Cerbera

Yeah, what you've done there is you've set the wind too high. There may also be an unintentional gravity well nearby. CBR

As it's a paid position I've moved this to the Job line, which will help you find someone faster... CBR

PM sent... CBR

It's closed to everyone until they ask to join ! :) CBR

Cool. All useful methods, and all quads all the way :) If I did have one criticism it is that constant mouse click sound, which drives me nuts before I remember to turn the sound off, but otherwise, it's all good... may I add it to my list of linked / approved tutorials over in my Colosseum of Topological Delight club ? CBR

Wow. That's quite some giveaway even if it's not being developed anymore ! Best wishes to Samir. CBR

We did, thanks ! @ABMotion beat me to it and did a thread the day it came out :) No harm in linking it again though ! CBR

Yep, those are certainly an improvement on your earlier versions... CBR

The second one you posted is better than the first, but the goal is not necessarily to model with straight lines, particularly when that doesn't match the border or inner sections of the shape you are trying to make. Also, if you said you wanted low poly, then my version is still lower poly than your latest 2, and remains preferable because the topology follows the flow of the object. CBR

I take it you've seen all the threads about this on the various realflow forums ? http://realflowforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=10463 http://www.nextlimit.com/forum_realflow/viewtopic.php?f=87&t=2613 and there's a few articles dotted round the net, of which this is one.. https://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-daredevil-details/ I don't know how quickly you'll get an answer - there aren't very many people here who have standalone realflow. CBR

You can't make the plane affect the water surface in any meaningful way without plugins, so you can solve that (or rather remove the need for it) by simply not making the plane go that close to the water ! :) As for the reflection, that can be done in Cinema no problem, but without any details as to how you have the scene setup it is difficult to know how best to advise you on that one. The brief overview is that you need to make the water in C4D too, probably from a plane with bump and displacement making the waves. If you can use free plugins, you should get something like HOT4D ocean surface, which will provide a more realistic result than you can get with C4D's noises alone. CBR

Great soundtrack. But we are missing the reflection of the plane in the water ! :) Also, if it is flying that low over water, the engines will be affecting the water surface... CBR

Strong in this one, the force is. CBR / Yoda

And let's not forget to say a massive thank you to @Igor and @HSrdelic for taking this place on and doing great things with it , and to @3DKiwi as well for starting it in the first place, and to MAXON, without whom none of us would be here :) Have a great new year everyone, and may your polygons be extra shiny (and 4 sides) in 2018 :) CBR

Getting better all the time... Just a quick word about coplanar / concave polygons. When you make a tri into a quad, try not to leave coplanar edges or worse, concave points along the same edge. The best polygons are always convex. The slide tool is your best friend for this purpose... CBR

