Latest news from pmG!

#41

I second Thomas post.

Although this might sound a bit harsh, but to me it´s the silence from pmg that somehow “kills” Messiah. I mean, i knew people that i personally influenced to get into messiah, they did it, they even talked with the developers several times on IRC (2 years ago +/-).

For some time things seemed pretty smoothed for pmg, developers communicated regularly and even daily, in here, on the mailing list and in IRC. Then all of sudden they dissapeared and for more than 6 months or close to 1 year (cant recall) there where no signs of life from pmg… this is a bit absurd" IMO, it takes away trust from the users, the people that i convinced to try Messiah later on sold it…why? who wants to support a software that has bugs and needs some features but the dev team says:

It´s on the list.

Then they dissapear for months and months, leaving the users that had high expectations on a software that already rocks, but they cant simply seem to trust the company behind it.

We all (or most of us anyway) know that pmg is a small company…but that is really not an excuse, i mean, i didn´t promissed anything or did i? Pmg promissed and advertised stuff that until today it´s not anywhere to be seen/added and even now it´s still not sure when the next update will be, even though Taron says it will be soon, but come on…when is soon? Tomorrow? Next week? An year from now?

I once got a pm message from one of the pmg guys thanking me for a post i made explaining and promoting Messiah on the Maya forums. I replyed saying that i only said the truth about messiah and it was an amazing tool already (with lots still to improve ), but after that the ball was really on pmg side, we users were doing everything we could to promote a great tool, and some still do, but the majority already quited (sad but true).

Messiah is dam cool and great yes it is, and people take notice into it when Taron shows it off, we see loads of posts on Taron stuff when he promotes Messiah, wich he does all the time by the way ;)…but then…it fades away again and this cycle it´s been the same year after year after year…people get fed up with it. Right now it´s :

Hey look another great work made in Messiah…geee this soft is soo cool…but where are the features they advertise or where are the features i asked 6 years ago? Are they still on the list?

Some of us know that coding is an organic thing, things can change all the time, but come on…deadlines must be meet at some point, and it´s not YEARS after they were announced, few companies have that luxory, Adobe might be one of them because they are leaders, former Alias might also, but pmg is neither one of them and by the looks of it, if this trend still continues one of this days Messiah will be used by Taron and a dozen others only.

I still have my Messiah dongle, i will (probably) never sell it, one of the reasons is to remind me that i will never buy “unfinished” or beta software again, the other it´s because and even though i dont even plug the dongle, i still care for Messiah, i “secretly” still dream on using it again in production someday, because the software is good, a tinny bit outdated in some areas regarding rigging and animation workflow, but it´s speed and elegancy are still breath taking IMO.

Lot´s of Messiah and Modo users wish that the “strategic” partnership announced by Fred sometime ago would involve this two companies…i DO IT too, because we see in it a chance for Messiah really show the world what a great tool it is, wich until now, and sorry for this remark, but pmg completly failed to do so. If it werent for a couple (and not more right now) of users this forum was dead already.

Not all of us have patience or can decide wich software we want to use in our dailly work offices, i tryed several times to get Messiah into a Studio i frequently do animation gigs…Boss doesnt “trust” the company…what else can i do?

Help us help you pmg!!!

Go back to the Dungeon the times u guys want, but PLEASE dont forget that theres a “World” outside also ;), take a break from time to time (weekly/monthly if possible) and spill out some news or vids showing features or dev progress… :wip:

#42

couldn’t agree more :deal:

I came to this software relativly late, the firts time it cought my eye was when studio came out and it was front page on cgtalk. lots of people were talking about it, i was excited about it but couldn’t afford it at the time.
then a little while ago i saw someone selling his copy and bought it. Why is any of this important, well i missed all the famous “promises” of 2000, i came into this software a complete messiah hype virgin :stuck_out_tongue: (so i am not bias toward you in any way :wink: )
The first thing that struck me was the lack of cummunity, or the lack of an organised and active community. This has gotten better with the resurection of the IRC channel and some heavy posting in the forum, now i’m not trying to take the claim of saving the comunity here, i’m just saying i’ve done a fair bit to try and “pep” things up in here since my arival, but i’ve seen many others do the same too. what i’m saying is that there are a lot of users out there talking messiah up and keeping this community alive.
All that is needed now is for pmG to meet us at the half way mark, PLEASE involve us, talk to us, be an active participant in the forums (reading them is not good enough, you have to post, other wise how are we to know if you’ve read it or not!?)

