New simple shader...Color Coordinates

#91

Hi Taron,

What do you think about the small upgrade idea? (Or is that what you’re mad at??)

David

#92

Well it make us users stand on your side, it was good to break the silence and we love you for that! :wavey:

It brings me to an deeper understanding, I’m no longer feel that it’s most important to deliver MessiahPro in the state it once was announced, no, the most important thing is that Messiah will survive and bring PMG a good revenue, so you can grow! Develop can arrive later and once it does I think we will se an explosion of new exiting plugins to Messiah!

/ Svante

#93

I agree. Messiah if it is to move on, need to kill the expectations from its initial release. We understand and request that you guys move on to aspect of the programs that you know you can complete.

Messiah is a character animation took first. Solve all those demons and then return to the render/shader department.

Use Modo’s business plan as a template. Soon modo will do character animation and then what? I bet you they will use your modo as a template: setup mode. The difference is that they will probbaly devote more time to it than you guys are.

And Taron, stop coding and pimp your name.

You, the one guy that rose in the CG game as Stalberg and the other 1998-2002 alumni: Feng, Metzler,Pascal Blanché, Francisco A. Cortina.

You have not used your “status” to promote a product you are part of. If I was taron, I would have milk it for every thing its worth. Zbrush camp pimp you more than Messiah does. Pop the collar, dog! Become a BRAND! Everyone else is.

PIMP your name. Tutorials. Something. Videos. One month. record. I’ve been saying this since Summer 2005. When one says Taron, Messiah should be akin to. Not Zbrush or LW or anything else.

Messiah: Art of character Animation.

#94

I completely concur with everything in your post Julez.

#95

I think going mad on people who have no concept of what’s involved with hair is useless. I was asked to do “hair” for messiah so often I can’t even count it anymore. People with no idea of coding simply can’t appreciate what that means.

BUT: A particle based fur should be possible in a first step to fill the most pressing need. I found the hair in “Elephants Dream”, done with blenders open source particle based hair quite satisfying and Weggs Hair tests look like they could guide to a good intermediate solution if given some internal workout from pmGs side.

Full styleable hair is not only about rendering and basic hair directions, but a whole concept of tools not currently available in the messiah interface. So that sure is a whole different shebang :slight_smile:

But I am with the people here who ask for streamlining and update animation first.

Another area where messiah is very much lacking is NPR. Outlines and some painterly stuff would help the addressed audience a lot (see Davids work).
These are things in reach (other than a full styleable hair solution).
Put that in with an Edit Sphere overhaul where plane and full free 3D movement works as simple and reliable as single axis manipulations and a lot is done. Then I would buy an update for 250.- € without much questions.

And: I don’t think anyone is trying to “rip off developers” here, but not anyone has an understanding of the time needed for even simple things and 2.) not anyone can throw out money as he/she would maybe like to (nor is it the users fault if there aren’t enough licenses sold to support development).
Times have changed and when XSI Foundation 6 is at 499.-$ you have a hard time to explain why messiah pro should be more expensive, even if the price of XSI may be pure madness.
From the users side, things look very differently, and - as Lyle explained quite some time ago - this will also lead to some people giving up on development completely. Between extremely capable open source software like blender (mainly hindered by it’s GUI) and cheap mass-high-end tools like XSI Foundation, it is almost impossible to place something “made by hand for a living” if you can’t show why it is better than the rest for what it does.
messiah still has this opportunity but it has to become way more simple and streamlined to work with it in a mixed app environment (see Silo/modo).

For me, the problem with pmG/messiah from day one was that the people doing it were too involved in their own universes to be really aware of the importance of the basics. This hasn’t much changed from 1999. The parts where this works are the parts that keep people at it - superfast rigging, no weight painting, expressions etc. But then there are areas (different ones for different people) where people are going mad a million times a day. For me it is the edit sphere and camera navigation (coming from XSI), for others it is inactive keyframes or multi-parameter editing or the missing search and replace in expressions.
For beginners it is things like F1 not being Help and instead Help being buried in a right-click on the File tab but not being available in the normal File dropdown…

I know just too well how often this has been reiterated already - and I know f***ing well why.
The “world” isn’t good or bad towards pmG, the world simply doesn’t care.
Create something indispensable and people will recognize, use and love it - and pay for it.
Leave too many quirks in it (especially in the basics) and people will go elsewhere.

