Why should I use Messiah?

#1

I have been using Zbrush with Messiah for about 12 months now and have been reasonably happy with the outcomes, but recently brought Maya 7 because of a need for hair and better particle / cloth options. I also got PointOven with the idea of animating in Messaih and rending in Maya, but as I learn more about Maya’s animation features I am starting to wonder if I need Messiah at all…

I was hoping that someone could enlighten me to reasons why it would be better to continue with Messiah. Now I understand that a question like this is a bit loaded because everyone has different preferences (and it is the Messiah forum!), but I curious to see what other poeple have found.

Thanks in advance.

#2

I think you will find that the realtime feedback is much faster in Messiah than it is with Maya. There are also significant advantages in having a setup mode in fine tuning rigging.

I also think in the near future the lack of particles and hair will be resolved.

#3

There is no other reason than if you WANT to.

If you bought Maya and you own messiah, why don’t you use a bit of both until your happy with the combination or even, messiah for one project, Maya for the next, get a feel for yourself which app works best in which situation.

#4

humm ??? strange question …
If you are more confortable with Maya and you are able to setup a rig faster than Messiah … where is the pblm ?
Of course Messiah have less options about hair, particles, etc.

I think, the difference is: if you have to work with someone else on a rig ( if you have to share your rig or give it to a company ), some studios don’t have messiah… or have internal tools ( Maya scripts or plugs to setup characters -ie: Weta Digital).

There is no reason to not use exclusively this or that … if you are good in both, use them both !?..

It’s like asking : Gimp or Photoshop ? … gimp is on linux, photoshop is popular…
Is it better to model in Modo or Silo ?.. you see what I mean ?

Focus on your needs, you will get your answer.
(Tools are important - I know … but you have them both ;)…too much toys ? give me one the them ;), It will make your choise easy.

cheers!

#5

Point taken, it is a case of whatever works best for me.

Thanks for the responses.

#6

maybe something like point oven would help you work with studios that may not have messiah. but i think its in PMGs best interest to provide a built in baking solution like point oven to facilitate better integration regardless. when you sell an auxiliary package like messiah, you better be damn sure that your software can communicate with as much stuff as it can out of the box. and do so, without requiring a license of it on your clients machine…

having said that, no one can answer your question but you. like i said in a different thread. when you are most comfortable, most fluid, in your package of choice, you will always have a higher productivity. for me messiah is almost there.

#7

The thing is what you are talking about with Paritcles and Hair are really just FlUFF. What makes a good software is the system under the hood and its a pretty solid animation system in Messiah even though most focus is now being put on the render.

The thing is if you want to go with Maya you are likely to find it has everything but it doesn’t do any of those things particularly well. Messiah is strong in the areas it presents it can do well, it just needs time to develop itself more so to get to the FLUFFY stuff.

The stuff I refer to as FLUFF might be standard for other software, but in truth who sets the standard? There was a time Maya didn’t have hair, Max didn’t have Uv unwrapping and Softimage didn’t even exist.

#8

Having used both messiah and Maya.
When it comes to rigging, Messiah has Maya beat for flexibility, ease of use and only constraining to a one man show where as Maya … you need experts in the rigging arena. you can do yourself but its a effort in time and effort that takes away from animating if thats what you are going to do.

Comfortablity always wins out. Whatever works for you.

#9

well one thing thats great about mayas rigging is the fact that you can get several available autorigger scripts/plugins. while messiah autorigger turned out to be vaporware. although, if you want specific functionality or prefer to do the rigging, then messiah wins hands down.

#10

Bah. . . brew your own riggs. Once you have done it once you will laugh at those auto-rig things. Its the whole “teach a man to fish” thing. (This is my own opinion and is not supposed to insult anyone who thinks otherwize.)

#11

true. but while you are rigging your one rig, i can generate 10 and start animating. when deadlines beckon its whatever gets the job done.

#12

Uhh. . . actually while your weighting your 10 I’ll just be swapping out the geometry on my rigs and with a few bone length adjustments. . . starting to animate. :smiley:

#13

actually i used to bind to the CPS BASE mesh which made weightmapping a cinch. literally a 10 minute ordeal.

think of the CPS base mesh as the cage. dunno if you used cps tool in maya.

#14

Nope. . . never heard of it. Sounds pretty slick though.

Man I can’t wait till the pattent on Box deformers goes away. I think that will open up a whole new world of rigging possabilities.

#15

well its alot like the subpatches in LW turned to 0, but then at the same time, this 0 level subpatch model has a maya smoothing node on, displaying the smoothed mesh instantly, under the base mesh. you can lock it, or change its drawing mode, independent of the base mesh. Hell, you can move it aside completely and watch it deform as you play with the base mesh. or delete half of your base mesh, then add a clone, flip and merge nodes and then add a smooth node on top of those, and now you can model just one half ALA mirror mode in LW and see a smoothed, whole model either under your base mesh or off to the side. REALLY nice to work with, and painting weights or doing set driven morph targets is super easy when you have just a few points to worry about.

but honestly, because the base mesh can be so rough and the points arent all bunched up, i barely had to do any weight painting. In fact, i could get away with rigid binds for most of my rigs!

now, you might be asking yourself: “damn stooch, if maya is so great, how come you are using this red headed step child called messiah”…

well, like i said before, its all about being “fluid” and comfortable. the red headed step child might be a pain in the ass, but damnit, its just so much fun to beat on.

#16

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