Cerbera

Nice :) Can we see some wires ? CBR

Indeedy. Have a good one dude, from me and the cat. CBR

Lovely job :) Enjoying all the detail, and your attractive clay renders. CBR

Oh did I ? Your memory is working much better than mine :) CBR

I don't think this has been linked here before, but it should be, so I'm doing it anyway. If you're making an epic space ship, or a jet fighter, or anything that requires ultra sharp angular panels on organically curved surfaces, then this presents a serious modelling challenge if you want to use SDS. Of course there are things to help, like SDS edge weighting, OpenSubDiv and Cinema's incredible bevel tool, but sometimes we just want some amazing panelling really quickly... So, where we don't have time or skill to model these things in, traditionally, it's into Photoshop we go, for a potentially lengthy image design process while we try make a map that will give us our panelling independently of the geometry via bump, normal, or displacement material channels. For this to work well you need to spend a lot of time, get a lot of detail in, and use a very high res map. OR you could just go here and pick up JSplacement by Windmill Arts, which will do it for you in about 30 seconds. This neat little app runs on pretty much everything, and generates randomised but controllable 8K pngs eminently suitable for material panelling. It consists of several subroutines for making various different types of panelling, all of which are very useful, and controllable enough to produce some really decent results. Here's the various types of map it can make: Classic (left) does straight panels and lines. JS2 (right) does more circuit board style elements. Velvet (left) specialises in panels with a lot of symmetry control, and Dotgrid (right) does exactly what its name suggests, for when you need windows and portholes etc... It's all scalable and you get a new random result every time you click. One mode even lets you load in custom sprites. And you can combine maps in a layer shader for some truly complex and highly detailed results. I have found it to be a little buggy on occasion (Windows), but nothing a quick restart of the app can't fix. Needless to say, with this sort of help you could knock up a Star Destroyer in weeks rather than years ! Here's one test panel (deformed plane, 5 x 5 segments, L3 SDS) I knocked up in 3 minutes flat using 3 JSP maps layered in the bump channel, with a just small amount of parallax for a speedy 2 minute render... It's even more impressive if you use it with sub-poly displacement, so just linking this here so everyone knows where to get it... What, you want a little icing on an already fairly impressive cake ? OK :) Here's cafe avenger @turboniko, with another excellent tutorial on using this with displacement and AO to make an awesome glowy edge circuit board type whatsit... JSP is free, as is Niko's lengthy and thorough tutorial, but please do tip / support them both if you find this useful. Anyway, enjoy... CBR

Ha ha - oh yeah so there is ! :)

Very nice :) CBR

I still think your main brick texture is just wrong - you never see that sort of mega-regular brick pattern in classic fantasy castles, or real castles, come to that... CBR

Oh I've already had a discussion with the developer in a previous thread :) It's bad news - with this current version it is still based on Cinema's boole function, and the topology remains terrible. Apparently they are working on a new boole tool that maintains quads so there's hope yet ;) CBR

The biggest problem in this is the textures and the lighting and the lack of sense of scale. The castle / stone / roof textures are just not realistic enough. If you want those to look real you need some high res high quality photographic castle stone / roof tile textures. And those should be mapped on so that there are no discernable repeating patterns, and then further variation can be added to simulate damage and wear. Or you can get reasonable results from the brick shader if you spend enough time with it, making sure patterns are not spottable, and that you add weathering effects. And then there's the lighting. You need to give a sense of scale, and the impression of size in your scene. In yours I worry that the model is not detailed enough to give that impression, and the placement and relative scale of other things in the scene doesn't seem correct to me. The crenellations particularly seem wrong, both modelling and texture-wise. If the white things on the ground, for example, are meant to be individual flowers, then the castle is tiny in relation to them. The trees look like young saplings, yet come near to the top of the walls. The lighting itself seems vague and muddy. There should be a single strong directional sunlight, and a bluer ambient light dome filling in the shadows from that. Physical Sky and GI is often the best way to achieve naturalistic lighting, so that's the first thing I'd try in your scene. You can also add fog and atmosphere there, which all contribute to the sense of largeness. Here I am trying that on this really old WiP model of Hogwarts main tower I did a few years ago. Texture-wise I'm using photo textures on the right tower, and brick shader on the main hall. Atmosphere and depth and lighting all coming from physical sky, with a photo BG. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I can still see tiling patterns on my tower, so that could be better, but the overall effect is not too bad. Here's a closeup of the hall, so you can see the sort of variation the brick shader can give you, although if I'm honest I was never fully happy with the way that looked either. There are opinions on both sides to the argument that modelling to real world scale is better when using physical sky, so that might be something to consider as well. CBR

That is one shiny kiwi ! Unless he has regular access to a bottle of sleek'n'shine conditioner, I'd be turning that hair specular down a bit ;) CBR

For most plugins you unzip the file, and then put the folder within it under the plugins folder in your C4D preferences folder. You can find that by editing preferences, and clicking 'open preferences folder'... CBR

Ooh yeah - I like that :) Good job ! CBR

Ditto here. And I positively hate its modelling - takes far too long to do the simplest things and looks almost as awful as Maya in the viewport. Has driven me mad every time I've tried :) CBR

Hi Dave I think the plugin developers themselves did a thread about this just the other day ! The general consensus there was that yes, this is better than the default boole tools because it sets up bevels for you right away. But as you say, it is based on the original boole tool, and therefore is unsuitable for use with subdivision. Personally I wouldn't pay $50 for a boolean plugin unless it did work with subdiv, and created sensible all-quad topology like Max's ProBoolean. The developer says they are working on this, despite it being a furiously difficult thing to achieve apparently :) My own instinct is that this is OK for small-scale nernie action (ie you only need a little bit of that), but you wouldn't want to be doing too many of these in a single scene before the limitations of booles catch up with you and your scene slows to a crawl while it tries to live-calculate all the booles in the scene. I think that would make it impractical if you were greebling a Star Destroyer for example... There are a great many tools out there for greebling, not least of them the extrudifier in MAXON labs, PolyGnome, being developed by cafe member @C4DS, and this incredible JS generator for making instant 8K displacement maps. Speaking as someone who values quality topology, I would have to say that all these are preferable to doing nernies with boole-based methodology, but it can't hurt to also have that method in your list of go-to options for when topology doesn't matter... CBR

Alas no. You have to set them up individually in each layout I'm afraid... CBR

Yay - bite marks looking a lot better now, though I do still wonder if there is a case for some SDS edge weighting to get sharper ridges / teeth marks... had a quick little play to see what that looks like... CBR

Just be patient. Someone with the right area of expertise will invariably be along in due course. CBR

Lovely work - textures look awesome ! The only thing I would say is that they are all a little low-contrast for me - I think they'd be more striking with less haze / darker dark bits ! CBR

Excellent - superb modelling work as well ! - IQP GOLD STAR for you :) May I borrow that wireframe for inclusion in my 'flawless victories' gallery over in the Colosseum of Topological Delight club ? CBR

Very cool :) Can we see some wireframes ? CBR

Ah the classic catenary arch :) It's a nice setup - thanks for sharing ! CBR

Thanks Thomas. Couldn't agree with you more about the far distance. Did a bit of editing to get some orange into those clouds, and made the rear mountains sit into the sky better by feathering the alpha slightly... I quite like the lighter blue of the clouds but have dialled it back a little - perhaps not far enough though... So, any better ? Am working on another scene for the series, so I'll pop that up when it's looking half decent... CBR

Sounds good to me, and I'm up for making some models in between other projects... CBR

Oh, you don't get alerted when someone wants to start a club ?!