Cerbera

Whilst some of the model is OK, rather a lot of it is not. You've used horrible lazy booles for some of it, which can't be considered proper modelling, and you have paid the price for this with the horrendous topology that booles generate. Then we have the proliferation of triangles everywhere which, whilst probably not too detrimental to this particular scene, because most of them are on planar areas, it can't be called good technique. Also some problematic complex poles. There is nothing about this model that couldn't be done with 100% quads, no booles, and no generator objects that produce all the horrible triangles. So that is what you should be aiming for if you're trying to improve your modelling. You can use these time saving generators, but you must take the time to clear up after them if you want Grade A models. CBR

Thanks for making this. I'll add it to my list of videos to refer people to when they ask about such things :) CBR

Pls check cafe rules. CBR

What do you mean by 'in presential mode' ? CBR

Well not me. BP as it is now is easy enough to learn (with the right tutorials and a little time / practice), and why wait to be able to UV stuff ? And I would bet that any solid grounding you had in the current version would help rather than hinder any subsequent efforts to learn the new version. CBR

Oh that is waaaaaaay cool ! Love the reindeer's nose bit :) CBR

In the interests of general levity, I'd like to talk about R100. I'm expecting a neural net that interfaces directly with my brain, and just does whatever I think of. All this would be displayed via some sort of quantum holography, with a new tactile / sensory feedback loop system that allows me to sculpt polygons by wishing them into the right places. I hope at this point Cinema will be self-repairing, self-improving, self-aware and engaged in perpetual cyber-war with Maya. Oh the joy of speculation... CBR

The walls and wall lights are working well. Is that IES you're using for those ? And the chair looks like a decent enough model from what we can see of them. But you are lacking some details that would give it a more realistic feel. It really is very rare that a room has no skirting or coving of some kind... The translucent curtain doesn't look like one because there are no folds / creases / variation apparent in it. What is that thing on the wall on the right ? We don't have enough detail in it to show the viewer what its function is. If it's a desk, it needs stuff on it, if it's air conditioning, it needs a plug and wire etc. Otherwise you risk making it look like an inexplicable 3D block in a scene. No mat or rug is ever perfectly straight on the floor, and / or perfectly flat and uniform throughout. And it's very thick for a vinyl mat, yet lacks any visual detail to tell us it's a carpet if that's what it is... There is no dirt or wear or variation on any object in the scene, which is making it look very sterile, and not adding to realism. The floor particularly looks like it has never seen a footstep and is a good deal shinier than floors in meeting rooms usually get. Where are the electric and data sockets / phones / pens / pads / easels and other things typically found in meeting rooms worldwide ? Adding some of these will subconsciously justify the space as a viable meeting place, and add realism that way. It seems unusual to have no overhead lighting for the main table, yet to have the featureless walls brilliantly lit by multiple spotlights... Lastly, no offence, but it's quite a dull room, which not very much visually engaging in it. That's not to say it's badly done, but if it's a portfolio piece, I would have thought you need to produce visually exciting work that will jump out at potential clients from the hundreds of reels they will invariably review all the time. I just thinking we're lacking a little 'wow factor'. I would add some high detail plants maybe, and / or put interesting / practical objects on the table and other surfaces or maybe some pictures on the walls - something to attract the eye and hold the attention. And maybe adjust the camera angle so we can see more of the glassy desk reflections, which I'd bet are more visually arresting than the walls. Hope that helps. CBR

It's not the camera angle ;) What sort of issues did you have ? I've always found the spiral staircase rig to be pretty solid... CBR

There's lots of good things about this, and lots that is working well - I particularly like the lamps and the coffee machine. One thing I wouldn't like to do though, is try and navigate those stairs every day if I wasn't some sort of acrobat. Someone's gonna die on those when they come down bleary-eyed one morning :) I forget what the standard formula / ratio is for stairs, but I'm sure there is one, and that this isn't it ! Grass looks really good from a distance, but are you not tempted to try it with hair based grass in the foreground ? CBR

We all know about Alt-D to hide the axis, but but perhaps even more useful is F12, which we can hold down to select directly through the axis, without hiding it. Very quick and helpful. Just wanted that on its own in a searchable post somewhere so that next time I forget, or noobs ask I don't have to bother @3DKiwi from whom this top tip originally came. As I asked both MAXON and Cineversity, who didn't know (!!) I thought it was in danger of becoming 'lost knowledge', but not any more ! ;) CBR

