Cerbera

Yes yes I am sure THAT's what it is. Needs more orange bits 😉 CBR

That wood is LOADS better as is the overall render 🙂 Great job, Aces or not ! CBR

Lols 🙂 Actually I am also staying on 1920 x 1200, but at least I now have a monitor that CAN do better, even though my eyes can't 🙂 CBR

OK, can't believe no1 has done it yet, so I will take the hit for us all... My New Year's Resolution is 3840 x2160. CBR

Yep - me too - all the best to everyone for an excellent 2022 ! For anyone missing spectacular fireworks, may I present some of the UK's 'best'... CBR

Good good - looking much better all round I'd say 🙂 I think the front port by the leading edge could also have its edge flow redirected around it before it dives into the hole. Ctrl-sliding the closest edge loop should do it, but if not I'd just cut it in manually... We can lose the complex pole there, as I have above, but I don't think it's strictly necessary to do so - it was only a 6 point pole, and positioned somewhat ideally for SDS to be able to nicely deal with it. CBR

I had insomnia in the night, so continued a bit with this, and then actually left your intended design slightly (!) with the aim of showing you some more optimum edge flows etc etc... so below I have 'completed' the rear vent in just one of the myriad ways in which we could do that... that looks like this... And breaking that down into stage, in case it helps you with yours... Referring to following... 1. Beginning with the opening I made yesterday, first step is to ctrl-scale in a small loop to redirect the edge flow around that hole (yellow arrows) 2. Then I added some edge loops along the 'spike' to get more density there, and bridged from one side of the hole to the other (green lines) 3. Then I added those 3 loops (purple lines) with loop cut and moved those into an inverse curvy shape matching the outer side roughly... 4... which gave me 8 edges (red highlighted) I could then extrude back into the hull, and rotate the round the corner. Lastly I did a round of tweaking in which I evened out and prettified all the edges etc etc, and then patched the end to quads with the 14 edges I had there. Now I don't know if that is exactly the sort of vent you want there, but I figured it might be useful to you to see that approach regardless. CBR

Very nice 🙂 I reckon that wood needs to be slightly shinier (they tend to go through multiple polishing processes to achieve a sort of multi level sheen), and a little more contrasty / darker but the grain and mapping are ace. And talking of Ace - I am guessing this isn't an ACES workflow ?, and if not would be interested to see this in one ! Metal band is especially good so far, though I can't decide if it's copper or gold. Whatever it is, I like it ! 🙂 CBR

Just popped back to show how I have now adapted the leading edge of that wing to make it physically aerodynamic, should you want such a thing, as I imagine you might... So just tweaking those 2 rows of verts at the front there out and up, to get a surface that would actually produce lift... Just a thought... CBR

Excellent file, and notes so far. However we should stop here, fix the horrible bits, then resume. I have repaired your mesh thusly... So, first I deleted everything to do with the inner thickness on that back port - too much was going wrong in there to repair it, so we'll just fuck it off altogether back to the point where everything was fine. Alas everything wasn't quite fine as we moved outside that to the top and bottom of the wing, which I had to sort out in terms of flow, distribution, poles, and a few more minor less desirable qualities, some of which you had flagged in your excellent annotations. This took me 15 mins to repair, and now we are back to ideal edge flow everywhere, no complex poles, ngons, triangles or other such nonsense, and we're in a really very good position to go on from here to recreate that inner bit of the other vent. 'Port border loops, ready for action, earlier...' Let me know if you'd like the file, but I imagine someone with your levels of grit and determination will want to have another pop at it yourself first.... Hope that helps CBR

When .113 came out they listed all 352 bugs addressed, so I don't think we can accuse them of lack of transparency ! Perhaps they will update that list in time, but at least they hotfixed something important and got it out nice and quick, which was the main thing... CBR

