Rectro

I will make a video on that in more detail, but you know when your know the way you want something to respond but your have to go at lengths to get it there, its refined to work in a way thats useful. If I get a moment today Il do a quick video. One example V1 you had to make a selection set or a map for where you wish to constrain the hair too which is still a option, now in V2 you can paint in directly on the mesh like a spray brush. Surface comb in which you draw direction curves has vastly improved, very fast to groom a animal, or pin back the sides of the hair. Dan

Yes, I was trying it during development using the beta, had a break for all 3D, now its out officially where it has been significantly improved in all areas. Im going to try it this week. Just having a quick play I can say its quite a game changer as far as usability is concerned. I will be making a overview of version 2 soon. Dan

V2 Of the fantastic Ornatrix Hair plugin is out. It has some significant features added which makes grooming hair even easier. https://ephere.com/plugins/MAXON/c4d/ornatrix/index.html

Hi. Welcome to the cafe, have fun. Dan

Well done, quality work, and yes its a huge task and anyone can only understand when they go through it, it really is a team work thing if you want to have a life outside CG. The physical looking bones in the mesh, what are these, I see these in Maya riggs and wonder what their purpose is in the rigging process, are they guides for placing joints? Dan

Welcome to the cafe. It will be easier once you have some direction or particular area of interest. C4D is like a kid in a candy store, just too much to look at when your not focused on what you want. Greyscalegorilla is a nice place to start, they do some free tutorials, project based which is ideal. Just make sure you do more of the doing part than watching the tutorials, zero skill will be learnt watching only. Good luck, and keep enjoying it. Dan

The Mocap files are useful to learn and try out the Character definitions and Motion Solver. Rather than import your own to try this out they have given you fast access to some Mocap files. If you go back there was plenty of people including me complaining about retargeting, the wrong joint orientations would mess it up enough to not use it. Delta Mush has been used in Maya for some time, and when it came to a paid for plugin version for C4D I jumped on it although that plugin was made free eventually the included version for C4D will always be kept up to date working as a native part of C4D. Again storing poses was down to Nitro Pose plugin, now we have a native solution. Copy and paste interpolations, or Ease curves is time saving and its the smaller things that make the big differences such as the filters for name and position or rotations for the F curves. The short cut keys Shift I or O again speeds things up setting the timeline input and output range. The filters for each object in the object manager is also so very welcome. This really simplifies what we need to see for animation. Adding markers for BPM for spot on timing, exporting timeline markers for their range into FBX files, Delete keys, Animate only for auto keys all save time and otherwise manual operations. These are all things that may be overlooked but are huge when in production for efficiency and speed. Dan

That is odd you didn't hear anything in a email, but there was certainly plenty of threads for S22 which was the subscription part of a two part upgrade for 2020. Collectively the combined two part release has had some big additions since r21, so its worth checking both out and ringing MAXON to see what they can offer in terms of perpetual upgrades. Not to get confused by s22 as it is part of the r23 perpetual upgrade so your be upgrading from r21 to r23 there will be no choice to upgrade to r22 perpetually. S22 Features. R23 Features. Perpetual release Dan

Hello and welcome to the cafe. I look forward to seeing what your produce. Dan

Hello Bil, welcome to the cafe, great to have you here. Look forward to seeing your work, and questions you may have. Dan

This is a awesome update, especially the Bendy character rig with face rig. Having Magic Bullet Looks in C4D is such a nice addition and shows how things can pan out in the near future. Dan

Hi. Iv touched some areas of rigging, setting up constraints. correctional morphs. Feedback in viewport is fast and looks so nice. I had to mainly deal with modelling tasks. My daughter was doing a Graphic Game Media course at college. She naturally came to me for help. They wanted proof she did the work in Maya but also allowed some work to be done in C4D. My daughter didnt know Maya an neither did I and the tutors didn't either lol. I started doing some training for Maya, just basics and using my intuition crossing between C4D and Maya. After a sort period about 30 hours I was getting things done and felt regret that I could not own it outright as I liked it, so didn't pursue learning it further because it was too expensive. My speciality is in Digital Sculpting and anatomy study which opened up to being a generalist, but had always wanted to understand rigging. Going way back my first rigging experience on a basic level was in XSI, then I took a course rigging in Max, this was enough to let me know rigging as a speciality was not for me, it gets way too technical, much deeper when your having to write scripts and rig hard surface objects e.c.t. Not giving up on rigging I then as a beta tester for DAZ3D for all their software range delved into rigging with DAZ3D specialist tools while working with a DAZ3D colleague on a project. I later moved on to Modo where again I touched on rigging characters. I got to rig some cartoon based characters in MODO where some past aspects of Max finally clicked with me. I hit some limitations in MODO and combined it with Messiah Studio, learnt some cool stuff in there, done some rigging training in there too. Next was C4D where it sat bang in the middle between Maya and Modo. Iv seen some exceptional character rigging done in C4D, and some great modelling, so while Maya, Modo may be better in some areas a lot can be said for being proficient in where your comfortable working in. If your working in software that's better but you feel your fighting against it you will not work fast, this is how MODO left me feeling often. This may be where Jay is coming from, he knows C4D well enough and feels comfortable enough to be very efficient with it and get the job done. Dan

