Cerbera

I'd be very surprised if that cushion / seat bit is actually part of the mainframe, if you see what I mean - wouldn't make any sense to manufacture it that way... I think I would have done those bits separately, which would have made SDS modelling it a breeze, but your point still stands - VB still does it a bit faster, removes the need for modelling skill entirely and is a worthy upgrade / alternative to that horrible boole tool, and if you don't need to further edit the result or use UV mapping, is very good for this sort of thing. Interested to see the rest of your room when you get there... The trouble remains with the VB that it needs millions of polys to do what SDS could do in 1000 times less, so I'd be cautious about filling a whole scene with VB objects lest it becomes needlessly processor-heavy. Unfortunately although it does include the adaptive topology reduction option I find that in practice we pretty much lose our surface perfection as soon as that leaves 0% ! :/ CBR

If you fancy a challenge, now we can we see the same floor after 100 years of regular use and in general disrepair !? :) CBR

Lols, I started with the back-end of mine, hence v slow progress so far - you're right - segmentation and multi-aligned panels like that is always a challenge, and mine's entire body is made of those :) Yours is looking great tho... CBR

This might be linked to the boole (don't they always cause the problems ? ;) not having 'Single Object' Ticked when you made it. That was the case in someone else's question yesterday, although that referred to dynamics collisions rather than TFD. I don't have TFD or have any experience of what it requires in a collider, but I would still make an educated guess that the boole is the issue. You could test this by trying to confine TFD to just a simple isolated primitive (or any polygon object not made by booles). If it works with those, then I'd say the boole remains chief suspect. If that is the case I can certainly model the part you need without booles, but obviously not having TFD myself, cannot guarantee it will work !! CBR

No, he means left and right sides of the Xpresso Nodes. You don't drag the sliders into Xpresso directly. You drag the Parent Object in, and then expose the User Data (the sliders) as ports on the output side (RHS) of the node. CBR

I know :) Hoping the Thin Film Shader can do them justice ! :) CBR

Inspired by @anglereserve's recent post on his Bull Ant, I set about finding some reference for a Jewel Wasp I was thinking of modelling myself. And while I was doing that, I came across this remarkable site, which not only provides some of the best arthropod reference anywhere on the net, but also is worth a look just for the sheer beauty of the images and the ridiculous level to which we can zoom in to appreciate the microstructure of these creatures. Absolutely breathtaking stuff, so sharing here for your reference (not you, angle, they don't have a Bull Ant unfortunately !), or general appreciation... Now I've seen those, I'll be doing this orchid Bee I think... http://microsculpture.net/orchid-bee-top.html CBR

CBR

That is a lovely modelling job, gets a Gold Star from me :) Rendering awesome too, but it's all about the wires for me. CBR

Can't believe I missed this, the latest adventures of now legendary Scrat when it came out, so posting here for anyone else that missed it too. The BEST character, and the best character animation you will ever see :) Also excellent fur. Enjoy ! This wasn't done in Cinema, but I bet we could get pretty close given enough time and skills :) CBR

Oh yes - for pretty much everything I look at for longer than 5 seconds now, my brain will be overlaying virtual polygons and auto-suggesting edge flow and all-quad topology options. I look at trees, and see L-systems, I look at the ocean and wonder about fluid solvers, and when I see sunsets and clouds I wish the Physical Sky was better :) Whenever I find myself somewhere truly beautiful I still manage to hold on to that sense of awe at nature, but at the same time, my brain is also very much working out how we might get an HDRI of that :) Seriously though - I suspect 3Ding is like musicianing, in that it gets certain parts of the brain practiced at thinking a certain way, and doing activities like music or 3D will of course open up new pathways, possibilities and ways of thinking as you improve your skills. I never used to be able to see 20 moves ahead when modelling for example, but years in Cinema has slowly retrained my brain to be able to do that. Indeed it has also increased my precision and general levels of diligence and technique, and I am now programmed to enjoy efficiency of action and an immaculately organised Object Manager in a way that was positively alien to me when I started. On the negative side, I have never seen anything that comes close to the massive periods of lost time that can happen when you are 'on one' in 3D. The amount of times I have thought to myself at 7 pm one evening 'Oh, I'll just pop in there and tweak that topology for 10 minutes', and then there's the dawn, and 15 hours have mysteriously disappeared. Can't believe I'm the only one that happens to !! :) CBR

You're welcome. If you want an alternative to making the rope with textures, this remains a really nice way of doing it with geo. Winch Epicycloid.c4d CBR

Ah OK. Yes, make your sweep along a straight spline, then spline wrap the whole sweep along the helix spline that is wrapping the winch barrel. Here's a scene file which might be better than my explanations :) Winch.c4d CBR

Never make cabling out of lofts - that is a singularly unhelpful method for anything rope-like ! You definitely want a Sweep for that. I don't think there's anything happening twice in that setup - I reckon we need every stage of it for it to work, but if you can prove me wrong I am happy to be corrected :) CBR

If you just want it shortening then it could be as simple as a zeroed-out parametric helix spline in a sweep, where you just keyframe the length of the spline ! But I suspect we can do better... If I had to guess at making it wind onto the barrel, I think I'd make a helix that wrapped round the barrel, editable that, massively extend one end of it to give me the line coming off it, make my cable completely separately, then spline wrap it onto that first spline, using the spline-wrap's offset parameter to move it down the line, and the 'keep original length' option so it actually moves onto the barrel... If you're after wire rope for this, then I recommend the old 'epicycloid in a sweep' trick to make that... CBR

Please take care to post in the right section. In this case that is 'Plugins', as Realflow does not come with C4D. I have moved this one for you. CBR

I like the overall feel of and light in the scene - lovely job there - really pleasing diffuse shadows... I think I'd move the camera focus to the front of the sofa - it's a great texture that deserves to be sharp somewhere :) And maybe too much DoF overall ? Also with JM about the plant - could it be little more variegated / glossy ? And less green. Those things are always darker than you think when there's no light behind them. CBR

Cough 'Volume Builder', cough 'Nodal Materials', cough 'Fields' ? ;) I'd say they were doin' OK ! CBR

Aww Nige :) We miss you over there on the dark side ! CBR

Email sent CBR

Hr-vo-yay ? :) However you pronounce it, we have to thank him profusely for such a wealth of high quality information and training. I have no doubt I will continue to refer to it for years to come ! And all delivered in that awesome zen-master hypno-tranquility voice :) CBR

I think that might be a remnant of the original cafe group names - I can see what @3DKiwi was probably trying to go for there, but agree it feels a little odd if for no other reason than that you don't see it on any other forums :) Just out of interest, what would you call that group ? CBR

Have you searched the site ? I posted this question about 2 weeks ago, and got a reply with the answer from Hrvoje. Just about to run out the door, hence why I don't have time to find it for you... CBR

I do like it ! Really good job :) CBR

That helps a bit I think... wondering now what would happen if you dialled down saturation on the floor diffuse map a little - still looks a little intensely yellow to me... But this is only nitpicking - there's a lot working well in this scene :) CBR