New simple shader...Color Coordinates

#41

[QUOTE=Panikos][/QUOTE]
Panikos, you’ve done so much in messiah, and contributed loads. Ignore the provocation.

#42

I agree with this, and would not expect fancy quality in a training DVD.
I would pay $100 for that suggested upgrade too. I think it’s a great idea
to do it this way. I mean look at how frustrated the Zbrush users are:
they have been waiting years for that free upgrade. They would much
rather have it just released without quite so much improvement. So, I think
this is a really great idea. Small upgrade, small upgrade price, gather more
working captial.

#43

Yeh, I do apologise. I just didn’t like the tone of his first post.
But my reply was uncalled for, I agree. You can delete it if you want.

I just don’t see why someone would make a post venting at pmg like that.
He’s unhappy with the software or something?
I’ve only seen messiah evolving here and getting bug fixed all over.

Sorry again.

#44

He’s unhappy with the communication. And now everyone is talking. :slight_smile:

#45

I want to make a statement of my own since I stumbled by accident over this thread:

I stated in the past that messiah:studio still doesn’t include what I once paid for (Develop etc.) and therefore I still call it unfinished and wait for those features to appear before I am willing to pay again.

But reality has bitten pmG in the behind enough by now, especially since even learning the hard way needs to end at one point.

Sooo…

Please make the next update a paid one.
Be sure to make this known beforehand on all channels so nobody is taken by surprise and can make his or her own decision to update or not before the fact!!!

My reasons for this are simple: While I still detest the boldness with which pmG sold messiah 6 years ago and some of the things that happened since, it makes no longer any sense to pressure something that is lost anyway. If messiah can’t be finished without some money injection, then nobody gains anything from the current state of deadlock.

There are clearly two fractions in the userbase:
1.) The ones really using it anyway, making money from it and wanting to see it prosper.
2.) All those others who would like to use it but hate certain aspects or miss major features or don’t understand how to use it etc.

The first group will pay for updates without asking like for all the other software they use in production.
The second group will after some initial grumble update or not (like with any other software) but in the medium time range will come over if they see things addressed that are “on the list” for ages, find learning material (this is a must!!!) or other fine solutions that you may come up with.

I am part of the second group and I am not sure if I would update right away before seeing some evidence of growing usability for what I need, but I do the same thing with Photoshop, so I think it’s a fair deal :wink:

Sure I would advice to throw something really cool into the first paid update since 2000 for studio pro users, just to make the bait more juicy. Be it a network render controller for pro (even a “light version” restricted to 3 machines would be welcome for starters if a deal could be made with Butterfly) or fur or real shadow passes and compositing or all the fixes that have been discussed for the graph editor, animation and the edit sphere (oh yes, I still detest it :wink: ). And/Or think about a bundle with the Frischluft plugins to spice up the deal even more.
It will be important to give the updaters something of substance to make them “feel” to not being ripped of.

And can’t you try finding someone in the community as your “prophet” to fill the information gap? Someone honest who is on the forums a lot already and to whom you give all the information needed so he can make statements with some foundation on the behalf of pmG?
Without better communications, I don’t see this endevour flourish.

And one last personal remark:
It doesn’t help to tell people just how powerful messiah is already and that they all just have to dig in and find out. I even find it insulting given the state of the docs and the absence of any serious learning material. I think I did quite a fair deal of digging in the past and still wouldn’t use if for my actual work.
If something is convincing by itself, it will work and sell, if not, any such statements are just so much bits and bytes without any meaning (as much as I may appreciate the enthusiasm behind it).

Just my - as usual long winded - two cent :slight_smile:

Cheers,

#46

Yay! Always great to see communication from PMG. Just talking to us makes a difference. Sure a $100 upgrade for the clearing of the zombie keys would be a fine start. A possibility (although a little silly perhaps) would be to have a few of these that would allow users to pool their way up to pro version with small $100 upgrades until they have invested enough to own a pro licence? Could become kind of an extra incentive to pay for smaller fixes and for you to get enough money from your customers to get to that mark you need.

#47

I like the idea of small updates as mentiond (by me, so of course I like it!), BUT I’d like to see the division between the renderer and the animation section. I want to pay for the development of the animation side. If I see things progressing well, bit by bit, small upgrade by small upgrade, I’m willing to pay sensible cash over time BUT I don’t want that cash going to the renderer. It’s time that Animate got some attention and I’d be more than happy to pay for it.

Nice thing about the small upgrades is no ‘faith’ is involved and so no one can be dissappointed when they’ve stumped up cash and then not got what they wanted/percieved to be in the works. It’s a good and easy - “These are the new features, do you want to pay for them and see things move along?”.

So, I reiterate, get rid of the inactive keys, add one or two small things or Dynamic Parenting In Place (DynaPIP thread) for animating and charge $100 for it - get some cash coming in!

Taron, How does that sound to you?

Question Everyone - If they got rid of inactive keys and aded Dynamic Parenting In Place, would you pay $100 for it? (Bear in mind this would be the first step to, hopefully, a more stable progress)

#48

Dynamic PIP, Inactive keys, Interaction profiles (to make it behave like maya or lw ALL the way through), Revamp the edit sphere so that its a true 3D sphere that looks correct without weird distortions and behaves properly, look at other manipulators for inspiration (planar constraints etc). Currently navigating messiah is a pain in the ass from POV of objects. Oh yeah and once and for all, make the drag and drop parent respect the keep in place options, and allow a quick way to get access to that feature since its often used.

not a big list imo.

