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Comments
Dartanbeck,
Messiah:studio is indeed a very powerful animation application. Actually , its animation system is very robust and its renderer is an off shoot of the Arnold Renderer and is very powerful.
That said .....its documentation is worse than Carrara's and one has to really pull together documentation here and there as it were. Its community is pretty quiet as well which does not help things out for new folks.
I had picked up a license two years ago when they had their crazy dare program but never really got into it very well.
Rich
I guess I purchased it around the same time, Rich. But like you, I was stifled by the lack of documentation. The are video tutorials, but I learn best / quickest through reading the docs.
I know Messiah has tight integration with Lightwave and I considered using it when I set aside time to explore that 3D app more.
But seeing the workflow used here makes me curious about what I might gain from using it with my Carrara projects. I enjoy animating characters in Carrara, but anything that helps accelerate or improve the process is worth exploring.
CyBoRgTy,
I think you could gain a lot more control with animations. Messiah has way more power with character animation if you can get into it sufficiently. The rigging process is easier in messiah but setting things up to get to that power user level does take experience I am sure. So its possible to imagine that you animate in Messiah and use a MDD file format back into Carrara. It takes Carrara obj's and 3ds files pretty well if you want to model or import -once you figure out the scaling issues.
The thing is --you look at the power , even the renderer and you think...gee why does this software seem so forgotten. I am sure there are many folks using it , busy producing --but overall you get that feeling especially over at their forum.
Its so tempting to try and dig into this but I can tell you --its no where as easy to get around as Carrara. And the resources for Carrara to learn are better. That said ...you look at some of the stuff done with it and its impressive.
Rich
Right. They use it for blockbuster movies. I hear the name in the 'special features' 'Disc 2' dvds I watch.
Yes, that is the big attraction for me in Carrara. Give me M4, C8 Pro, some Stonemason scenes, and a few mocaps and I can do anything. And of course that's nonsense. I can't even get close to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egbdAtkPApY
(I don't remember how I found this, if one of you led me to it, I apologize for forgetting. And I don't know if its Messiah. But its way good character animation.)
Rich -
A friend of mine and some of his Lightwave buddies are starting a feature film (!) project in Lightwave. I think they are pretty well equipped, with a mocap studio, etc. I do have an older version of Lightwave, but I am not proficient, spending most of my animation time in Carrara 8.1 Pro. I am new to the MDD format, and I understand that Fenric's plugin only works in Carrara 8.1, there is a bug in 8.5. So ... can I provide animated files to my friend's team using Carrara 8.1 with Fenric's MDD plugin, which they can use in Lightwave? I did ask Fenric, and he said yes ( I think), although any textures will have to be re-applied in Lightwave.
I would appreciate any perspective, however short.
Thanks.
My favorites. Better than the movies in some cases. Especially the Pixar "outtakes", like "Monsters, Inc.", with Boo trying to catch the popcorn, and looking sheepishly at the director when she misses ...
Steve,
I have not used MDD myself. I have imported models from Carrara into messiah but not animations via mdd.
rich
Yes, that is the big attraction for me in Carrara. Give me M4, C8 Pro, some Stonemason scenes, and a few mocaps and I can do anything. And of course that's nonsense. I can't even get close to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egbdAtkPApY
(I don't remember how I found this, if one of you led me to it, I apologize for forgetting. And I don't know if its Messiah. But its way good character animation.)Oh Man!!!
Bra-freaking-Vo!!!
I fail to see anything that cannot be done in Carrara, though. I bet that any one of those animators could perform well no matter which software they chose to learn. They are just that good!
Here, I remembered that I have this test render from when I was practicing emotions from another topic so I just converted it to a gif.
This was the result of the first session with the scene - just the initial shape of what's going on. The intent is so that I can re-use this fun expression over in different settings and apply variations specific each time.
Oh, right...
my point was that Carrara has terrific animation capabilities. High-end stuff does go way beyond in many ways, absolutely. But great animation is all about timing and feeling. All animation software can achieve this given enough love from the user.
As for Daz Dollies, I don't see much limitations of animations from them. DAZ 3D makes some great figures.
Regarding exporting from Carrara to Lightwave, within the past months I had successes with this using the FBX export. An obvious issue seen is Carrara seems (at times; could be something I'm causing) to produce objects with normals that are not always pointing in the same direction (either all in or all out). But this isn't a problem since Lightwave's Modeler can easily unify the normals.
The more key-frame animation I do in Carrara, the more I wish there were certain features that I may have seen in a Lightwave (or other 3D app) documentation or videos and now things I have read about yesterday regarding Messiah features. I agree with Dantenbeck, you can accomplish quite a bit using the Carrara animation tools. Its just you might take longer because of the lack of certain features (I like the bone dynamics in Lightwave). Obviously, we can use creativity in using Carrara's feature set to produce what we want (this is true with the use of any 3D app). Some apps have features that allow you to realize your vision quicker.
