Cerbera

Still doesn't show wider context. I need the file. CBR

Need to see the wider context of the mesh. From the screenshots that is too many edges conflate on a corner. CBR

Yes, we sort of have to remember that these trade shows are a bit optimised for newer users, and apart from Chris Schmidt's, which are always ultra info-packed and informative, I tend to wait until the recordings of the others to see if there are other presenters to learn from as an advanced user. Sometimes there are, and this year there is no shortage of useful intros to the areas I don't get around to so much ! Also nice to see breakdowns of some more advanced files people have worked on... CBR

Oh, well done - that certainly wins my award for most awful tesselation of the year 🙂 I'm sure Rhino can do better than that if it tries ! Even the almighty Z-ReMesher is going to struggle with that. I haven't looked at HP's plan for rescuing it, but mine begins with deleting the thickness polys leaving a flat layer, doing UQ to select the outline of that, and extracting a spline (edge to spline) from it, which is then going under an Extrude, where, TBH I am probably going to stick with the ngon option - the surface is entirely flat, so as long as it produces a renderable surface - the triangulation going on behind the scenes is still likely to be moderately better than what Rhino did (let's face it - it couldn't be worse!) and if we don't have to look at ngon lines, then they need not worry us ! However if we do care about nice(r) topology, then the delaunay options in the extrude caps can work for us if we set the source spline to be uniform and a low point value such as 1, and choose Quad-dominant and suitable density... CBR

Well, we already have that functionality to a degree, insofar as most functions have a 'New Transform' button that will apply the same settings as last time again, once a tool is recalled. Commander also remembers the last used command, so if called again will normally be at top of list. We also used to have a 'last used tool' icon, which would be at the top of the interface, but I think that has gone now since the new interface in R25, presumably because their aggregated stats showed them people weren't using it... CBR

Here we go - first pass - still not happy with corners, but basically it's probably this sort of thing... This seemed like the ultimate candidate for edge weighting, so did the creases with that. SDS L4. I think we can improve on this though, so will try again tonight. CBR

Send me that model, and I will retopo it beautifully for you. CBR

Yes. Then if your computer dies while rendering you don't lose everything already rendered and can resume last frame. CBR

Surprisingly well I would have to say, specifically Advanced Mode... It is different to and better than any method we have previously had for coping with the tricky ones. I can still find occasional meshes that fox it, but it's a lot harder than it used to be. CBR

I concur - it can't cope with that. I have reported it as a bug, and hope it doesn't come back as a limitation. Agree it would be very useful if it worked as you expect ! CBR

I will investigate this once I have got though all my modelling work today ! CBR

That's a very good question ! You can' certainly turn hair into geo, but have never tried it with feathers ! Will do if I get a second later... CBR

Yep. Still a way to go there 'til we achieve completeness / parity with more advanced features there, but it has got better. CBR

We got a Thicken tool guys ! Advanced mode is a wonder to behold... And updated Symmetry ! As usual Chris Schmidt has got us covered... but all thanks to Maxon modelling devs especially - lovely job there. Very nice to finally have a shell tool better than everyone else's, and to be able to have a better alternative to Cloth Surface 🙂 CBR

It will not 😉 But you can assign a video to a material, which you can apply to a plane, and have that play back with the timeline. This also has the advantage of working in perspective view, and can be easily offset behind your models. CBR

You could also not use Xpresso at all, and, re-rig it for IK, just keyframe the rotation of the first joint, and then leave the rest of it to joint dynamics, which do a very reasonable job of providing decent wing animation without any maths... CBR

I thought death / grim reaper rode a horse ?! One called Binky, specifically, if Terry Pratchett is to be believed ! Anyway, what you want is very easy to achieve. Dump the whole rig / mesh in a null and add a vibrate tag to it, then set it to give a gentle up-down pulse which will be 90% of the effect you are looking for, and leaves you free to add specific (rigged) motion to the skeleton independent of the floating. CBR

Oh yes we can, but can't ZRM do something extra with polygroups or something over in ZBrush ? CBR

Are you using the poly reduction generator or the legacy deformer ? If it's the former you should be able to instance the generator then scatter that, and if it's the latter you should be able to scatter the object (and its child deformer) directly. It will take a while to update if there are lots of instances. CBR

Ah yes, I meant specifically in Cinema, where we don't yet have ZBrush's epic control over it... CBR

Contrary to previous advice I can't recommend ZRM for this. Yes it produces beautiful quads, but it knows nothing of character edge flow, and it's a bit random chance if the result is useful or not for animation ! Usually it is not I have to say... Ben's advice is good. Edge flow change nearer armpit, otherwise decent ! Because the body is 'not very toned' (to the point where we could almost call it a blob !) you don't need to follow the flow of any underlying muscles, or even the man-boobs (!), just get the edge flow right where the arms join the body. CBR

UV unwrapping a cylinder is very easy in that is already mostly done for you when you create the primitive ! All you have to do is make it editable, pop to UV Edit mode, make sure you have the object and its UV tag selected, go into poly mode, select all, find the UV Packing tab, and do a 5% spacing auto-pack using Bounding Box mode to get a map that looks like this... Then just grab a screenshot of the UV canvas, paste that into your 2D photo editor, and use that to line up your textures.

Unless it has to unroll in an animation, or the camera is literally inches away from it in a still shot, that is the sort of model that is best done mainly with textures I'd say. So you need to model a main cylinder (with enough geo to support hi res displacement on the ends) and possibly the label, but arguably even that could be done with textures ! Once you have your cylinder you would UV unwrap it into 3 islands, the ends and the main wrap, and then use displacement maps you have previously made using photos of the actual object to get the wrinkles in the flat bit and the concentric patterns on the ends. The other approach is to model it manually, which certainly can be done if you are prepared to spend some time wrangling splines. If I had to model this I would get a photo of one end (front-on) and make a spline that described the unique shape of the spirals in that end, then I would get a copy of that and use them both in a Loft object under cloth thickness to get the whole length of the object. Displacer deformers, possibly in a planar mode, would then get you the rest of the way. Wrinkling would still be done with textures, or via the smoothing deformer / magnet technique. Here's a very rough one I threw together to demonstrate the general principal... CBR

Yes, particularly the fact that it is now a feasible choice for production asset modelling in top quality productions like this shows just how much Cinema's modelling toolset has come on over the last few years - it really is quite formidable now - Maxon have listened, and mostly caught up where they needed to, giving us the sort of everyday tools we used to have to turn to plugins to supplement. Of course there are still gaps, but I am encouraged to see that in every area they catch up, they usually do better than all the competition - Pyro, and in modelling, the Symmetry Modes being a good example of that recently. CBR

Not that I am aware of I'm afraid... CBR