Also take a look at some of the bugs already reported in the bug tracker, even if some could be addressed thats great!

also EVERYONE if you are bitching about certain functionality, why dont you go ahead and enter it in the bug tracker! The bug tracker accepts all - feature requests, bugs, etc allowing PMG to sort by importance and allows you to upload examples…

#49

I understand the importance of parent in place but there are cases one may need the opposite affect. It should be more user sensitive change, like if you use ctrl to drag it would respect position otherwise not, kind of things. I do not want one implementation to take another feature personally. I assigned shortcut to parent in place and it works damn good to me. My shortcut suggestion for parent in place “p”, for unparent in place is “ctrl p”. easy to remember and use.

it may surprise many but my biggest complaint is the shortcuts, it is claimed that you can assign shortcuts to anything, but in reality this is not true. I really want to assign shortcuts to anything in messiah and that would make me happy more than anything else. So please give us easier shortcut control and access to truely all functions of messiah to assign shortcuts. There are someshortcuts that cannot be changed in messiah, or some letters cannot be used, why?

My second wish is about interface even thou i enjoy messiah`s interface overall. I think that we should have the ability to change the interface, every animator or project needs different
layouts for better project performance. What if i want my dopesheet to be on top and my timeline at the bottom, one may need this kind of layout.

3rd, ability to deselect and dropping selection. It is pain in the butt to deselect or drop selection. It gets on my nerves sometimes to be honest, and i end up moving stuff or selecting wrong pieces when i am trying to change selections . We definetely need some improvement on object selecton side. Also more organize bottom item list (the one sits below the timeline) can be helpful in this respect.

Personally inactive keys does not hit me that bad but maybe people can explain their reasonings of asking removal of inactive keys so passionately?

i would pay for paid upgrade, but i would be more passionate to pay especially when there are improvements on usability and interface. Thou in case of removal of gimbal lock related problems can be a good paid upgrade :slight_smile:

Ahh one last thing, please give us a real shadow pass, everytime one needs to hand over renders to an effect or production company, one of the first things they ask is proper shadow passes.

Beside all these complaints i think messiah is a very powerful package , i cannot resist the joy of messiah to be honest :slight_smile:

#50

Hi Lorenz, not sure if you know this so…
If you have the channel mode set to independent and the 3 channels selected, those keys will move just fine. And channels can now be easily toggle-add selected with ctrl+“2” or whatever channel number you’re after.
There actually was a good thought behind these zombies, but - yeah - they paved the way to…

#51

Oh come on…just because that’s what you want doesn’t mean that’s what
everybody wants. I agree with what Taron said about rendering being part of
animation.

Nice thing about the small upgrades is no ‘faith’ is involved and so no one can be dissappointed when they’ve stumped up cash and then not got what they wanted/percieved to be in the works. It’s a good and easy - “These are the new features, do you want to pay for them and see things move along?”.

So, I reiterate, get rid of the inactive keys, add one or two small things or Dynamic Parenting In Place (DynaPIP thread) for animating and charge $100 for it - get some cash coming in!

Maybe it would be best to just suggest this for the time being? Like, a little at
a time, you know…

[b]

Question Everyone - If they got rid of inactive keys and aded Dynamic Parenting In Place, would you pay $100 for it? (Bear in mind this would be the first step to, hopefully, a more stable progress)[/b]

Yes!

#52

Don’t worry…I think you are in good company. A well thought out post I’d say, I agree on all stated.

#53

Hi David! Hmm, I can select them that way, thats true - but at least on my system (running studio 2.5b) I get the exact same results as if I do it the way demonstrated in the avi (using dopemaster) … :-
Dunno, but to me it these inactive relics seem evil ;-}

#54

I apologize Panikos, that likely came on more harsh then intended. I understand your issues and hopes.

#55

original text: Oh yeah and once and for all, make the drag and drop parent respect the keep in place options, and allow a quick way to get access to that feature since its often used.

#56

Hi Tyler,

I’m just saying that I don’t want to pay for something that I don’t want - that’s all :slight_smile: . So if the two can be developed separately then people can pay for just animate if that’s what they want or just Render or both. I just don’t want to spend money on a joint situation and see most of the cash go on something that I have no real interest in. If you are familiar with the recent history of Messiah, then you’ll know that there seems to have been a concentration on the render side of things.

Kursad,

We’re talking about Dynamic Parenting in Place in animation not setup. Do a search on inactive keys in the forum and you’ll see! :slight_smile:

#57

Hmmmm…

To think that I just wanted to give you real quick the color-coordinates shader and show you a use of it for compositing… wow. :eek:

Even I feel confused writing this now?! :shrug:

Well, first of all, I’m surprised but very, very happily surprised about all these extraordinarily sweet reactions! You guys are incredible already and I wished I could wave a magic wand above my own head so that I can quickly do these changes right this second only to show you how happy you’re all making me. Neither do I have that wand, nor would I have to swing it above my head, but instead I have to tell Fori and Dan about your fantastic suggestions and we can begin with our small SOS updates <maypay, maypay> program. I’m still not sure if they won’t rip my head straight off after all of this, so I better thank you all right now once again! You’re all the best, really! Stay on that course! We’ll run along side of you!

#58

Deleted as stated.

#59

Hi dmack

sorry i guess because i have not read the whole topic i missed it. i am very busy at the moment but interesting topic interesting ideas, keep them flowing!

#60

I own the professional version

I’m ready to pay for :

  • full tutorial about particles / expressions / tips and tricks used by professionnal …,
  • inside Network rendering
  • Fur and hair (with interactive real time guide or effect ala Blender)

I’m waiting for :

  • better manual
  • better communication about Messiah future

Phil