even if you are getting sucked into your coding you NEED to come in here, like we’ve said even if it slows you down the benifits will far outweight the negatives.
A regular update would be a great place to start, it may sound corny but i think it would give users hope that messiah isn’t a lost cause.
by dissapearing for months on end you are only shooting yourselves in the foot, you are loosing potential customers and you are loosing your established ones. now i hate to sound grimm but your situation is NOT good. from what i’ve heard about these “ugly” days of promises thrown left right and center, you need to work TWICE as hard to rebuild your image, dissapearing from the scene for long periods at a time is NOT how to do this, you will only suffer a slow death by doing so. You need to regain users confidence, you need to show users (new and old) that you have changed and learn’t from your mistakes.
People need to be reasured that you are a company that is in it for the long run, that you are serious about your product and that you care about your userbase.
Because no matter how much you feel or know that you are/do it doesn’t matter unless the public can see it.

if you do this (properly and not only for a few months) you will find that you will get more newcomers and less people are leaving, more people in the industry using messiah will mean it will start having more chances of seaping into more FX houses and everyone wins, the users get their product and community and the devs get their users and community :beer:

but please, you must do something sooner rather than later. the longer you leave it the harder it will be to make a comeback, and i have no desire to see you fade away.

sorry to sound so grimm but i really wish to see positive change, and i think there is no point in ignoring the hard issues. deal with the root of the problem and everything else connected to it will sort itself out.

#43

Regards regular communication - I have noticed a direct correlation on the Luxology website - The more that Lux demo the upcoming 201 and show little videos (EVERY friday until launch) ther more the forum buzzes (14,000 views for some of the Friday update threads!!) - it’s got to be good for business. I have at times been left with the feeling that messiah is dying SIMPLY because of a lack of communication - The sw is really realy good and I sing its praises on this and other forums…BUT commuincation is the key to peoples belief that a programme is being actively developed - and that is key to people choosing to integrate it into their pipeline.

Keep in touch with the user base and it will pay dividends.

I notice that all the talk at the moment, other than something on the edit sphere is render related - I’d really like to hear something on the animation front! - I’m beginning to wonder if its being ignored - help!

#44

Wow, that is some fantastic feedback. I concur with all of those well stated points and have had the same experience with users I know or to which I recommended messiah.
Heck, even the single european messiah-dealer (3Dpowerstore.de) who was extremely motivated at first, gave up lately.

Nobody is making this up.

The day pmG finally understands those points and acts accordingly, I am willing to continue development of TLHPro (almost done anyway) as well as AoN:Animate (realtime displacement deformers in the viewport based on the AoN:Studio procedurals (half finished)).

Until then, my dongle will continue to catch dust as it does for almost a year now…

And since the topic of my AoN-sales came up earlier:
I want satisfied customers more than money.
I have no interest in someone buying messiah and my shaders just to become frustrated later. I even thought about stopping to sell AoN completely, but found that an even worse thing for the existing community, so I will keep them available, even though I can’t promise when and if an update will come. The shaders work flawless so far anyway.

The ball is in pmGs square and is there for almost 6 years.

Time to play.

Regards,

#45

wow for me too ! …
I am impressed by this feedback. I feel lost now … I was going to register but after reading your posts, the first thing coming to my mind is “wait and see …”

I felt the same with Lightwave ( Luxology transition until now). Very disapointed for the same reasons you have been with Messiah.

hummmm… yes I get interested by Messiah only since few days ( I never had to do complex animations before… but I have to find an “answer” to my new projects for character animation). As you said I was impressed from the work of users ( marek,taron,and co … that make me look to messiah.

I was thinking that everything was shiny in the Messiah world…

I appreciate the feed back from experienced users, (since I am a newbie in animation).

Thanks.

#46

My concern as well on all that’s been said here. In the retail environment when a business starts delaying product release, promises made and broken (not realized) (Autorig version 1 or 2 as one feature looking forward too), lack of feedback and an open communication line, that’s the red flag of a pending closure of the business (bankruptcy). Or that it’s a don’t really care attitude and we do whatever we desire to do.

Additionally, I noticed as well features that SHOULD have been included / promised in the software when finally RELEASED as an upgrade, we have to pay for it again.
Example: confusion on the Studio Workstation release versus the M:A 5 pricing…

Paula has been most helpful at pmG. But I feel pmG isolates itself from any pressure and as a result leaving us out. But allowing the user to “wish” for better times.
I’m keeping an eye on these discussions and what pmG may do to rectify the user gap.
Oh well…

#47

Let me clarify a couple of things before im getting acused of driving people away from Messiah…

  • Messiah is a TOP NOTCH Character Animation tool!!! I wouldn´t mind animating on it for a living at all.

