How do you use messiah for rendering?

#38

your poll suggestion looks good to me dmack. you know my answer before we even start though.

and honestly, lets sit back and really look at what it is that can improve in messiah animation side. you know, its really not that bad.

-i can see armatures being 3d (check, from taron hints).
-improve the rotation coordinates to reduce gimal locks.
-give the expression editor search and replace function (relatively easy??)
-make more preset rigs for the setup box? (we can start a contest for making preset rigs and maybe include them with messiah releases? make the rigs in such a way taht you can drag around handles in setup mode to scale and reposition the rig elements while keeping it intact - WITH ARMATURES ALREADY ASSIGNED AND POSITIONED)
-better sbd?
-better connection to LW (more like point oven) i think in general, baking should be included and working nicely in messiah, its just too important for connecting to other apps!
-little changes to the way you interact with the widget, maybe make it optional to behave like LW for example…

not a big list if you ask me. that for me would already make messiah alot better for animation…

#39

lets do some more tests then! lets pick something interesting. or make something interesing.

#40

I’m busy trying to pay my bills.

#41

…while looking at CGTalk :wink:

#42

thats my commic relief. :slight_smile:

#43

Yes, I should have said, Wegg’s cactus render is very nice too. How did you do the spines?

Also, back on the renderer, I would love to see Fprime-like capability. It seems that something similar will be in Modo 201. After using Fprime, hitting F9 to test render seems tedious.

Alex

#44

I agree. I’m fairly certain that was what the render “lock” was supposed to do.

Whats really fun is the fact that you can actually change things about your model WHILE its rendering. So I know it can be done. . .

Try it. . .

Plop a sphere in your scene and while its rendering change its color. It will change in the render.

The foundation is there. . . they just have to make it work I guess.

#45

The foundation is there. . . they just have to make it work I guess.

Amen to that :wink:

#46

Thats my story.

The few times I’ve tried rendering demo scenes in Messiah I would generally get a crash or a lockup. Occassionally I would be rewarded with an incredibly slow render.

I put it down to my “feeble” machine (1.6Ghz P4, 1Gig of RAM) and Messiah’s renderer being a work in progress.

#47

My sentiments EXACTLY!
Nothing like building a rocket ship that no one can fly because there isn’t a sufficient user manual except in the minds of a few scientists…

#48

You know the funny thing is that messiah led in the video tutorial/manual WITH
your software package in 1999.
Before then, Maya, LW, Max and others all had static manuals and third party training DVDs.

Fred Tepper blew the doors off dull manuals with injokes, animated gifs and mini videos.
messiah wasn’t hard to lean and the learning curve was eased. Most everyone who learned messiah:animate was on the same page of proficency with the software.

But of late, the render has individual levels of learning. There is no set standard of learning when it comes to the render. A lot of happy accidents to a few godlings (Wegg, Thomas, Taron, Tony, etc)

It was said that Taron would have new tutorials on the render a few weeks after Siggraph.
its March 2006… not one training video.

#49

I have to say, Jules4001…
It’s because of your tutorials, along with Joe Cosman’s and Weggs that some of us can hang on this rocket ship at all.

Thanks!!! :thumbsup:

#50

I think that if you look back at the development of messiah it lead in the documentation war and revolutionized the industry. Fred I am afraid is obviously very busy, after all look at how he’s been using messiah in his own projects. I hope if its not him that does the next round of documentation then someone else does with the same effort and energy fred has.

My only wish with the time and effort that Messiah puts into its development is that they could quickly create a camtasia video as to how it works. Even if it means Taron opening up the Neckling project and walking people through it, I think it would go miles to not only sell the software but allow new users to quickly use it. Look at Luxology, they don’t even have to write down features, they show them in a video!!

In Taron’s defense, he’s one artist, and it would go miles that once you finish a project do a little walkthrough camtasia video and show us how you got there. The Zbrush Community does this and look how much it helps them.

Who’s with me!!

#51

Thanks for the compliment…

The funny thing is that at all the shows: Siggraph and Zbrush events.
Everyone is hanging on this TARON;s every word and clicks. You should see the audience.
Yet it seem that kind of fame is lost at PMG, they close this guy in a closet to make new RENDER stuff that only he can make and use.

