Cerbera

There are 3 main reasons to UV things: 1. You are exporting somewhere else that requires UV maps, for example a game engine, or where you need cross platform compatibility, like if you are making a model to sell. 2. You are dealing with a shape that is not adequately textured using the standard projection modes. 3. You are sculpting, and want to bake that down to materials. There are exceptions to these of course - for example where the standard projections don't work, sometimes tri-planar mapping will, and it is usually less effort to set that up than it is to UV the object. CBR

Yes :) that looks so much better now ! CBR

Could someone tell me why Instagram is a good thing ? To me it looks awful - square only aspect ratio, and pics too small to be properly viewable and you have to log in to see anything. Kinda like the opposite of the rather nice gallery software we already have here ! Wouldn't we get a nicer result, and better quality images if we did the same thing but on somewhere like DeviantArt etc ? or even Twitter, which has really good image settings now. Although of course someone's gotta Admin it, and poor @Igor doesn't need the hassle I'm sure... I'd offer if I didn't hate Instagram so much :) CBR

This isn't exactly what you want, but it does lead the way, and let you know what can be done with effectors and motext... So one way would be using 2 cloners, and falloffs to make your random word transition into your final word; ie one randomizes and scales down as the other one de-randomizes and scales up ? There will be other ways too - I'm sure our resident Mograph experts will want to chip in their ideas... CBR

That's a great find. Thanks for sharing. Very very useful. CBR

Ha, good idea for a series, and nice looking models ! Wouldn't the scary car be called Mary though ?! :) CBR

Even though it might not be all-quads perfection, a lot of it is, and that is still a pretty bloody awesome model :) How long did you spend on it ? CBR

No need to shoot me a PM - just ask to join the club in the club options !

Sure, no problem...

Hello, and welcome to the forum. I'm a great fan of anything cat-based, so it's a winner for me :) However, you should probably go back and pop an 'H' into the title - 'Panter' means 'someone who is either too hot, or out of breath and panting', whereas I'm sure you were going for 'Panther', which is the big black feline. Could we see the base model wireframe / isoparms ? Always good to see the edge flow of models like this... I also came from Max originally, and I suspect that overall you will be very pleased that you did, even if you find some little modelling / UV annoyances along the way. We do not have anything so useful as 'set flow' for example. Oh, and I should tell you what I didn't find out for a long time after switching to Cinema - the equivalent of Connect in Max is called 'Edge Cut' in Cinema, and you use modifier keys to do pinch and slide, and drag right as you click to add more cuts. CBR

Is 'No Response' the title of your image, or an instruction to cafe members ?! :D CBR

Definitely looking better ! It's pleasing to look around now, and I can enjoy all the little details... bricks and shadows particularly - much better now. You're right - stuff is never finished; only left at the point we ran out of time or inclination :) CBR

Yep, after I updated drivers, and compiled shaders (7 mins here), even my old little GTX650Ti Boost is working very nicely with ProRender now... But is it right that any noise I use now can't have its texture space changed ? That option is greyed out with PR. CBR

Yep, also the OpenSubdiv UV fail bug also remains, but I've whinged about that in another thread, so won't repeat myself here as well. I used to have a lot of confidence that if things didn't work early on in a version they usually did in the updates. Not any more it seems... anyway - sorry they didn't fix yours either ! :/ CBR

I did find that if I override the device settings to allow the CPU to run ProRender, it does surprisingly OK ! :)

My card doesn't even show up in the list of devices :) Too old I guess. New computer time again !

Bad news everyone. Open SubDiv STILL doesn't work with UV's in R19. That is a disappointment. Other things great though, but I was really hoping they'd fix that. Please, MAXON, PLEASE - that feature is almost entirely useless until that works ! My modelling times would be instantly halved if I wasn't having to worry about control loops. I suspect it is the single most productive and effective thing you could do to make modelling radically faster, and yet a year of updates has passed, and we're a whole new version later, and still nobody has addressed this !! What is going on ?! I don't mind admitting that I am going to find it very hard to give them another £540 until they sort this out. CBR

Is anyone else getting the following error when they try to run R19 ? Installation error. Cinema 4d version 17.016 does not match Resource folder version (19.024) PLease reinstall Cinema correctly! When I ran the setup, for some reason the default path was to the R17 directory that already existed, so I changed that to make a new R19 folder, and then the above happened... Edit: Always check there isn't already a .res file (or any other previous installation files) in the folder you extract the zip to ;) So that was me being a plonker. All working now :) CBR

