United3dArtists Archive

Notice how U3DA slowed down? I think a lot of users are waiting for the release of Messiah today.
I am not sure if Messiah will hurt or help activity here. My own work will keep trueSpace in the mix (if possible)
and I'll share my results here.
It is nice to see the return of long-time friends. Maybe we will share a common application again.

Does anyone remember when Roman flipped out over a discussion of Messiah years ago? I think it was Dele comparing
trueSpace and Messiah. That was the moment I became aware of Messiah.
If Roman was that upset about a user even discussing Messiah at the Caligari Forums then it must be good....

Thanks again Roman!

I am surprised how many users don't use the free trueSpace app with Messiah. Maybe it is over-kill or the fact that Messiah doesn't play well
with N-Gons?

Messiah has no Modeler. It needs another Application to create objects. If trueSpace and Messiah play well together it could help trueSpace.
I wonder if it would be possible for someone here to write code to connect the two like 3DCoat and Messiah has?

About slowed down:
Always waiting for the release of a software is something that can ruin our life if it prevents us from creating. Hardly you master new software, here is a new announcement. Must go through with what we undertake regardless of progress during our work to focus on work. After there will always be easy to take a new train for a new challenge. But by running to the fastest train so obsessive, sometime we forget why we take it. It is the best way to lose enthusiasm after several years.
Transform this forum to a tutorial for software will not help the interests of its contents. There are plenty of tutorial on the Internet with a quality far superior to what we can do. It's a waste of time. At least show a trick or technique in connection with a wip. In the name of this forum there is the word "artist" and show work in progress is what is more interesting. This is the best thing to use to make the forum more fun and lively any software used. Frankly, I do not care if I see ideas really personal.
I had this discussion several months ago and I realize that this forum become more technical than artistic. Perhaps that is the wish of many but it also explains that most artists of former Caligari no longer follow. Fortunately, the mood remained courteous.

A lot of Messiah reminds me of Lightwave3D which I have. Not sure if I'll be gaining anything or not with the purchase.

We'll see.

Matter of affinity. Difficult to know in advance. Software quality is not the most important. Must also keep the motivation. When the three met, it can become great.

Pretty interesting how things develop here.......
Messiah is a very good tool i said it a dozen times but how should truespace play with Messiah other
then being a modeler for it ?
why shoud Truespace not be a good modeler for Messiah ?
But thats just about it !
Other then that Truespace doesnt play well with Messiah at the moment.....
80 % of the work i have seen in the past on this site was 100 % different to what Messiah is well known for......
Its a charcter animation tool with a decent render engine.....at an unbeatable price....
Most of the people here rendered stills of different things.... houses ..objects..... vehicles........
Even Marcels animations wasnt heavily into character animations.........
Character animations inside a program like Messiah is daunting... takes a long time to get used to.......
modeling and rigging a human being with all the joints isnt easy........ setting up all the joints etc......fingers and the facial expression
and even talking figures.....
I use Vue as the final application and Poser and daz studio play much better with it............. messiah is much more capable dont get me wrong
but I prefer that workflow........its much much much easier.....and there is little you cant do......
Truespace plays very well with Vue and both Poser and Daz (I call Vue and Daz and Truespace and Poser the golden square) not Messiah.... mainly because of Collada export...
Peter

Hey I do characters so Messiah would fit perfectly in my work flow. I could use trueSpace to model
as you said but can I control the N-Gons in trueSpace as I asked before?
I can also use trueSpace to render scenes and overlay animation in an editor if I decided to. There are different approaches other then your own workflow.
Your workflow works for you why question others?
I think trueSpace gets the short stick way too much. Pretty soon it will have a better rendering engine VRAy Stan-Alone.
In the past I have combined images created with two different rendering engines for effect. Worked great.
I have seen where someone here struggles with DOF when it can be done in seconds with Photoshop.
Marcel approaches 3D as an Artist. Others are technicians utilizing the code. I admire both.

