Unlike other animation packages Messiah uses volume based bone weights and weight objects. It is a great piece of program that lets you rig, render, animate at the same time. Messiah is one of the tools in my toolbox beside Modo-ZBrush-Wings3d. If you haven’t already checked it out, this film by him might be worth watching as an example of what can be achieved with a ZBrush, Messiah combination: The link is also very strong because of Taron, who is one of the main programmers of Messiah is also an avid user of Zbrush. This is where the strong tie in to ZBrush lies, because with it, you have the opportunity to make some freakishly exciting and dynamic looking animations with animated displacement maps. You can export the animation you create in it to render in any other program through the built in mdd format, or plug it into other larger packages as a plugin. Speed of creation is really what it’s all about. Also the expression engine is extremely powerful and easy to learn so you can make really very complicated rigs, without getting too geeky about it. It’s deformation speed and quality is extraordinary within the animation industry. The development team is small, but is extremely competent, most of them with 15-20 years in the industry.Īmong it’s strongest points is the fact that as you animate, you can usually just hit play to preview an animation in realtime, without having to make time consuming playblasts throughout. Because of that, it can enjoy the kind of focus like Zbrush has with sculpting, or wings and silo has with modelling. It doesn’t have any form of modelling, but rather it is designed to work singly as an animation program and a rendering platform. What’s so good about that is that it’s tools are created for a reason, with thought for and knowledge of the process by the people who make it. I am a third party developer for it, and I am also an animator and rigger.

Essentially, what it is is an animation program made by animators, which puts it in a very unique little position indeed. Messiah goes particularly well with ZBrush.

Houdini apprentice too small