Listening to you, Taron is like listening to Stahlberg telling how easy it is to create good female characters :wink: It may be true for you individuals, but it surely isn’t for everybody.

So, to end this long post: Both sides, users and pmG have to move. The users look willing to… :thumbsup:

Have a nice day!

Cheers,

#96

I’ve been also wanting to revert attention back to the plug-in that Taron released. I’ve used similar things in xsi and its a great help for compositing.

So, thanks Taron - for these:

ColorCoordinates.mp

NoiZette_Ball quicktime

#97

Sounds reasonable to me.

#98

Rereading some of the thread, its clear the only consensus we can reach is that all of us want pmG and Messiah to succeed and continue its evolution. :applause:

For the record, I paid $1495 for Messiah Studio 1.0 when they first announced its availability, and still wouldn’t mind paying a little more, just to get the product in a truly complete state. The free upgrades are outstanding, but releasing Develop can only lessen the burden for Messiah’s programming maestros. Get that out in the next update, and let the legions of hard core users fix the edit sphere, and zombies and dynamic parent in place and whatever other vermin bother us, so the main developers can focus on Hair. Or vice versa.

Whatever keeps Taron and company motivated and eager to please. Even if they have to follow a tortuously long development cycle like zBrush.

Speaking of which, how does Pixologic manage to survive when they haven’t charged for an upgrade since 1.23b, for or five years ago? Did they sell some of their technology to ILM? Is Google a silent partner? Or did they really sell a million copies with the sudden promise of 2.5? Perhaps another tactic pmG can try (pay now for hair later). Or maybe pmG and Pixologic should join forces and morph into a complete 3D Solution (and still never charge for upgrades). :buttrock:

Bah. I see reality oozing in and suspect 3D is about to get really expensive again. :shrug:

#99

Ahem.

I think there are a lot of myths regarding Develop in the air…
AFAIK, it is just a tool that helps you setting up your plugins parameters, variables, build interfaces for it visually etc.
It doesn’t allow you (please correct me if I’m wrong) to do anything that the current SDK can’t do. :sad:
It just makes it easier and more convenient.

It is an advanced form of the plugin wizards that are part of XSI and other software.

So: Forget about changes to the Edit Sphere from outside Developers, more Import Formats, changes to the Graph Editor or Zombies. The SDK is great but extremely limited in it’s reach, otherwise a lot of those things would lie behind us already.

I personally think as of today that Develop is actually the most unimportant part of messiah. Nice to have but without a much deeper SDK not too much of a feature and a lot of work to maintain.

K.I.S.S. time IMO

Cheers,

#100

Sir ThomasHelzle,

Then that makes sense they chose to put it so far down on their to do list. So, if it won’t help you customize Messiah to an extreme degree, hopefully they’ll go nuts and rip open the SDK so super coders like yourself can remedy the smaller (I’m guessing the edit sphere wouldn’t be too complicated, though it’s probably the most complicated and mind-boggling edit sphere ever invented) frustrations.

Knowing this, I like another free upgrade, before 3.0 is offered, out of spite. :applause:

#101

Sorry to “butcher” you post but i just wanted to evidence those lines :slight_smile:

I have read this thread, and at first i was a bit shocked by it, but then, what the heck… sure charge at will, but before i pay for another update i want some features in there.

Being honest, i coulnd´t care less about rendering (this is ME… mkay? Others might have a diferent opinion) I prefer to see improvements on the animation side of Messiah, thats why i bought Studio in late 2001.

  • Get rif of the Edit Sphere and make a regular gizmo for translate and rotate.

  • Weight maps, they are needed, Metaeffectors might be cool and all, i want industry standard Weight maps.

  • Steamlined Set Driven Keys without the need to go to negative keyframes, please

  • Point and clik Ik

  • Corrective Morph sculpting INSIDE Messiah, after XSI i wont go back to guess modeling in any other modeler.

This are the things that pop up right way into my mind, this and that Graph Editor mockup i did in Photoshop some time ago… Sorry if it sounds harsh, but, having payed for something in 2001 thats still hasn´t been provided, i wont mind paying for an updated, but this time, i want something i will use and really want to dive into, instead of features i dont use.