Steinie wrote:Hey I do characters so Messiah would fit perfectly in my work flow. I could use trueSpace to model
as you said but can I control the N-Gons in trueSpace as I asked before?
I can also use trueSpace to render scenes and overlay animation in an editor if I decided to. There are different approaches other then your own workflow.
Your workflow works for you why question others?
I think trueSpace gets the short stick way too much. Pretty soon it will have a better rendering engine VRAy Stan-Alone.
In the past I have combined images created with two different rendering engines for effect. Worked great.
I have seen where someone here struggles with DOF when it can be done in seconds with Photoshop.
Marcel approaches 3D as an Artist. Others are technicians utilizing the code. I admire both.

Steinie what I said was that once you are in Messsiah you cant easily go back to another application if it doesnt have fbx.......
Foreget the idea of Vray standalone with Truespace and Messiah.....you would need the exporter for Messiah..
N gons arent good for animations as such so dont use them ! If you do character animations youd want to do as many quads as possible.....
Truespace as a modeler yes that works ......you dont have to use ngons with truespace just make triangles out of those few ngons...

I´m also telling you because either a collada exporter for messiah would be great and an importer..... or in case of Vue I´m not sure if will have fbx pretty soon so you may have afew more interesting options that way .. that would be an interesting project for some coders.....
Peter

What is the best way to get models from TS to Messiah? Does Silo work and play well with Messiah?

I'm happy to get Messiah but I'm not waiting for it on my current project -- just busy with other things. I don't even expect to be able to use it soon. Even the renderer, the first thing I intend to learn, will take time. I am waiting on any new projects until I have non-TS software because I've outgrown the things TS is good at and entered the parts of it that are unfinished or full of bugs. TS is great but I'm tired of being limited by my software. I'm looking for software that challenges me to grow and learn new things.

I don't expect Messiah's power to be easy to use. Power comes with a price and since we got it cheap the price is the time, determination, and effort needed to learn the program. Kind of like Blender.

One reason 80% of what you see here is 100% different than the character animation Messiah is noted for is that people here couldn't do character animation because we use TS. Now that some have a tool that excels at it we will see it.

Someone should create a good Vue-Messiah pipeline because Vue is great.

Finis wrote:What is the best way to get models from TS to Messiah? Does Silo work and play well with Messiah?

I'm happy to get Messiah but I'm not waiting for it on my current project -- just busy with other things. I don't even expect to be able to use it soon. Even the renderer, the first thing I intend to learn, will take time. I am waiting on any new projects until I have non-TS software because I've outgrown the things TS is good at and entered the parts of it that are unfinished or full of bugs. TS is great but I'm tired of being limited by my software. I'm looking for software that challenges me to grow and learn new things.

I don't expect Messiah's power to be easy to use. Power comes with a price and since we got it cheap the price is the time, determination, and effort needed to learn the program. Kind of like Blender.

One reason 80% of what you see here is 100% different than the character animation Messiah is noted for is that people here couldn't do character animation because we use TS. Now that some have a tool that excels at it we will see it.

Someone should create a good Vue-Messiah pipeline because Vue is great.

Thats my saying !
Silo works well with Messiah just like any other render engine or animation package even Moi or Rhino work well with it.
The only problemis that once you do high grade animations inside Messiah you are stuck inside the messiah render engine....
If you dont want that you need to find a way to export with Collada or a way to import with fbx from messiah....
Then you can use some of the functions...
A way I could think of that theoretically does it is Animeeple !
Peter

RAYMAN wrote:File comment: you see an animation saved as a Collada file....

Nice beast! Could you please tell us a bit more detailed, how it was born? What App? where exported, etc...

If one of the plugin guys writes an MDD reader, you can bring the point animation into truespace. Otherwise you need someone to write an FBX importer for TS side, a full fbx importer. When that happens you will be able to play the same as the other 3D packages.

If you used the demo, and you felt comfortable in it, than the real program should not be a problem. As for activity here after the release, I do not see this hurting this forum, maybe even it will help you guys, SetupTab is all set to take off, many professionals are over their testing the software, if that continues it will not be a good place for new guys to get their feet wet with the program, they need a place to come and experiment and show what they are creating, this is a pretty good place for that.

I use Modo and 3DCoat besides messiah, so having a place to throw around some pixels for the few things I do anymore is not a bad thing, I was always a bit skeptical of placing my work on the setuptab forums because of the harsh crits I have seen some of the guys giving it is hard to satisfy hardcore character animators of world class talent. There is one guy that does a lot of World Craft character animations, all BVH stuff, he sysns his voices with MudPie, man they were harsh on him... Mind you, for help, there is no better place... showing work... they might not be the best place... kinda like going to CGTalk and displaying your work.

