"Messiah's Crash Course" Video Tutorial Released

Got 40 mins? Then I can show you how to kickoff with the amazing 3D render and animation package, Messiah Studio, which has just dropped temporarily in price from US$399-599 to US$10-40 (!!) in the remarkable "Dare to Share" promotion by its developer, pmG. This made the relatively unknown yet great software win many adoptors, but that ain't no good if all this new people hasn't got how to learn it quickly and easily. So I've decided to jump on the bandwagon and create three videos (totaling 42 mins) showing some of the very early steps when running the software the first time and learning its ways as quickly and objectively as possible - a crash course.

Instead of repeating what's already explained in the many videos available on pmG's site (www.projectmessiah.com/x6/videos.html), like how to create and tweak a bone deformer or how to use the MDD file format, in these videos I've tried to fill some of the gaps for Messiah newcomers. There's also a clear focus on actually bringing in animation and deformation data from Messiah to other 3D packages, showing how Messiah can, with its recent FBX (Filmbox) export option, smoothly integrate with most other 3D applications. I show Lightwave and Maya import workflows in the videos, but the same principles apply to MotionBuilder, SoftImage and any other software which accepts the almost-ubiquitous Filmbox file format.

It's worth mentioning that the weight map creation from Messiah's procedural weighting is nothing short of stellar, for that one feature (getting you rid of weight painting!) learning it will already provide a big boost to your animated character production speed. Being able to use those amazing skin weights with other incredible solutions like Maya's Dual Quaternion Skinning and Lightwave's IKBooster is the icing on the cake.

Last but not least I quickly go through the process of importing the Messiah-generated animation into the excellent Unity real-time engine, including the position and adjustment of cameras.

Interested already? One last thing - the tutorials are free! So run and grab it while the promotion lasts.. nah, just kidding, this will keep with its incredible low price - ie. US$ zero ;) Enjoy!

Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsGa1ulR8Ok

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyymdexYBuY

Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgTtUTgnxgg

Project Files:

Messiah-exported FBX File

Maya 2011 Project File

Lightwave 10 Project Files

Unity Project Files