Rectro

Hello all. This is my first project for 2019. My aim is to create a digital double of the actor Charlize Theron. Im in no rush on this one, so will be updating as I go. I will also be happy to answer any questions. Comments, critiques welcome. Im a bit ahead already so here is the start stage modelling the head. I place down the core loops then fill the gaps. Eyes, mouth, muzzle, jaw line, and head centre line along with the big neck muscle Sternocleidomastoid. I will be making the whole entire body, clothes as a complete finished asset.

Hi If your using the standard renderer it should be very fast. Physical will be much slower with more noise. Corona is by far the fastest I seen hair in C4D renderer and is currently free while in beta. Your CPU is rather old now so such a task just may be pushing it a bit but there are some tricks you can use such as culling. In the hair settings you can use the backface, distance and off screen culling, this can help. Just turning on back face culling will shave some time off. Dan

Some good advice there from everfresh. Not much to add but to tell you that tutorials are streamlined, they iron out all the problems, the problems that always come up that will help the viewer follow the tutorials refined workflow. Just remember that in reality this is not how it works. The better you become at problem solving the more productive your be. When I follow any tutorial I watch it, then watch it back again taking a section of it, then I go off and do it. The way I learn is to teach. This may sound strange but in my mind if I can't teach it I really did'nt get it. I would test myself even if im not teaching it. Id ask myself could I teach it, could I show it, and id simulate that? I would shut down the tutorial, and start what iv been learning from scratch. I did this with Brets rigging tutorials. Watch it, watch i again, do it, and do it several times. Repetition will set it in there because doing it is what helps retain more than using any other senses. Reading is the lowest retention, then seeing, then seeing and hearing is what he get from tutorials. Doing it is the highest way to retain it. If your doing it while simulating teaching it your talking your self through it, try it, it works for me very well. See if you can do it as if your showing someone else, this really helps me retain it. I found this out years ago when I started making videos for myself in case I forgot how to do it later on, but by doing this I never returned to the videos. I Kept doing this as it helps others but I never end up watching my own videos. Im not suggesting you make videos but follow a kind of workflow that makes you repeat a task as if you were projecting your knowledge away from you. You need to have a think what area is of the highest interest. Modelling is always a good place to start, this naturally leads to learning Uv mapping, then texturing, then surfacing, lighting, and before you know it you would have learnt something in many areas. Keep at it ,good luck. Dan

Old, yea getting there lol. Im just grateful that I can own what Iv got, its not ideal the way the cost of living is and software pricing, but Iv got there to the point that there is plenty to get on with and master. Dan

3000? Sounds like a beast of a machine for them days. I got my 1200 power tower second hand but they was crazy expensive new. I think its time to sell mine look how much someone is selling one for. Iv got about 200 disks, Midi adaptor, Music X2 boxed music production software, monitor, keyboard and mouse, my tower is still white. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/223198288170

Same here in fact I still got mine but I was doing 2d stuff and music production back then. Iv got a Amiga 1200 power tower with a huge 33mhz blizzard upgrade. Dan

Here is a video that I found interesting in that the presenter Perry Harovas has been a long time Maya user so can shed some light on some comparisons between the two. He didn't mentioned Mayas Rigging but either still its gives C4D users some perspective when we think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Dan

They have a big sale on at the moment. https://www.marvelousdesigner.com/

Downloaded the demo to test it. I used the polygon pen to create a single side of a dress, one big ngon. I did a front UV projection, imported it as a garment into MD and unfolded it. It automatically sub divided it ready for simulation. I used the new remesh to quads, and draped it. All took less than 2 min to do.

Hi all For thoes of you who use Marvelouse Designer in your pipeline with C4D a new version is out, and this one is in my opinion the biggie one. When I first got MD it didnt feel like a tool designed for traditional 3d artists in the way its workflow was too directed at the clothing designer, it was mainly about 2D pattern making at its core which I hated. I expected to be able to sew my designed in the 3d view port, but it just wasn't there yet, but now it is. Full 3D sewing is finally here. Talk about speeding things up. Next issue was triangulated meshes. Yes they do simulate well, but they are not ideal if you like to keep a quad workflow, now it has a quad remesher, and it looks sweet even at its beta stages in this release. MD always worked at its best when working with Zbrush for that extra detail from sculpting, now MD has its own sculpting tools, how cool is that. Making garments was one thing, but getting them in the correct place to simulate around the character was not a easy task. There where methods put in place to place markers around the body, so that parts of the pattern could snap to these areas but that took too long to set up so I just kept moving, rotating each part till it was in place, that too can take some time. Now the markers are automatic, this will speed things up a great deal. Also now zips, buttons and other accessories can play their roll in effecting the simulation by adding weight to them, nice addition. In the last update smooth imported meshes was finally added which saves so much time in producing two meshes with the same animation on just to get a decent simulation. Anyways, not trying to sell it lol, just thought this update was significant and could be the version that gets around all the issues I once faced in the pipeline. Dan

Hi guys. A new plugin is coming this month called IKMax. Its a auto rigging plugin that looks to work much like Mixamo meaning its super easy. If C4D gets the same features as the Max version It has the advantage of shrink wrapping clothes, attaching objects and accessories, and import/export of Mocap. Its costs looks to be very cheap indeed, very welcome for non Studio owners. http://www.3dtoall.com/products/ikmax/ Dan