If you advertise yourselves as a messiah playground, you may benefit from the growth of the program...

Over at setuptab, many of the older regulars are using wingz, other than some of the more complicated hardsurface things it seems to be pretty capable.

Nice octopus Pete, very pussy like

Rich

richlevy wrote:If one of the plugin guys writes an MDD reader, you can bring the point animation into truespace. Otherwise you need someone to write an FBX importer for TS side, a full fbx importer. When that happens you will be able to play the same as the other 3D packages.

If you used the demo, and you felt comfortable in it, than the real program should not be a problem. As for activity here after the release, I do not see this hurting this forum, maybe even it will help you guys, SetupTab is all set to take off, many professionals are over their testing the software, if that continues it will not be a good place for new guys to get their feet wet with the program, they need a place to come and experiment and show what they are creating, this is a pretty good place for that.

I use Modo and 3DCoat besides messiah, so having a place to throw around some pixels for the few things I do anymore is not a bad thing, I was always a bit skeptical of placing my work on the setuptab forums because of the harsh crits I have seen some of the guys giving it is hard to satisfy hardcore character animators of world class talent. There is one guy that does a lot of World Craft character animations, all BVH stuff, he sysns his voices with MudPie, man they were harsh on him... Mind you, for help, there is no better place... showing work... they might not be the best place... kinda like going to CGTalk and displaying your work.

If you advertise yourselves as a messiah playground, you may benefit from the growth of the program...

Over at setuptab, many of the older regulars are using wingz, other than some of the more complicated hardsurface things it seems to be pretty capable.

Nice octopus Pete, very pussy like

Rich

I think the messiah community has always been kind of anti-newbie, kinda like parts of
cgsociety. There's something that comes into play when there are pros around, and it's
something that nobody likes to talk about, but it's there......that is an attitude of "weeding out
the competition by discouragement." And that is a big part of what is going on with
Pros being less than encouraging to non-pros, imho. You see it in every field.

There is a way to give helpful criticism to people who are less than pro, and the way
I see it handled over on cgsociety is not it.

That said, I still like those people over there on Setuptab, and hope that things change for the better.

If these forums become a place for messiah newbies to show their work, that would be
really cool. When I have something almost worth looking at, from any software, I plan
to put it here anyway....

Math Path wrote:

RAYMAN wrote:File comment: you see an animation saved as a Collada file....

Nice beast! Could you please tell us a bit more detailed, how it was born? What App? where exported, etc...

Oh that one is a very simple animation.
That octapus was rigged and animated inside poser with only 3 poses and keyframes.....
I exported the Pz3 file into daz3 studio and exported with collada... then imported into a Vue scene......
Something I guess could be also done with Messiah..
It can also be done with truespace too !
Its a quickie to show you the transport of the file into another application and enviroment outside of the rigging application...
Peter

Well I don't want to turn U3DA into a Messiah Forum. It is just another
application being used by "some" trueSpace artist just like VUE, Silo, Hexagon,
3DCoat etc etc.
I'll be posting my Animations here like others will I hope.

It sounds like positive reinforcement is a strength of ours at U3DA. The Pros do tend to be blunt.
(Just like their Clients)
One problem they created at Setup Tab, when you sell Software cheap you get all kinds of users.
The Pros may find another home soon after they answer the same question 100 times.

After all is said and done it is the Artwork and Friendships that are important here.
That is why Prodigy created this place.

I agree Steinie... its the people that make this place...

I think the messiah community has always been kind of anti-newbie, kinda like parts of
cgsociety. There's something that comes into play when there are pros around, and it's
something that nobody likes to talk about, but it's there......that is an attitude of "weeding out
the competition by discouragement." And that is a big part of what is going on with
Pros being less than encouraging to non-pros, imho. You see it in every field.

I really couldn't disagree more.

Really, the issue of "the pros" is that most often they got to where they were on their own backs, with possibly very little help from doco's or even developers. Often, and I would bet this is the case with messiah, they were the ones who helped get the app get to where it is, with years of trial and error and bug reports and hassling the devs for changes.

