all:

The head of animation with 15 years of experience said: “This is the first time I’ve been really excited to learn a new package.” and “Maya is not the best thing since sliced bread, and this proves it.”

Their lead animator with about 9 years experience after playing with messiah for a couple of hours said: “This is the first time I’ve had fun on a computer in ages.”

Their TD said: “Sweeet.”

Their character modeller, who was able to change the model completely freely while I was making the rig and weights said: “It’s the future.”

And they are all exact quotes.

#11

And just to address the last remark, you have to see the development of messiah as a whole. What came out of the development of v3 and andy’s airplanes in total so far is: Suricate’s action and expression pack (craploads of great animation tools I use every day), Autorig, Walker, new editsphere, dynamic parent in place, fast smooth GI and hair & fur. Just to mention some of the major features of development that are already available to you.

#12

Hi Ulven, thanks for your attention. I suppose it comes down to my unique requirements and that is that presently, the type of animation projects I work on are probably not in the same league as the type of animation you work on and LW fits the bill in a large proportion of my work. I am giving Lightwave another look but I am sure as i delve into the darker corners - alot of what you said will ring true!

Ya, and…, your contrubutions to Messiah development are fantastic and much appreciated.

Will PMG please let you update there web site as that would be great to see that stuff on ‘User quotes of the month’!!!

Well I look forward to seeing what is next, in the meantime, I am gonna try and keep my pipe short and my mind open. I wil continue to learn Messiah because it is a great animation app, but, sometimes the lack of development scares me a bit into not keeping all my eggs in one basket.

#13

That’s how they do things at the Blender Foundation too. Make a short film, improve
the program as they go along.

#14

It’s that much better than Maya? Wow…you know they have a quote on the pmg
site by somebody saying Messiah could let them animate in 1/4 of the time, compared
to Maya, but there’s no name mentioned. I wish they had mentioned who the person
was.

#15

Hi…
Im trying to decide as starting out whats my best combination.. I want to do short films, 5 to 10 minutes... I want to use Messiah animate because of what Ive seen with it…but I want to use
and learn another major application too…Softimage looks great and very powerful…
how does it compare in animation to messiah? I wanted messiah with softimage…any feedback ideas based on your experience would be great…its now 2008, is messiah still the animation leader? or has modo animation tools caught up? I thought Kaydara`s (autodesk) motion builder allowed realtime preview while animating, and so did modo.…any feedback is good thankyou…

Mark.

#16

I didn’t think that Modo had any animation yet.

I think Messiah has more features than motionbuilder.

#17

yep modo has animation, of every element, texture, etc…luxology.com

does messiah have the ability to blend sets animation mixer, and transfer animated data to other models, like softimage?
is the only advantage of messiah the preset bones and weighting?
are there any other big advantages? I think softimage has all these and more. even in its basic version for $500…plus compositing painting and special fx.

#18

Not character animation…if you’re doing fly throughs it will work for your purposes.

does messiah have the ability to blend sets animation mixer, and transfer animated data to other models, like softimage?
is the only advantage of messiah the preset bones and weighting?
are there any other big advantages? I think softimage has all these and more. even in its basic version for $500…plus compositing painting and special fx

I think you’re talking about XSI Foundation $500…Foundation is no longer…you’d have to buy XSI Essentials at $2995

That’s not to say that messiah shouldn’t improve it’s animation tools…

#19

Plus, XSI has been bought by the software company that I dare not speak the name of.

#20

Which also owns Motionbuilder.