Cerbera

Excellent use of SPD there. I'd be interested to know more about if and how you translated the photos you took into usable UV maps. I imagine that would have been quite difficult to match photos to the mesh layout when viewed flat. Or did you just make a 'general rock texture' and not worry about if it was accurately mapped because it looked fine anyway ? Thanks CBR

Oh it is nice to see things modelled properly :) IQP GOLD STAR CBR

Yeah - very very cool :) Lovely renders. CBR

The biggest thing wrong with this is the lack of edge bevelling.. No surface in the real world has perfectly sharp corners / edges. You could also do with some improved texturing and some Ambient Occlusion / shadows to make this look real. CBR

Excellent share - thanks for that Igor CBR

If it isn't fixed in the next update, I will have to start writing to them / phoning them - we can't go on like this. I'd better just check that @HSrdelic and @RBarrett are aware of the problem... Same applies to OpenSubDiv. That has been unusable since release because it still won't work with UV's ! CBR

Indeed. I cannot for the life of me figure out what causes it to work sometimes and not others, but when it's not working it drives me properly insane, and I have to go and watch cat videos until calmness returns ! :) PLEASE, @MaxonUSA, help us out here !!

That's some nice work there, and couldn't agree more about the knife tool, although I can confirm they still haven't completely eradicated all the issues with 'cut visible only' being ignored. As soon as they do that, it will be capital awesome :) CBR

Just checking you've all seen this, on MAXON's site, about the new short film by Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. It's some properly lovely character work, great C4D use, and is SO shiny :) And comes with a load of cool little breakdowns, and making-of's even though we can't see the whole finished film as far as I can see... So, enjoy that :) CBR

Yep - I'm in too - always happy to learn cool new stuff from Hrvoje... and I'm particularly interested in that little turtle, and all its L-system goodness ;) CBR

Probably not. IME, no1 gives a sh1t what qualifications you've got; they are only interested in your showreel and how much you charge.

No, I didn't overdo it, but my standards are high. Everybody will be different of course, and there is no right or wrong to it, other than the results you produce, and how they stand up to everyone else's...

That very much wasn't my point. Quite the opposite, if anything. I was trying to get across that if you are going to ask people to pay you for your expertise in this program , then you'd better have that expertise. Too often I see people selling their services far too soon, when they have nothing like the level of ability they need. So just warning against that really... I'm not the fastest learner, so I waited 7 years until I felt I had enough skills in enough areas of the program to be confident that I was able to solve 99% of the challenges clients give me with no external help. How you feel now is how I felt in Year 2. So it really is just the addition of time and experience that moves you from one hobby-wise state of affairs to something more commercially viable.

You can want to be perfect at both - nothing wrong with that as long as you are prepared to put the years of work in... You just gotta keep doing stuff in the program, every day. And work at it until it does pop, or whizz, or whatever else you're looking for...

So perhaps your key talent is to be a technician rather than a creative spark ? What do you do to inspire yourself and improve / develop your ideas ?

Well, talent is just natural disposition for something, so you don't acquire it from anywhere specific. You either have it (less time investment required), or you don't (maximum time investment required). Or you may be good at some areas of the program, and worse at others, which is the case with most people that use it I would imagine. For example, I have some natural propensity for modelling and hierarchy, and absolutely none for Xpresso. So I got my Xpresso chops with hard work and (a lot of) time. All depends how your brain is wired, and what sort of tasks you have optimised it for so far in life. Some people find this easy, some people find it a constant struggle. 3D is, at the end of the day, quite hard, despite how easy MAXON try and make it for beginners. CBR

Any good ? CBR

I do like a bit of dark art, and that's very dark, and very excellent :) Great, original work. CBR

Yeah, that doesn't really happen with MAXON :) We see what's in R19 when R19 is released. At least we get to see the new version before we have to renew our MSA's, but that's about as much heads-up as we get, other than what the rumour mill generates. However, MAXON have responded to frequent criticism of / exasperation with this policy, and have now got a corporate blog that also doesn't give much away, and the occasional little video snippets of things that are coming soon, but is at least something. Still won't tell you what's in 19, alas. The only rumours I have heard involve updating UV tools / Bodypaint, but that could be wishful thinking, and it would be mad to rely on hearsay to make any purchase decisions. CBR

Hmmm. My first impression is that this is going to be very very hard to try and do in C4D. Even in the latest release I can't think of many tools that could help. We can rule out cloth, collision and dynamics straight away because of 'proximity explosion problems'. Which only leaves hair, joints or connectors really. And I don't envy the person who tries to set that up using either of those ! Maybe hair can do it ???? But you'd have to be something of a hair expert to make that happen... Very interested to hear from anyone that can see a way, because initially at least, I really can't ! :) CBR

Well said. I find there are quite a lot of clients like that in the game :)

Pretty much only if you are using it with dynamics and require a low poly version to run that at speed in the viewport.

So, if you wanna get paid £50 an hour, which seems reasonable, that budget gives you 100 hours to get that done. Let's ignore all the paths, and the greenery for now, and just look at the 18 houses and 2 massive buildings. Just for sh1ts and giggles let's pretend we're doing 20 houses, which leaves 5 hours tops to finish each one. That may be enough for the smaller, less complex ones, but I'd bet it's not for the big ones, or even the more complex smaller models. And that's just the modelling. If they want things exact dimensions as well, that takes even longer ! And all those hedges might take quite some time to get looking just as they want, and by the time you've factored in trees, and sky, and lighting, and placement, and roads, and plots, we're running to about +50 or more hours over the 100 we allowed ourselves while we were trying to get paid properly :) So working at roughly that sort of scale, if you have to put in 200 hours to get this done, then you'd be on £25 / hour, and less if it takes longer. I have done jobs for £25 an hour, but it's not ideally what I'm looking for, and £5000 for all that does seem at the bare limits of feasibility if the buildings are as detailed as you suggest.. I certainly couldn't model and texture all that in 100 hours. But then I am quite slow :) I'm sure there are speed-freak modellers out there who would tear through this, and perhaps it's one of those you're bidding against. I am working on a long term Film Foundation project at the moment for a record low of £10 per hour, but I've chosen to do that because of the artistic integrity of the project, and because it's all of the sort of work I most like, and none of the stuff I don't, and doesn't get in the way of better paid work. So I guess you just have to weigh each job on its merits and how much of PITA' it is ! CBR

What, this sort of thing ? Where you only need incredibly simplified buildings, or was much more detail required ? And how many of the houses were the same ? It's really difficult to tell without all the details. CBR

Yep, that is what he asked :) But going forward with it, those rounded panels will really get in his way when he gets to the front detail, so merely pointing out that he is probably best to continue with the straight versions for that reason.