Well it's positively criminal that they don't show us the wires for Robot 😉 CBR

I quite like both variations of those materials - the velvetiness really comes across well. But i do think it may be a little intense / vibrant, and recall that most red velvet I have seen particularly is a fair bit darker than that and slightly less saturated. Just a thought - it's an exceptional render regardless ! CBR

I've been in it since R10 and was on MSA up to R21. Last year I upgraded to R23 perpetual, and I intend to do the same to R25 perpetual just before R27 arrives, presuming that is still an option, which I hope it is. Most of my clients / upstream colleagues are using most recent versions / are on subs. Teaching-wise it's much more variable. I have some students on R18, 1 on R20, and the others are R25 subs, so something of a mixed bag. CBR

You could fix the topology on the octopus's head 😉 Naughty triangles. Otherwise beautifully modelled ! CBR

Oh that is VERY cool 🙂 Despite it being literally one click away from a 'do what I'm thinking' button, and feeling rather too much like cheating, I kinda also don't care because it's such a cool thing to see happening in front of you. Instant backdrops ! I haven't had time to watch the vids yet, but I hope we get HDRI panos out of it , and massive resolution etc etc Lovely that it's free for beta as well - good find HP ! CBR

Nope. That was modelled specifically for how it reacts to toon shading, which is the point of his discussion video, and what they have to do with each other, which is more than you'd think ! 🙂 and on that I couldn't agree more ! So what I take from this is that some specific and directed triangulation can fix some toon shading issues where traditional topology would produce less desirable results, but that I view that as something of a Pyrrhic victory given what you have to give up to get it, which is SDS and character based edge flow by the looks of it ! CBR

Hardly. You seem to have missed the epic list of fixes in that update, and mistakenly used the words 'instead of' rather than 'as well as'... CBR

Yeah I am pretty sure some have gone back already, just not all of them. CBR

We can ! I will be interested to hear @everfresh's take on that, given that his cartoon / stylised works all have really nice topology as I recall AND perfect shading !! I will watch that vid, but presumably it goes without saying that you'd have to sacrifice any SDS to be able to use topo like that ? CBR

Beep, whirrr, Boing, clack, clack, bang. Nope. Does not compute. Error ! Error ! Shutting down ! lols 🙂 Only joking - an interesting watch to be sure... CBR

R25.113 is out, and addresses a great many of the issues with the original release. Recommended for all R25 users (especially if you have a tablet!), and available through the Maxon app. https://support.maxon.net/hc/en-us/articles/4411991623442-Cinema-4D-R25-December-13-2021-SP1 CBR

Excellent - much better 🙂 CBR

Yep, piano is my main instrument, so if those bits aren't played in half-decently I know something's wrong 🙂 You're very kind with your comments Dave, but I feel right in my infancy with orchestral writing at the moment - although I have listened to that sort of stuff for decades, I only really started trying to write it since the first lockdown (which also killed my wedding / function band of 20 years !) when I decided I should keep doing music 'somehow', and then seemed like a good time to learn to orchestrate and score stuff. I'm a bit more confident now I finished the ballet soundtrack, but it's still very early days, and I regularly pore over the scores of the normal notables (Richard Rodney Bennett particularly recently - have you heard his Gormenghast soundtrack ?! Just Wow ! ) in an attempt to try and be better myself... honestly - the complexity in a typical John Williams Score remains utterly terrifying to me - I don't know if I could ever get there no matter how hard I tried or how many hours there were in the day ! Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on where you sit !) we live in a world now where apparently you have to use any 'string to your bow' you have to help earn a living, and ideally I would like my job to be a pretty even mix of music writing and 3D, so I'll keep doing both, and see what flies... It's 2 very different kinds of joy in the doing, and I'd miss either one if it wasn't there ! Music provides such a nice respite from when polys are driving me up the wall, and wonderful SDS cleanliness and order is there for when musical ideas are chaotically spiralling off into the distance or just plain 'not coming out right' ! 🙂 I think that's a good idea. We should see if @Igor concurs ! CBR