I like Carrara for some obvious reasons, but I'm not married to a software tool. If Messiah helps me speed-up or improve my animation production because of its feature set, I should give it a look (already own a license to it; I hate buying software and not using it :-) ). And the animation produced with it can be exported to Carrara, Lightwave (have 11.6; I'm sure there are others here who bought this app because they saw something in it they don't have in Carrara), Maya, etc. Also, I'm not squeamish and don't have a problem with using tools others believe are not easy to use.
Most of us are not going to push a 3D application (or a feature set of the app) to its limits, but some use it to an extent that exposes limitations/faults (this is true with ALL apps). I still love Carrara!
I like what the 'Dinner For Few' team appears to be accomplishing with their Messiah and Carrara based workflow.
Probably right. I'm just too impatient, I think, basically designing the whole animation around available mocaps. Also, its just my hobby, I don't want to put Pixar out of business.
Very good. In the 48 Hour contests, detailed facial expressions are usually a luxury that time does not allow, so the dreaded "dead eyes" problem creeps in. My wife also points out the hands that are "stiff". The bottom line is I should not be trying to do a five minute animation in two days, but I'm a slow learner.
:P
OK, thanks (Rich, also). I doubt if I'll end up trying to provide Carrara animation to the Lightwave group, but I'll keep that in mind. If they do want to just use some Poser format elements (I've been touting DAZ to them for such), probably Poser Fusion is the answer, although I've never used it. I've gotten so used to Carrara, I forget that Poser is still around ...
Right. I am certainly not trying to knock Messiah or the other higher end solutions, or even the other inexpensive ones. Just trying to make a point about 'will' and 'way'. :) I see some of the things they get to play with in LW and I get a bit jealous. Much more so with Maya and I'm sure, Messiah, C4D, Modo, Max and others. I even kind of miss being able to pin the feet and hands in Poser. But all-in-all, I'm really grateful to be away from that habit.
NASSOS has scored himself an excellent animation artist for this. faba has captured my attention many times over with excellent movements and great ideas. I miss the times when she was more frequently seen around here. She was (if I remember correctly) the driving force behind the creation of Fenric's ERC Controller for Carrara - a much needed tool to bring Carrara a bit more into the Animation department.
If I get a bit overly protective of Carrara, just try to remember why:
I have a very meager income. Carrara answered my call to be a tool that would let me come in and do anything within the CG environment - Anything - without making me take out a mortgage for it, or even have a wonder-machine to run it. With enough imagination and intuition, an artist is truly capable of doing nearly all of the special effects within Carrara - which simply exploded into vastly more possibilities now that I've found Howler.
I cannot stop thinking about how, even in Episode I of Star Wars (movie #4) they used clay-mation techniques to get his vision down on film. But back up not that long ago, and composites where done with artists painting on glass, so that the cameramen could expose over it. The first CG software used my ILM was made in-house (probably still is) on computers that they had to design and build themselves, because Personal Computers did not yet exist.
Talk about limitations! these folks had to make things happen... however. I love that.
And now that I have Carrara, I have a means to fulfill my animation goals. I already knew, before getting to far into my current methods, that people who hire CG animators may not take my stuff seriously if I'm using only pre-made content. Still, I enjoy the complexity available to me right out of the box, with DAZ 3D figures. I understand and even practice, sometimes, how to create my own models and rig them. I have been doing a lot more modeling lately, which I think is healthy for me. But that doesn't change the fact that I find Michael, Victoria, and their neighbors, to be outstanding 3d assets that not only save me gobs and gobs of time, but they make me smile constantly.
I just wanted to say that we end up using Messiah when we felt we could have more flexibility this way than using Carrara. To our opinion the rigs were more stable and the IK functions better. I had some experience with ready models for my earlier film animated in Carrara and keeping the IK steady was an issue. Even in Messish Faba( Eva ) had to work on this and change the rig a few times. Nevertheless we have a few scenes animated with the Carrara rigs I did but sooner or later the Messiah versions were just...well more advanced. Besides that there was a number of things that didn't work even with the Messiah-carrara-MDD workflow. For example the simulations were a nightmare and some were done in Messiah, some in Carrara and some even in Blender. Not to mention the ones that were not able to be done anywhere and were hand animated or an after effect trick. There are quite a few of these in the film. What keeps them of looking odd is the style of the design and the color. So I would say the method might not have work as well if we were shooting for a photo-realistic film render. In this point I would like to say that I wanted exactly to avoid that. I felt trying to compete with what I had technically available including hardware and resources against studios with more... well more or everything would have been foolish. I had to design my own way of style comfortable to the resources I had. This is what we end up doing. And by the way for whoever tries to use the Messiah-carrara-MDD workflow keep in mind that the imported characters always wanted some kind of readjustment in Carrara. from moving let say a finger or correcting a strange deformation. This was accomplished with piling new morphs reshaping the geometry on the sequence of morphs MDD was already creating. That was a nightmare!
thanks Nassos for your detailed explanation of working with messiah and carrara.
