Hash’s marketing strategies border on hucksterism. I remember the first time I saw Greg Rostrami doing his thing at a local computer show here in L.A. Their approach to sales and his demo was that of the guy selling kitchen gadjets at a home show or some dude in an infomercial. When you think about it there are very few products sold in that fashon that work too well in the long run. The problem was at that time I already owned the software. I sincerely beleive they are interested mainly in selling a lot of units, not in following through with all the things that have been stated by others in previous posts. The fact that some people have spent money on a version of their software that will never work properly, and were not told at the time of their purchase that at the end of that calender year they would have to upgrade to get a working version of the software is pretty effed-up. I think all that stuff the company put out about Hash being the only true software and Martins rants, are laughable and in my opinion sort of pitiful. Martin minutes sometimes read like some of the self serving ravings I’ve read by Jim Jones toward the end of his run. O.K. that was harsh. But there is a tone of delusion meandering through some of those verses. In the end what matters is if the product works for you the way they said it would. It, in my opinion, does not. This rant has not been checked for spelling or gramatical errors.
what the heck is going on with HASH
Originally posted by Raji
Wings doesn’t claim to be an animation package, but it sure beats the crap out of AM’s modeler… both in stability and useability. Patches in my opinion are a thing of the past. And a free and good modeler is still better than 300 bucks of a half-working program…
I never said it did Raji, geez. Meloncully was saying how much more stable Wings3d was then AM and I was pointing out that of course it’s more stable, it’s a ton less complex. One is just a modeler, the other is an animation package.
Wings doesn’t claim to be an animation package, but it sure beats the crap out of AM’s modeler… both in stability and useability. Patches in my opinion are a thing of the past. And a free and good modeler is still better than 300 bucks of a half-working program…
yes raji, my same point, and i would rather model with a wonderful FREE app like wings, and animate with a 500$ animation package that could gobble up A:M with its ability to import almost every major apps models out on the market almost flawlessly AND WORK than go out and buy the poo with air freshener that is also known as A:M
myfault,
don’t take offense, i was just pointing that out… i must have misunderstood what you meant i guess.
but you’re right, wings isn’t nearly as complex and the code was practically ripped from nendo which dissapeared a while ago anyway…
but like i said at the end of my post, pmg has done a phenomenal job at making sure that basic functionality is there for any project and stability has never really been an issue… all that despite it being a team of 3 people…
that comparison alone goes to show that Hash is not putting enough effort into making their software what their users want it to be: more stable
I own LW 5, which is pre-Messiah.
I’m a little confused by the references to LW and Messiah, since I have not been paying any attention to LW for a couple of years. Could someone explain the relationship between the two? I believe Messiah was created by ex-NewTek employees. I don’t know how the two are used together.
What do you guys at Eggington use?
Thank you,
Jay
I’m working with the newest version of animation master and I don’t have a problem, no crash since weeks and I’m modeling and animating alot
Wow, this thread has been…informative…to say the least.
I’ve been doing character animation with Hash AM since Fall '98. Actually I have to give it credit as the App that I LEARNED character animation on. It’s been great for this, but the other areas leave much to be desired. I haven’t had as many problems with crashes. I use AM ‘99 and it seems to be pretty stable on my system (except for when I’m stitching patches and various other things). But the thing that’s driven me nuts is the freakin’ creases that you just can’t seem to get rid of!!! Well, that was the first of many things anyway. I upgraded to 9.5 last year and found the upgrade to be extremely buggy and frustrating.
However, since then I’ve begun teaching myself Lightwave. Although I feel like I’m learning 3D all over again, I’m impressed. First off, the quality of my models is SO much better. NO CREASES! NO CREASES! YEAAHHH!!! With subdivision surfaces I’m able to get characters that look much more like my concept drawings.
Rendering is MUCH faster and looks better too.
The only problem I’m having with Lightwave is the one problem I wasn’t having with AM: Character Animation.