Interesting topic and replies. Maya Indie price offer is very good and for those who are located in the right country its worth it for sure. Im Into purely character based work, no Mograph so how come I got C4D? Maya was my first port of interest before getting C4D but it was their greedy tactics and steep pricing that put me off right before the last month by trying to lock me into a maintenance subscription where if stopped for any reason that perpetual licence would no longer be upgradable. Then I started looking at MAXON before looking at C4D. Not long after I got C4D, Autodesk tried to get their perpetual customers to give in their perpetual licences in order to have it rented back to them at a discount, I dodged the bullet and felt happy to work with C4D even with its limitations. Many do use these apps as pure money making tools which is fair enough, but there are some that also see these tools as part of their hobbies or artistic output. I fit into both of these which is why I respect the likes of Pixologic, they make a lot of money but they are interested in the art and their customers, they are artists, good business ethics. I had to use Maya 2 years ago and I found it was much better than I had thought it would be. C4D weakest link IMHO is in its modelling and UVs, although its capable its quite some way behind the likes of MODO in this area, shame MODO feels so clinical and lacks C4D user friendliness. Dan

Iv been using Unfold3D for years now, still do, nothing else touches it in every regard apart from Rizom Uv which is the same company split up. C4D has had some very nice additions recently to its Uv toolset so If that is not getting you there then Rizom or Unfold3D. As C4D dont natively support UDIMs so if your also using UDIMS then options I mentioned above are the best was forward. Dan

Hello and welcome to the cafe, hope you learn plenty and show us your work soon. Dan

Looking great so far. Prefer Notification at the top as its a drop down type of listing so makes sense to be at the top. Dan

HI Fred, Welcome to the Cafe, look forward to seeing your progress and works. Dan

Welcome to the Cafe, great to have you here. Dan

Thanks, I like the night and day mode, that very good option to have.

All sounding pretty good Igor. You have already done a awesome job to where it is now, look forward to seeing the new colour themes. Dan

Hello Sol, welcome to the cafe. Its easier than you may think, just learn one bit at a time and your soon be creating cool stuff. Dan

Hi Ditmar Welcome to the cafe, look forward to seeing your work soon. Dan

Hello and welcome to the cafe. 3D covers a wide range of skills, what area are your interests in? Dan

@FLima You got nice result there. For proxy hair its nothing special, it just fills a void to help the look dev for the face. A sphere pulled into basic volume, the primary form, then converted to dynamesh, still quite low poly. Using the move tool to form the silhouette then secondary forms are added. Zremesh it then sculpt into the details. So its Volume, primary forms, Secondary, then detail. Its good to have a reference as the mind can wander off to another style and it looks wrong. S curves are so important, I never leave a straight edge unless that's required but I will always add a S curve to counter balance weight and form into rhythm and flow. Topology wise if you look at page 1 your see I lay down the essential loops first, then fill in the gaps. Its good idea to keep the loops with even numbers then you wont end up with a triangle. The hardest thing with doing it this way for beginners is attaining volume in 3D space. Working from front and side views can start off ok until you look in the Perspective view and see it lacks correct volume and contours. The way around this is not a short term solution, but Zbrush helps a great deal as it teaches you how you perceive volume in 3D space. Anatomy is also essential as without it its like feeling your way around a dark room, hit and miss, and thats frustrating when you think you got it down, but next time things dont go so well, this is a sure indication you just got lucky. Stylized you can get away with a lot in this regard but you have to push appeal so its still good to understand anatomy even at a basic level. Anatomy teaches volume and contour, and that teaches edge flow, and then half you retopology decisions are already grounded. Once you can add loops, be in control over where poles are added for directional changes, how to reduce, or increase edges to say a wrist, or neck your off to a good start. This is why I start with the palm of the hand as the hand has to have the right number of edges to fit to the arm, and if it dont you need to plan how your going to reduce it evenly. Dan

Making hair like this at this stage, no its not a standard way to work, but I would normally still make a proxy hair object in Zbrush which is a standard way to work. Trying to get likeness without hair is hard. In this case I skipped making a proxy object and went directly in and made hair with Ornatrix as Im learning it at the moment so want to use every opportunity I can to use it. Regardless what I do with the character I can use the hair over and over again from one character to another. What I will do is convert the hair to mesh then export that into Zbrush. Il do the same for lashes and brows as well. Dan