everfresh

as already mentioned, there are plenty uv mapping alternatives and plugins available, but with a little bit more effort you can also get decent maps with c4ds native tools... i was at the same spot as you a couple of years ago, modo or c4d... i also liked modo a lot, but since my focus is motion graphics and character animation the decision was obvious after a little while of dabbling with the demos... haven't had any regrets yet, c4d is very reliable and easy to learn. i don't know much about the workflows for game stuff though.

a goat or sheep were actually in discussion at some point :D and yeah, the pond has some goldfish in it...

you just reminded me that I'll have to take care of my actual lawn... if you even can call it that, more of a meadow with potholes in it :D from far away it looks ok though...

ok, here's my take on the topic: is c4d overpriced? yes, a little. are some of the features outdated? most certainly. do we need plugins for certain tasks? we do, but really not THAT many. and since r17 you could also treat houdini as a plugin and then you really only need one, and it's not even expensive. and in other packages you also need plugins, just for different tasks. to me it often sounds like some people just want to have everything just for the sake of having it, without actually having a real use for it. just so they know "if i would need or want to do this or that in the future, i'll be able to do it with c4ds onboard features". for day to day work cinema actually does a great job. and i do a lot of different things with it, mograph stuff, character animation, product vis, sometimes vfx. what makes it shine IMO is productivity and ease of use. whenever i talk to people using maya or max they make a big deal out of relatively easy tasks where i'm thinking "hey, i could pull that off within a couple of minutes or hours"... people often seem to forget how cumbersome other packages can be and how intuitive c4d is in comparison. when i was exploring c4d for the first time a couple of years ago i was amazed that i really could just explore the software by myself, without having to follow tutorial after tutorial step by step. sure, i also followed some tutorials, but i was also able to figure out a lot of stuff by myself and come up with ideas to solve this or that problem and really enjoyed that it's mostly self-explanatory. IMO the most artist-friendly package out there. and don't forget stability and how frustrating it can be when you're working in an unstable environment. and how much time it can swallow. even though i think the initial buy-in price is a little high, to me c4d is worth every penny and i still enjoy opening c4d every day. if i'd have the suspicion that the grass might be greener on the other side, i'd just go over there and take a look.

depends a lot on what kind of music you want to have produced... orchestral will cost a lot more than something that can be produced by a single musician... it also depends on how many approval steps there will be, how explicit your visions are etc... the cheapest approach would be to just buy stock footage, there are really cool platforms with tons of great music out there, and if you are willing to make some compromises and spend a decent amount of time searching this might be also a solution for you. licenses for a single track for personal use (i suppose you're not aiming to make any money with your short) are usually pretty low, between free and around 10$ per track...

looking good, except for the liquid ;) if your computer struggles to play back the fluid sim, just do a hardware render (which should only take a couple of minutes max) first to judge the motion before you do the final render...

nice model and render... my grandma had one of those, brings up childhood memories

big like! love the style and animation, really nice piece of work!

really nice render.... i think the scratches are a bit too prominent though.

great modeling!

amazing work, really beautiful shots in there....

just estimate the time you need to produce the product and multiply that with your hourly rate. since music producers are usually short on cash you might need to divide that amount then by 2 ;)

thanks! :) igor, i didn't do much shading wise on this one... in fact for this one i just applied a toon Filter in after effects, and separated the two skinned xp meshes with objectbuffers and then made the gaps with a simple matte choker...

awesome reel!

great creatures, great renders!

wow! very detailed model, great work!

http://giphy.com/gifs/cartoon-fire-smoke-3oriObE7QnMyqiATEQ Made an x-particles cartoon explosion yesterday.

audio is a scene from the movie "the heartbreak kid" with ben stiller.

looks great so far! looking forward to the final render.

thanks... tunnel is just a giant rotating torus with a striped material (gradient) applied to it ;)

congrats, well done! camera and boat movement seem a bit too fast...

new gif loop called "permaswing" :)

great! liked that a lot! a few notes in case you've interested: the animation looks a bit floaty (even in the parts where he's actually not floating ;) ) ... the walk could have used some more love... and the scene with the city and roof tops doesn't really fit in... looks like you comped your character into an Element 3d scene and the lighting doesn't really match. but over all great work, very nice look and feel.

fantastic modeling again. regarding the light saber: you could make the saber a lightsource, so the character get's actually lit by it...

thanks :) little gifs of some setups are actually a good idea :) here's one of the fluid effects i used everytime a limb got ripped apart.. baked that one out to alembic and then imported that into my scene, just because another two metaballed cloners times 4 would have slowed down the scene by another 2 or 3 fps...