Very nice, Taron,
I’ll chat to you about additive subd displacement mapping soon. Ive been following research in this area i and am thinking about implementing it into my rig. My rig is following the muscle route, but in addition wrinkles, pores and finite creases are gunna follow the displacement(gollum) route.
Anyway nice work, ill pm you in a few days.
eek
you can duplicate the procedure on a Mac with Cinema 4D Release 9 (with the advanced render option you have Subpolydisplacement) and maybe, as addition, the PlugIn DiTools for realtime-displacement to have better control in editor.
It does definitely work with Z-Brush displacement nicely and .
I am not sure if its a s smooth & fast as Messiah here, but when i have time (after xmas) I will try it out for sure.
Taron, I am really impressed how far you guys advanced with messiah.
I was M:A user in M:A3 times and even then was impressed by the clever Morphs you did for the Muscle-Demo character.
You are definitely a morph-master 
Olli
Not to long, this kind of message would have terrified me to my frozen bones! HAHAHA! But now I must say, well, darned…thank you! 
(little explanation: I still prefer to focus on muscles (bones) for setting up facial animation rigs, coming from times where people used complete morph targets in attempts to animate a face. Since messiah I’ve begun to involve expression driven morphs to correct or refine some of the bone deformations in such facial systems. Nowadays the mixture out of bone and morph deformations is nearly next to equal, but with the heavy element of displacement a new candidat has entered, that makes the weight of morph-like animations heavier once again! morph-master…wow…Fred, can you hear that!) 
Thank you, Olli! 
And good luck with the cinema 4D route!
Taron: You are a great artist and heck of a nice guy. I get inspired seeing the things you do. Please keep it up!
This is probably my fav test he’s done in the last 3 years second only to the never before seen “mummy in bandages”.
Taron has proved this can be done within messiah beautifully. I am curious if anyone’s tried to replicate this technique in other packages, is it even possible to get near these results?
Taron, I like your experimentation and innovation!
I can see that Messiah needs even more cool features, because now you got to create a tool that can make the nostrils follow the shape through the morph, and not just fade.;):wip:
Maybe a technique similar to a classical 2D-morph, but between the displacement maps, controlled by effectors instead of anchorpoints, wouldn’t that be cool!
I hope this wont give you a headache…
/ Svante
Fantastic, I’m very happy to see some urges growing to make a perfect transition out there amongst you. I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with! Very exciting for me and certainly for everyone else! GO GO GO, get those nostrils! Awesome!
…just don’t blame Messiah for my neglecting! For that stuff it has everything you need.
Tarron…how hard did you find the COMPLEAT transition from LW to messiah…I ha ve only used the original Project : here and there but am thinking about transfering directly over from LW just cause I’m sick of some of the limitations …?
I don’t know if Taron is the best person to ask that question. He’s been using messiah in it’s various incarnations ever since working at StationX with Lyle Milton et al. How long has that been, Taron - 7 years or so? I don’t think he’s ever had to transition really - since he grew with it from the very beginning and is now influencing it’s direction. In anycase, I’ve picked up messiah within the last year, coming from a LW background. Since messiah started as a plugin for LW, there are a lot of similarities - so, the transition is not bad at all. There are some “gotchas” for sure. There are no weight maps. The shading system is completely different (but very powerful). There are also some things that you’ll still have to use LW for, like Fur, Hypervoxels, Particle effects, etc… So, it won’t be just messiah or just LW - it’ll be a little of both for a while. And probably a lot of ZB. By the sound of it, Taron will be trying to use ZB as his primary modeler.
By the way, love your website! That’s some kick ass creature work, essencedesign.
Very nice work, indeed, essence!
Besides the absolutely correct observation of Gary, regarding my knowledge about the transitioning, I’ve been working with both Lightwave and Messiah together for the past 6 years, seizing to use lightwave’s layouter for about 8 months now, I believe. For the most part when you switch over to messiah it really quickly begins to feel like, damn, that’s just how I would have wanted it in LW, haha, but it soon becomes somewhat like: How was that in LW again…oh no…ah…never! At least that is what I remember and certainly how I feel now…hahaha. That goes for animation as well as for rendering now. I’d say, lucky them we don’t offer modeling hahahaha…but besides that. Gary is right to as for our current missing pieces, which are automatic fur and heavy volumen things, but especially all the volume things including hypervoxel type effects will soon be there and certainly make a lot a lot of noise…hahaha…it’s kind of a personal favorite of mine and I can’t believe that we didn’t find time to focus on it, yet, but it’s been brewing for a while now and I’m almost willing to promiss that it’s going to be a very nice premier! But, I must admitt I’m currently continue to be very captivated by all of the displacement and shading discoveries. Those are just too powerful and I am already brewing on a new concept for expanding on these things in yet another big revolution…maybe bigger, actually…well, it’s some way to go…I’m very excited, but I don’t want to jinx anything already.
Anyway, we’re working on the particle section as well, which already did get a bit of a good boost, but still is in it’s first steps. Particle is actually fun for us to code, but for some reason they got pushed into delay for a few times already. Many people may not realize how simple it can be to create stunning particle systems, particularely with a strong architecture underneath that allows for all sorts of crazy and conventional ideas.
Thanks for the compliments guys…really means alot…
…I think the reasons you point out are why I have been so drawn to making the switch…the 2 places where LW lacks most…in my opinion…are it’s shader/render system, and advanced rigging and animation…although I haven’t made the 8 upgrade yet…from what I’ve heard the changes aren’t that drastic…
…Any ways Taron seeing what you’ve done here really makes my mind gloW…and I know what I’ll be saving my beans for now…Thanks
Jeremy
I look forward to the advancements in the Render portion. I really, though would llike to see some improvements in the softbodies/collision detection part. Unfortunately it’s still not complete or reliable at all, which is too bad because it has some great choices as far as features go. But that’s another topic.
There’s some important things in Render that need to be there in order to go full steam ahead, I think. Basially they are Hair/fur and flares, glows and soft filter solutions. And of course, particle effects. Hair especially, it’s not easy to get around that one…what about Shave and a Haircut? pmG talking to him?
Judging from these future trends, the value of my m:Studio just keeps on appreciating every day! I’m as excited just lurking here reading the advances and breakthroughs as I am to be using this software in my long term animation pipeline. At this moment I feel like I bet on the best horse, and the race has just started, and listen to all the cheers from the galleries . . . thanks pmG and keep it up!
Taron,
A bit off-topic, but any leak, I mean word on hair/fur or instancing for hi-poly count rendering? How about a render region tool for rendering via the viewport? And of course, when can we expect to see 2.0c, no need for a specific date, just something like tomorrow would be nice.
Cheers,
Can’t let things leak out…hihi
As for the render-region tool for the view port or for window render, it’s there and in great shape. I use it way too little, but it’s working just fine. There’s one fascinating trade it has, although I would most likely have to pretent that it was ment to do that, but if you have rendered a frame and then activate the render region, you can sort of truncate the render over the openGL and move around like a window into the rendered picture. It’s a big blast with displacement, because while openGL show the original mesh, you can just reveal the rendered displacement over top of it…really funky and entertaining!
As for that…well…only days away now! Hold on tight!
I don’t think this is Os driven… its more like app driven. At the moment I’m moving pretty fast to reproduce this on Maya. As soon as I crack that up I’ll post the Hypershade printscreen on the Alias Maya forum. For now I want to keep the conversation flowing here at pmG messiah forum where it all started.
other ppl should should be testing this with their apps…
No reason to studder, I totally agree!
The principles of it should be easily replicated with what ever app you’re using. If not, just come and try m:Studio with it’s upcoming version!