Cerbera

A brief but interesting look at the design process behind the excellent Ornithopters in Villeneuve's Dune... It's the wrong name for it though isn't ? 😉 THAT is an ORDONOTHOPTER if I've ever seen one ! CBR

Is that for me or OP or both of us ? 🙂 In my case I have a Nektar Impact LX 88+ (semi-weighted) for inputting non-piano stuff (lots of sliders for real time CCs), and a Yamaha S90 XS hammer-action fully weighted stage piano for 'proper' piano parts. Audio Interface is Steinberg UR22 MkII (also makers of Cubase, so very good compatibility). CBR

I'd have a go with pose morph first and see if I needed to rig it at all... It would all need to be one object ideally, but if your illustration is anything to go by it could be... CBR

I do believe we are starting to climb out the far side of uncanny valley there ! Still can't quite do eyes right though can we ? 🙂 CBR

Funnily enough I also went back to music after a huge break, at the beginning of the first plague lockdowns, and had a very similar experience to you in terms of prices and updates. My version of Cubase Pro still worked after 8 years of inactivity, and I could also upgrade it for less than 150 pounds to latest version, so did that. Was suitably delighted to find that all my main synths / VST's still worked as well, and much to my relief, Keyscape and Omnisphere. And I was feeling very warm and fuzzy about permanent licences, but still had a problem - I was going back to music to learn to orchestrate, and I needed some proper orchestral firepower, and a lot of it, straight away !! I would have had to have spent thousands to get what I needed. Fortunately, didn't take me long to find EastWest's Composer Cloud, which allowed me access to a vast array of VSTs and EFX including enough orchestral stuff to get started, for less than $15 a month ! So I was able to use that subscription for a year whilst I built up a collection of higher quality instruments I now had time to save for, and now I have permanent licenses for most of the Spitfire Audio Library, which makes me very very happy. 🙂 And, to my surprise, SA keep finding new ways to sell me their more recent VSTs, but they do it with genuinely innovative new products, frequent sales with meaningful amounts off, and generous discounts for people who already own key libraries. They also give away an astonishing amount for free via their LABS instrument, so in my eyes that REALLY makes them good guys - fair prices, permanent licensing, generous discounts, amazing support. I also bought VSTi Serum, not only because it filled any remaining gaps in my synthesizer department (for the very few things Omnisphere is overkill for) but also because I wanted to support and encourage their (pioneering at the time) rent-to-buy plans, which really are, for me, the ultimate holy grail of 'fair play' in digital retail ! So as big a fan as I remain of perpetual licenses, and even more so of rent-to-buy, I was also glad in that first instance that EastWest's Composer Cloud subscription was available. The final stage in my music plans involves cancelling subs to Composer Cloud next year, but perma-buying the 2 items from it that I use constantly - Hollywood Choirs and Spaces II convolution reverb as perpetuals, both of which are still available, and pretty reasonably priced. Happy musicings ! CBR

Subdivide if and when you need to, to be able to add smaller details, and when you are very happy with all the curves you think you have got right so far, because those, as you note, will become doubly awkward to change once you nail in another level. I always keep a copy of the low res base in case I need to go back, but once you have that, there's the safety margin, and now you can confidently nail in that SDS, and go to town on the smaller stuff confident that if you cock it up, it won't matter ! Once you have subdivided it is worth a look round to see if any edge loops you had placed before as primarily controls can be removed now they have been doubled by the subdivision, and by this method you can 'thin out' the polys in areas where it becomes a little TOO dense. Also, on the nose of it, we still don't quite enough segmentation to be able to do really sexy hinge indents there, so I would manually add a loop cut between those more widely spaced loops when the nose gets out of the pointy bit, and possibly redistribute the edges so you get more consistent poly density between the cockpit and nose areas. Your most recent edge flow looks much better than previous versions btw, so I would say this IS the right time to do the staged SDS. CBR