The thing is there is no perfect application. They all have warts. Its a matter of using what works best for you at the time.
Carrara is -- a wonderful application. Capable and accessable. No doubt.
rich
Very good. In the 48 Hour contests, detailed facial expressions are usually a luxury that time does not allow, so the dreaded "dead eyes" problem creeps in. My wife also points out the hands that are "stiff". The bottom line is I should not be trying to do a five minute animation in two days, but I'm a slow learner.
:P
A great way to get eye animation is to have them track an object. That way, all you have to do is move the object. I prefer Target Helper objects as they are invisible in the final render. If you're using a Poser or DAZ figure, the eyelids will adjust naturally, so that if they track down, the upper eyelids slighty close, if they track up, the upper eyelids slightly open.
Some were able to get Messiah v5 for $10 or $40 a few years ago.
As I read about it, its interesting to discover its heritage is from Lightwave and some of what people like about Messiah is still in Lightwave (especially when you consider how bones are managed in 'Layout' as well as things like IKBooster and Relativity).
Anyway, happy animating. I look forward to seeing the finished film (as well as the animations of other Carrara animators). :cheese:
Is there any way to see 'Human Nature' on-line (the full movie; already saw the trailer)?
The "dead eyes" and "stiff hands" are mostly a lack of time in the two day 48 Hour Film contests. After writing the story, selecting the characters/clothes, props, scenes, lighting, setting it all up with the large scale movements ... there's barely enough time to add the music & sound effects, render, fix, re-render, and rush to the dropoff. Sort of the "bullet chess" (1 minute for all your moves) version of making a short animation (these two are master level players):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvF4GTT5OxM
I have uploaded "HUMAN NATURE" in vimeo. I will leave it up there for a few days for people to see it.
Remember "HUMAN NATURE" is all done in carrara,
"DINNER FOR FEW" is Messiah and Carrara
When I get the Dinner for few trailer done I will let you guys know.
http://vimeo.com/90195549
You are welcome to leave comments in the vimeo page.
Thanks for sharing this! Nicely done. :-)
Very nice. A good example of "visual storytelling", in particular no dialogue. Director Stanley Kubrick was known for cutting out lines of dialogue from the script, saying the actor could transmit the message with an expression. You did that nicely here, along with some great animation (and all done in Carrara, my favorite!)
Alex Williams is a good friend and excellent animator who runs the animation blog FLIP. He recently posted an interview about DINNER FOR FEW at his blog. This is a very special interview since it is the first one that comes out about the movie!
http://flipanimation.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/dreamworks-artist-nassos-vakalis.html
Very nice interview, with great replies. Whoa... you work at DreamWorks!?!!! Coool!
I believe that I've already told you, perhaps years ago, that my main ambition in Carrara is to produce animated episode of movies. I have been working really hard lately towards finding ways to overcome some of those impossibilities that we face - especially going for an all CG film, and have really stumbled upon some really impressive new techniques.
Production has finally begun. But like you said in the interview, patience is key. I wanted to start making my first episode as soon as I bought Carrara in 2010. Instead, I began (patiently) working through issues that I could predict at that time, while learning how to use Carrara. With Carrara's interface, manual, and this forum, the learning Carrara part was a synch, leaving me more time to focus on dilemmas. Of course, knock one dilemma out of the way and you know what happens next, right? So over the past few years, I've spent so much time preparing for the time to actually start 'shooting' video, that I'm getting that roller-coaster feeling in my gut that I'm actually beginning!
Anyways, I hope that when I have something to show, that I can find you and that you might have enough time to see it and tell me what you think.
But back on topic:
So... when can we see this magnificent film? :)
(I know... just excited = me!)
I can't post the film online since I plan to show it in various festivals and this is not allowed. I do plan to have a trailer though soon and this will be available.
Right. I remember from last time. I'm just very excited for you, and really look forward to seeing it :)
Well here is one of the first interviews about "DINNER FOR FEW" including a review!
Zippy Frames, a great website about all animation, has uploaded and interview about Dinner For Few and the way it was put together including some great insides about the thematic and artistic choices I took. Please visit the link for more information and support Zippy Frames for the excellent work they do presenting the latest about independent animation.
Warning, review has some spoilers!
http://zippyframes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2000:dinner-for-few-interview-with-nassos-vakalis&catid=132:european-features&Itemid=100100
Another fine article, NASSOS... thanks for the link ;)