Ha - none at all - didn't even know today was release day ! Is it ? (runs to check e-portfolio)... Oh yes it is ! Thanks for the heads up ! :) We should remind @Igor there are new things to be added to the C4D version options... CBR

Hello, and welcome back :) I take it you know Kiwi moved on to Modo, and stopped running the forum ? So @Igor is the new @3DKiwi now, but to everyone's delight, Nigel is still a regular visitor... 1. Shorts. The basic shape is easy enough, but Cinema is really going to struggle with that waistband on those shorts. Really you need Marvellous Designer for that sort of wrinkling. I am fairly confident that C4D cloth can't be persuaded to behave like that, so natively, you'd either have to fake it with texturing, or model it if you are a suitably genius level modeller and have endless time and patience. The other problem you may run into is how to texture it. That satin sheen is rather difficult to get looking good with no reflectance channel in <R12. But that's not to say it can't be done. I imagine a cheen shader would get you some way there. 2. The shoe on the other hand is a good deal easier if you are any sort of vaguely experienced SDS poly modeller. The sole / tread could be modelled in and a separate piece of geometry, or you could use bump / normal maps or displacement to get the wavy lines. There is a time-lapse for this sort of shoe (of course it won't be identical) here, if that helps. If you slow it down to x0.25 to see what he's doing more clearly you get the added advantage that the hideous music stops playing ! :) Texture-wise it's all fairly simple - again, in R12 you are lacking Irawan cloth surfaces, so you are probably best off finding a hi-res photo texture from which you can make a seamlessly tileable 'blue aero fabric' map and a variation of it for the bump channel. I assume you don't have the proper sculpting tools of later versions, but you can approximate those gentle folds and creases with the brush tools, or if you feel confident, even address them in your edge flow. CBR

Not sure there are many people here who would still use that, so you may get faster help contacting Lazaros directly at nitro4d.com. CBR

It's always a pleasure to try and help you - I am impressed by the way you think about things like backstory and the reasons for things being where they are - there really aren't enough people doing that in their rendering, and I am reminded of it on a daily basis every time I see another chrome sphere in a desert :) Damn those everyday's for encouraging people to rush stuff, and get it out any old how, with only the briefest of thought or consideration for any one aspect... No, I am much more rewarded and impressed by people like you that are willing to spend a long time reviewing and revising an image until you are totally happy with it yourself, and proud to show it to anyone else because you really took that time to do it well. Keep going my friend, you're winning a long way before you get to the end ! ;) CBR

Were you tempted to give him a little white pointy hat ? :)

Getting better all the time... Now I'm worried about contrast and busyness. :) I like high contrast scenes on the whole, and generally speaking they are better and more impactive / impressive for the viewer. But here, it's working against you a little bit - it's a little too harsh, and exactly the same over the whole image, which confuses the eye, and leads to it not flowing across the scene. You may or may not care about such things, but you could fix it either in post, or with additional 'bounce' lighting if you felt so inclined... I see you've left the sunlight almost blowing out in certain areas, which I assume was to try and get the strong sunlight feel, but it's a slightly wanton eye distraction to have front center in an image. I suspect you could solve a lot of it by putting some clouds in the sky to diffuse and soften that sunlight. I'd be tempted to not overexpose it all in Cinema, but resolve to add a softer and more aesthetically subtle exposure / glow in post. Busyness is another thing that distracts the eye, and there's a lot to look at here ! I wonder if it wouldn't be more effective if there was less - small focused groups of objects that draw the eye and hold the attention, rather than 100's of things of equal contrast and and complexity all screaming 'look at me' ! :) If you did want to keep all those things, you could try and direct the eye a bit more with some subtle depth of field, which will help isolate focus, add to perceived depth and increase variation across the image, all to good effect I would have thought. Lastly, do you think your bricks are a little too saturated ? Old rough brickwork like this is sometimes much greyer than you'd think, even in bright sun, and I just feel it's a little overpowering at the moment... Obviously I am being 'maximum picky' here, and if you disagree with me, of course feel free to disregard any or all of my late-night ramblings :) CBR

Well that's good, in that loads of people missed it / were looking for it when it disappeared, but bad if you do have to pay again. Perhaps you should expect to pay a little more for the update, but I agree you shouldn't be paying full price. pls do email Toolfarm, explain, and l.et us know what they say ! Good luck :) CBR