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Morning all. Finally got some decent looking electric arc going on. All procedural. Video and c4d file attached. Add your mesh to Connect object and its ready to go. Simple enough but its using Nexus constraint to get stupidly quick result. Can be replaced with standard Constraints. Muuuch slower though. The xpCover controls where it will shoot the particles (nearest point in this case, few other options there) Enjoy. 1630455350_xP-Electirc.mp4 xP - Electirc__0008.c4d

I'm a member of the forum from the "3dKiwi" era. After the switch of captains there was as bit of upgrading the forum (which took a bit to be honest). I have nothing against paying for the membership, but ARE YOU SERIOUS guys? People are searching for a solution to a problem -> they find a link in google -> you have to pay to find out if this will solve your problem. NOPE. I would never do that. I'm paying my sub just because this was and still is the best C4D forum and I like helping other guys when I can. READING THE ANSWERS SHOULD BE FREE!.

I only occasionally want to use blender. Most of the time it's when I find a blender file online that I want to do something with. I know how to export to fbx, And that is also the extend I've ever used Blender for. I'd like to get a general knowledge of blender so I know where to look for things. Tutorials for beginners are unfortunately also focusing on general 3D concepts. A tutorial I just started spend 15 minutes on the view-port and navigation. It had about a minute of information that I didn't know yet. And video tutorials are unfortunately very hard for skimming through. So, does anyone know of any blender tutorials that focus on coming from C4D?

Planetside have announced a new app with C4D support and a way more intuitive interface than before. It's in early access but doesn't look like it's too far away. The channel linked here has a few videos up already digging into the settings Interesting stuff.

All is good and nice but I find it very weird that it renders directly onto a Cubemap projection. I don't know about you but my eye cannot unsee the slight distortion at the very edges and corners of the cube. That dome sky gizmo reminds me of the Bryce GUI...

Maybe have a look at Wolfr4D site: https://www.youtube.com/@Wolf-4D/videos He switched from C4D to Blender some day and made some tuts especially for those, who wanted to switch also. And he did some tutorials for items he also had made for C4D users. Maybe there you can find something you are looking for.

You can convert the nodes setup by going edit / current scene state to classic, or alternatively, you can copy whole setup into object group capsule and then it will sit in object manager.

Reading down your comprehensive list above, I am struck by why I never seem to encounter these issues in hours and hours of my own unwrapping, and I think we are using different methods ! The 'rules' I follow are thusly: 1. Only do automatic unwrap on sections of mesh clearly made for it. 2. Define poly selections, and project those frontally from all the best angles, then use 4, 5 and 6 keys to put those and align them where I want them. 3. Optionally Pin and Relax those meshes, optionally using cuts I have saved to a selection tag 4. Activate UV options to show Distortion (100%) and Island Connectivity (now I can see what connects where) 5. Use 'weld and relax' mainly in poly mode (instead of weld, on the whole) or manual UV point terracing to combine islands if necessary (and I tend to move the islands adjacent to where I want them to end up before doing this). 6. Further relaxment if I went the manual terrace route. 7. UV Packing. You will detect something of the 'legacy' in my workflow, and that is true - I liked the 'old' way of unwrapping stuff, and that continues to work for me very nicely in Cinema, enhanced as it is by the new layout and UV mode details. Occasionally I find that approach isn't optimal or takes a bit long for really organic stuff, so only then do I head over to the newer cut and unwrap tools like the Ministry of flat-based UV Unwrap etc. And because I don't use that much I guess that may be why your specific issues are new to me ! 🙂 You are right that in my example above the red areas are less than ideal (and that is the best Cinema's relax routines can manage using workflow above), but the Magnet (UV) and brush relax (modelling) tools are there to sort out situations like that, where it is important using the old workflow. If you have connectivity turned on you usually can see what will weld where. The UV Weld tool does not move islands first, and I believe that is intended. If you want to move islands at the same time, use weld and relax instead. The help is very illuminating about precisely how that works, but in trying it myself I have found a few bugs and moments of unexpected behaviour... I can't answer your questions on texel density or UDIMs alas (though fairly sure Maxon is aware of and working on those) - as a mainly modeller I have so far considered those 'none of my business' , and there are people much better qualified than me to comment on those aspects. CBR

This comprehensive course is a year or more old but uses the new interface and is pretty highly regarded, certainly better than grabbing at random Youtube courses for each topic. https://www.cgboost.com/courses/blender-launch-pad