No this IS a forum where people can talk freely. You can make your posts as long and rambling as you like ! But as ICM points out, that tends to overwhelm people who are casually browsing who might help if the questions were clearer or briefer. That is not to say, however that you shouldn't provide all the information you did, which I thought was pretty necessary to the post, and indeed I asked for more ! 🙂 CBR

Yeah I was wondering that - where is our illustrious Captain ?! CBR

Fair enough. The C4D community IS famed for being both big AND helpful, so I remain hopeful that now we have the file someone will see it. I would help myself, but my skills / expertise are not in this area, so useless to you here I'm afraid... Sure Maya is the industry standard for rigging, but I'd be massively surprised to find anyone in that community will use Daz with it ! Same for Max I would guess. So I think you ARE in the right place, with the right software to have most chance of someone able to help seeing this, but it may take a while for them to find you... CBR

No disrespect, but you only posted the other day, didn't provide any scene files that would make it easier to solve this, and you have a very specific problem that needs anyone who can help to have both applications, and to have experience in using them for animation, so that's quite a narrow band of people you are targeting there ! Daz is hardly mainstream any more - there are really not that many people that still use it, so it was always going to be quite chancy that anyone here would have that expertise in it AND Cinema. Those people do exist here - I have seen them contribute before on similar questions, but they don't visit all the time, so you just have to wait for them ! but you massively increase your chances of attracting their interest if you post the C4D scene file, and probably the .daz file as well ! CBR

Yep, me too - hardly any clients give a damn what qualification you might or might not have in this - you are as valuable to them as your portfolio / last render demonstrates ! ALL my client modelling work comes from word of mouth, and not once has anyone ever asked what my qualifications are, over and above 15 years in this software ! Another option is some good quality 1-1 remote tutition, like the kind I just so happen to offer for example ! 😉 Some people entering this industry find it very helpful to have a very experienced, ongoing 'mentor' type person on hand, to solve all your problems for you, and help you directly over any specific hurdles you encounter, as well as being there to give you a slow, staged, cumulative understanding of all major areas of this immense software via 1-1 remote screen sharing. This avoids having to build up knowledge in the very slow and protracted way from a series of disparate free tutorials of widely varying standards, some of which may contradict each other, or leave questions unanswered. That has a lot of advantages over group lessons, or uni courses, because not only are you getting 1-1 attention ALL THE TIME, but also because your lessons can be tailored specifically to what YOU alone want, in the order you want it, or that would be most helpful to you and your plans. Once the basics are out of the way you can set a balance between more theory-led lessons and project based learning. Just a thought, but I don't often have ongoing tuition spaces free, and you happen to catch me at a time when I do, so thought I'd mention it ! If interested feel free to PM me for more info. CBR

That's a French Horn I modelled a while back... but DF did a most magnificent render indeed ! CBR

Welcome to the Core ! 🙂 Lots of help here when you need it hopefully ! CBR

Yes, even here we can see tyre marks indicating that ngons cause skids, and presumably RTA's AS WELL ! Safety first guys. Pffft. CBR

Excellent, welcome indeed ! - lovely to have some more rendering wizards aboard ! CBR