Sure - I was on about these bits :) CBR

This is not bad at all for someone who is recently learning the program, and your Lightwave experience has obviously served you well to be able to get this far this quickly... but that is not to say there aren't problems :) The areas for improvement fall into 2 main areas; 1 - problems that cause shading errors, and 2 - problems caused by less than ideal technique that don't necessarily show in render, but could be improved upon regardless. Let's do shading errors first, and deal with the possible reasons for them... 1. Top Panel We are getting a shading error here most visible around the holes at either end, caused by lack of polygon density - you don't really have enough points here to accurately describe those holes, and the edge flow around them abruptly transitions to them, causing the shading error. This could be fixed by using more dense geometry to start with, or helped by simply inner extruding the holes before you extruded them down. 2. Grid of holes (transition to) See the corner where the helmet transitions into the frame for the air holes/ vent section ? We're getting some pinching one corner, caused primarily by the unevenness of polygon density around that area. When doing curved surfaces you'll get unattractive pinching wherever your edges are not evenly distributed. 3. Side fins inconsistency Do you mean 2 of the fins in those side bits to be different to all the others ? This is caused by the extra edges you've run into some of them but not others. 4. Uniformly hard surfaces This may be intentional, but to me it looks odd that some panels are very sharp, and others are unsupported and therefore very soft edged. Mainly I'm talking about the difference in thickness and hardness between the main top and bottom extrusions of the head. 5. 4 sided Holes Being the quad-freak that I am you'd think I'd be in favour of 4 sided holes, but no :) 4 sides is not quite enough to make a decent circle under subdivision. Yes it's get-awayable-with sometimes, but you couldn't call it ideal. I don't like 6 sides either, and there's some of that too, which is still better than 4, but in general I would recommend 8 minimum sides for every perfect hole you intend to make. 6. Overall polygon density / complex poles Generally, this whole model is slightly too low poly to support the details you've added into it, and because your topology has not isolated each feature section from its surroundings this has led to a lot of complex poles, which are very much not your friend on curved surfaces under subdivision. this is for future reference really - I don't expect you to do this again higher poly, but usually when adding small details it is best to subdivide your base mesh once or twice before you start cutting in the smaller details - this way you 'establish curvature', meaning that SDS has less work to do, and therefore there are less chances of curvature distortion and shading errors when you change the topology to add detail. OK, think that's all the big stuff - the rest of it comes down to personal pride and improving polygon modelling technique. 7. Unnecessary Triangles There are quite a few tris all over this model, and there doesn't need to be a single one. Now, subdivision will solve tris to quads, so people often mistakenly believe that triangles are therefore fine, and they can just leave them in the base mesh. Well - no. If there are triangles, you do not control how subdivision deals with them, whereas if they are 100% quads, you do. It might be fine, but it equally might cause a shading error, if not in C4D in any other program that opens the model, because subdivision and triangles are not handled in the same way across all 3D software. This is but one of the reasons why modelling purists like me and Vector will never tolerate any triangles in any of our SDS base meshes, but we do realise that not everyone adheres to this gold star of modelling standards, even though we might wish they would :) At the end of the day, subdivision surface modelling works best (and the modelling tools work most predictably) with quads, so that's what we should use. It is also one of the primary skills of the competent modeller to be able to solve tris into quads, so I would advise not overlooking this vital skill in your future projects. To reiterate, your overall job here is really not that bad, so please don't be discouraged by any of this constructive criticism. Hope that helps... CBR

Yep - that's a decent model now. Here's an idea for flawless topology of the other one... CBR

Not at all, thanks for this - it's very helpful :) CBR

As usual, this is amongst the best modelling we will ever see on this board :) CBR

In the case of the star on the previous page, OK that is all quads, and is as minimal as it can get, but there is a big complex pole in the center. Technically this doesn't matter if you are not using subdivision, but in general it's good practice to avoid them. In this case you could solve that by bevelling the center vertex, and solving the geometry that creates to quads. The shape above, on the other hand, is almost good enough as it is, but ideally those edges will be evenly spaced, rather than bunched up in places - you can fix that using slide, or if you have the HB modelling bundle, using the Even Distribution script. But you're right that you only need edges in one direction for this piece. CBR

I've just seen another potential problem. See the chamfered corners on your top / roof section ? They are coloured darker in your pic, possibly because of a non-planar polygon error. Difficult to see whether that's planar or not. Mesh checker would tell you. If not, here's an alternative way of solving that to quads that could avoid that problem. Basic cuts, control edges, subdivided result. CBR

This is much better. But see those arrow-shaped quads at the top of the arches in pic 4 ? That's not good. That's a not a degenerated quad as such (I'm still looking for the correct term for this type of poly) but polys shouldn't be concavely indented like this. You could fix it like below, cutting in green lines, and dissolving red ones... ...or you could step it down to 1 edge further up the model, and slide that center vertex down (see lower yellow dot) to get a kite shaped convex quad. CBR

You're welcome. That's looking much better. CBR

Poor old OP. I bet he had little idea when he uploaded his early models what a firestorm he would start :) And it's always good to get all the old arguments out again for a fresh airing :) CBR