Lightwave doesn’t seem to be as friendly in the character animation dept. I guess I’m going to need to buy either Keytrak and ACS4 or Messiah. Probably Messiah. Can anyone tell me what their experience with it has been like? Good? Bad? The thing I like about AM is that it’s a simple interface that gets out of your way so you can animate. The dope sheet is a nice feature too (I’m not too partial to graph editors). Does Messiah have any of this going for it?
Also, just wanted to add that I’m a big fan of the work you Eggington guys are putting out! Brian’s procedural landscapes rock! And Joe I love your dino models you made in AM! Do you still have a website up? It’s nice to know there’s some guys here in Utah doing stuff like this. Gives me hope (sniff, sniff)
:rolleyes:
-bRiAn
Hello again!
Just a quick reply to some of the things you people said.
The refresh problem, I reported the bug to Dan (pc programmer at Hash) directly in v10, he told me that the bug existed in previous versions of AM, he told me that it was going to be fixed in next version of AM (10a) but it was not fixed, it was not in 10b either.
As for lightwave, I have seen it at 995$ but without the 1400$ of learning materials. That is about twice the price of AM 3 license version. Not bad for one of the best 3D application out there and one that defiantly outshines AM in many areas.
My two cents.
No offense taken Raji, just wanted to make sure my point got across. I blame any of my testiness on lack of caffeine 
Believe me when I say I understand complaints against Hash’s stability, though my favorite version of AM (8.5p+) is usually rock solid.
The app I am using now, Lightwave, has never so much as hicupped on me. Great app, great community, weird ui 
If you’re in school you can grab it for all of $395 or so at creation engine.
VERY tempting…
My Fault, I thought you had a good point. It is true that A:M is a very complex piece of software, as is any software that tries to do everything on the A:M feature list. (It could be a whole lot more complex and still not adequately perform all of the features on its list!)
However, I also see Melloncully’s point. I mostly create still art, not animations. ZBrush is my current app for that. In A:M, to do this, I am basically creating models, texturing them in some fashion, posing them in a choreography or scene, and then rendering. I’m not using all of the animation stuff you mentioned. Yet I am still having almost all of the stability problems that anyone else has had. In this sense, you can compare just the modeling in A:M to modeling in Wings, and it is at least a bit valid to wonder why Hash can’t get the basics right.
Granted, there even if I don’t use the animation capabilities, there may well be a great deal of added complexity in the modeling side of A:M due to the fact that it also needs to do animation. We really can’t make the judgement either way unless we could compare the code and lots of other factors.
We could make the same comparison between ZBrush and A:M. ZB is at version 1.55 almost, and A:M is at v10. ZB has lots of modelling and rendering goodness, and let’s me create what I have in mind. A:M flat-out did not. In fact, it held me back. I was not one of those who was able to persevere through the crashes. Many A:M users talk about the loss of creative will after enduring multiple crashes. (Just NOT on the A:M list, for more than one post ,anyway.) ZB has crashed on me. I’ve lost work when it did. You can go to the official ZB forum and commiserate with fellow ZBrushers without being kicked off and verbally abused by the moderator. But it is a whole different animal to crash once in ZB and be able to continue on, and crash repeatedly in A:M and have your project corrupted in the end. In my case, I retreat to drawing with pencil and paper for a while, then looking for some other application. ZBrush is ideal for now. I’m looking for something else for animation, and I doubt it will be A:M v11 (or AM v11.2q for that matter).
Jay
Arghh
I cant take any more of this &%¤#¤%¤#
I havent checked the AM list for long when I stumbled on the post that brought us here.
After that I started to read again to se if something interesting should happen on the list but now I will stop to read it as everything is back to normal.
Someone asked for the most stable 9.5 version and he got the usuall there is no problem with stability its your computer setup
.a little snippet from the list…
Animation:Master and all programs like it that are computationally intensive
(Lightwave, Maya, and all the rest) can not be compared to regular word
processing and photo processing programs. They are different animals. Just
because you have no problems running a photo program, doesn’t mean your
system is streamlined to run a more demanding CG animation program. Get to
work and make your system stable.
