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Messiah 6 Applink


AbnRanger
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I realize that Messiah may well be a dead product by now, but I was trying to explore it some to see if Andrew might be able to work out some arrangement to take ownership and have one of his staff members develop it as a companion app...changing the name of course. But it could be very useful, if there were live links between the two apps, tweak the UI (which shares a Lightwave style tabbed interface and navigation bar) to match 3D Coat's, and perhaps add the PBR viewport tech and Smart Materials, and it could provide a full pipeline for many 3D Coat users.

 

Any chance Greg or someone else can update the Messiah Applink for MS 6 and 3D Coat  4.5. When Andrew changed the MyDocs/ 3D Coat directory to 3D Coat 4.5, it messed up all the applinks, requiring them to reflect the 4.5 rather than just 4. I'd like to do some demo work to show Andrew and Stas how it might work. Could be a good way to keep such a powerful app alive and also give 3D Coat users tools for Posing, adding Hair/Fur and more powerful Cloth dynamics, and rendering.

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It would be a great solution to go on with the development on it and 3DC could really use such a powerful addition. I still prefer and use 3DCoat and Messiah very often besides the bigger tools I own like Lightwave and Modo. Fori seems to have other more interesting projects to do than Messiah and is an awful community treater. Most of the effects are still very capable with bigger programs and there are a lot of really great animation features and plugins. Hopefully Andrew reads this and decides to try something to push 3DCoat with the Messiah package into a bright future.

Edited by Crush
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It would be a great solution to go on with the development on it and 3DC could really use such a powerful addition. I still prefer and use 3DCoat and Messiah very often besides the bigger tools I own like Lightwave and Modo. Fori seems to have other more interesting projects to do than Messiah and is an awful community treater. Most of the effects are still very capable with bigger programs and there are a lot of really great animation features and plugins. Hopefully Andrew reads this and decides to try something to push 3DCoat with the Messiah package into a bright future.

 

if what you say is possible, sounds like it could be amazing!

Yeah. Before the PBR tech in 3DC 4.5, I would have thought it a sketchy idea, but after that, and knowing Andrew has an OpenCL guy (who did the OpenCL AO) who is either on staff or available to him, I think it could be a game-changer. This could be 3D Coat's platform for a full-blown renderer with nodal shading network. Again, if he could incorporate the PBR/Smart Materials tech from 3D Coat into the Messiah (I'd change the name to something like "Kinima," which is Greek for MOTION), and if his OpenCL guy could port the render to OpenCL, then 3D Coat could really make a splash in the industry....especially with Autodesk products going rental only.

 

The dynamic render in Messiah doesn't get much fanfare, but it works pretty darn well. It seems to update faster than Mental Ray does in Max (using ActiveShade), and seems on par with Lightwave's VPR. Plus, it's pretty solid, unlike ActiveShade in Max, which is always kind of buggy.

 

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It would be a great solution to go on with the development on it and 3DC could really use such a powerful addition. I still prefer and use 3DCoat and Messiah very often besides the bigger tools I own like Lightwave and Modo. Fori seems to have other more interesting projects to do than Messiah and is an awful community treater. Most of the effects are still very capable with bigger programs and there are a lot of really great animation features and plugins. Hopefully Andrew reads this and decides to try something to push 3DCoat with the Messiah package into a bright future.

By the way...I haven't yet found a Shadow Catcher type of material, for the ground plane (renders just the shadow). Do you know how to handle that? Would help a lot when using HDR environment maps

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Isn´t it enough to render the shadow pass?

It's not quite the same as a shadow matte/catcher material. Can't see how it's going to look in the Dynamic Render or test renders without it. Sure you can increase the ground plane opacity, but what one needs with HDR environment backgrounds, is a transparent shadow-catching material. I did a search on Setup tab on the topic but the closest thing I could find was perhaps the "Seen Matte" tutorial for V6....but I've already been burned buying training videos there and not being able to download them...cause Wegg has abandoned the site, and I shouldn't have to waste money on a tutorial just to see if there is a shadow catching material or not. There is no manual for V6 and I didn't see anything in the V4-5 manual about it.

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It should be possible to create a shader that can serve the wished results. My first tests did not show the correct result, but the TLHPro_Raytype has a shadow node that could be able to do the right thing with the correct node configuration. Some surface command hiding the objects from rendering by the camera and reflection could also show up nice.

Edited by Crush
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The below is just a suggestion as I have not used Messiah in a couple of years.

 

I kinda miss Messiah Studio... The armatures were easy to setup. My Messiah Studio 5 messed up on Linux and it seems to much of a hassle at that time to figure that dongle USB key stuff all over again. I know I did a video of a dino walking on a shelf top with a shadow. I can not remember clearly but I think I used Front Projection Mapping as my camera stayed static.

 

Possible workaround... Use the lighting from the HDRI (if you can hide the image) but use a separate image for the Front Projection Mapping on a plane or planes. Not as easy to set up as a shadow catcher but should work with dynamic rendering...

Edited by digman
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The below is just a suggestion as I have not used Messiah in a couple of years.

 

I kinda miss Messiah Studio... The armatures were easy to setup. My Messiah Studio 5 messed up on Linux and it seems to much of a hassle at that time to figure that dongle USB key stuff all over again. I know I did a video of a dino walking on a shelf top with a shadow. I can not remember clearly but I think I used Front Projection Mapping as my camera stayed static.

 

Possible workaround... Use the lighting from the HDRI (if you can hide the image) but use a separate image for the Front Projection Mapping on a plane or planes. Not as easy to set up as a shadow catcher but should work with dynamic rendering...

I tried the front projection before, but it didn't work with the background being spherical (same as environment). I saw that trick from the Rat in London tutorial. Really surprised there isn't some shadow catching material as it is pretty much standard with any other render. On another note, I noticed a really strange bug. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that I'm using Win10, but the first time I click on the icon to load the app, it crashes. But the 2nd attempt works. Wonder what that could point to?

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Funny, I am tempted just to fork out the 65 bucks for a year of Messiah 6. That is about 5 bucks a month... less than a McDonald's meal. Maybe one day, I will go through the process of contacting support and getting all the stuff to run 5 again.. 

 

Strange that the program crashes, then runs on the second try... Will Messiah run in any of the compatibility modes without crashing the first time, or maybe you tried already.

Edited by digman
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Funny, I am tempted just to fork out the 65 bucks for a year of Messiah 6. That is about 5 bucks a month... less than a McDonald's meal. Maybe one day, I will go through the process of contacting support and getting all the stuff to run 5 again.. 

 

Strange that the program crashes, then runs on the second try... Will Messiah run in any of the compatibility modes without crashing the first time, or maybe you tried already.

If you think you will use it, sure...it's worth it. I'm going to try and use it on a few projects and see if I prefer it over 3ds Max, for Character Animation purposes. It still has playback deformation speed in it's quiver

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