mattbowden

For the life of me I can't figure out how to activate/deactivate a cam in xpresso. I have a lot of cameras and I have animated swapping between them with a stage for my render...but Im creating a simple xpresso rig that allows me to activate and deactivate the stage with a simple user data click. Problem is when the stage is deactivated the camera in the frame range is still active. So I cant move around the viewport without messing it up. I want to be able to also click to deactivate all of the cameras....or if its simple just see a list of the cameras with check marks and be able to cick to deactivate them in one spot so I dont have to go searching through all my rigs. Make sense? I tried the "on" property but it doesnt seem to do anything. I could be using it wrong though.

Hey guys...so Im working on modelling a glass seltzer water bottle. Im having a "helluva" time trying to get the freaking labels on nicely. I've tried uv unwrapping and can't get it to where it's not stretching the materials. So now I'm making multiple textures and placing them via the flat projection on my model. It works. Nothing special. However...Im getting issues at my intersections between the different polygon selections. Take a look. Any ideas? Im just using these placeholder materials to lay everything out so ignore the colors etc

HERE HE IS!!!!! This guy is insane. https://www.johannesl.se/

I think it looks awesome! I agree that you should work on adding micro detail to give it a more realistic texture. I also agree maybe bringing your camera down a bit to get a bit more of the floor and lose some of the ceiling. A friend of mine told me about this amazing Archviz guy (I can't remember who he is...I'll try to find him) he overexposes the windows to try and give it a hint of realism. Lowers the contrast. I tried to emulate that. I just quickly rendered this out..it's faaaar from perfect....but you'll see what I mean about the windows.

Hi All. I work for a company called Hutton Miller. We produce national television spots for ASOTV [As Seen On TV] products. I am looking for some talented 3D Modelers that can alleviate some of my workload. Projects will be on a per project freelance basis. We are wanting to find some people proficient in hard surface product modelling. Some minor rigging might be required. We won't need any texturing, lighting or animating. 100% modeling. You can check out some of our spots on our website: http://huttonmiller.com/ The ideal candidate can work within tight deadlines and provide clean meshes as well as organzied C4D Project files ready for animating. Many of the products we shoot spots for are prototypes so therefore you will need to e able to work using images and measurements to recreate the product. Most projects require a 2 to 3 day turn around. The images that I have uploaded are some of the product animations that I have modeled and animated for some reference as to the types of models we need. We work on a very wide variety of products. If you are interested send me your reel [or a current collection of product stills] and your rate to Matthew@huttonmiller.com

Looks great. The only thing that I initally noticed was it almost looks like the carpet is sunken into the floor. Maybe give the carpet some more thickness? It could just be optical illusion but the side of the carpet closest to the kitchen looks like the hardwood floor. Have you thought about adding a bit more contrast to the scene? Less ambient lighting? Looks great!

Great stuff. Just awesome! Cool song too.

Thanks for the votes of confidence. Here is the negative clip. I had to use ReelSmart Motion Blur becuase for some reason I just can't get Octanes Motion Blur to work with the skinner in Xparticles. Video Link

Working on a project at work. It's due tomorrow. Working on setting up and rendering all night tonight. I started on Tuesday. It's a product that stops leaks in hoses. Here is a section showing how a leak "kind of" happens lol. Not scientific at all. Can't show frames with the product in it yet since the commercial hasn't aired. But it looks the same. It's going to be a split screen. Currently rendering 1280x720 out of Octane. Pathtracing. The water sim is taking about 45 seconds to a minute to cache before EACH frame so timewise I'm not able to render out at the full 1080 for my deadline. But I think I've been able to uprez to 1080 in After Effects successfully enough. Water sim done with xparticles. It's not perfect. Having to just leave or deal with some issues due to my deadline. I have a bit of stretching with the mold texture on the white part and the water itself isn't "spray-like" enough for my taste but it gets the point across. Not sure if I can get that realistic with xparticles. Thoughts/Questions?

Oh man. Thanks, Nick. I appreciate your feedback. It makes me so happy to hear that other 3D artists like my work. I work from home and don't get lots of feedback from my bosses, lol. I'll send you a PM so as not to derail the thread here with Octane mumbo jumbo. lol

Hey, thanks! I do have to say that having a background in production has really benefited me. I use Octane as my main renderer and approaching my 3D scenes the same way I would a location shoot has been really helpful.

