Rectro

This is my fear, but Im not giving into that fear just yet. This was the very reason I moved from MODO to C4D, only every year had this cycle of instabilities, and broken tools, along with high expectations of features that failed at the very least on the level of intuitive user friendly tools. R18 has certainly shown this as you say, and I hope its a blip, or delayed response during their transition to the new core. OpenSubdiv is something that either works or it dont, so they have to get this sorted, lets hope r20 will show this. Even if its a feature that not everyone uses it should at least show all their users their attention to their own tools, and adhering to past standards of having workable features out the box. What I dont want to see is new features being added that look great on paper but in actual reality don't work. MAXON certainly has a good reputation of stability, easy of use, and from what iv come to know well thought out implementations of workable tools, all but many being a tad old in accordance to today's technological advances. I hope MAXON reinforces these things with r20. Im a sporadic musician, and use Reason software. Reason 10 recently came out, for many the "10" should have been a huge shift in its core functionality, but it wasnt no more than a content bundle all be it a nice one for some whom didnt shed out loads for VSTi the year before. I do hope that to MAXON the "20" is significant to them. Dan

Yea a CG generalist is the term. Do you have a website, a portfolio to show off what you can do? Dan

Thanks, guys appreciate your comments. Dan

As I said on Artstation, them teeth really does the trick for his character, nice work as always. Dan

Nice job, can imagine this 3d printed. For CG render it screams substance painter, can just imagine it. Dan

MAXON said it has not fully incorporated all its features to Pro Renderer, and when a first iteration for such a big add on comes in that context I got what I expected from Pro Renderer, Iv not touch it as it neither has the features, the stability or my system has a good enough Card to untilize it. New features always get over hyped, and I dont get pulled into it. The MSA in itself is saving you a fair bit, more so if you make the best of what Cinevercity offers. The only saving of opting out of a MSA is never to return, and this means you have a half baked version of Pro renderer. Even if you left it a few years till your just within the upgrade path, your still pay for all them years of upgrades anyway, only more without the MSA discount. Your dammed if you do, dammed if you dont. MAXON did say something about its UV tools in a blog, and I have no doubt they will update them. For many the expectations are high for r20, and given that MAXON increased its MSA they had better pull something special off. There will always be better 3rd party specialist tools, but they know that their software is a workhourse that still must meet a certain level of quality, and areas such as mentioned are a long way behind. Luxology for Modo once had this method of incrementally adding features, I hated it, and it meant that your playing a game of evolution waiting for a product to become something that it may never be, or at best complete over many years. I dont know If MAXON has ever done this before, iv not been around long enough. I gathered that they generally MAXON adds features fully functional out the box so I cant give an opinion if they will drag Pro Renderer updates out over many years or produce huge leaps in its implementation. Dan

Hey guys. I was asked by 3DArtist to write them a tutorial/break down for their Magazine. The tutorial is from my Tyrion Lannister portrait, and covers quite a bit over a 16 step break down. I had made some additions to it since its been posted publicly, that being the clothes where textured using Substance Painter. The core focus of the tutorial is Cinema 4D in which was used for Modelling, base sculpting and hair, although I talk about the full process. Anyways, check it out, should be out by Tuesday 10th April. Sampler here Latest version of the image, Original rendered at 5550 x 3700 Artstation limited to 1920 x 1080 : Click here Dan

Congrats, look forward to seeing your presentation, Im sure your do a great job. Do you have a website so we can see your works? Dan

Thats exactly what its made for, deformation corrections during articulation of joints for animation, it has no other use. A typical still frame object only needs correcting for a single pose unless you rigged it for multiple still shots. Baking it is the only option, but Im glad that we have that for now, look how long it took to even add the PSD morphs since they removed it from a past version. Dan

It works on a single frame, but when you render out the animation the frame what ever it happens to be on has the PSD morph frozen in all frames, in other words, it dont update each frame with the PSD morph state. Only way is to bake the PSD morphs into the whole animation. Dan

I think one major area that they did change, or add to navigation was in the last update, a proper gizmo for Position, Scale and Rotation with locking to objects pivot, normals and selections, so this feels more like working in a traditional modelling application in that regard. As for zooming, rotation, and panning around the canvas its not something I give a second thought. The layout can be rather daunting more so since they keep adding more and more features. Strip back Zbrush UI to what you use they things become clear that its not so bad. I dont use half the features in Zbrush, to me its a organic sculpting app with great fluidity in its strokes. It still needs proper grouping, and layers worked out, blend modes, and multiple painting layers per object that work with a complete PBR workflow like substance painter. That said Substance Painter while fantastic has its own flaws with no seamless painting across uv texture sets/ UDIMs. This version, well, adding adaptive sub div with the other ways of working with multi resolution geometry has taken Zbrush as a sculpting too to new depths. I do wonder however how this translates to the production UV model. I think this is where Zbrush and me divide apart. I want to get the maps, high quality maps, thats all I care about at the end of the day, and if all this fancy concepting cant help me make high quality maps then these features remain great for the concept artist. Now what would make me go wow! would be If that adaptive sub d mesh could retain its Uvs, and produce high end maps from it as at the end of the day I still have to sub divide my good topo model a million times to project the details on it in order to get the maps. Dan

So Zbrush 2018 is another free update out March 28th. Check out the new features in this video. Skip to 4:04 into the video to get right into the demo.