I don't think it is too arrogant to expect newbies to put in a little effort to figure things out for themselves before they start demanding answers to their questions, which is what so often happens in 3d forums.

Anyway, the setup tab guys have been swamped with queries this past week, including a couple from me, and they have (so far) been very cool about it.

Benji wrote:

I think the messiah community has always been kind of anti-newbie, kinda like parts of
cgsociety. There's something that comes into play when there are pros around, and it's
something that nobody likes to talk about, but it's there......that is an attitude of "weeding out
the competition by discouragement." And that is a big part of what is going on with
Pros being less than encouraging to non-pros, imho. You see it in every field.

I really couldn't disagree more.

Really, the issue of "the pros" is that most often they got to where they were on their own backs, with possibly very little help from doco's or even developers. Often, and I would bet this is the case with messiah, they were the ones who helped get the app get to where it is, with years of trial and error and bug reports and hassling the devs for changes.

I don't think it is too arrogant to expect newbies to put in a little effort to figure things out for themselves before they start demanding answers to their questions, which is what so often happens in 3d forums.

Anyway, the setup tab guys have been swamped with queries this past week, including a couple from me, and they have (so far) been very cool about it.

I basically agree with your position, but as was the case with messiah, the community was not really getting any bigger. From the reports we heard on the forums from Wegg or Ulven, the program was growing, though it appears to have been in studios and other professional areas. Not a bad thing at all, but the hobbyist and freelance guys represent a large segment also, so they have to allow for some handholding and working with the users in order to get them up to speed. I do not have a problem with SetupTab, nor the people on it, but it is a hard place to get into the "in" crowd . The new influx of people is going to be interesting to see how the community evolves.

Again, I need to clarify, I like it over there, it is a good place to learn, but I think I have learned nearly as much in the last 2 weeks as I have in the 2 years of hangin around there before. I think it is going to be a tremendous resource for information and inspiration, but what it becomes beyond that will be the question.

(my post count over there is like 100 post now, before the promotion is was around 60)

Rich

richlevy wrote:

Benji wrote:

I think the messiah community has always been kind of anti-newbie, kinda like parts of
cgsociety. There's something that comes into play when there are pros around, and it's
something that nobody likes to talk about, but it's there......that is an attitude of "weeding out
the competition by discouragement." And that is a big part of what is going on with
Pros being less than encouraging to non-pros, imho. You see it in every field.

I really couldn't disagree more.

Really, the issue of "the pros" is that most often they got to where they were on their own backs, with possibly very little help from doco's or even developers. Often, and I would bet this is the case with messiah, they were the ones who helped get the app get to where it is, with years of trial and error and bug reports and hassling the devs for changes.

I don't think it is too arrogant to expect newbies to put in a little effort to figure things out for themselves before they start demanding answers to their questions, which is what so often happens in 3d forums.

Anyway, the setup tab guys have been swamped with queries this past week, including a couple from me, and they have (so far) been very cool about it.

I basically agree with your position, but as was the case with messiah, the community was not really getting any bigger. From the reports we heard on the forums from Wegg or Ulven, the program was growing, though it appears to have been in studios and other professional areas. Not a bad thing at all, but the hobbyist and freelance guys represent a large segment also, so they have to allow for some handholding and working with the users in order to get them up to speed. I do not have a problem with SetupTab, nor the people on it, but it is a hard place to get into the "in" crowd . The new influx of people is going to be interesting to see how the community evolves.

That is what I meant when I referred to the "circle of the druids," meaning no disrespect...
And yes, it certainly will be interesting. I hope the adjustment works out well...

Again, I need to clarify, I like it over there, it is a good place to learn, but I think I have learned nearly as much in the last 2 weeks as I have in the 2 years of hangin around there before. I think it is going to be a tremendous resource for information and inspiration, but what it becomes beyond that will be the question.

Thank you, so you kinda see what I mean....

(my post count over there is like 100 post now, before the promotion is was around 60)

Rich

I'm glad you're getting more help now......and I do hope for the best with this project.

