I know this is a bit off topic but I have just recently taken a look at Messiah Studio for animation. It seems to get really good results and fairly intuitive character rigging system. I want to use it for animating some characters created in Zbrush. I would like to know if any of you use it and would recommend it. Unfortunately, I missed it when the price was only $40. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
I did get on the deal and got the pro , and the non pro version. Iv been using it on, and off between projects, and am not a animator /rigger. So with this said here is my honest opinion as a somewhat newbie to animation back when I first got Messiah studio.
Once you get the basic controls down its easy to add bones from which you get instant skinning switching between the setup Tab to the Animation Tab, thats how it works. You can adjust the weighting by the use of MetaEffectors, which are spheres in which you place in the area you wish to influence, it works, but not always, and you have no decent weight painting to make up for when it don’t. Muscle bones are very good to keep deformations as natural as possible, these stretch and expand the geometry in which these bones are placed between normal bones.
You only have to rig one half, and can easily mirror it over, only the skeleton gets mirrored over, no meta effectors or anything els gets copied. You can get a script to do this which copies over everything including effects, armatures, and expressions, but only using the 32bit version, as I found out after hours of it not working in the 64bit version.
Adding effects are very easy, and quick to see results, once you understand how they work which il get to in a moment.
Armatures are basically controllers for the skeleton, but they can be used way beyond this, including custom UI buttons.
So it all sounds quite dandy right, wrong!. The issues are getting there to where I can write this. learning how things are done, in short was a hard, time consuming, and very frustrating as there is no manual which comes with it, its online, and it always seems the very topics I wanted to learn was either missing, or incomplete. Some parts of the online docs are written for the newbie, while other areas assume your a expert in which there is no other way to learn than to ask lots of questions via the online chat via their website. This is great, and if it was not for the help I got there I would have left Messiah Studio as a bad idea. However if your not within the correct time zone as these experts, your don for, your learning now becomes a nightmare, with countless hours of trying over and over again searching all over the internet for answers.
The things that where harder to understand was how to get around its flaws, such as there is no real time deformation while adjusting weights, this means your constantly switching between rooms to see if your adjustments worked or not. Working out how to get the mirror script to work, joint controlled morphs where near impossible to get down, that took me a year to work out.
Expressions are functions in which some what automate and unleash the power within Messiah, but you have to understand how they fit together and work. You only have a very brief description what each expression does, your left to work it out how to get it to work, this can take huge amounts of time, and you really must know how to use these as to me this is the real core of getting things done and working well within Messiah Studio.
Training is there, but if im to be honest its very limited in quantity and quality. Its worth paying to be a member on the forum in order to get the free videos, in fact id say essential. Joe Corsman is the man that has put together what one would call a more constructed set of videos to take you through each step, this really is your only video aid out there that I could find. His videos are to the point, fast paced, but very low resolution due lack of resources that he had at the time these videos where made. They are rather old now, and do not cover all versions.
If you have plenty of time, some experience in animation, programing, scripting, technical minded, and fall in line with Messiah Studios logic of doing things, you will get there.
I personally gave up in the end as it just was not getting the attention it deserved, that being the manual, updates, and higher quality video training. It would have taken me years to get realy conftable with this software.
Im also a Modo user, in which has only just got character animation added to its latest version. As early as it is, and as many Bugs it currently has, what it does, it does well, and produces results quicker in a more user friendly and intuitive method than Messiah Studio. Its not even close to Messiah when in the hands of the power users, but it gets the job done, and its fun doing it. Modo support is there, video training is there, and Luxology are right on the ball for bringing service packs out.
I hope this gives you some idea on what Messiah Studio is like.
Thank you very much for this response. I noticed that there were not a lot of tutorials or support out there. I will look into Modo as well. Thanks again.
Your welcome.
Remember Modo is not as mature as Messiah Studio for its character animation features, but taking this into account it shows early on just how powerfull it will become in years to come. Zbrush and Modo play very well together with GoZ, and Hair fibers. Also another thing to take into account is Modos new dedicated skin and hair shader, this all fits well for character animation betwen just two applications.
All the best.