I submitted the bug to MAXON a while back, they where aware of the bug. I always submit bugs, and requests to MAXON. As far as reproducing it yourself apply a correction morph PSD, and render out a animation, the PSD morphs do not render, so for now you have to bake the scene before rendering it. Dan

A bit late here, so here is my expected list for r20, and also my wish list. 1: Fully Modelling Symmetry, and Re-symmetry. Its a basic feature that all modelling applications have, and by now C4D should have it. A proper symmetry feature which is not a tag but a global switch that simply allows symmetrical modelling and tasks throughout C4D which also including Uv mapping, Painting, modelling. Along with this have a re-symmetry tool that works of the basis of both object space, world space, and vertex position. 2: Faster all round performance. Faster performance in the view port, especially for character animation with deformers, and frame rate to preview timing. Speed all over, the updated core should show this when the tool set is updated to use it. Hair to Hair, Hair to Surface are too slow for any use. The muscle system has no cache. 3: Dynamics refinement and updates. There are a few areas I see C4D struggle within the dynamics. Dynamic IK even with 100 iterations can still have errors when using collision surfaces. Hair to hair simulation would sort out the nasty intersecting hair when having multiple layers underneath each other. Self collision is a area that the muscle system has non, deformers such as jiggle needs to simulate self collision. Using a low collision radius value for hair guides causes odd behaviour at roots. Cloth is not very accurate. 4: Modelling tools. Quad fill, multiple edge selection bridge, do away with dissolve just use the back space key, and a simple cut n paste command to copy polygon selection from model to new mesh. This takes way to much time up to cut a selection from one model to a new mesh layer. Axis modeling from normal, local from selection of object, or another object, or multiple objects needs refining. A universal manipulator tool handle would save a great deal of time when using fast extrude so one could position, scale and rotate without changing tool handles. Macro recording and script saving would also make doing repetitive task over again much faster. 5: Fixes General fixes for tools that have been needing a fix for a long time as well as new tools introduced such as PSD morphs do not render, they only show in the viewport. OpenSub Div needs fixing. 6: Pro Render updates. Not as if Im interested in this as I use Vray, but I expect to see more of C4D core features work with Pro render such as hair, sss and major stability and speed improvements. I also think this is one area where a nodal system will be introduced. 7: Updated Expresso I think we will see some updates in this area. Im quite new to this area but have read many who do use it state how it needs a revamp. This is a powerfull area of C4D and would do well to work even better according to others. 8: Features I dont need. I expect there will be mostly features that I dont need as C4D is at its core a Mograph tool so expect to see most new things in this area. Thats what I expect, this is what I wish for. 1: Character rigging and animation I wish for MAXON to aim high and be a contender to Maya. Give new users a reason to purchase it for character animation. It serves me, but clearly Maya is the chosen tool for this, and Id like to see the character rigging abilities be on par with Maya in regards its vast tool set and speed. The C4D character tool needs to support Mocap while retaining its control rig, retargetting needs to work better with more rigs and to correct itself for joint alignment. Order of operation needs a more robust way of solving permissions in how we can find what is causing a complex part of the rig not to work. NLA has its flaws in that you cant mix key framed animation with a motion clip within the same motion clip layer. Even if a joint chain is added to a animation layer it still can mess up when trying to mix key frame animation with motion clips. a ease in ease out to override portions of a motion clip would be better than using a transition tool. At the moment to disable a joint such as the arm you can only turn it on or off, we need key frame blending for this. A better method for fixing feet into position is needed when blending from one motion clip to another. Although you can use the Pivot object to get it in place, ti dont stop the foot from sliding in place. A new pivot should be made as a option from the last position on to a new motion clip, at the moment you have to turn on snapping to manualy position it to the last pivot object. The pivot object should be allowed to be frozen in another position. At the moment if the rigs pivot position is at the hip and you wish for the pivot object to be at the feet, while you may move it there in no time soon it will revert back to the hips. Align to spline has no -Z axis so you have to reverse the spline, and key the position from backwards to get character to walk forwards. These are just some area that need to be worked out better. 2: Muscle system I dont see any video training on this, or hardly anyone using it. When I went through this system I could see its short falls that resulted in more time spent than predictable results. Its hard to keep on track with the 3 positions that get locked in. The segments can not be changed after setting up the anchor points as it messes their position up from either end. You cant create your own custom muscle shapes to form flat sheets of muscle. Dynamics are unpredictable with no cache available. More segments to the muscle results its bad deformation for dynamics. Muscles do not self collide, and its tricky to get the muscle skin to deform well. 3: Facial rigging Id like to see a facial rigging solution for C4D. some of the features within C4D combined can do it, these need to be brought together to new tool sets to make it easier. 4: Hair refinement Hair while is great, and the next best thing to Maya, Max its still needing some refinements. Self collision for hair or a better force detention system to keep layers of hair intersecting will result in much better renders. The hair does not grow from around the guide, but on a flat plane between one guide to another. This makes it very difficult to make advanced hair styles such as braided hair. If you could grow many hairs around a single guide this would be much better if that was added as a option. Hair farm like styling from geometry would make styling so much more easier. Make hair grow from volume of polygon objects. A Braid tool would be helpful, and the ability to save hair styles in which when applied to another character it works out the scale and adjust its settings to produce the same results. Hair material clumping needs to be made more simple, hair needs to work with ray traced shadows, not just soft maps. Hair instancing geometry has no option to collide with itself or other objects. This is a huge deal as not only will this let you have objects that collide for things like flowers, trees, reeds, bushes, but they will be groomable, and work with hair dynamics. The other major advantage for this is to remove the huge long task of making hair cards. Hair cards that are dynamic, can be goomed, yet collide with each other. 5: Deformers to work with dynamics. Deformers such as jiggle simulate softbody but has no self collision. If the collision deform was much better at solving outside, and inside volume and work with the same object to collide with itself that would help. The collision deformer is so powerful, yet it fails to get me the ideal results So there you have it much expected and wish list. Dan

