Cerbera

Yeah - I'm with you there. It was worth it when I was hobbyist, and is even more so now when just a single typical job pays for a year's MSA - it's a no-brainer :)

Done :)

I'll do it for 9, 995 ;)

Yep, what he said. You'd have to have some pretty incredible skills, and immediate feedback from client at several key stages to have any hope of turning that round in 24 hours. CBR

Yeah, that's the only thing; don't get more than 2 versions behind, or you'll have to buy it again with no discount. You can check the MAXON site to see how much they are charging to go from 16 to 18 (it's roughly half price), but they don't even mention any versions before that, so I think you'd be back to full price were you trying to upgrade from 15. CBR

see 'complete atomization' ;)

New taser does complete atomization, and provides attractive particle displays when stuff explodes.

It's OK. I've stood them down. That was a test, GI Vector, and you have just passed your annual review. Newer, better taser in post.

That is a lot of rain. Hopefully the Texan spirit will pull you all through... I see you've already started :) Seriously though, hope you're all OK... CBR

Oh thank you. Nailed it ! CBR

No need, my friend, I've become convinced it's beyond me :/

Your instructions aren't very clear. I'm trying to follow your cube tutorial above, and it's not working. I just don't know where I'm going wrong... CBR

R18 will continue to be a powerful piece of software no matter what comes after it, and you don't have to have the latest version of something to be producing quality work. I stopped updating Photoshop when they started their monthly rental scam scheme, and nothing I have needed to do since has not been possible in the older version of the software. You'll be good for a few years yet I would have thought... CBR

Very cool :) Genius animation, and awesome sound design. CBR

First of all it's a very nice render, beautifully textured and lit, so definitely winning there. But the modelling isn't going quite so well, as @VECTOR mentioned. You're actually getting small shading errors if you look closely at the ports areas, and you could do with another edge loop between the top of them and the ridge above so that the ports don't disrupt the edge flow of the circular rim. However it is probably not so severe that you couldn't sort it out by increasing the phong angle a bit. You also have some complex poles that don't need to be there. The booles are horrible - look what they've done to your topology ! And there was no need for them - you had easily enough segmentation there to model the holes properly. But don't be discouraged - your excellent work in the texturing, lighting and rendering, combined with no SDS has largely mitigated any dodgy modelling to all but the most critical eye. CBR

Yep, just keep doing it, and keep caring that you are doing it well, and you'll get there :) In a year you'll look back at your initial meshes and laugh your ass off :)

Yep, 'pretty good' might be slightly optimistic; what I meant by that is that it's not too bad for someone in the early stages of learning modelling, and that it's probably good enough to animate OK :) That isn't to say the mesh is ideal - you have some weird edge flow going on in places, and complex poles (6 or more points convening) in a few more places (mainly hands), but most of the less-than-ideal edge flow isn't where you will be deforming when animating, so you'll probably get away with most of it ;) CBR

SSS working nicely there :) I assume you are showing us the subdivided wireframe ? If so that's Ok, and your basic loops look pretty good. But if that's the base besh isoparms, without subdivision, then I'd say it's too high poly in places to be animating easily. CBR

I like the general feel of this, but it's not passing any 'spot the noise' tests for me at the moment :) Especially on the floor, but elsewhere too the dirt looks like sort of low res smudges with not enough detail or variation in them. The window frames at the end are suffering worst from this. So whereas you may be using one noise type of quite low octaves, try a layer shader with at least 4 different types at different scales, and with lots of octave detail and attention to delta to make sure you are getting nice detailed roughwork. And you may want to consider a displacement based texture for the mossy walls - we can tell too easily on the right hand side that this is totally flat. Oh, has the greenhouse glass got any physical thickness to it ? I'm not sure I'm expecting the wall bricks to warp like that when viewed through it... Other than that, looking good so far ! :)

They do eventually. But it adds value to have them on Cineversity first I guess...

I suspect they are, but don't know where myself, sorry :) I haven't checked, but do the GSG links go to the CV versions, or are they kept somewhere else ? As much as I love the guy (and he really is one of my all-time favourites), this session wasn't as advertised, and was a little disappointing for me as I'd seen it all before. Instead of doing what the title suggested, he spent the whole time basically showing the same musical mushroom rig he's been demoing in the last 3 Ask GSG videos ! No new info at all, which is very rare for him ! :) On the plus side, you could go to twitch and watch his almost identical session there !

Yes that's damn annoying isn't it, specially when you're trying to get to sleep to a Siggraph presentation, and it just stops 3 mins after you've got into bed :) I too have noticed problems with CV playback, which for me at least, seem to be worse when there are a lot of people watching, like in the week after Siggraph videos first go up :) Your 16MB connection is totally fine for even 4K video, so the problem is not likely to be your end. Unfortunately, there is also not likely to be anything you can do about it either, other than find the videos elsewhere, and/or notifying Cineversity that you're having problems, and seeing if there is anything they can do their end. CBR

When we haven't got time to do it properly ;) Or in very specific modelling circumstances where we need edge flow to be a certain way and also need sharp corners in a way that would adversely affect that edge flow were we to try and accommodate them with additional topology. Another legitimate use for it is when you are doing high detail panel modelling on a lower res mesh, and need to split a section away from the main for additional subdivision, so that would require that you would use edge weighting to keep the corners perfectly meeting their counterparts on the main model, for a seamless surface, despite separate objects, SDS and non-uniform subdivision. If your model isn't ever going to be shared, or end up in another system, you can probably get away with edge weighting like you are using it - you don't need compatibility with other programs. But you asked for a critique, so my point is only to let you know that it should be the last solution you turn to for modelling - it is almost always superior to control your curvature with geometry and use no edge weighting at all.

All the cloners or all the clones ? Terminology very important here :) We need a lot more information really. What are you trying to make, will it be moving, and if so how, what are the things you are trying to clone, what aspects of the cloner do you need to maintain, are the cloned objects dynamic - that sort of thing... CBR

Aha ! Thomas, it IS you ! I knew your name was familiar, but couldn't quite think where or when :) Of course I'd be delighted to look it over when it's ready... J