Project Messiah?

[jasonwestmas]

Great. Have you tried it yet?

I took a gander. All you do it just go to the multiloader in I/O select your object and load your mdd file. So much better than all that nodal digging we had to do.

[allabulle]

Good to know. Thanks.

[wesleycorgi]

Has anyone heard when the next Messiah is due out? (Got my hands full with LW 11.5 and the Marv Designer 3 beta is on the horizon -- so I already have my hands full).

[jasonwestmas]

It'd due first quarter. So between now and end of March.

[Afalk]

Jason hit that squarely Sadly, no real breakdown of what to expect, then again they were running a killer upgrade to pre-order Messiah 6

[Surrealist.]

Thing about it is I really liked having a version of Arnold to play with. It is an outdated version I think I am not sure what kind of agreement he has with SolidAngle so I don't know of it gets updated or if it is just running on some old code or what. But I still have not had any response to the "bugs" I found. That was a flippin' year ago. Still the rendering was kinda nice. I really liked it. I could do without the quirky - yeah it is quirky to me - interface. But it had some powerful features. I just decided to roll the dice and upgrade one of my licenses. I don't think he'll get to the render bugs. But what the heck. Might be some cool features that come in handy. Messiah is kinda like that for me. The PA tool is very cool I think. But for the price, I mean, it has instancing, great rendering, powerful animation and deformation effects, some basic hair and fur that renders pretty nice.

[jasonwestmas]

MS 6 is supposedly heavy on rendering improvements Richard. As far as Messiah being a self reliant package with super duper customer service, it's obvious that's not what we are paying for. Not saying that is ideal but better to think of this program as a 3rd party plugin with minimal funds. At least that is how it is presented to me.

I enjoy supporting messiah because eventually, with the right mindset, I think the thing is going to explode and provide a different way of animating that you can't get elsewhere. Not saying everyone will like it and I expect many to say, why be different. I say, why not try to do something that makes things more fluid and technically more sound.

[Surrealist.]

Whatever dude!

Yeah, joking aside, I think back fondly of our time there figuring stuff out. I think I was looking for the animation side of it to be more or less the central part of my pipeline with at least rendering and it was clear that was not going to be Messiah. I had also returned to LightWave with those same kinda hopes briefly before finally just choosing XSI. After playing with XSI for a while, it has been great. But I finally settled on a Maya/MotionBuilder pipeline with XSI to bring in for effects I can not do in Maya as well or easy. But I think for me, I kinda wanted something that I could use as a hub to host everything basically. And the best compromise was using Maya with MotionBuilder. I plan to use a lot of Mocap as well as traditional animation and the tools between those two are really the best I think considering Human IK and the great editing tools in MotionBuilder. And the interoperability is virtually seamless. XSI not so much. But it a great tool to have. Face Robot is a big plus for me.

So now with that basically settled and my suite license all squared away with upgrades set for 2014, I am finally feeling more grounded. I was just really looking there for more than a year, trying stuff out and trying to get settled. Now that that is over, I can kind of look at Messiah with the proper perspective as you say. It is just a very nice extra tool. Who knows what will happen with it on the animation side. And the same goes for LightWave. It is just another tool in the arsenal.

Will be interesting to see what happens with the Messiah 6 release.

[jasonwestmas]

Yes, the creative suite is certainly a very rich set of tools and when needed it's nice to have. Maya has an amazing list of 3rd party support. . .enough said. When I think of Lightwave and Messiah I tend to think of stylistic forms of animation and getting that done more quickly, so I hope nt and pmg stick to their guns on that.

[Surrealist.]

Trust me, I don't think you'll have anything to worry about there in either case. It is great that you have the view you have of it as "Sticking to their guns". I am far more cynical than that. Suffice to say.. ah. don't worry. Things will roll along as they have.

It is however exiting right now to see lots of cool things coming ahead for these apps. And I do have the positive view however that it is a good thing that these apps can fit into the niche that they do.

The only app I see as having a potential effect on the other big guys grip on animation is Modo. time will tell. At the very least it will soon be a low cost alternative as a go to all around app.

[jasonwestmas]

Yep and I have no problem calling lightwave and messiah niche apps. It's a power in and of itself. I know people don't like to think of them like that, but I do. They provide a different perspective of things in my mind.

Modo is actually half-baked in a lot of regards, but yeah, if Lux can get their priorities straight with their new found backing, I can see it being one of those "monster apps". Especially if it gets all their nodal rendering guns blazing like it has with the rigging.

[Surrealist.]

Modo is actually half-baked in a lot of regards, but yeah, if Lux can get their priorities straight with their new found backing, I can see it being one of those "monster apps". Especially if it gets all their nodal rendering guns blazing like it has with the rigging.

Yeah, exactly, half baked is the best way to describe it. That was why I did not buy in right now. And that is exactly what they need to get going. Will be interesting to see what happens.