The reasons for all your concerns are evident in the mesh, and are all fixable with some minor rethinking about how stuff flows. Don't be downhearted with any of the following constructive criticism - it is all designed to build on what you already know, and to encourage your thinking in the right sort of direction to turn this from a B grade mesh into a properly stellar one. OK, Consider the following image: What we have here is cascade of relatively minor faults that lead to lumpy surfaces and unrewarding curves... Starting on the left of the above, look how the cockpit loops A and B turn back on themselves - in the wrong order. See how B turns back INSIDE A and not outside it ? That's one thing that starts the lumpiness. Now consider Loop C which turns the edge where the wing meets the body into the centre, instead of continuing it around the and into the nose section. Compounding these things further is D the sudden change in polygon density as shown, which is then made worse by immediate disruption of it by the inset front vents. We'll come back to those, but they need to go ! Now let's turn SDS off, and examine that section by looking along it, to see how smooth (or not) our point positioning and curve integrity is... And so here we see the final contributor to the lumpy SDS woes; the actual positioning and placement of each point in relation to the ones adjacent to it. Look at the blue lines travelling down the nose and up into the cockpit on an individual loop basis. See how they are being constantly wrenched in different directions and have uneven Y axis values, and in the case of the left-most one, divert into the centreline where they shouldn't. TBH a decent whack with a smooth brush would sort a lot of that out, but that wouldn't correct the previous issues. Now the nose insets - let's not do those like that ! In fact let's not put those in at this stage at all until we have at least 1 level of staged subdivision applied, and have re-established a perimeter loop edge flow that goes all the way around the craft ! Cascaded insets like that are not a good idea, so best avoided. The way we do hinged topology on curved surfaces is as follows... So that is achieved by selecting the polys we want to 'hinge indent', moving the modelling axis to the hinge point, and ctrl-rotating them down, before welding the (now 4) points at the hinge point. Then we solve the triangles to kite quads by cutting a loop inside new border edges created, connecting them. Then we must remember to slide the tips of the newly bisected triangle edges back down the new loop to turn them from degenerated polys to kite quads SDS will treat as such. Now let's see what effect polygon density has on that operation; consider the following: Here's pretty much the same hinged section done with increasing levels of precision. In A we have what I would call slightly less than the required polygon density (but still much greater than that in your current model I note!) to make this hinge section look defined enough, so it appears quite smooth and organic (which may be seem a good thing, initially in context, but also looks quite floppy and unintentional, particularly at the hinge end, because we a) don't have enough density, and b) haven't told SDS what to do with it (via weighting or controls). In B, we have applied 1 level of subdivision to the mesh first and THEN done the hinge bit. Things immediately look more defined, and intentional, but still a little soft and 'paddy' if you see what I mean. So, let's improve that by taking control of the flow. In C we have inset the hinged polys, which gives us a degree of controlled rounding at the top but then left the hinge end open (ie not inset and returning loops); instead these flow off the end of the inset, and therefore keep it straight and lump free, and provide the most controlled result yet. The 'other side' of that control loop I also added, outside the indent area to further reinforce the flow. And that, I hope, makes a convincing case for why you can't do those insets yet, and why they must be open at one end, which inset alone cannot achieve, and also why you need more density first before adding them at all. Hope that helps... CBR

And me. I will report this if it is unknown. CBR

Oh nice progress ! I shall pop back tomorrow and comment on this properly - mad busy for rest of today ! CBR

No worries about the refs though - sometimes it's good to keep your 'by eye' skills up to scratch by trying something with not much in the way of orthographics refs, or a design that leaves some parts to your imagination... CBR

Yep - welcome on in 🙂 May your learnings here be excellent, and your 3D's as real as you want them to be ! CBR

It's only a guess, but I would imagine the text describes things most helpfully from a mathematical / scientific perspective, whereas the use of these things practically in apps is more based on what is useful to see to be able to most easily / conveniently change that spline. I suspect our B-spline (Bernstein basis) primitive is mainly there for people who like to input changes via the other method ! I am happy as long as there are both options available ! CBR

Spline is short for Smooth Polyline. It derives from the flexible spline devices used by shipbuilders and architects / draftsmen to draw smooth shapes (circa 18th century I think). NURBS is my favourite though - Non uniform Rational B-smooth polyline ! CBR

Well this isn't big or clever, but just checking you know that if you put objects under a cloner (like ALL the objects) and then Linear clone they will preserve their order as it appears under the cloner in the OM ? So, if your objects under the cloner are Sphere, X number of squares, Pyramid, that should give you what you need, no ? CBR

Hey Harry I may be able to help there - I offer exactly that sort of service - either providing structured modelling lessons or 'as-needed' project based help. I can certainly show you how to model the all the things on your reference page. Check out my profile, and drop me a PM if you think I am the person to help you, and we can discuss... Many thanks CBR

Lovely dose of atmosphere there 🙂 CBR