I actually went to college for Media Broadcasting. I worked for MTV, even won an Emmy. Then parted ways and started working as a D.P. I always loved post production and got to the point that I no longer wanted the type of lifestyle befitting a traveling D.P. Through college and after I spent loads of freetime learning after effects etc. Never branched out into 3D. Didn't have access to the software. Then about 5 years ago I downloaded Blender and was hooked. I took a job in post production that allowed me to grow my After Effects skills while I dabbled in 3D for fun on nights and weekends. Three years into that job my company shut down it's production/media department. Through contacts that I had made at said company I was offered a position as an editor at a new company. They saw some of my side 3D work and loved it. That was April of 2015. They bought C4D for me and told me that they wanted me to be their full time in house 3D/VFX artist. I said yeah I can totally do that (while I was actually thinking what the hell are you doing you've never done any commercial work before). It's been awesome. So my story seems to lean towards what Cerbera warned against. And while I do agree with him in part on a few things I do think that you can do anything you put your mind to. If you have the drive and determination you can succeed. I've asked for pointers a few times and hope it didn't come across as deadline-based. LoL. But I do see where he is coming from. In my first year I literally worked 7 days a week up to 22 hours a day to get stuff done. It was trial by fire. It's still that way sometimes and I am FAR from an EXPERT. But I have a solid fundamental understanding and always have ideas on where to start. This makes it easier for me to find out how to do stuff by creative problem solving. I also have a strong support system that I've been lucky to be a part of. i found an awesome group in my area called CAVEMODE (Charlotte Area Visual Effects and Motion Design) and have made so many awesome contacts. Good friends that I can call or message if I'm in a bind that are happy to help or let me pick their brain. Find a good community, get involved. You'll make friends that are invested in your success that are willing to put in the effort to help. Also, my case is kind of rare though with regards to my company. They are totally supportive and to a very specific and small level has a bit of understanding that I'm not an artist with 15 years experience. They do still require and expect the world from me. It's hard being directly managed by someone who has no clue what goes into 3D work. I rambled on long enough. But I wasn't classically trained. I am self taught. I spend ridiculous amounts of time reading, watching tutorials and doing everything possible to get my work done. And in doing so I am learning my way through C4D. If you find someone willing to pay you to for your work and there is a very clear understanding on what you could provide I say go for it. No matter how much experience you have. Doing client work is SO much different than playing with tutorials on your own. Here's a few pieces that I worked on through this past year. They aren't amazing but I am super proud of them. My name is Matt. I'm a full time 3D Artist and the sole artist for my entire company. I've been a professional artist for about a year and a half and will never do anything else.

TerminatorJQ. I'm not sure what type of work you do but I have been very happy with C4D. I find it very stable, intuitive and gets about 90% of the job done with included options. I do have Studio though. With Xparticles (and Octane but that's not necessary) I feel like its a great choice. But again without knowing the type of work you do I can't offer specific bonuses.

Absolutely amazing. I'd love more info about this as well. Renderer etc?

