Hi, I’m sure there are some Lightwavers here,
I’m thinking, now that 9.6 is out, it has some allright rigging tools,
i’m wondering, what do you find better in Messiah compared to LW 9.6
is the rigging better, or is the animation process easier, or maybe both?
There’s the inherit advantage of having a Setup mode for rigging. Yes, I know, skelegons… bleh. Easy to use, simple Expressions with a good UI. In fact, a lot of messiah’s advantage comes from having a smart, well designed UI. (I’ve been a LW user since 5.6)
Muscle bones are a big bonus, along with bones on editable spline paths, Melt, Meta Effectors, and the whole Setup/Effects thing is accessible and extensible without the opacity of something like Maya’s system, or XSI, where any parameter can be linked to any other parameter, but (IMO) hides too much from the rigger. Everything in messiah is immediately visible while rigging, yet hideable for animating. Partially this may be personal bias: for me, messiah’s UI is like a direct line into my brain.
I still use LightWave when I just need to get something done, because I know all the keyboard shortcuts (and because of BNR), but LightWave was the reason I bought PuppetMaster 15 years ago. It has a LOT of awesome plugins, especially the Worley ones, but animating in LW, do not like.
On top of that messiah has stable, FAST radiosity. Read the 9.6 release notes. Animated radiosity in LW 9.6 is still pretty iffy.
The short answer is: In Messiah, everything works* and then some…
I used to animate in Lightwave as just got tired of the crashes, speed, motionmixer not behaving and spending hours looking for workarounds to stuff. I have been keeping an eye on the latest releases of LW and yes, the joint system looks good.
But everyday I am finding out new stuff with Messiah and it is just awesome. Took me awhile to get used to the graph editor / dope sheet but this is because it is more powerful and there are so many ways of working with it. The rigging is very easy and there is a very robust auto rigger and walk generator from Useful Slug with which you can have a mesh rigged and doing a walk cycle within 30 minutes!
(*well almost everything.)
i’ve read that rigging is an art form in itself and i found that it’s true. thing is in lw rigging is clumsy (for a better word) i do mind crashes, but that’s with everything. i can rig, use expressions, even experiment a little on pmg and it’ll take me a day…sometimes. lw it’ll take me twice as long. monkeying around with the weight maps (which is crap), sometimes i might goof on placement of a bone and that’s another headache. that whole tip and joint move another pain ( you gotta press the space bar at every move only to find out it’s not where you exactly wanted it.) plus what everyone else is pointing out. messiah just works better at rigging.
Can you change placement of the bone after animating it? Do the smart bones automatically weight paint the face if you use them there? I haven’t had much time to experiment with PMG.
let’s say it’s rigged and animated. you see that the bone placement (let’s say wrist/hand bone for arguement sake) isn’t working for you. go into setup, change it, go back into animate press play and you’ll see if the bone placement works without adjusting the animation. as afr as weight it automatically does it for you. not to say it’s always perfect sometimes you MAY need to add or really specify weights, but for the majority and you plan well the bones take care of themselves. pmg is awesome.
There are. Joe Cosman did a bunch, that you can get here. There’s also the messiah forum here. You can click the Chat button there to open up an embedded IRC window if you need some realtime advice.
There’s also a brief 10 min intro video to the interface here.
If you have not already, you must try out the demo: http://www.projectmessiah.com/x4/downloads_main.htm
The manual is really good as most examples are illustrated with a mini video that shows rigging etc.
Also, not foirgetting the vid tuts page: http://www.projectmessiah.com/x4/tutorials.htm
No offence…but 9.6 render engine is a lot faster than Messiah’s.
Chaching radiosity for animated object with no deformation works great in LW9.6.
Radiosity used with deforming objects looks fine if you use a good number of rays.
Sorry, but I don’t think Messiah’s render engine is comparable to LW9.6 one.
Messiah’s animation tools are better for sure…even if LW9.6 has some good rigging tools too.
I’ve used Messiah for rigging and animating characters, but I made some good animation using LW9.6 (and even previous version, using PLG IK tools).
There are a few things that are faster to set up in 9.6. Just as an example FK/IK blending is a bit of a pain to set up in messiah but very quick to set up in LW 9.6. Both methods are in tutorial videos. Messiah still seems to have a much better and easier expression system for rigging than Lightwave though. Pros and cons to both depending on the job at hand.
Wow wow wow. . . I beg to differ my friend. In every test I have ever done, Messiah smokes Lightwave. Where are you getting your info?
Here is a very basic (ugly) technical scene with a reflective ball and 1 area light. As far as I can tell the two scenes are identical in setup. I tried VERY hard to get the quality settings to line up as best I could and I have to say I am impressed with the improvements made to lightwave from when I last used its renderer. But. . .
Lightwave is 1 minuts 9 seconds. Messiah is 24 seconds.
Overall messiah lends itself much better to professional character animation and rigging, in that it’s tools are developed for that very purpose and the system is a lot more solid. In lightwave, there are some nice little tidbits that might look similarish to the untrained eye, but the overall tools are far more limited and they are scattered throughout poorly laid out panels and plugins that tend not to work very well together. It’s all about workflow. I’ve rigged and animated in both for a long time and lightwave doesn’t come close in speed, stability or flexibility where character rigging and animation is concerned.
That said, I’ve used both lightwave and messiah’s renderers, and I quite frankly, like both, and can usually get whatever I want in both. So there, for me, it comes down to whatever the job at hand is.
Can you please post this scene?
I’d like to test the render speed on my system (a Macpro 8 core, it’s the same you used?).
And what about GI?
No not even close. I have an older Dual CPU Opteron system clocked at 1.9ghz. Most Mac Pro machines blow mine out of the water.
Here is the scene.
Its very tricky to get a scene that compares rendering speeds because each software deals with things in totally different ways. At first my Lightwave renders were up into the 4 minute area but then I started to find a nice balance in the quality of the area light and AA that got the times way down without introducing any noise. I have tried a few more times but . . . this seems to be as good as I can get it without sacrificing the quality of the AA on the top of the cylinders.
Messiah’s GI is killer.
Why don’t you set up a SIMPLE scene this time to test GI and I’ll see what Messiah can do to match it.
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good links.