web analytics

Calling all artards!

Have I got a deal for you!

Project Messiah offers an industrial-strength, professional level 3D modeling and animation tool (it’s called “Messiah” because the code was originally developed to do special effects for the film Dogma. Or so they said at Boing Boing. It’s not listed on their film credits).

Serious professional tool. The basic edition is usually $599 and the pro version $1,195, but they’re trying a viral marketing experiment.

Sign up now and you can reserve a copy of basic for $10 or pro for $40. The deal is, if they reach a certain level of sales by a certain date, then everyone who signed on gets a copy at that price (and then the software reverts to its regular price). If they don’t reach that level of sales, we all get our money back and go home empty handed.

They won’t say what their intended level of sales is, or the closing date — but the progress bar has gone from 0 to about 50% on the first day, so it’s looking good.

Fair warning — animation tools aren’t fun toys to fiddle around with casually. Not at first, anyway. There’s a very steep learning curve just to get on top of the basics, and powerful computing needed to render any kind of serious animation.

But when you get the basics down, 3D modeling is the most fun I have ever had with my eyeballs. It’s fantastically engaging.

It’s like carpentry without all the splinters and blood and severed fingers.

Anyhow, it’s an interesting marketing idea. I’ve ponied up my forty bucks and we’ll see what happens.

p.s. If that’s too rich for your blood, there’s always Blender. It’s free.

p.p.s. A strangely hypnotic animation I did in 3DS. Also, my favorite comment thread ever. If I do say so myself.

February 10, 2011 — 2:03 pm
Comments: 26