A note: Messiah Studio doesn't have any way to actually create or paint 3D models, it's simply for rigging/animating models that you would create in other programs and import.
"messiahStudio can be used as a complete stand-alone animation and rendering package, or as a powerful addition to Modo, Maya, 3DMAX, SoftImage XSI, LightWave, Cinema 4D or an in-house proprietary application; through extensive animation export capabilities (fbx, mdd, collada), Host Connection plugins and Host API."
When I read this the first time, I assumed that "animation" meant modeling as well, but only because I don't know very much about this whole process.
I started 3d animation as an autodidact when I was 11 years old (now 24). I've spent over a year each in about a dozen different packages, with the majority of my time and effort poured into 3D Studio Max, Maya, and a little-known Mac-only package called Pixels:3D Studio (anyone else here use it, back in the day?).
Just this past week, I've started on Blender. I've been following it loosely since the late 90s, but this was my first real go at becoming proficient. I first tried 2.49, but found it extremely aggravating. Moving to 2.5 was a tremendous improvement, making Blender's unusual workflow slightly more obvious, but there's the rub.
Blender, in its origins, was designed with a very different set of basic interactions than the leading 3d animation packages. In time, as they've added more features, they've slowly moved the experience to be more in-line with Max and Maya, but these alignments apply pretty much exclusively to the newer, high-level features. The core interactions for moving/rotating/scaling, viewport movement, selection, and other "basics" are completely different.
If anyone else is just picking up the program, I'd encourage you to share any good resources or tips you've found for overcoming the initial grind. Here's what has helped me most:
Take notes of all the keyboard shortcuts you encounter. Sure, there are existing lists and cheat-sheets, but writing them out has really helped me memorize them. As I'm following the BlenderCookie videos, I watch for the interactions I don't yet know and immediately jot down the details. Don't forget, many of the commands are highly context-sensitive.
I use it quite a bit, though not professionally so far. Their 2.5 redesign is incredible from a usability perspective, however its not quite stable yet in my experience. Documentation is also inconsistent: there are great resource like http://blendercookie.com for video tutorials, yet sometimes simple questions like how to split a view into two can mean searching forums etc due to lack of real documentation for version 2.5.
I've been using blender for models in the android game I'm making. Don't see a reason to spend $ 40 when there is a fantastic open source alternative. Kind of like buying windows server instead off just using linux.
I've been watching the blendtuts videos. My game only uses basic models since I want to support older generation handsets, so I'm not making use of any of the advanced blender features. But, it has been well worth the effort learning Blender. Its really a great tool.
Blender has it's own working experience and once mastered hard to leave. Most of the time new comers are really frustrated with the ui and controls. It's a steep learning curve. But it's really a powerful 3d animation, modelling and video editing suit. It's capable of doing professional level works.
I agree that it is fully capable of producing professional quality work, given that it's professional adoption has been relatively small as to date. 3D packages take years of investment in training to master and once one masters a suit they are hesitant to switch. The dogma in 3D packages can be worse than language dogma. For good reason as well, with languages some amount of foundation transfers but with 3D packages how one accomplishes a task differs from UI to UI, it is closer to starting completely over. When I left 3D as a career I had one of 2 choices buy a full license for a commercial package(and an SGI at the time, Wavefront had just become Maya and the windows version was in the works) or learn Blender. I chose the latter it really was starting over but I eventually became as good with Blender as I was with Wavefront (now Maya).
I've been using blender since 2000. It is really powerful, and the UI has incredibly improved with version 2.5.
I use it for everything: App Icons, textures, explanatory animations, diagrams, and of course 3D.
Try it, it's incredible (though the documentation needs some love)
As a seasoned Max vet, and an avid Maya user (tempting to make an "avid Softimage" joke, but I digress), I find the UI to be similar to look at, but the similarity breaks down as soon as you start touching it.
Working with blender is fundamentally different at the most base, intuition-sensitive level. Not better or worse, but different.
It will be worse if you're coming to it already familiar with Max and Maya. You'll rub against the grain of the program. Of course, the same is true of moving between any programs that are cosmetically similar but based on different interaction models.
I agree. I've worked with MAX and Maya, and my experience is that Maya is at least as different from MAX as Blender is from MAX/Maya. The different programs have a different workflow.
I found MAX very easy to use. Maya was harder, and Blender (before 2.5) was extremely difficult to learn. With the 2.5 release, though, they really improved usability of their program. I'm really surprised, and am now trying to use Blender for everything as I enjoy it most.
Played with it a bit a few years ago. For what it is (free 3D software), I think it does fine. But at the same time, I think there's a reason it's not really being used professionally in the film industry (disclaimer: it wasn't the last time I looked, anyway).
blender is used a lot more in the industry than you probably know. As one already mentioned it was used to do the animatics for spiderman 2 and it's used in a number of small admination shops for the smaller illustration and animation markets (adverts, short films, stills)
Studios usually don't advertise the tool used in a production to the general public. The trend is shifting in favour of tools like blender though. Blender is also doing a lot of heavy marketing to those segments through their open movie and game projects. I can see a day in the future where studios contribute significant developer time to a project like blender in lieu of expensive licenses for something like Maya or 3DS.
