Project Messiah Studio Sale

I have always wanted to test this with Unity.

Now is our chance:

Unbelievable discount. See the link for details.

http://projectmessiah.com/x6/shop.html

 

Yes this is a most incredible deal. Messiah is very widely used in CG films. If your an animator or want to learn something very robust i suggest ordering the $40 pro version, normally at $1200 bucks! Check out the gallery and videos and see that this is very awesome. I have never used messiah but even I know that any animation software of this caliber for $40 is a once in a lifetime deal!

 

Installed the demo version, but was shocked to find out they are just using a CrossOver/Wine wrapper for the Mac version. I guess at $40 it's less of an issue, but at the regular price of $1195 I want a native version.

I always get a little annoyed if I, as a Mac user, am treated like a second rank citizen. Game companies are doing this all the time with the Transgaming/Cider wrappers. Eve Online, The Sims 3, Spore, Warhammer Online, Grand Theft Auto, Dragon Age, City of Heroes, The Settlers 7 and the list goes on. I am paying the same price for an application, but my version uses more system resources and most of the times is running less stable and with more bugs.

I think this is a once in a lifetime deal, but only if you spend your time in a windows environment or don't care about stuff like this.

 

Did I read the feature comparison right or was I reading too quickly? Does it say that unless you buy pro you can't save your UVs to a texture map?

Kinda makes to $10 one really worthless if I read that right...
I am kinda tempted to go with the $40 version but what really gets me is that I have only ever used Maya since I first started learning 3D modeling around 6 years ago. I used blender for about a month and played with the rest for about an hour or so... this one, I have never heard of... and yet it seems like it is a decent enough program... is it worth changing over from Maya to this or is there any benefit to working in both?

Looking at the track record and the price I am tempted but I don't want to buy another program to go to my trash can in a month's time...

 

Yeh, this is a great offer. I've used messiah for unity and game development and it has proved a great tool for rapidly getting characters in game.

MrDude- I think what you read is that only messiah pro offers texture baking (uv bake render), so a user could render out a material to a texturemap based on UVs. This is a nice feature for game dev, but all versions support UVs

 

I own and like Messiah Studio, but if you have a copy of Maya and are used to animating with it, I would just stick with that. Unity supports native Maya files which would make for an easier workflow. Plus I think Adam Mechtley mentioned at the Unite conference potentially sharing a script or plugin that can transfer the expressions from Maya to Unity.

Messiah Studio is great, but it's designed more for film/tv production. It can work decent for game development too, but I would probably use Maya if I had it.

 

Arghhh... I read that reply too late... I just bought it like 3 minutes ago

 

got myself the pro one along this deal ... or will get given it works out

Gives me a nice alternative to Fragmotion to bring the silo models to life I guess

 

I looked at the progress indicator, bpught the pro, went back to the site... Looked like it jumped a lot, so just 10 more pros and we are done

I wish

 

hehe doubt it was just yours, cause when I bought pro the progress indicator didn't move a single pixel ... perhaps you clicked too fast?

 

Going at t he current rate - My guess is that it will reach the end in about 5 days.

Total unscientific observation that its moved about an inch in 24h hours!

 

You forget the math behind viral spreading as the word spreads "exponentially", not linear.
So it should speed up normally.

But I guess thats exactly what they try to find out, how well and far does it spread and is it worth it as an "ad campaign replacement"

 

At $40 it's still worth having in your toolbox.

 

definitely

so now if only zbrush did that too

 

And Modo!

 

And Unity Pro!

 

Model Render in modo, animate in messiah! How about that? (you just need the mdd export plugin!)

 

Has anyone used this with Unity projects? Could you tell us your experiences with the program? pros, cons? 10$ isn't much but...

 

I bought it do, i need easy animating for Unity

 

i got the 40$ deal, lets see

 

I have tested it a little bit. I'm currently using it for a project. I haven't used any other animation packages with Unity though so I can't give a real good comparison. So far all of the animation seems to import just fine. Some of the tools that make Messiah so nice don't work with Unity though (like point animation). At least I haven't been able to get it to work. The bone animations all seem to import fine though. I do recall there being an issue if the animated character is not a single mesh too.

The AutoRigger is really nice for bipedal characters. You pretty much just position the bones, press a button, and you have a nice rig to work with. It has IK legs and FK upper body with nifty handles to work with. Good hand/finger controls too.

Messiah has an auto-weighting system by default, which can be very fast. You use hold bones or effectors to tweak the weighting. While this makes for fast and easy weighting, it also can add more complexity to your rig. I haven't tested closely, but I would think this would increase file sizes. Though I haven't tried it, you can do weight painting by hand. That might allow you to keep the rig leaner, but then of course you lose some of the quickness and ease of using Messiah.

I haven't tested a ragdoll yet, but the skinning info does get saved. I actually haven't used ragdolls at all in Unity so I'm not sure how that's set up. If there is a way to define IK chains and constraints I would think it would work.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you'll have to do some clean-up work when you get the character into Unity. The FBX exports the whole scene (lights, cameras, etc.). So once your in Unity you'll have to go in and delete all that stuff (plus any nulls or effectors you're using that relate only to Messiah).

All in all, it does work alright. I think with a little more experimentation a decent workflow could be developed. Perhaps even some Unity scripts could be written to make the workflow smoother.

 

To add to what Dele posted...

I've used messiah with some unity projects and it has worked well. I've used the ragdoll on messiah rigs and had no problems.

I can also report that the cleanup will be partially addressed in a patch so you have the option to not include cameras and lights. As for nulls, and effectors...well... A custom script would be nice!

messiah exports mdd natively, however there is the fastMDD plugin which makes going between messiah<>modo even smoother/faster!