The animation industry provides jobs for talented animators, but mostly specialized. Should not be compared to that. We use different software for fun. We do not ask a musician to play perfectly all the musical instruments. When you're a professional you use 2 or 3 software correctly for your job. The others is for the pleasure of knowing experience and to allow discussion and exchange. We must not despair of seeing what else do best because maybe they can't do what each of us do well.
A specialized forum is useful for learning but if this is not your main software, it can be frustrating because professionals are often too competitive spirit and not friendly enough for beginner. U3DArtists is not that kind of forum. i will try messiah because i never do character animation and i think it is a specialized software for that. a good way to start a new thing. I know I don't need it for my work. I will never be an expert so will only be for fun. the price of this challenge is reasonable for that.
Another important point: I like the function of the software away to another use. For example, I often use trueSpace as a video editing software with simple planes textured with videos. I wonder what use I'll be with messiah. and this is what amuses me the most.

marcel wrote:The animation industry provides jobs for talented animators, but mostly specialized. Should not be compared to that. We use different software for fun. We do not ask a musician to play perfectly all the musical instruments. When you're a professional you use 2 or 3 software correctly for your job. The others is for the pleasure of knowing experience and to allow discussion and exchange. We must not despair of seeing what else do best because maybe they can't do what each of us do well.
A specialized forum is useful for learning but if this is not your main software, it can be frustrating because professionals are often too competitive spirit and not friendly enough for beginner. U3DArtists is not that kind of forum. i will try messiah because i never do character animation and i think it is a specialized software for that. a good way to start a new thing. I know I don't need it for my work. I will never be an expert so will only be for fun. the price of this challenge is reasonable for that.
Another important point: I like the function of the software away to another use. For example, I often use trueSpace as a video editing software with simple planes textured with videos. I wonder what use I'll be with messiah. and this is what amuses me the most.

Marcel, you are cool .

Thanks RAYMAN for details about octopus.
It's always interesting and just useful to know, what are the possible 'pipes' that could be used.

marcel wrote: Another important point: I like the function of the software away to another use. For example, I often use trueSpace as a video editing software with simple planes textured with videos. I wonder what use I'll be with messiah. and this is what amuses me the most.

http://setuptab.com/index.php?action=st ... view;id=94"

Check out this video when you have some time, it does not make messiah a very good video editor, but it does bring in some of the easy correction tool. There are other videos on using messiah as a compositing software, I am not sure I would do that for anything too complicated, but for little corrections it ain't bad.

Rich

I wonder if it would be possible for someone here to write code to connect the two like 3DCoat and Messiah has?

Back OT.

The cleanest way to get messiah animations into an app from what I can gather is either fbx or mdd. I've noticed that there is an fbx importer for 7.6 that doesn't import skeletons yet. Perhaps this could be an option one day, perhaps some cash to be made there as well.....

With the progress being made in the vray standalone project, truespace users could soon be in a best-of-all-worlds situation - messiah really brings the character animation potential that truespace never quite had (although motion studio is nice).

I've been testing out the messiah renderer today though, and so far it's looking very, very fast - especially for gi. Not sure what I will do with all of this, but by the time I've mastered messiah, I'm fairly certain some solution will be in place.

Benji wrote:

...

The cleanest way to get messiah animations into an app from what I can gather is either fbx or mdd. I've noticed that there is an fbx importer for 7.6 that doesn't import skeletons yet. ....

Actually, at this point it does import skeletons. It doesn't import skinning or animations yet.

Messiah isnt an exception... when you go from one application to another there are always causes for trouble.
Its always a can of worms......
I´d love to see a working Collada solution inside of Messiah I could use it pretty well if it had that.. i could even animate whole ecosystems that way.....
like in this example (Daz studio advanced and Vue 8inf)...
Fbx importers and Mdd for the other applications wouldnt be bad either.... the integration of Modo (with mdd) looks very promising i searched the setup forums
and found some promising videos there....
Peter

Actually, at this point it does import skeletons. It doesn't import skinning or animations yet.

Oops, my bad. Is skinning and animations a possibility at some point?

TS and messiah. Let me think about that...
I read here that TS does not work with Windows7, is that still the case, are there work arounds?
If I can get it to work on one of my laptops I might try doing some things again. TS on the WS side always did some things that other programs took longer to do. Modo is a fine tool, probably more complicated than it needs to be though.

