f13.net

Basic software for $10, Pro for $40. Normally they are $500 and $1200 respectively.

The catch? They need to get enough orders to fill the bar on their website, if it doesn't happen, they refund your money.

Link (http://www.projectmessiah.com/x6/shop.html)

No clue how to use it, tempted to buy it, since that bar will fill up by tonight.

I bought a couple of copies just for the heck of it :awesome_for_real: :uhrr:

This has been going for several days now and the bar is inching up slowly. I am on the fence. I believe the software will need some models to put into it or for the user to know how to model themselves. I've been playing with Daz3d which is sort of like Poser and am quite tempted to give it a try.

Is there any big advantage to getting the pro version, for somebody who isn't a professional and just wants to fuck around with it?

This shit is always dependent on workflow.  No one prog. does it all.  Daz3d and Poser are actually the easiest and best imo to model anything humanoid, short of Zbrush.  But for animation, everyone is moving to cheap mocap.  Right now, for free, in the space of 10 mins. you could model a human and animate it using daz/poser and a home mocap rig. (a buncha webcams and some good software)

Thanks for pointing this deal out, got my studio to buy some copies just because. We outsource alot of cutscenes, perhaps we can do more in house.

I ordered the Pro version for the 64-bit and >dual-core support (I have a quad-core CPU with HT). Fur and hair support is nice too.

I'm tempted to get the Pro, but not sure I'd ever use it. Would be nice just to have though.

What's 40 bucks?

I doubt you'd ever actually use it either. It's fun to play with and whatnot, but practical applications outside niche industry uses are few. What you get from Pro really isn't worth it I think for the casual user. What you get in basic is more than enough. The extra from Pro are great perks for professional use. Reduced render times. Slightly more options as far as how the tiny details of actors work etc; And better scrubbing options for tweaking your work. But you get those already, just not as fleshed out. iirc, messiah implements these features as plugins, kinda how 3dsMAX/Maya do it. I'd bet you could even find free plugins floating around to semi fill those roles if not fully fill them.

$1k of software for $20?  Yes, please.  Bar is close to getting full, too.

To say thanks for linking this is to understate how genuinely grateful I am. Passing the link on to a large group of filmmakers which will help fill that bar.

Looks about 80% of the way there, I went ahead and anteed up for a copy and would love nothing more than to find the time to use it.  Unfortunately it is probably mostly wishful thinking and may never even get installed.

Not that I would ever need this, but what the heck! I saved 1160 dollar, didn't I?  :grin:

Just remember to share the link so it fills up faster.

Being unemployed, even spending the 10 bucks is going to be tough (and wanting 64bit/quad core support makes me want to spend the 40).

:/

Yeah, I've been playing with Daz3d and to a lesser extent, Poser, since late January. I'm finding you can make some damn good stills of humanoids and even complicated scenes if you play enough and do some experimenting. I'm not there yet but I'm learning. It's great fun. I have no expectations of ever, you know, making money but as a hobbyist I'm enjoying myself.

If you make something good - consider selling it in SL. I make a few bucks a day selling animations there.

Hm, well since part of my degree right now is 3D Modeling and 3D Simulation I may have to pick up a copy....nice find.

Wonder how it compares to 3dsMax and Unity which are our current two main programs.

*edit*
Argh, at first glance I thought the bar was full.  It's at about 90%.  :uhrr:

It's been a long, long while since I messed with Max in school, but at that time it was all keyframing and pathing in & around static objects. The kind of stuff that you'd need for A&E or environment rendering, which makes sense given AutoDesk's primary focus was CAD/ CAM.   Is it more animation friendly now? 

This seems focused on CGI and character skeletons rather than realistic environment rendering.

So I bit the bullet, bought the $40 version on my credit card. This is stuff I messed around with years ago in college and would like to mess around with again.

The additional features seemed well worth the 30 bucks difference to me if I actually get into using this I will want them so /shrug.

Also remember, there are many game engines that'll accept poser characters (like cough - 3DGameStudio), which makes it ridiculously easy to put nice models in your levels.
Hmmm, which has me thinking, does UDK or Unity import daz/poser scenes?  (I totally forgot to try that back in the day)

There used to be a hefty performance and quality loss when using poser figs in games, but I'm assuming things arent like than anymore which is is why you see a lotta people modeling with zBrush.

I'm missing what this does that poser or blender don't do.

Step 1. Spend ten bucks.

Step 2. Find out.

Step 3. Profit..?

In all seriousness, I got away from this stuff long ago enough that Poser would have been a punchline, though it looks like it's come a long way.  Who knew?
Blender, now...It (messiah) could lack a moonman interface and possess actual documentation, maybe? That's kind of a differentiator.

You can compare feature lists until the cows come home, but it's always workflow that makes the difference. Seems a low enough price point to find out if this package sucks.

Blender is/was a pretty clunky program (with a shit UI and no real support) that has lately been rendered useless due to the amount of pro-level 'Freeware' out there (messiah is just but one of these).  Lotta guys like to jerk eachother off for using Blender, but pfft.  It's irrelevant now unless you're just really used to it.

Poser is still mostly "playing with dolls."  Most everything is pre-rigged and the polys are high.  Also, many engines dont accept the format directly so you have to have a whole workflow just to export.  BUT, poser/daz has a pretty amazing community, you can pretty much get whatever you want for free if you look hard enough.

I say the easiest (not the best) animation apps I ever played with were simply iClone stuff, mostly designed for movies/machinima though (it REALLY kicks ass for this)... not great for games.   It has some of poser's dollhouse appeal, but not quite as robust.