I know i know, looks like am im being selfish, well probably, but its my money after all,so ill spend it on whatever i want right? So instead of saying i will update, im saying i will update IF i see features im interested, those that i listed are some of them.

ps: Almost forgot: LATICES! its 2006 almost 2007…LATICES PLEASE!

#102

You want modeling? I don’t think they ever intended to add that, so why ask?
I am not so sure it’s really reasonable. They might be more likely to listen if the
requests are reasonable and within the bounds of possibility.

#103

Hi guys,
I’ve been biting my tongue just to not reply, but I can’t help myself now!
To me all of this small upgrade system seems nonsense, and I’m meaning it in the kindest way possible, and I’ll explain why:

First of all what pmg really would need is new buyers, that would be totally scared away hundred of miles if they ever read some of the posts here.
Onestly whould you invest in an app. whoes users, by right, complain of the lack of comunication in future development? And plus have to throw in an extra hundred so that the company can finally correct some minor/major issues and even start thinking about the future versions?

And all this faith thing is wack.
We all have jobs and would we even think to ask our clients, (not that pmg officially has), to add some money to buy equipment so that we can finish the work they had paid us for in the beginning?

This is only going to give pmg oxygen till the next release, after that if their aproach with comunication and pubblicity doesn’t change were going to have the same situation over again, maybe a partnership wouldn’t be bad to reach this task either.

I love messiah and want it to survive but my small opinion is that a company cannot rely on the good proposals of its clients but on its own.

Sorry for the long post,

Rago.

#104

Sil3: butcher right away :slight_smile: You’re welcome, I find your suggestions very good.

There is a difference between “modeling” and moving points around. The latter just needs to save a point offset (that’s what endomorphs in LW is all about) and create a morph target from it. And if it is done like in XSI (where this is called “Secondary Shape Modeling”) you can model on top of your animated object so you really can see how a deformation works. Combine that with a straight forward driven key solution and you are a big step forward towards 2006 animation and easily correctable joints.
The development effort is nothing out of whack for that. Very doable.

Regarding Latices: Look at what fantastic possibilities you get from something like latices if given to the right guy:
http://www.characteranimator.com/temp/movies/character_td.html
Watch “Deformation Grid” - if that doesn’t water your mouth, I don’t know what will :slight_smile:

Watch the other stuff too, all of it - instant joy!

And I am right with you Rago. :thumbsup: :wink:
I personally would be willing to give a little push to pmG since I am heavily invested in messiah with my shaders anyway, but in the end, if messiah can’t survive on it’s own merits, it will die sooner or later or become an “inhouse tool” for Taron (and Wegg :wink: ) once again.

Interesting times :slight_smile:

Best regards,

#105

Okay, my 2 cents - not that I expect them to really help here :D…

I am solely talking about the animate portion - just because that is IMHO the portion of the software that actually helps in an actual production to get you money in (at present)

There are some quirks that come with messiah that at this point in time make it really difficult to establish a rocksolid fast and - even fun - workflow and stay sane at the same time when you have tight schedules - I could probably count them on the fingers of one hand.
If pmG is able to get these few things sorted, it to me is the almost perfect solution to get everything done in a very convenient and flexible way that might come down the road animationwise.
If I can help with a little further investment to get that into the package I would be more than happy.
And when this really happens I have something that I will everybody tell about - and could do that with the absolute confidence that any “high-ender” will have not much arguments left to explain why an industry-animation-workflow could only be achieved with the big M or S…
And messiah definately could stand up to every package on the market when it comes to animation - especially character animation - and would absolutely stand out in so many areas…

So IMHO it would absolutely make sense to me - and quite a few others when I read a lot of the recent postings here - to invest just a little more into the package that can help me/us to get a rocksolid animation solution that I can build a production on.

Its a f****ing great animation-tool already but straightening out a few issues would make it a package that does a big job of selfpromotion by itself, just because it WILL BE used in production!