So does Hudini have direct hands on polygon modelling outside this procedurally driven method? Dan

Yea I think they would both work very well in a pipeline, and continue that way until if ever C4D becomes redundant over time, thats the way I think about it. All apps have their shortfalls, it was too easy to have a poke at that video as it did make a simple task look, well not so simple, kinda like using a dinner fork to dig your back yard. Simulations in C4D are good for small projects, id not try anything more until maybe r20 can process things a bit faster. Dan

I havent watched it all, but I assume at close to 20min that includes UV mapping, texturing, and rendering? Dan

I will certainly give it a try end of this year. Im getting used to nodal systems more these days now Im using Natron (Nuke clone) I have been hitting some brick walls recently while on a bigger project in C4D. The view port has had some major slow downs, and have found many limitations with NLA motion clips that have lost me hours of work. R20 needs to be significant, and I dont mean shiny new features as such, but speed, more reliable dynamics. To elaborate on this a bit. I have long reeds as instances to hair. I went with this as I wanted wind to blow over 400 of them around a pond. By now we should have it so the geometry can self collide. Using forces hair to hair, Hair to surface takes such a huge hit that I was getting during cache 1 frame every 5 min. muscle self collision, jiggle with self collision to name a few. Im very happy with most of what C4D gives me, but iv had a taste this month of what can bring it down. Thanks, Dan

For me there is no other options. C4D ticks too many boxes that no other app can, so even if r20 isnt what I hoped it to be the worse case would be I stick with r20 and leave it at that and not bother to upgrade again. I know people using r10 still and they are doing just fine. I wouldn't take much notice of rumours. Houdini is way to complex for me, id be going backwards making life harder for myself, not easier even if the tools produce better outcomes. Dan

Iv seen some awesome renders done in Redshift, but as of yet iv seen no decent skin shading which most render engines other than Arnold and Vray just cant do , but thats a small thing for majority of CG artists needs. Im still on a GTX 780 6GB card, getting old now but its still very good card. Dan

If the next gen retails at the correct price, how long will it take till bit minners grab all these and push their prices up, and if that does happen then wouldnt the 1080 cards be in even higher demand if they did drop in price which would then put the demand back up, and the price to follow. Im fine with Vray, but the price increase of C4D and with the attention on its own GPU render engine I do wonder where my money is going. Dan

Just going on toms hardware, I noticed when I went on this article, it appears the price of the cards in their test from amazon are updated live, and within a few seconds are updated, does this reflect the price increase from the time the article was posted Sep 2017 to now? Notice how the top gtx 1060 jumps from $281 to $392. Dan

Im not fully up on the bitcoin mining thing, but what got my attention was the increase price of GPUs. It was at one point looking that GPU rendering was the way to go, but with the cost of high end GPUs some GTX 1080 close to £700 new, and selling second hand for £500 and higher I do wonder how things are going to turn out for Maxons implementation for Pro render. Iv always got my GPU seconds hand in order to get a higher end one at a reasonable price, but whats to say that now I wouldn't get a over used bitcoin used GPU thats been run all day long leaving it with a short life span. I cant even use Pro Render at all because my GPU is a old generation, and at the current prices its a very bad time to upgrade my GPU. Whats your views on this? http://uk.businessinsider.com/nvidia-gtx-1080-gpu-impossible-to-find-buy-because-of-bitcoin-2018-1 Dan

If you have r19 then the work flow got a hell of a lot easier thanks to ablemic, and updated FBX. There was certainly a string of steps before, but now its just the case of animating character, export it as FBX, no MDD data needed. The figure imports into MD with all animation data. Making clothing, I mean proper clothing in MD is something that not in a million years would be done in C4D. There is a learning curve to MD but its used more and more in big game titles, and just simply works. Exporting you now use Alembic format. C4D now imports abc files with extra features, check them out in r19. Thats it. Watch my video on a quick run through. Dont dismiss Syflex, as that has alot of potential but your need to find out if its going to work for you.