Rich

Hey Rich.
Here is a solution by dawdolman for a Link Editor problem in Win7.
The LE window would not redraw/refresh:

http://www.dawdolman.com/Downloads.aspx"

I use tS on my Win7 64 bit laptop; Workspace works fine for me; not sure about Model;
others have reported problems, so you may need to just give it a go.

Benji wrote:

Actually, at this point it does import skeletons. It doesn't import skinning or animations yet.

Oops, my bad. Is skinning and animations a possibility at some point?

It's in the plan. I also want to import and export morph targets.

Just let you know guys, pmG has released patch 5.0a for messiah:studio.
You can get it here: http://www.projectmessiah.com/x6/downloadPatches.html

Please note there is currently typo in release date, saying "March 20 2010".
Unfortunately there is no list of fixes available, but it's probably a good idea to download it...

as always: make sure, you have backup of old files.

Sooo. How's everybody comin along with Messiah? Any cool animations you want to share?
I still need to get my PC hooked up; no time yet to get messiah installed.
I'd really like to see what you've done with messiah so far though!

Nothing yet... PC calamity on my end.... not mine... just the rest of the family.

My youngest has been hit with 3 of the pc security fakes which take forever to clean up... finally got that done and this morning my wife's email service is down.

Boat loads of other stuff on the go as well. Prolly won't tackle messiah for a few weeks yet.

trueSpace runs fine.

Messiah won't run at all.

See Also: 10 bucks worth of toilet paper.

Nothing else to report.

I regret that i have bought Messiah. The material system is a mess. The whole workflow in general is not this much better, not hat i have really mastered it. But what makes Messiah really useless is the im- and export, or better the lack of it. I personally don`t touch Messiah again as long as there is no working pipeline. Only somehow proper working import format is *.lwo. And there is no really proper and flawless working export neither. Well, FBX export works as long as your mesh has just one UV ...

Im not playing with either ,save model as wavefront try to import wavefront model it says
no wavefront model found. load off expensive shit

So it sounds like import/export capability is pretty weak. Hm.
I do hope I can get into it soon.

pugman 1 wrote:...load off expensive shit...

hehe, its regularly price @ $1195 is at least joke. I think, the promotion was just the short time with the price adequate to what you get...
I agree with Tiles. Im and export are most important points to consider messiah as pipeline component.

maybe that would be a worthwhile plugin project then.
Yes, I am 'looking for work' so to speak.

froo wrote:maybe that would be a worthwhile plugin project then.
Yes, I am 'looking for work' so to speak.

Thats pretty cool to hear that Froo !
MDD for Truespace both Model and workspace side.
Remember the shark.......That is one of the strong points of Ts 7.6.....
You can get that in and out of other applications easily with MDD if they support it and there are lots
of projects in the future coming from people who bought Messiah and want to use it...
Peter

Thanks Rayman. I am definitely investigating the possibility.

I have to wonder though. How is it that the other messiah users have
been able to successfully incorporate messiah into their pipeline?
I should ask over there. We'll see what we find out.

Good point Froo.

Is this somehow internally different than the $1000+ one?

froo wrote:Thanks Rayman. I am definitely investigating the possibility.

I have to wonder though. How is it that the other messiah users have
been able to successfully incorporate messiah into their pipeline?
I should ask over there. We'll see what we find out.

Froo !
I had the trial of the software on my computer for a few weeks.
I can tell you that I was able to import with obj..
but the software isnt as intuitive as i would have liked it to be.. i in the end didnt opt
to buy it because it is pretty difficult to use.
I also have my pipeline which is a lot easier to use and is very power full too.
But software is never without quirks....
i used to use my software on a 32 bit Os and an old computer .. i now updated to
64 bit and 16 gig of ram...
i am constantly in contact with the support crew of the software because it is 64 bit and only recognises 2.3 gig of ram... so nothing is perfect you got to get systems going and get used to things and build up pipelines.....
nothing comes without a lot of devotion.....
by the time you get things to run perfectly they are old and outdated......
Peter

I have to wonder though. How is it that the other messiah users have been able to successfully incorporate messiah into their pipeline?

