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Martijn Korstanje aka Kingcoma is a well known 3D artist from Netherlands and our fellow member.Currently lives in Belgium and is active in industry for 20+ years. He worked at graphics and 3D companies in the past but for last 15 years he has his own company. Apart from addictive 3D passion he enjoys nature, traveling, photography, Lego, how stuff works and loves driving his car. We are very happy to present him and his fabulous work! Describe yourself in a single word: Downtoearth : ) How did you get into C4D and 3D in general? A couple of centuries ago, some new computers arrived at the school I was attending. Instantly loved working on it (I think we used to work with Photoshop 5) and a couple of years later I bought my first Mac. Spent almost every day practicing and discovering new things, for hours and hours. I was a pretty quick learner, so once I got the hang of Illustrator and Photoshop, I came across Swift3D, and started experimenting with that (very basic 3d). Because there were lots of limitations and I really wanted to make my drawings and characters come to life, I searched for other, a bit more advanced software. 3ds max was only available on windows, so that was out of the question, and Maya had a HUGE learning curve. And then I bumped into cinema4d. Love at first sight! I can’t count the evenings / nights / days I spent learning it and trying out new things, but it’s a massive amount of time. Which area interest you the most? Modelling techniques. I’ve always been a fan of nice and clean topology, and I really enjoy figuring out the best and nicest way to model something, whether hard surfaces or organic / characters. Other then that, I love doing animations. How things move, how slow or fast things move, how a character moves when he’s just standing there. What does the left hand do when the right hand’s busy doing something? Whenever I have character animation jobs, I always find myself standing up and acting a bit first, to see what a ‘natural’ movement is and what not. Really silly, but super helpful. What other apps are you using and what for? Mainly Illustrator, Photoshop and aftereffects. Illustrator for vector paths, creating logo’s or creating packaging or visuals that need to be put on 3d models. Photoshop for textures, compositing and retouch. Aftereffects for animations, putting together all different parts (rendersequence, sounds, music, texts, logos, etc) Which learning resources you used and would recommend? In the very beginning, there weren’t that much tutorials online, so you had to figure it out yourself or look for help on different forum (such as core4d, previously c4dcafe). Most tutorials were screenshots and written text. Later, more and more video tutorials came along, which are very easy to follow and you can actually see what’s going on and what you’re missing or doing wrong. Whenever I need to learn or check something nowadays, I usually check Core4D, Cineversity, tutorials from GreyScaleGorilla, or when I can’t find it on there, general google searches. Do you think talent is overrated and can be offset with a lot of hard work? I don’t think talent is overrated. I think when you have talent, it comes a bit more natural and some things are a bit more ‘easy’. The thing with 3d is, it’s not just one thing. It’s a boatload of things. You can be talented in modelling, but really suck at texturing. Or you’re an average rigger, but you master simulations. Your drawing skills aren’t all that, but when that Xpresso or Python script editor open up, you’re on fire. Overall, I think everyone has something they're good at (or better at), and I think in 3d-land, you always have to work hard, talented or less talented. Your character work is stellar, what made you focus on them? Thanks! As a kid, I wanted to be a comicbook-artist, always drawing creatures and characters. Later it shifted to Illustrator, and after that, I really wanted to translate my thoughts and creativity of those characters in 3d, so I could animate them, look at them from all sides (which you can’t with 2d obviously) and put the expressions and humor in them I so clearly see in my head. I also admire Pixar / Dreamworks characters and animation, the details in them, the movements, the humor. When I watch animations, I don’t just watch them, I anaylise them (sometimes frame by frame) to try and learn new things or ways to improve myself. Your best advice for newcomers, tips or tricks to pick up? Have fun, don’t take it too seriously and practice, practice, practice. Give it your own twist, don’t just copy something blindly, and don’t stop learning new ways or techniques! Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I really hope I can continue doing what I’m doing now, making fun and friendly characters to brighten someones day or to put a smile on someones face. Thoughts on AI? It’s a bit frightening, hence the answer above.. I hope I can continue doing my job til I retire. I probably keep doing 3d even when I’m retired though. But yeah, as many other artists, I’m worried about this. AI as a tool to help the artist is great, but AI taking over would be lame. Lately there are more and more examples of AI that I receive in briefings, but they’re only used to show ‘something like this’ or an overall moodboard / look&feel. Fortunately, clients can be very tricky and very unclear as to what they want exactly or it’s the oposite: super-extremely specific and detailed. It’s part of my job to assist them in the whole process of creating the perfect character or visual for them, and advise them where I can. Top 3 wishes for C4d I don’t have any wishes actually, I’m very happy with all the tools available right now and I don’t have any problems making the things I want / have to make. If you could send a message for Maxon, what would you say? A big thanks. It’s a marvelous piece of software which I love to work with and not a week goes by where I find something new which I haven’t seen before (or found out about) after all these years. I think it’s amazing people can create software like this, have all the options you can possibly imagine, making it possible for people like me to create art and have the ability to do what I love to do most. Message for Core4D? Also a HUGE thanks. For all the talks, insights, tips, tricks, questions, answers, tutorials, models, contests. I wouldn’t be the artist I am today without the people, help and knowledge found on Core4D. If people want to contact you? They can, of course! I’m just an email, phonecall or whatsapp away https://www.kingcoma.com phone +32 479 43 61 82 email: info@kingcoma.com Thank you very much for your time and all the best in future endeavours!