 

I bought it too and looks like we are halfway through the progress bar. It seems to be moving fast. I have seen this link in multiple forums now without even looking for it so I think the viral campaign is working.

 

I picked up the Pro version, I mean who can pass up on $40!

 

I watched the Messiah->Modo video on their website. Quite comical with his kids screaming in the background, then the police siren blaring in a high speed chase through his neighborhood towards the end.

I hope there's a cache of tutorials with an acceptable quality level that I haven't found yet.

Not quite sure how useful the autorig really would be. As dele alluded to, in a number of the videos they tend to add quite a few extra bones. Two extra in the head and 6 in the torso in one video I watched. For a game you would want to end up painting weights instead of adding a dozen extra bones, which somewhat defeats the purpose of their autorig.

But hey, for 10 or 40 greenbacks it's a steal.

 

Does anyone know if you can switch platforms on this? I ordered it for PC - but tonight I ordered a macbook pro... so just wondering if I could use it when I get my Mac? rather than on the PC?

 

Just ordered the pro version tonight

Try sending them an email, I'm sure you still have lots of time as they won't be sending enything to you until the goal is met.
Though, be aware that the mac version is just the pc version running in Wine/Crossover...
But I'm not sure if you can just create your own wine package of the PC version... The licensing may not work right?

 

Hmmmm.... Thanks VPrime.

I'm going to have to run a vm or parallels install for work - so I guess I could just stick with messiah in the VM.

Thanks for the heads up - its much appreciated

 

Just ordered the pro version -- can't wait to try it out!

 

It was a no brainer for me. I picked up a Basic and a Pro license. You can purchase up to 4 licenses. I was surprised they charged you up front and state they will refund your money if the goal isn't met. Here in the United States I believe that is illegal. You can accept orders and place a hold on the funds but your not allowed to collect money until your actually ready to ship it out. And collecting money without the intent of actually delivering the goods...well.....

I have read through the Messiah forums and I see current users buying additional licenses and maxing out the 4 license sale limit. Most already have 2 licenses so are adding and additional 2 from what I am reading. If you need to you can purchase a PC and a Mac license and still not touch the cost of a good dinner.

 

Wouldn't it be possible to buy a Windows license and access it in linux through Wine?
I'm planning to use it on both Linux and Windows on 1 pc only (dual boot).
It's just that I don't know wich will be my primary development os yet (sadly Unity is windows/mac only) so I would like to buy one license instead of 2 if I could.

 

That's why I went with a front loading hard drive system on my computer. Now I just change HDs depending on what OS or programs I am going to be using. I have hard drives for OSs and programs. Visual Studio doesn't like to play well with others so it has its own HD. Hard drives have become really cheap these days.

 

ok, thank you for the answer.
This is what I've asked on the Messiah Studio forum :

What would be your thoughts about it?

 

Bought basic. I see no use for it right now but who knows.It's certainly a useful tool and totally worth buying for 10 bucks.

P.S: just went through their forums. Except a few minor bugs in their export pipeline, it's actually a steal for 10 bucks.

 

Ordered. It looks like it would be excellent for cutscenes!

 

89%, shouldn't be long now...

 

How do you see the percent rate because i only see a image of a progess bar that isn't that spefic

 

If you view the source of the web page you can see how much the image is stretched by - its currently at 90%.

 

RUMOR is the contest will be over 3.5 hours from now (12:01 AM pacific time) and that they missed the goal. I read it on CG forums earlier tonight. What they did was lower the price of Pro from $1195 to $599. So, unfortunately, it looks like its over (I hope not though).

 

no!!!! D:

 

What?? I've been using a ruler the whole time!

 

Hopefully this is just a rumour. With the goal being so close, seems odd not to extend a few days or so until it's reached (def looks like it will be very soon). If they cut it at 95-99..... that would definitely make me question their experimental viral marketing strategy. Let's all hope the goal is met though. Would be nice to try this software out.

 

I agree, thats why I put RUMOR in caps. I don't trust the folks in CG society forums...

 

i just bought my $10 basic one for this > hope to try it out and hope they reach their goal too )

 

Really hoping the rumor is false.

Purchased a Pro licence earlier. Had to contact their customer support team (my browser crashed during purchase, so I wanted to make sure my order had been placed) who were extremely fast to reply, great customer service!

 

crashed? my buy was smooth and i sent an email requesting info about the license i just bought and i got an email from them fast > i thought their business hours were not on sundays

 

By crash I mean I accidentally force quit Chrome just after hitting purchase, haha.

And I would have thought they'd be closed on Sunday too, but I had a reply from them in under 20mins!

 

The progress bar hasn't moved for some time now. But judging by the speed it was moving earlier I expected they would have met their goal sometime last friday or saturday. What bothers me is that there are no exact numbers and no way to know if that bar is being updated. We don't even know what the goal was. The whole thing could be there just for show. Or maybe we just have to wait until office hours

 

The quantity is arbitrary, there's no way of knowing how many sales they wanted, and I doubt it's important, they're unlikely to let everyone down now. They're interest in proliferation more than income.

Messiah isn't used that much right now, it's an underdog. This has generated a huge amount of interest and will get them a ton of customers and might even help push them into some studios, by all accounts it's a pretty awesome score for the marketing department. It's what they do next that'll be interesting, how they manage all the potential and handle their new users, the follow through.

 

Canceling the "experiment" now would seriously dent their integrity as a brand. I consider it done regardless if the actual goal (if there is one) is reached or not. Would of been possible to keep it at 50% and cancel it if that's what they were planning. That wouldn't of caused any real shock waves, but canceling it at 99% percent will make them seem cheap/ untrustworthy and generally achieve the reversal of the effect they were expecting.

There's really no other way to go now.