Messiah is currently intended for two kinds of users - ones that don't use XSI or Maya but still want top end animation tools that are easy to setup and use. In this case no problems, as it's only minnow apps like truespace that have difficulty importing mdd files or using translators like point oven. Many (most?) Messiah users render in other apps, particularly Lightwave or less commonly Modo. This isn't because they are necessarily better, but simply because there many more users of these apps, and Messiah began as a plugin for LW. Modo was created by (disgruntled?) former LW developers, like Messiah, hence the natural connection.

Messiah is also gaining a reputation as a destination application because of it's wickedly fast and high quality renderer, and it's best-of-class material editor. However, Messiah is only near the beginning of this journey hence some of the rough edges with object imports. That said, nothing I've tried to import has tanked, the only real caveat is that you have to manually assign texture maps and shaders. No big deal imo.

I very much doubt I will be using any other 3d software as my main app for a very long time. Unless someone gives me 3dsmax and a bunch of plugins, perhaps not even then. The down side is that this software has a steep learning curve, and dabbling with it for a couple of weeks just won't cut it. If all you need is enough knowledge to make ignorant comments about it on a forum, then of course two weeks is plenty.

Benji wrote:

I have to wonder though. How is it that the other messiah users have been able to successfully incorporate messiah into their pipeline?

Messiah is currently intended for two kinds of users - ones that don't use XSI or Maya but still want top end animation tools that are easy to setup and use. In this case no problems, as it's only minnow apps like truespace that have difficulty importing mdd files or using translators like point oven. Many (most?) Messiah users render in other apps, particularly Lightwave or less commonly Modo. This isn't because they are necessarily better, but simply because there many more users of these apps, and Messiah began as a plugin for LW. Modo was created by (disgruntled?) former LW developers, like Messiah, hence the natural connection.

Messiah is also gaining a reputation as a destination application because of it's wickedly fast and high quality renderer, and it's best-of-class material editor. However, Messiah is only near the beginning of this journey hence some of the rough edges with object imports. That said, nothing I've tried to import has tanked, the only real caveat is that you have to manually assign texture maps and shaders. No big deal imo.

I very much doubt I will be using any other 3d software as my main app for a very long time. Unless someone gives me 3dsmax and a bunch of plugins, perhaps not even then. The down side is that this software has a steep learning curve, and dabbling with it for a couple of weeks just won't cut it. If all you need is enough knowledge to make ignorant comments about it on a forum, then of course two weeks is plenty.

Which comments, specifically, were ignorant? Can you be really really specific?
Thanks!

How is it that the other messiah users have been able to successfully incorporate messiah into their pipeline?

That`s easy. At the setuptab board they declare everybody that moans about the pipeline or anything else to a) non pro, and b) somebody who has no clue. And they declare the workarounds to the road to go. Perfect solution. They have also a little fanboy problem over there. I managed to get four negative karma points within a few minutes, just by asking a few newbie questions. But yeah, i can be a real pain

And they have a user base and unfortunately also a programmer base that has no real clue about the rest of the 3d world i fear. I`ve contacted PMG about the pipeline problems with FBX. And have asked if they know that the Obj im and export is just half implemented because it does not read nor write the *.mtl part. The answer was really scary.

As for the .obj export. Since the time the obj export was made there never was a .mtl that was part of the object geometry export. It imported and exported the object data only, and we've never even heard of a the .mtl file or have ever seen anyone mention it in 11 years. That would lead me to believe that it's either something newly added to the object, or not really part of the obi data itself, and that might be why it's doesn't exist.

They didn`t even know that Obj is made of two files! And the userbase didn`t ever tell them in the eleven years Messiah exists. They are happy with everything PMG does. They are even still happy that they need to reapply all materials after im and export. What a marvellous userbase. Do i wonder about the pipeline problems in Messiah? Not anymore

I`ve answered them then, have explained what the *.mtl file is good for, and have even provided them with two links where they could find the Obj file specifications. They also asked for a example file for the FBX problem, which i have also attached. That was last week. And i still wait for an answer. Let`s have a look if they answer at all. I doubt it.

