I am contemplating making the jump from Animation Master to Messiah but for me a 3D hobbyist it is a little intimadating. I’m just looking for experiences of people who have made the conversion and what it was like. Also, how about learning MS - are the docs the best way?
Thanks to all in advance!
Hi Pesto,
FIRST - Messiah is a great app with lots of potential.
BUT - Probably will get hammered for this … as a fully paid up owner of messiah I think I can let my thoughts be known. DOCUMENTATION / TUTORIALS - lack of same. This is the big problem for a novice / non tech 3D’er / newbie IN MY OPINION. I for one didnt find the documentation very accessible AND I found alot of messiah functionality is either not covered or is patchy. Their is not a huge amount of tutes Online either. Compared to other apps it is NOT very easy to learn once you move beyond the most basic stuff.
Taron has a set of tutorial CD’s available - as far as I know they havent been updated for a while and you may need to buy these to fill in the gaps.
Hope this is taken as a solid critique - I know this is not a fanboy / rosy review. BUT - This is an experience from a user like yourself [ recent enough ]. If others reply who are very technical and find this stuff a breeze - please remember the rest of us at the lower levels.
Comprehensive documentation and a good selection of online / vid tutes would be a huge addition to this app. Otherwise as I said already - great app along side your Modeller program.
Cheers
CTGUITARS
I’m all about A:M. Love it. Messiah kicks ass in a lot of other ways that you will love. . . but you will also miss a lot of the things that were easy in A:M.
The documentation that comes with Messiah is pretty good. Follow every step in the tutorials. When you get to a point where you understand rigging and animation I can help you out with the rendering stuff.
Its not as hard as people think it is.
And come over to #Messiah3D on IRC. Lots of A:M users there as well.
Thank you both
CTGUITARS - that is my hesitation - not enough learning material for the non-techy like myself. Thanks for the honest thoughts.
Bill - Your videos from years ago helped me learn AM bones and stuff. Great stuff. I also have your AM to LW video, thou I don’t use LW much anymore. I understand the trade-offs, seeing as AM is so simple from a modelling and rigging perspective, but MS seems like AM on 'riods. So it is tempting. Not to mention my machine seems to be slow with AM compared to when I use other apps (C4D, LW, etc…).
I will play with the demo more, watch some tuts and see. Also, thanks Bill for offering to help me learn the rendering, if I should get that far.
Pesto
Again don’t be too quick to dismiss the documentation that is included. It does require you to walk things through step by step but in doing so you start to understand how things mesh together. The newer shaders and some of the newer features aren’t as well documented but the “core” is covered.
Wegg,
I mentioned the Documentation thing above as I found gaps and assumptions in it at the times I spent with messiah. I find this the case with alot of 3D apps either from the documentation OR from Video tutes OR from one and one Email/IRC converstions. The person giving the info ASSUMES that the other knows certain steps and skips them. I find - in the area of computer software tuition - ASSUMPTION is rife. I was only looking at a VUE video tute recently that I bought and the narrator tutor left out steps because of ASSUMPTION. One had to scramble elsewhere to get the info. Particularly when you buy novice video tutes one expects all the steps to be covered, particularly in the early stages as one would not be aware of the got yous.
I pee people off when I am asking for advice at IRC/email lists - because I highlight an assumption and sometimes get - ah do we have to go over that part, shur you know that - problem is No I Dont!
On occasion when I have written tutes I go over the process described a good few times and try fill in any gaps. I try and write same from the perspective of a complete newb.
I yet have to come across an app whose documentation has not been patchy. this is troublesome particularly for a beginner as they are totally at sea with this app and are at the mercy of the Assuming author.
Cheers
CTGuitars
I couldn’t disagree more. I’m a tech bufoon. Can’t rig a twig in ANY other software.
In messiah I’m doing LEECHES!
Hi Guys,
Bugpoo - Sorry yes you are right, half asleep writing to this thread earlier - apologies.
dobermunk - Good for you, Over at another 3D apps IRC we came to the conclusion their were 4 types of 3D’ers:
Type 1 - The ultra 3D Beginner in general
Type 2 - The 3D enthusiast who has experience, but is more artistic and not a techy in any way - [ Me…ish! ]
Type 3 - The Proggy / Techy experts where 3D is secondary to redesigning and turning 3D App code / scripts /shaders upside down
Type 4 - A mix of 2 and 3 above
So Dobermunk, you a Type 3 / 4?
Cheers
CTGuitars
Hey I’m probably a longtime lurker here 
I think messiah is finally getting some serious competition from others like xsi foundation.
For learning animation I wouldn’t think twice (messiah hands down)
But xsi comes with fast native mental ray.
messiah renderer looks great but keeps striking me as slow (?)
In an animation package (render x 1000’s) it is something to look at.
I’d love to know that it’s at least possible, if not easy, to export messiah scenes to something
renderman compliant. My only comment.
It would make it an easy choice then imho
Hehe, sounds like a pick-up line…
I am not technically oriented at all. I can’t write a line of code, or an expression, in any other software. Why? Because I haven’t invested the energy to learn how to do so. I’ve done this in messiah because there is an assistant that sits there and when I select an expression it describes its function and tells me what I have to enter where, even helps me select them.
That’s built-in documentation. As for the effects, I’ve learned how to deal with them within the capacity I bring. I am modeling-enabled - so I tend to solve problems manually with morphs. But messiah bones and particularly muscle bones are very easy to set up. make bone drag to parent position click muscle and auto-length and done. Makes me feel technically capable. But I know better than to take the credit.
Much more important than ease of use is how forgiving a software is. In other packages, the rigging process is for me a landmine - one flase step and things explode and I can’t figure out what’s gone wrong and have to start all over again, following someone’s step-by-step tutorial which can never be really custom for my purposes. In messiah, I feel free to experiment. I’ve had a crash here and there and there are some bugs - but the base feel I have is that if I mess something up I can go back to set-up or simply delete an effect, effector, whatever…
Maybe you could share some of the issues you’re experiencing?
I know for a fact that David and I both sit squarely in Type 2 land. I can BARELY write my own expressions. Most of my “tricks” are old school experience. Not crazy source code expression writing, scripting crazy stuff. The fact is I can truck around in Messiah like a pro and I don’t know how to code. BTW A:M’s documentation from what I remember is just as devoid of real technical explanations and information needed to really learn it’s guts. Thats why my instructional videos on eggprops did and still do sell so well.
Spin99: Go ahead and price out 30 CPU licenses for Mental Ray.
Spin99: I’ve worked with pipelines in which messiah was hooked up to every major package, and often more than two or three: maya, xsi, max, cinema and LW. No Blender yet. Using mdds with or without PointOven is solid and easy - with automatically updated scenes.
Usually smaller team sizes - 3 or 4 people, occassionally up to 16. Its a fantastic, flexible method.
i thought that messiah`s documentation was quite efficient actually. It lays out most of the stuff, and lets you have some space to explore I learned messiah myself from documents including expressions and many others.
Anyways too much documentation can make you loose focus
But Blender won’t support mdds, only… collada (?)
From Blender I can >slap >in a fast renderer.
But I have to wait any case.
Wow the new messiah Christmas production looks really great (!)
That is so much the way to go guys, it’s not even funny.
Five stars to that already (!)
Is this usable?
https://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=4969&group_id=9&atid=127
Amazing. I’m sold out.
Thanks for pointing it all out for me.
I can see the light! :buttrock:
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