Here is a quick test I did today. Although Ornatrix don't support Vray yet, I converted the hair to splines then used it for Vray render. The thing to point out here was this hair took 2min to style, I intentionally didn't spend long on it as to see how hair does or does not intersect. The Push away feature, and the way the guides are distributed seems to almost eliminate intersections. Dan

Hi I shall point you in this thread direction as its covered here. Dan

I removed it from the C4D preferences location for plugins put it in my root directory plugins, all the operators now show, it may have just needed reinstalling but now they show. I will check Ornatrix in more depth over week end, and see what I can get from it at this stage. Thanks, Dan

Hi Marsel To get clumping I had to use the clump option from C4D own hair material, I cant see any hair options for clumping within Ornatrix. Im using Ornatrix-C4D-0-0-2-16954 I will check again to see is another build is avalible. My go to renderer is Vray, It would be great if you could get the ball rolling to get it working with Vray4C4D. Thanks Dan

I had my first look at it yesterday, and while only the basics are added at the moment, it seems to work quite well. I noticed that there are different ways to distribute the hair from presets, these make a huge difference in the way the hair looks. Not sure if this will remain as Ornatrix for C4D does not use its own shader at present but uses C4D own one. While it dont offer viewport changes to adjustment like clump from within the C4D own material these things still work onto Ornatrix which is nice. I didnt get much time to play, but spending 30min with it 10min of which I actualy did any styling, here is my first render with standard render. Dan

I think for me to have direct control over the hair this means a huge deal. To be able to produce hair from polygon strips is another big deal as is the ability to make braids. It has a normalise feature to force intersecting hairs away from each other and along the same direction as the rest of the hairs. The arrow direction control is very nice indeed too. It looks like C4D own feather system has more control and uses a dedicated system to create the barbs with full curve control. Also C4D seems to have more brushes but at the end of it all if the result is better, or faster, and the dynamics are more reliable then its worth a look I think. Al speculation at the moment and it may take a while to get all Max features but at the end of the day its in development, C4D hair system as far as I can tell is not. Dan

So Ornatrix comes with its own map painting tools? What other map support does it have such as density, length? I noticed when looking at the feather features in a bird video that feathers dont actualy get produced but feather like shaped cards, is this the case I wonder? Dan

Yes Iv found the same with all the things you mentioned, but the Comb tool does let you push all hair in a direction, but its just not smart enough to get it spread in a nice flow as shown in the Ornatrix C4D demo but I will have to see for myself. Ornatrix had a braid system in the older version but now they have a easier solution which initially C4D wont get, along with some other features to start with, but will be added during beta and onwards. Iv have been in communication with Marsel this week and from what I get from him is this is not just a port over but a very well thought out truly reliable robust hair solution for C4D based on latest version of Ornatrix. I think its going to be a significant plugin for hair and fur. According to Wikipedia MAXON had made a great hair system 2005, and considering it was made back in 2005 shows how well their hair system was thought out back then. 2007 the hair was optimised, I could not find any more enhancements to the hair system since then, but that may not be the case. Having Ornatrix come to C4D is a good thing but at the same time could let MAXON not bother making any additions to its own hair system for a while longer mean while costing the user another $499 on top of the package if they want a more enhanced hair system. On the other hand very good for non Studio users as their MSA is much cheaper than Studio users. Dan

@zeden thanks for the extra info. What is meant by "Access to groom every single hair"? Do you mean that instead of just grooming the guides you can groom the hair that is generated? Dan

Hard to say in full at this point as Iv only been looking at its features over the week end here n there. Right off the bat I would assume that this works with all other non Studio versions. Aside from that a few things I picked up on was you can generate and control hair off polygon strips, it has its own dynamics, and has a anti collision for both the hair and of course the object. It has a quick flow arrow system that lays down the hair more so fur perfectly over the geometry. Its viewport visual feedback shows the hairs much better. It has a hair preset system. Its own shader looks to be very nice, and it works with the top render engines. Like C4D own hair system it can generate polygon strips, only you have control over its shape, and flow direction so the hair cards have a slight curve in them. Of course with C4D you can use instances for similar effect. From the looks of it the outcome is better regarding how hair does not intersect, and its dynamics look to be solid. Because its used in big industries its prooven itself to produce the results. C4D hair system is fantastic, no doubt about it, and will see for myself when I beta test it soon how it compares. For non Studio Users this is even more of a bigger deal.

Great news, Ornatrix for Cinema is coming and is soon going into beta. This is awesome news. https://vimeo.com/290705688 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLjdYTW4lTg Dan

Thanks for the share, looks nice, and iv seen some nice renders come from this render engine, how long did that take, what are your specs? iIt looks very close to Vray hair. ts shame its rent only engine as for me this method dont work out well. I would assume this will be the case for C4D version when its released too? Still its priced very well against Arnold which gives you one single licence at £72 per month as apposed to Corona £26.65 with 3 render nodes. Dan

Also please correct me If Im wrong but the last time I looked the $399 maintenance was only given as a incentive discount for users who owned Modo before the new licences where put in place such as me as I own v901. But if the maintenance at $399 has any break what so ever it jumps up to $599 for life there on. If the OP is on the standard rate of $599 then so will the new owner. Dan