Messiah offers real-time playback speed, which is a blessing to any animator. Without having to waste time on previews, animators can work quickly and efficiently to produce a higher quality of work in a shorter time.

Messiah supplies a no-nonsense user interface that is easy to navigate and customize, allowing the user to feel more comfortable within the 3D environment. A pleasant surprise is how many settings the user is allowed to change to suit their personal workflow.

Messiah 3.0 does not have it's own modeling tools, but allows you to import a model from a variety of 3D modeling programs, including Lightwave 5.x or 6.x objects (.lwo), Wavefront objects (.obj), 3DS (.3ds), BioVision Mocap Data (.bvh), DXF objects (.dxf), Messiah Motion (.fxm), Messiah Scene (.fxs), Motion Analysis Hierarchical Translation Rotation (.htr).

Once the model is imported the user can create an animation rig. You point and click to create the bone, and Messiah uses its own initiative and skins the bone for you. Creating an armature for a character can often be a frustrating, time-consuming affair, but with Messiah, the process is easy. Copying an armature from one character to another is easy, and requires only a small amount of time to adjust the rig to fit the new character.

Animating with a fully rigged character in Messiah is as easy as spreading butter on bread. Nothing holds you back and you can truly lose yourself in the joy of breathing life and personality into the character. Changing between the timeline and the dope sheet is a simple click away, and for someone like me who uses a pose to pose method to create the initial animation, easy access to the dope sheet is a must.

Editing and deleting keys is a quick, easy process, and Messiah offers a variety of on-screen tools and sliders that are great for facial deformations and phonemes.

The compose tab allows the user to create clips for the character, which are easy to insert anywhere on the timeline. This is especially useful and time-saving for adding walk sequences into a shot.

To render, one must bake out the character motion and then load the character in the software that they wish to render in. The Messiah plug-in then deforms the vertices of the character frame-by-frame. This process is a bit frustrating at first, but again, Messiah does all the hard work, which allows you to concentrate on other aspects of the production.

On the whole, PMG's Messiah 3.0 is a powerful piece of software, focusing specifically on the needs of character animators and rigging artists. It is affordable, straight-forward and offers plenty of long awaited animation tools. PMG's innovations with this software have caused a lot of excitement in the animation industry and I look forward to enjoying future upgrades of this software.

You Will Need:

• Photoshop CS2 or CS3
• Grunge/Abstract Brushes 
• The Font you want (Text Style)
• A render (Cut out picture). 

Directions

1. Open up a new document, measuring 450px X 150px with transparent background.
2. Open your render.
3. Drag your render into your blank signature document and resize it according to how you want it to look. (Press Ctrl+t then hold shift and resize your image.)
4. Press Ctrl+J a few times to duplicate your image, then spread the duplicates across the canvas to cover most of the transperancy this will be your background. Then merge every duplicate and leave ur original one seperate.
5. Now Duplicate your background.
6. On your lower background apply a Gaussian Blur and set the radius to 6.7 px. (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur)
7. Now with your top layer add a ripple effect, set the size to medium and the amount to 280%. (Filter > Distort > Ripple.)
8. Then set the opacity of the ripple layer to about 25% (you will find this option just above your layers)
9. Now create a new layer and make sure its on top of the backgrounds. Set your colors to black and white and use your grunge/Abstract brushes to brush on that layer, while alternating between black and white.
10. Now change the layer type to either overlay or soft light depending on what looks the best. (You will find this option just to the left of your opacity tool, it will say normal.)
11. Drag the layer with your render on it, to the top so it appears on top of the background.
12. Create a new layer and place it behind your render. Then select your rectangular marquee tool to select some areas across the canvas like this. (Press shift to add more than one)
13. Use the paint bucket tool to fill these in with white, then set the layer to soft light. (You can repeat this step with back aswell to create a different effect)
14. Create a new layer on top of the render, now do some light, white grunge/abstract brushing and set the layer to soft light and adjust the opacity until it looks good. You should end up with something like this.
15. Now create another layer above all the others and press ctrl+a to select all. Then go to edit > stroke.
16. Add a stroke that is black 3px then press ok.
17. Add a stroke that is white 2px then press ok.
18. Add a stroke that is black 1px then press ok. (This will give a nice border.)
19. Now all thats left to do is add your text. I personally dont't make it to big and drop the opacity of it a touch to make it blend in a little but it totally up 2 you.

And there you go your done.