These days you can get your hands on some powerful shit for little to no money, which is why Messiah is basically free too now.   My fav. 3d stuff is still zbrush/sculptris, xsi (which has real-time animation also), and mojoworld.  Chunk all that into udk or unity and you're set.


Oh, check this out (using Messiah):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFxMWP7Ciuc

My understanding:

Poser/Daz are mostly for setting up and rendering scenes. They both do some animation but it doesn't seem to be their strong suit. I don't believe you can do much modeling in either of them beyond putting in a few primitives (cubes, spheres, etc) and texturing them.
Blender is a modeling program like 3DSMax.

Messiah seems to be more focused on the animation side of things. I'd guess you could bring in models from other sources and then animate them using Messiah.

The big thing is Messiah can handle real-time animation, instead of just keyframe.  This means you can use mocap and more easily have reactive objects (mouths that react to sound, etc.), which is where everyone is headed to right now, even at home.  Since most 'pro level' real-time suites are like $1000's of dollars, it's nice that it's only $10.

We won! \o/

Nice of them to keep the deal alive for 24 hours after the goal was met for people who had problems (or latecomers) to get a chance to buy it as well.

Any pointers/links on setting up a DIY poor mans mocap solution at home?

Run a search on good software/video-based solutions (webcams), some even markerless ala Kinect (yes, someone has already hacked multiple kinects for mocap).  There are a few cheap inertial systems you can get, but they're only good for short animations since they drift a lot over time.

I'd be more specific but I havent done any hands-on with any of this stuff yet aside from begging for SDKs that never come, and I havent bookmarked the info.  It's easy enough to find though, there's a lot of movement in cheap mocap right now it seems.  :rimshot:

I'm not sure if I'll ever use it, but I'm involved in making a strategy game with a friend of mine, and I might end up making models for it. Giving them $40 for the pro version just in case seems like a pretty fair tradeoff to me, i.e. we all win. Supported.

Looks like extension ends in 5 hours if you did not get a copy and want one.

Here's a tip.  Run searches with online "miniatures" distributors (places like Reaper) for exactly what you're looking for in physical form.  Buy the minis you want in your game.  Then buy/rent a small 3D scanner or hack one from a normal vid. cam.  Scan em in and you've got your digital model w/o doing a lick of work.

 :ye_gods:

That sounds like just as much work, and probably higher cost... :P

found a solution that uses the ps3 eye camera (with a soon to be released kinect version).  Also found some info on the messiah forums that seemed to indicate that their autorig feature does this w/o the need for any additional software.

Uhhh no.  Calculate what the hourly rate would be to model a nice digital 3d strat. game mini and then speculate again.
3d scanners are pretty cheap, or you can make a good enough one with a cheap laser and a few parts from home.  Most people dont have the skill (or time) to model something digitally with the amount of precision a sculptor has with real miniatures.  So take said minis, scan em, rig em (autorig in Messiah's case), and you're done.

Only thing you'd have to play with is the texturing part, and since it's pretty much 'pre-textured' you can get away with using specialized paint programs that'll paint right on the model just as you would painting a real mini.

I actually had a rough design for all my Warmachine minis using this technique.  I was essentially gonna 'digitize' the entire game and play online.  Copyright infringement ftw!

Unless I'm missing something, messiah isn't really something you'd use for this kind of work, is it?  You can't make models in it (as far as I know) or do any texturing.  You can rig and animate in messiah (I think?) but I don't know how complex the animation in a strategy game is going to get, or if it would be easier to export and bundle everything for messiah than to do it natively in whatever your modelling package is.

EDIT:

Can you give an example?  I wouldn't mind grabbing a copy of something cheap for personal projects or something, and Blender makes me bite kittens.

Kail: It's probably me that's missing something, I just assumed it was capable of doing both. In any case, I can live with it possibly not being used at all at $40. Honestly I've no idea how complex the models are going to get either, but at $40 it's just too good an opportunity to pass by. Worst case I've given them money they wouldn't have gotten anyways, and I have the possibility in case I do decide to animate the ships, so it's still win-win.

Hell, if nothing else I'll probably end up animating a dickbutt just for the hell of it.

ghambit: I'll admit I've no idea how detailed we'd bother to make the models, nor how long it would take. Suffice it to say I'll take your word for it. As for the cost, it's a project we're doing in our spare time, with no set pressure to make something quickly (or even hires; we're not going for high quality graphics). Design inspiration is probably going to be a bigger issue, so miniatures is still a good suggestion, so thanks for that idea.

Anyone actually gotten their keys from this yet?

Nope. Still waiting.

Just got mine (on the 20th), says the licensing server went up on the 19th.

Looks like, according to their forums, there are some hiccups with their new liicensing system (apparently requires a USB stick to be setup as a hardware dongle).

That is 1 of the options, the instructions say you can also install it as a fixed license:

Then again they proceed to only describe Install of the USB license:

I have not tried either install yet as I am deciding between the fixed and dongle installs.  Any one ever see a USB flash drive that looks like the logitech nano reciever?  I realize they make them pretty small but I want something that doesn't stick out at all.

My buddy at work had a flash drive that was only the 'tip' of most other drives.  I think he said he'd picked it up at Best Buy.

Ed:  Found it.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/PNY+-+Swivel+4GB+USB+Flash+Drive+-+Plum/9527381.p?id=1218119228265&skuId=9527381&st=mini%20flash%20drive&cp=1&lp=25

This one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820326106) is pretty small.

Same for this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820191309).

Ordered that Lexar USB stick, exactly what I was looking for.

Just got my license email as well. Whee.