
Interest in 3D animation? Get Messiah Studio Pro for $40 ($1200 retail value)  - davidjhall
http://projectmessiah.com/x6/shop.html
======
alanfalcon
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.

~~~
andrewce
From their website:

"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.

Thanks for pointing this out.

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rythie
Anyone used blender for this sort of thing? <http://www.blender.org/>

~~~
RyanHolliday
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).

~~~
cryptoz
Blender was used to storyboard in Spiderman 2, so it's...getting closer.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#Use_in_the_m...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_\(software\)#Use_in_the_media_industry)

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RyanHolliday
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.

~~~
nroach
There's some commentary about it on the lightwave forums
([http://www.spinquad.com/forums/showthread.php?27757-Messiah-...](http://www.spinquad.com/forums/showthread.php?27757-Messiah-
Studio-and-Lightwave-An-Objective-View)) but I'm still not sure why you'd use
Messiah over LW3D, Blender, or one of the more mainstream packages.

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.

edit: comparison here: [http://www.thepixelart.com/10-best-real-time-
animation-tools...](http://www.thepixelart.com/10-best-real-time-animation-
tools/)

~~~
wtracy
It looks like some complex animations are easier to do in Messiah. At least in
the pro edition, it seems to support dynamic hair, and motion capture.

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CountHackulus
Interesting business model here. They'll give you the program for $40, but
charge you extra for the tutorials.

Still, for $40 how can you go wrong on a piece of professional software?

~~~
icefox
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'.

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NathanKP
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.

~~~
omarchowdhury
<http://thepiratebay.org/>

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bsaunder
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.

~~~
kikibobo69
I noticed it does 64 bit only on Windows. Not a good sign for other platforms.

~~~
georgemcbay
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.

~~~
nika
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.)

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PostOnce
1] Build software, charge $1,160 too much for it.

2] Wait a while, put it on "sale" for $40, tell everyone they are SAVING
THOUSANDS.

3] Profit.

If it were really worth $1,200, people would pay $1,200, and they'd charge
$1,200.

Let me know when Adobe and Autodesk start selling their stuff for $40.

~~~
absconditus
People do pay $1200 for it. See the bottom of the page here:

<http://projectmessiah.com/x6/products.html>

The people who are only willing to pay $40 are not the main demographic that
messiahStudio is marketed to.

I honestly expect a bit more business sense on HN.

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joblessjunkie
So, naked advertising now qualifies for HN front page?

~~~
javanix
I thought it was an interesting advertising technique, at least, and ties in
well with interests that many visitors here might have.

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hook
There is a difference between value and price.

~~~
spiralganglion
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.

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dirtyaura
Anyone has experience how well it runs on Mac?

~~~
nika
It is using crossover to be able to run the windows code on a mac. So it isn't
a native mac port.