Thanks, Guys. I work for a production company that does high end ASOTV commercials. Think Proactive type spots. I am the sole 3D /VFX artist. This was a typical commercial. 2 minutes in length. The offer, which is the end where they have a call to action, was about 30 seconds of the entire spot. This was all done 3D. It's cheaper than hiring a full crew to shoot multiple days for this type of shot. I used Octane for this render. We have (x5) 980ti cards. For this specific 'dark' version I had to up the samples pretty high to get a clean/noise free image. I used Pathtracing, 5000 sample with diffuse and specular depth set at 16. This resolved in about 2:15 seconds per frame on the five cards at 1920x1080. I still had some fireflies in the floor to deal with but they were out of the main action area so a small blur in After Effects got rid of them good enough. The modelling was pretty straight forward. The bottle and wipes were simple. I created the bottle and cap. Then I loop selected some of the polygons around the center of the bottle and split them. Then I just extruded those a bit to create the lable paper. Just to give it some depth. The lamp was more difficult. I can't show specifics on that because of the NDA. It's one of the secrets of the product. The global lighting and reflections are driven by an HDRI map. I had the flag the heck out of it in order to keep the floor and background clean of anything. I was going for that nice dark but reflective look. I started out in my career as a D.O.P. so i figured I'd just try to approach the lighting like I would have on set somewhere. Not sure if there is an easier way but unfortunately the amazing/handy compositing tag is not compatible with Octane. So no way to select which objects effect what with regards to reflection etc. Then I started creating area lights to add highlights to things. Back lights, rim lights etc. Also the light hit on the background behind the product is the result of one area light. While I'm on that I'll quickly explain the BG setup. It took me awhile to get something I liked figured out. What I do is crate a HUGE floor plane. Like massive. Then duplicate it and rotate it so that it's sitting vertical. Then I move it back in the Z axis REALLY far away. I make the texture in the back wall a diffuse material (rough) and then I make the floor a glossy material. Then what happens is that because the back wall is so far away, when you add the slightest bit of depth of field, the seam between the floor and wall disappears. Then throw a light on it like a spot and boom. Textures. They are all pretty basic. The flags are straight up diffuse textures with a black as the color and everything else turned off. The equivalent in a native C4D shader would be turning everything off. Most are simple glossy materials with different values in the roughness node. The texture for the bottle cap is the same thing with a bit of bump. The edges of the wipes also have some ribbed bump map to try to give it the look and feel of the type of wetnap packaging material. If there's anything that I didn't cover that you guys are interested in let me know.

Here's still from a design/animation that I did for a tv commercial. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. CC is welcome. I'm always looking to grow. This was not the final approved version hence the noise level. Rendered just enough to get the point across.

Grain, thanks so much for your feedback. It's GREATLY appreciated. I do feel like I need to spend some time trying to hone my texturing. I do get a little bit of push back from my bosses. Just like you said they're like "no it needs to look perfect. I don't want there to be fingerprints on it." lol. I'd LOVE to look into substance designer. It's a little pricey. I'm the sole bread winner and have two kids. ;) I purchased Quixel on black friday but I hate it. It's sucks. It's way too confusing I just can't wrap my mind around it.

Thanks, everyone. The feedback means a lot. Any constructive criticism? I'm wanting to try to keep pushing my stuff into the ultra-real category. My bosses love that stuff. With lighting I generally start with an HDRI and then add area lights to beef it up. But my lighting still seems to look flat sometimes.

I second gimp it's awesome!

Looks great! My two cents... Add a tiny bit of blur and noise/grain over the 3D aspects to make it blend in more with your BG. If you are using After Effects it has a nice Match grain effect that will try to emulate the grain in the BG.

I started a new job as a 3D artist December of 2015. I had dabbled in 3D for a couple years but was working professionally as a one man band shooting/editing commercials and doing motion graphics. I've always wanted to get into 3D but never had the experience or chance to do it professionally. I occasionally did a free gig here and there using blender. When my company tanked I was able to negotiate my way in to a new company by showing them how they could benefit from a FT 3D artist on the payroll. So there I was, all of a sudden in a 3D position ready to start the new phase of my career. It's been a crazy year of insane deadlines and being expected to do things I don't know how to do but I continue to grow. Here are just a few snippets from projects I've worked on this past year. Been the most rewarding year ever. All were done in C4D. All but one were rendered with Octane. I know it's not the best work but I'm super proud of it and feel like I've grown a lot in my first year of being a FT 3D artist. Of course there's lots of bad crap not shown here. Find a way to do what makes you happy. You won't regret it. https://vimeo.com/202454546/e159a3b8ea

Thanks guys for the responses! I was so hoping that there might already be something out there that would kind of offer this. Robididan thanks for the idea. I actually already team viewer to access my other slave computers. I had no idea there was a phone app. I'll look into that too.

Oh ut would be so flipping cool if there was an app that integrated with c4d thatbwould send live updates and infor about your obgoing renders from the que or picture viewer. So many times a render fails and i dont know it because I cant get to the computer to check on it. would be neatto be able to see prpgress of the render. Maybe heat infor on cpu/gpu. number of frames left estimated time etc. seems possible but im not s coder. would anyone else find this useful?