It was used in the past already - and does now if you are accepting a few painful workarounds in few situations; just for the recorsds:all character-animation projects I was working on since 2000 were based on :messiah - I would really love to continue that tradition :slight_smile:

#106

I agree - these sorts of instant-feedback mesh-control possibilities are important.
Also things like texture-displacement in viewport. (I’m convinced that displacement rigging / modeling is the cat’s pyjama’s - AND would match Taron’s comping tools perfectly). This can be done already using bulge, as written here- but something so powerful should be more accessible.

There’s so much potential…
which is why I think we all want to see the messiah team continue working for us. Its tools are laid out in a way that suits me - as Peter Thomas said, its a great balance between power and accessibility. I know xsi is powerful, and that folk like Bernhard (your link) do kick-ass things with it… but messiah suits me and my way of working.

I reiterate: I don’t think its a question of getting the pmG team back on track as much it is of getting the balance between user base and team back into the correct proportion. (Hold off on the heated response for a sec…) Part of which is a financial basis for continued development - ideally via expanded user base, but also via regular updates.

I feel unwell at the thought that this dev team should be in the defensive - sure there is a list of unkept promises as to features - but there is also a wealth of new features. Has messiah communication been lacking? You bet! Has messiah been clever in its development priority list? Absolutely not! (Do I do a good Rumsfeld impersonation? err… no!)

I just hope that when messiah battens down the hatches and adresses the unkept promises, they will be (finally) met with recognition for all of the goodies that they’ve packed in there over the years.

#107

No i dont want full Modeling, i dont need to delete/add vertices/polygons, turn edges, spinquads whatever, i need/want a way to push points around so that i can make corrective morphs and see them as i move those points around, ala XSI or Animation Master.

If they never intended to do that, well, its a feature requested since 1999, i think maybe its about time they start thinking about it, same way its about time they start thinking about removing the inactive keys… even if those are deeply coded into the core and they need to get their hands dirty, well do it while there are animators wanting to use messiah…

  • by the way, on my previous post Steamlined should be written STREAMlined :wink:
#108

You know, I really like this forum. It’s well administered (allows free speech!) and the people on it seem much clamer than other forums.

rago - Despite suggesting the small upgrade thing, I can completely see your point and to a large degree I agree. The only thing I’d say is that we seem to be in a slightly unusual situation. I’m trying to find a solution (small upgrade thing) that will just push animate to the level where it becomes a real joy to use. At that stage, maybe new users will start to arrive. With Modo advancing leaps and bounds and LW9 out, I think now is a great time to have a dedicated CA tool - and messiah:Animate COULD be that tool. If all PMG need is a small injection of cash, the $100 upgrade might just do it. Longer term, you’re absolutely right - PMG will have to do it on their own. Communication and PR are essential to success and they just don’t seem to want to do it - I just don’t get it? Luxology have PR and communication completely sussed.

If this thread is not helping PMG, just let me know (PM me) and I’ll stop. Personally, I’d like to hear something from PMG and then have this whole thread removed for the sake of sales.

#109
  • Get rif of the Edit Sphere and make a regular gizmo for translate and rotate.

* I agree to a point, option for either or.

  • Weight maps, they are needed, Metaeffectors might be cool and all, i want industry standard Weight maps.

** If it doesn’t take forever but the original reason behind this is because you wouod use different applications that have different ways to use wrightmaps. LW wouldn’t work with Max or Maya.

  • Steamlined Set Driven Keys without the need to go to negative keyframes, please

** not a big issue in the grand scheme but yeah it would be nice. Joe Cosman has some neat workarounds.

  • Point and clik Ik

*** Heck yeah! Faster IK SETUP is always nice.

  • Corrective Morph sculpting INSIDE Messiah, after XSI i wont go back to guess modeling in any other modeler.

** Red flags. See this is just screams that it would take forever to cod ein. Sorta right up there with the hair system. Maya has hair and no one uses it. they love Shave and Haircuts 10x better.

ps: Almost forgot: LATICES! its 2006 almost 2007…LATICES PLEASE

Its license on the technology – ie formula. Maya & Max all paid to use the patent on this technology. Thisis oneof those things that they have to buy the patent to before they even figure out how to code it.
If they wanted Hair … go code it. Lattices. Gotta go ask the due for the rights. Its why Lightwave and Modo doesn’t have yet too.
Expensive.

#110

i moved the post, new url