  • We cant compared LW and Messiah the same way you are comparing, they have totaly diferent scenarios… LW started sinking some years ago (and still is IMO) while Messiah never got to where it SHOULD HAD been all along since it first appeared in 99, but always rising in features and ease of use.

If u need a Character Animation tool that is easy to use and fast fast fast, so fast that u can simply adjust keyframes while the animation is still playing in REALTIME!!! Then messiah is a perfect and wise choice…if only XSI had at least half of this speed… but this is another subject :slight_smile:

I wont coment on the render because besides a few F9´s several versions ago (2-3 years or so), i never did anything more on it, im not a render guy, in fact i kinda try to avoid it hehehe, it simply dont atract me to make tests on my free time. So the render doesnt really appeal to me as the rigging and animation tools do.

#48

hehehe yeah, i feel i should point out to that i am not trying to “bad mouth” messiah, just that i feel that certain key things in the way the company is running PR are wrong.

i’ll add that i to have XSI, and messiah (i find) much more intuitive and free to animate in, a lot of this is no doubt due to my lack of experiance in XSI but at the time i had no time to get to grips with its learning curve (that will come later).
if you are a “newbie aimator” i think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by Messiah, it does animation…and it does it very well.
the renderer is good too (only suffering from extremely poor docs atm unless there are some that i dont know of) and is looking to get even better in this next release.
For messiah workstation the $299 price tag is a GREAT deal and i urge you to give it a “real” go. it took me a little while to get my head around messiah’s quirks but come join us on IRC and ask questions in there, you’ll find we have a nice little community in there :slight_smile:

so i still continue to recommend Messiah. but i also still think pmG need to act soon, or they will be stuck in a limbo with a great app but no one to use it.

just as another example, i can think of at least 3 features i have requested/mentioned in the silo forums that have been added to the app, nevercenter now have my support for life as it is, and i swear by silo now because i know if there is something in there i feel should be changed or added and i say something i KNOW they will be listening and i will see a result within my liftime.

#49

Thanks don’t worry guys… I don’t run away. I still need a tool to animate.

With my experince I can see “a good product”, Messiah is a good product !

The render engine with more features (sorry again Taron :slight_smile: -yes the render engine rocks, but … layers, photon baking, etc…etc… I have done a simple test with a box and a hole humm (there are something to fix with flipped polygons, shadows and boucing lights … ) I did render an organic shape , it works very well. That’s why I am not surprised that you rendered characters for films… . ) well I have many things to say about missing parameters. BUT with more developpements it can be used for different kind of projects ( not only character oriented :wink: … ).

I think it will be more “serious” for me to wait the new release with a listed features. There is no official date for the update, it could me in 1 month … it could be in 6 months … or more ??..

I will wait and see how PMG will answer to your posts ( about communication, feedback, upgrade, tutorial, doc,share infos, etc… ).

SOme people sold their packages, some don’t use it anymore… it’s not good for marketing, new user like me can say …" whoaw ? what’s going on here ? Is it a dying tool ?".

For the few I have understand PMG team need to make more effort about communication and more frequent update?

cheers!

#50

A dead tool does not find second hand buyers. we have seen how many users selling in the last 4 months , 3? well they come here coz they know here they will get some one to buy it, so, that is far from sounding like a dead, or dying tool, it is alive kicking and being improved as we speak, not much comunication, well they have to find a way to post frequent news (maybe a blog or something that gets updated every two weekends).

Messiah is As it is one of the best Character Animation tools with a superb rederer as a plus, and if only half of what Taron have talked about is shown in the next weeks, well things will only get better in the coming months, and I am sure of that.

Antonio

#51

Hey PMG give me this features and I will be able to use messiah at work ( 3d real time ) and do some plugs again.

  • weight maps. the most important one for real time!

  • opengl transparency (for billboards and FX-> car lights for example)

  • backing solution. (obvious)

a few personal :

  • Pose space deformation.
  • Smooth interpolated UVs on subdiv.
  • Ngons, edge weight.
  • separate bump and displace.
  • map gradient keys.(u&v gradient).
#52

I second the interpolated subdiv uv’s and seperate bump/displace :slight_smile:

#53

I’ve been an interested buyer for quite some time. But have been holding off for a few reasons. Little quirks in the program (having to scale each object to adjust to Messiah’s scale, why can’t this be automated somehow?) and the lack of a strong community presence (and I don’t mean users, but company). Another 3D company that I have close ties with has attempted to contact pmG on numerous occasions. And I’ve emailed them at least 3+ times. And no response has been received. Its things like that, that turn me off to buying Messiah.