I'd never heard of Messiah Studio before, but heck, I've dabbled in 3D enough to cough up $40 for professional software. Fingers crossed it hits the goal.
For a hobbyist, this might be a good value, but if you're looking at it for semi-pro use, it might be a better investment of time to build portable skills in a more widely adopted platform.
Same here. For $40 for pro software, i'll buy even i I don't need it. By the same token, if I see a board game on sale for $10, I take it and figure out later if I like it or not.
I like the idea; i'll leave them figure out if it makes business sense. One thing certain: if their retail price had been $100 on special to $40, I would not even have clicked.
Yeah I've never heard of this either despite reading quite a lot about 3D software recently. But it's good to see an independent package that hasn't been acquired by Autodesk (yet). I'm a bit suspicious of the lack of recent reviews or discussion online, but as you say $40 is worth the risk.
Word is that Messiah requires a dongle to run. I can imagine even people with a licensed copy seeking out a cracked version that they can run unencumbered.
My gut says it is the wrong way around. I suspect that a user would buy the program for $40 because I want to save money and then don't buy the tutorials resulting in not being able to do that much and giving the app negative reviews because it is 'hard'.
I wish I had $40 in my Paypal account. I'd buy it for sure. Ah well, even if I don't end up getting Messiah Pro, there's always Blender3D, which is free, and which I have some experience in already.
Does anyone here use this and have a recommendation on platform? My preference is Linux, MaxOS and Windows (in that order). But if not all platforms work equally well, I may reconsider.
I don't have any first hand experience with it but it looks like the Linux version is running through Wine, not a native port.
Wine is great but for 3D stuff (including games) I've found that its usually more trouble than its worth to get it configured right for my specific systems.
Adobe's CS products were 64-bit only on Windows for a while as well, due to Apple's last minute decision to drop 64-bit support for Carbon and force developers into Cocoa use for 64-bit apps. While Adobe addressed the situation with CS5, not every company out there has the same resources available for such a rewrite of their Mac-specific layer on multiplatform software.
tl;dr -- Apple is at least partially to blame for the slow move to 64-bit apps on the Mac platform.
This app is not written for the mac using Carbon or Cocoa, it is using Crossover. It is a windows app and they're using technology (wine for linux) to get it to run on other platforms.
I don't think that, after creating carbon and delaying OS X in the first place due to the demands of microsoft and adobe, that Apple should feel at all guilty, when those two companies do not keep their promises to migrate to cocoa after nearly 10 years.
This is especially heinous given that cocoa is a much better platform, is relatively easy to work with, and if the underlying code was written at all decently, the migrating should not be very difficult at all-- maybe a year of effort while working on the next version, and that's being generous. And as a result of doing that migration, even back in 2000-2002, they would have gotten more stable, better performant apps. They just couldn't be bothered, and so for that entire decade from Microsoft and Adobe we've gotten clunky, crappy apps that just have more features piled onto them every year. "64-bit" is just one of those features.
Apple create carbon to soften the transition for these two companies... but they never bothered to transition.
Further, Apple didn't drop 64 bit support for carbon, it never existed. This phrasing is one of the lies adobe has told about apple in their ongoing war. 64-bit carbon support was on a roadmap at one point, but they decided not to do it because the original mac OS X and consequently carbon are fundamentally 32 bit and it involved too many resources. I'm sure they did some exploratory work, but the claim that they "dropped it" is a claim that they shipped it and then reneged.
That adobe has been able to lie about this and create an impression in you, and many others, that apple dropped support and "forced" people is one of the reasons Apple is so reticent to talk about future plans.
That people are blaming Apple for this when Adobe and Microsoft sat on their asses for a decade, I just don't understand. (Well, actually I do.)
I have no stake in this, and have not used this software, but consider another option:
1] Build a great piece of software, worth every nickel of $1200.
2] Release it to a crowded field where you are a small fish in a big pond, overshadowed by players like Adobe and Autodesk.
3] Drop the price dramatically and take a hit up front to build your customer base, because you believe in your product.
4] Profit.
I have no idea which of these two scenarios is closer to the truth. I have never used this software. I am, however, glad for a world with startups and innovators.
Messiah has been around since 1999ish (originally as a plugin for Lightwave), so if that was their plan they certainly work on a very long time scale!
Messiah is actually pretty great at what it does though it must be getting squeezed a bit by Blender3D with the strides that (totally free) software has made in usability over the last year or so.
I do find it a little bit curious that they (pmG) haven't defined what either their goal is or what the timeframe for meeting the goal is. I doubt they are doing anything underhanded, but if the "goal" is not met in whatever the "timeframe" is, it'll be pretty easy for people to make a case that the whole thing was a PR stunt rigged from the start.. of course, then they'd be on the hook for who knows how many refunds, which doesn't come for free.
Alternative scenario:
1) Build software, charge $1000+ for it, even though it cost you way less
2) Get insane margins.
3) Don't lower your prices ever to reinforce the assumption that it really is worth that much, meanwhile making competitors' products look cheap / worthless.
4) Profit.
Remember when WebObjects went from $50000, to $699, to "bundled"? This sort of movement is certainly a signal. Maybe the Messiah devs are tired of being in a niche. I hope that's what it is.