I feel sorry for people on that list
I now very little about the Mac but on Windows…yes, the power user could get some more power with optimized settings but the impact on stability Is something I would question…
When AM goes down its not when your doing the render or rotates the model or any other computer intensive tasks, its usually when I click a menu item, unfolds a property dropdown, press a shortcut key or the arrow keys, loads a model, material, choreography or whatever. And this is interface problems and application logic problems not system problems.
So now this poor guy is probably recommended to reinstall the computer or something
I have probably about 100 applications on my computer. About witch 20 are 3D oriented in some way. Some of those 3D applications are even Freeware, Open Source or none financed or cost a couple of dollars. Not a single one of those 100 crashes more than maybe at an average of once per 100hours of use.
On my computer there is also ONE application that crashes on a regular basis.
Thats Animation Master*.
I must say that I was tempted to replay to this stupid post but…I have done it before and its no use. Instead I keep an eye on the Animation Master forum at Renderosity so that not any crap information manages to find the way to that list unanswered.
As most people here I really like animation master. If it could handle polygon models just as AM models, get the creasing fixed, a better render and stability. What a killer application it would be.
Now days I mostly model in Wings or Metasequoia and render in Vue . Thats god for still images but Im looking for an application for bone setup and animation.
The Wings developer have some plans for bones and animation in v2. That together with integration with PRMAN compatible render engines could do it for me. Only problem with that is that its probably will take a year or two.
Any suggestions for what I could use untill then. I really hate the blender interface so I try to avoid that one, Cinema or Truespace could maybe be an option if it’s possible to reverse the mouse when rotating. Truespace bones does however feel very jerky to setup and use. I’m just a hobbyist and probably want to keep it as that so the budget would be limited. Max around $600 as costom and taxes have to be added.
HellBorn
*Except for the 8.5p++ version that almost can compare to some of the Freeware applications in stability.
jaymackey,
at eggington, we have switched primarily to Messiah for character animation. We still use Lightwave for our scenes. Our modeler (SGT. Squeaks) does his thing in Wings and exports his stuff to Lightwave. All of our character animation/rigging is done in Messiah. Joe told me he used to do the modeling in Lightwave before we got into Wings. In the end, after the characters are animated, everything goes back to Lightwave for rendering.
This should answer your other question about the relation between the two. Messiah: Animate (if you think of it, it’s the opposite of A:M… 
) is really only half a program. It’s great for rigging and animating, but there’s nothing as far as lighting, texturing, rendering, UV mapping, etc. That’s what Messiah: Studio is supposed to be. We might switch to that when it becomes decent, but until then, it’s gonna be lightwave for everything other than character animation and rigging.
dragonfollower,
Lightwave doesn’t seem to be as friendly in the character animation dept. I guess I’m going to need to buy either Keytrak and ACS4 or Messiah. Probably Messiah. Can anyone tell me what their experience with it has been like? Good? Bad? The thing I like about AM is that it’s a simple interface that gets out of your way so you can animate. The dope sheet is a nice feature too (I’m not too partial to graph editors). Does Messiah have any of this going for it?
my experience with Messiah may be a bit distorted from the truth… the reason is because i don’t go as far in depth as Joe does, so he will be able to tell you much more about the intricacies of the program. But as an animator, i have grown to love it. Very stable if you use it alone. And I mean very stable. It does have some issues with high end cards like the Wildcats and some of the ATI cards, but on my GeForce 4 Ti 4600 at home, it works flawlessly. Even with our complex scenes at work, Joe’s GeForce 3 can handle just about anything you chuck at it. It’s very fast like some have already said in this thread.