It would make sense to save the motherload of goodness for a nice round number I guess ;) CBR

Only you can answer that. Leave C4D only if it annoys you sufficiently to do so or if you have tried another app that feels more intuitive to you (good luck with that ! :) If you know one bit of 3D software you have a vast advantage learning another one over someone who is new to everything. Although all the major apps have their unique ways of doing things (Blender and Modo most obviously), your knowledge of 3D language and terms will usually transfer straight over. Z-brush is the one exception I can think of to that; its interface is just a peculiar mystery, no matter how good you are with 3D elsewhere !! C4D is principally used for Motion Design, and as such is in not much danger of being displaced by anything except Houdini, which is hardcore difficult to learn. Of course the 2 apps play very nicely together as well so they aren't just in competition. And Maya have just added motion toolset that is vastly superior to what they had before. But I would speculate the very opposite might happen, and that people like me, who hate Autodesk's monthly bollocks may move to C4D who, for the time being at least, continue to offer a permanent license. It is mainly MoGraph that used to be the separator, but others have caught up recently, so the gaps are smaller. In general, I would say that the advantage C4D has over everything else is that it only takes a few years to comprehensively learn - not 10 like Max or Maya ! :) Yes. I came from Max. And fan as I will always be of 'the stack', I am totally pleased I moved to C4D. Max's interface (like Maya's!) is still a total state compared to the sleek organisational excellence and intuitiveness of C4D, and there is simply nothing more reliable, certainly not 3DS Max ! So that's my 10ps worth, but of course everyone will give you different but equally valid answers to all these questions. Predictably, most of us here are somewhat biased ;) CBR

Hey Cafe Ever wished cubic mapping did soft transitions on the edges ? Do it anyway, with 3 masked projector shaders like in this excellent new tutorial from C4D avenger Pingo van der Brinkloev. Could well do away with most of your UV mapping tasks, so if that's you, it's a biggie ! As the guy says, would be quite nice if this could be more native and less hacky, but it sure is a nice little workaround / UV unwrap avoidance tool to have up your sleeve, so something of an essential share I reckon... CBR

Have you got any idea where you saw it at all ? Generally, I mean, like YouTube or Vimeo or something ? The only good Lindenmeyer System tutorial I've seen is this one, but it's certainly not the one you mentioned, and don't know if it helps you do what you're trying to do... CBR

WooHoo !!! Got my links over the weekend - thanks Holger. Make Quads and Clip Symmetry are awesome !! Really like both BlueNight and Modo colour schemes as well. CBR

Hey Cafe It seems that MAXON, whose Quick Tips videos used to be about the limit of what they did tutorial-wise (apart from Cineversity of course) have upped their game recently, and have just dropped the first 2 parts of what will be a massive 16 hour multi-part tutorial on building a space colony environment by Adam Benton. It's very thorough, and covers everything from initial sketches and planning through to render settings and post work. This will be most helpful for beginners and intermediate users to show them a complete project process I'd imagine, but also worth the more advanced of us giving it a look as it's quite an interesting project aside from any skills development. So just linking that for whoever hasn't seen it yet. Here's the first part - the 2nd part links on from that. Hopefully they'll be some more of these - and thanks MAXON for doing this one ! CBR

Yes that's right.

I had a kick-ass Atari ST for music production, which I expensively upgraded to 2MB RAM. Devastating firepower, hey ? ;) And the processor in my doorbell runs faster than what got man to the moon the first time round ! CBR

Yep, that's pretty immense :) Some lovely moments in that, putting the gun away being my favourite. First class sound design as well. CBR

Might be able to save you a wait there, @3D-Pangel we both put our wire frames up in the original thread... Don't know if the Vectorizer has done any improvements since then, but it was pretty damn good the first time :) CBR

Superb. Lovely textures and lighting... CBR

I think he was vaporized ! Or went to bed. One of those...

I've always assumed that language and abuse are the main things that system is for, but personally I have never seen anyone get any warning points, so I've always guessed it's just part of the new forum software and don't know whether Admins are using it or not... I suppose @Igor is the man to ask ! CBR

Good one, Al - the world needs more good UV tuts, and now it needs them a lot less ! :)