Really WEGG is the one person who has kept me interested in Messiah and hoping for some changes. For now I continue to be a bystander and keeping an eye on Messiah and its continued development. I’ve been very interested in DEVELOP, with my experience in programming I’d love to get my hands on it, but that seems to be taking forever to surface.

Anyway. Thanks a lot for the news, its great stuff and sounds like some exciting fixes, changes and new enhancements.

#54

Wow. What a thread. I have to admit I’m a Messiah zealot and every time Taron put his fingers on a keyboard to reply to anything. . . Its a wild ride. Lets just re-cap some of the crazy crap.

I’m again very sorry for stripping Taron’s post out of his conversation with Thomas on the material thread. It was just . . . so juicy . . . I had to spotlight it.

Fur. . .

Ahh. . . . fur. . . .

But then the ability to change the direction of a displacement!?! Holly crap! That right there changes everything! Man thats going to rule.

Post effect filters with a Fusion like shader flow!?! DAMN Thomas! Wouldn’t that kick ass!?! I have seen and played with an early version Taron’s AE plugin and if this is what he is hinting at. . . . this changes everything. . . You should see how fast that thing renders!

wow.

Layer01: you and I have talked about your concerns on IRC a few times and I think Taron re-stated what I told you in there. They are gun shy. They over-sold their product years ago and they are not looking repeat that mistake. But as you can see I don’t think this “complete silence” is a trend that will continue. I think they will find their balance.

Nichod: The scale issue your fighting is something I faced years ago when I transitioned to Lightwave. The Lightwave/Messiah world space is so insainly small compared to the package I was using. But as I dug deeper I found multiple solutions to the problem. Multipliers of .1 and even .01 on export did the trick. I managed to get your tea post into Messiah through Wings. You shouldn’t HAVE to do that. . . But you would be faced with the same issue in Lightwave. . . and it’s install base is MASSIVE. Seems odd that the modeler your using hasn’t seen that and come up with a solution. . . And the other company you mentioned that tried to contact pmG. . . I tried to help out with that but they never returned MY e-mails! :argh: The irony. . .

As far as the rest of you. . . I don’t know you. You don’t come visit us in IRC. <HINT!>

#55

:stuck_out_tongue: :smiley: :wink: … Man could you ask Taron his aut to post images or clips of the beta stuff
so he does not have to use his time to do that? only the particles stuff he was ready to post …
if possible , that would rock :slight_smile:

thanks

#56

Well I have seen the particle tests. Everyone on the beta team has them and a few are messing around with how it all works but its not really my place to go showing you guys. That would kind of break my trust with them. (Plus the fact that I’m pretty busy with my own projects and don’t really have as much time as I’d like to play with all the new toys.)

#57

, sure no prob , not asking you to post anything just maybe a “this thing you can post” from Taron, or something like that for future stuff, well hoping him to have the time to post something of the current stuff…

#58

I’ve been with this software since it was released by SXS and I see it again and again before a major release… people start getting all head up and concerned about the demise of the software, then the release comes out and everyone that complained picks up their jaw of the floor. (or finds something else to complain about)

The biggest laugh I got was when XSI had it’s massive reduction in price, everyone thought it was the end of the world for other software… meh, all it meant was you could buy XSI as well, if you could be arsed learning another piece of software.

I only use messiah for my personal joy, no commercial stuff and I love this ride. :bounce:

#59

I have to admit that communication is what’s kept me from buying messiah. You just feel it’s dead or going to go away soon, and it tears you up inside because you search and search for developer feedback or updates and nothing changes nothing is different. All the while feeling you’ve found the perfect tool for animation, I love the fact you can just us bones to animate(and not need weight maps). I would without a doubt make a purchase if I seen more feedback direcly from PMG on what it’s doing. I wouldnt think twice about it, as a matter of fact I’ve been trying to pick up a copy from users selling it cheap as I had no idea where things are headed. And I’m nervous about making a purchase in all honesty. Communication from PMG would change that as messiah is a great product.

#60

What more do you need to know beyond what Taron has mentioned in this thread?