As for the interface, well it’s sort of based on Lightwave, and I hate their interface… Messiah’s interface is easy enough to follow and get up to speed with, so if you want to compare AM to messiah, then messiah is again, far ahead of AM in terms of interface… at least in my opinion. It’s just that every now and then Messiah’s interface can be Lightwave-confusing. hehe
Hope this helps you guys. And if it doesn’t, you have my permission to bug the crap outta Joe.
:wavey:
Just took a look at Realsoft.
It’s priced in Euro witch probably means that it’s sold from inside Europe. Does anybody know where they are based.
If it’s inside Europe I for once wont have to pay costom and tax when buying.
I will download the demo and take it for a ride.
Suppose I don’t have to mention that you can download the manual…ahh a manual, rare in some applications they are…
HellBorn
Hellborn: Yeah, Realsoft is in Europe (Finland, I believe), which means the rest of us will have to pay duty & tax;) Bah… Sometimes I wish us humans could just do away with these silly “border” things. Global government all the way, baby!
Well if we can’t get rid of the borders then at least getting rid of the damn reseller system we have in Europe would be a half victory.
I don’t understand it. The European common market should guarantie a free market. So how the heck can the resellers still exist. I cant buy from where I get the best price. I have to go trough my reseller that adds 20% to the price.
Is long as they remain I will vote NO!! to everything that has to do with the European common market.
Ehhh… think I went of a bit from the subject of this tread…
HellBorn
I bought Animation:Master on the advice of a friend when I told him what I wanted to accomplish. I found it to be an excellent app for the money, albeit kinda crashy. I subscribed to the group for awhile, but I never gleamed much information dealing with my particular needs, and wading through 100 e-mails a day was getting laborious after a bit. Finally I quit the group, and went about working with A:M on my own. Soon after that, I upgraded to Windows XP. Well, end of story. A:M (whatever version it was called, the one with the cat on the front) won’t work with XP. I was bummed.
I recently considered upgrading to the newest version. After reading some of the posts I’ve seen here, I think perhaps my money would best be spent elsewhere.
SK
Jay Mackey wrote:
It is just amazing to me that A:M doesn’t have this natively by now. Arthur Wasalek has given A:M the capability to import/export quad-based models, but you still need to do decaling in A:M to be able to round-trip a model to Deep Paint or ZBrush for texturing, if I am not mistaken. Please correct me if I am! Anyway, at least an A:M model can now be textured outside of the application in ZB or DP.
You do not need to do decalling in AM, you just need to create UV coords before bringing it into DeepPaint or ZBrush. What I do now is export from AM (as OBJ), run UVMapper or LithUnwrap to create UV coords, paint in DeepPaint, and import back into AM. (In DeepPaint I do not save the model because it saves it as tris which really make bad splines - I just save the new maps).
That way seems to work…
I’m actually considering being able to select a group of faces in AM, export that out as OBJ, get the new UV coords, and (instead of importing), apply the new maps with UV’s to the existing AM model. I think this would work, and you would get to keep your existing model (no importing of verticies/faces/normals).
P.s. I’m not (per-se) an AM backer, I just can understand why they don’t want a discussion like this on their list…
while i agree that there are some tallented individuals who are busting their butt to provide basic functionality at a:m, i’m not sure that this is such a handicap in the current situation.
the basic business model here seems to be that once someone gets far enough along with a good plugin, hash throws them some money to finish it up.
just look at how the hash folks have embraced the arctic pigs plugin. i doubt they could have developed it themselves, but once it was able to do some tricks, they got behind it and threw some money at the programmer and started a media blitz.
the irony is, of course that it only works with the last moderately stable a:m version. 8.5p+
as for the repressive nature of the animaster list, i used to welcome the smackdown of non-helpful posters. but now i see it a little differently: they have to earn the right to squash complaints by producing a rock-solid program, until then, they should take their lumps.
-jon
Here’s a rhetoric question… to all of you experienced AM users.
Have you used any other application on any operating system, on any computer, that crashes more often than AM?
I’ve been with AM since 99 I think… man. I just want to say that I haven’t. Nothing comes even close.
Animation Master is a league of its own…