For those who are not so familiar with the Obj file format. Obj is made of two parts, a *.obj file and a *.mtl file. The *.obj file contains all the mesh data like vertices, texturevertices, normals and stuff. The *.mtl file contains everything around the material. Shadersettings and used textures, bumpmaps, normalmaps. In case you`re interested, here you can find the file specifications:

http://www.martinreddy.net/gfx/3d/OBJ.spec"

VERY interesting reply Tiles. They don't know what an .mtl file is? Anyone with an 'official' reply should know this.
Uhhhh... alrighty then. And I thought I was the novice.

thanks for all the info everyone.
I am trying to determine whether I should create an import/export plugin for messiah.
So we'll see.

Thanks!

Froo

Tiles wrote:

How is it that the other messiah users have been able to successfully incorporate messiah into their pipeline?

That`s easy. At the setuptab board they declare everybody that moans about the pipeline or anything else to a) non pro, and b) somebody who has no clue. And they declare the workarounds to the road to go. Perfect solution. They have also a little fanboy problem over there. I managed to get four negative karma points within a few minutes, just by asking a few newbie questions. But yeah, i can be a real pain

And they have a user base and unfortunately also a programmer base that has no real clue about the rest of the 3d world i fear. I`ve contacted PMG about the pipeline problems with FBX. And have asked if they know that the Obj im and export is just half implemented because it does not read nor write the *.mtl part. The answer was really scary.

I do hope the "circle of the druids" thing is not extending itself to all the new people too.
But I think you are starting to see what it was I was talking about.....

They didn`t even know that Obj is made of two files! And the userbase didn`t ever tell them in the eleven years Messiah exists. They are happy with everything PMG does. They are even still happy that they need to reapply all materials after im and export. What a marvellous userbase. Do i wonder about the pipeline problems in Messiah? Not anymore

I`ve answered them then, have explained what the *.mtl file is good for, and have even provided them with two links where they could find the Obj file specifications. They also asked for a example file for the FBX problem, which i have also attached. That was last week. And i still wait for an answer. Let`s have a look if they answer at all. I doubt it.

For those who are not so familiar with the Obj file format. Obj is made of two parts, a *.obj file and a *.mtl file. The *.obj file contains all the mesh data like vertices, texturevertices, normals and stuff. The *.mtl file contains everything around the material. Shadersettings and used textures, bumpmaps, normalmaps. In case you`re interested, here you can find the file specifications:

http://www.martinreddy.net/gfx/3d/OBJ.spec"

Here's an old thread about the .mtl file issue from the old messiah forum on cgtalk:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/ind ... 81009.html"

I hope that could be helpful in some way, dunno....

Dragneye wrote:Good point Froo.

Is this somehow internally different than the $1000+ one?

Hey Dragneye. Sorry I did not respond sooner. No, the 'promo' Messiah is no different from the full-priced version.

I am just a bit puzzled that, in 11 years, this issue with OBJ import at least, was not addressed. On the other hand, I recall asking ts users about this; some (not all) reported that import of textures was not required in their workflow. What some circles of users care about is primarily importing the geometry, and texturing is performed either in the importing application, or further down the pipeline. So, perhaps, that is why material import in Messiah was disregarded. I don't know for sure about that; just a guess.

In any event, some people would like to have that capability.

Try if you can import this file into Messiah.. I still got the trial
and it refuses to import... it can be imported into Truespace with Froos importer...
it can be imported into Silo ...
Peter

Heh oh yeah I remember that one! I thought I had it right a couple times; finally got it right, I believe, with the tS OBJ importer.

Use the Workspace's Quadrify tool on it and it will Import into Messiah.

Well that brings us alot further with why Messiah cant import some meshes...
Thanks !
Peter

Cool trueBlue!
So, it sounds like, we will have more success importing OBJ files into messiah, if they are quads?
It's been awhile; I assume that is what the Quadrify tool does, right?

Thanks!

Froo

I am just a bit puzzled that, in 11 years, this issue with OBJ import at least, was not addressed. On the other hand, I recall asking ts users about this; some (not all) reported that import of textures was not required in their workflow. What some circles of users care about is primarily importing the geometry, and texturing is performed either in the importing application, or further down the pipeline. So, perhaps, that is why material import in Messiah was disregarded. I don't know for sure about that; just a guess.

I think you've pretty much nailed it there. Anyway, I'm interested to see what comes of this, good luck.