Face it, he is known more for Zbrush than messiah and HE WORKS FOR PMG!

I know I have said time and time gain, that he needs to stop whatever he doing …
take 2 days and bang out a few video tutorials in the vein of Fred Teppers (Gary or mine).

The eyeball and Anisotrophic nodes are his babies and really only he knows how to get them
working 90% of the time, everyone else its a science experiment.

#52

godlings? Gimme a break :rolleyes:

Come on guys, don’t fool yourself too much: After you can use the tool, it has still to be worthwhile, no?
Most people who did great work with the renderer gave it up after finding more and more serious flaws, stopping their stride. If this wouldn’t have been the case, they would have created a much greater suction toward messiah and we would see tons of renders from starters to pros.
But the people who are able to use one renderer are as able to use another in most cases, so why bother with messiah which lacks so many features a renderer needs today, has so many flaws and which shows such slow development?

I only feel sorry for the developers who are trapped with a software with great potential and a team too small to really get it airborne. So far it has been a classical deadlock situation. :shrug:

Cheers :bowdown:

#53

man, you can’t take a compliment.

Hey Thomas You coded plugins for messiah, that would qualify as a godling and a half :twisted: :scream:

Anyway, its true I think they, too , are in trapped a development ditch.

#54

It’s actually very simple and Taron’s “interesting” little teases aside, the developers apparently have themselves involved with other non messiah development gigs that pay the bills and they get around to working on messiah when they find the time.

#55

the developers apparently have themselves involved with other non messiah development gigs that pay the bills and they get around to working on messiah when they find the time.

Tama, are you part of the development team? and if not what grounds is your assertion drawn?

#56

(Awwwwwhhhh…rrrrrhhh…kaboom!) A part of me just has exploded. :rolleyes:
…nope, not that part. :deal:

Thomas, please, give us some more time without you! Otherwise we really will have a too hard time coming over that hump of shite, piled up by your somewhat capsized observations! Without a cup of coffee, yet, I’m ready to smack you, really. Of course, we have our challenges, but considering what is coming out right now, because finally our release candidate is ready to roll out, we should demonstrate that even the small team we are can and will show all them monsters out there what’s possible and what’s going to happen next in the rendering world. We’ve developed far more within the last two years then the Maya rendering department in the last 10 years, so I hear. And that’s just a random example. You’re one of them fools, who’ve been clubbing seal-babies for the longest time and havn’t noticed that we survived you so far and we have become a mature animal. I wouldn’t say fully grown, only because I know what we’re about to become. I know the missing things and those are very little in terms of rendering.

Anyway, funny enough, last night I’ve made a camtasia recording of an introduction into our rendering: “rendering - Getting Started”. I’m planning on not editing the thing at all, except trimming the start and the end, but maybe doing a bunch of zooms into focus areas. This way it’s clearly natural, even if at 15 fps.
I’m planning on making a whole bunch of these sessions to cover all the basics and even go into the early advanced stages of using the renderer. I just wanted to make sure that I’m using the exact same version you will be using now! And I do! And you will! :slight_smile:

And, oh, f u thomas, really. I’ll apologize, once I’m really awake, but for now, this is the most sincere - even if somewhat immature- thing I can possible say deep from the bottom of my heart!

#57

clearing the Thomas bashing…

Really?!

We’ve developed far more within the last two years then the Maya rendering department in the last 10 years, so I hear.

Bold statement considering no one duplicated Paint FX yet and Maya was released in 1998.
Then the render layers for multiple passes.
And shader library … wouldn’t have said this.

Anyway, funny enough, last night I’ve made a camtasia recording of an introduction into our rendering: “rendering - Getting Started”. I’m planning on not editing the thing at all, except trimming the start and the end, but maybe doing a bunch of zooms into focus areas. This way it’s clearly natural, even if at 15 fps.
I’m planning on making a whole bunch of these sessions to cover all the basics and even go into the early advanced stages of using the renderer. I just wanted to make sure that I’m using the exact same version you will be using now! And I do! And you will! :slight_smile:

Okay the clock is ticking … you have a tutorial for messiah on rendering.
You know you have to release it soon that you said you have one.

We the users await.