Dear members We are introducing new section where we will interview industry professionals, artists, programmers and various interesting individuals across the board. Understanding what motivates and drives someone, gaining insight into minds, methods and approaches that are used, tips, tricks and plethora of valuable information in particular field of interest will make this series very interesting. Already we have couple of interviews in pipeline and some are with very elusive individuals which usually never go public but they agreed to do it for CORE4D : ) We will not shy away from asking any question, even if the subject is provocative or controversial. Stay tuned, first interview will be available shortly!

In your prefs turn on layer colors, now you will be able to colour code objects Add a new timeline window (top right, either a plus or an export type icon depending on c4d version. Now drag and drop objects, materials etc into here for a custom timeline of certain items. You can reset this behaviour in any timeline by going to the bookmark menu and selecting Default Bookmark Rename tags and shaders so you can see what youre doing. eg if Im animating 20 gradient shaders in a scene, all I see in the timeline is Gradient, Gradient, Gradient.... Go to the basic tab of the gradient shader and give it a new unique name so it shows up in the timeline NEVER use linear keyframes, they absolutely suck and make all adjoining bezier keyframes work like arse. Instead just click the two "zero" icons (zero angle, zero length) This gives you a linear keyframe without screwing up other keyframes.

Dash for Unreal Engine. Looks pretty wicked.

It would be nice to have this kind of interview, and yes, I feel that C4D just target motion graphic artists but it can do sooo much more... I'm an architectural visualization for example and I can tell you that with the current toolset and coupled with a proper render engine C4D is an extremely solid platform, but in this regard it's still neglected by the management... I mean.. never see anyone from Maxon posting about this field, only Mograph and little else, and because of this archiviz plugin developers and users are often looking elsewhere. Of course this is only my personal experience as an archiviz, but I'm sure many other fields are neglected as well.

To be honest these are 2 fairly rubbish options, I'd go back to your IT team and tell them to put some actual effort into finding a decent machine. The Xeon is an old outdated pile of garbage, are HP really trying to sell you a new machine with 7 year old cpus in it? The 5696 xeon system wouldnt be any faster to us than your current system. It would render faster but thats it. Unless this thing is sat in a corner gathering dust and theyre just offering you someone elses old system? The i9 system would be much faster to use as a workstation, though again, this system is 3 years old, this must be your IT team offering you old scraps, they cant be buying these systems new can they? Either way, it would be faster to use, but half the speed for actually rendering. What you should really be looking for is either an intel 13900 or a ryzen 7950x. Either of these would render faster than your current system and would be roughly 4-5x faster for you to use for everything else.

filter > animated only Otherwise your timeline will be filled with empty and duplicated tracks