Mike A

Congratulations Vector! They made a great choice of cover artist!

Thanks for this post Mash. It would have been so helpful for Maxon to have posted this sort of information, rather than leaving us all to guess and speculate.

Well, given the lack of any official info, free interpretation seems to be the only option. Three years ago the message was certainly that scene nodes would become the foundation of C4D. The message was that the Object manager would - sometime in the future - be based on this foundational scene node technology - whatever the nature of its presentation to the user, and once everything was converted to the scene node based foundation - then Xpresso would become obsolete. Now I totally understand and appreciate that those lofty ambitions may have been challenged by unforseen technical and other issues. But three years down the road how many scene nodes have been introduced? Capsules seem to be a half-way-house to facilitate scene nodes in the 'classic' object manager - while throttling the #1 claimed benefit of scene nodes - speed. Are scene nodes still on track to replace the entire C4D foundation? The object manager? Is Xpresso ulimately going to become obsolete or not? No one seems to know, or be willing to reveal, which way the ship is heading.

A big issue for me is that Maxon have totally changed their their tune on this over the last few years and have done so while leaving their customers totally in the dark. As MJV notes, a few years ago it was all 'scene nodes are the future, Xpresso will be depreciated'. Then Scene nodes became the 'child you dare not speak of' and 'Capsules are the future'. Now it's 'Scene nodes / Capsules and Xpresso are the future together'... I think. What a mess. Good luck planning any future workflows.

One for the poets and math geeks : )

I wouldn't get your hopes up. Of all the things McGavran is good at, screwing the customer for all they're worth must be his No.1 talent.

I think Hobbyist is 'bang on the nail'. Hidden away now, terminated next year.

The NURBS modeller "Plasticity" is $50 off 24th through 27th https://www.plasticity.xyz/

For me: Instrumental Jazz. Blue Note Classic hits is a fave. John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock and others.

A great recommendation - thanks Dave.

That video may well be the greatest example of why you shouldn't believe everything you find on YouTube : ) It's a guy fumbling around not knowing what he's doing and switching on stuff that was clearly labelled as early experimental (why do you think the 'on switch' is buried as code in a text file? 🙄) Just for the record: from what I've used and seen over the last few days, I think it's probably the most impressive upgrade I've ever seen for any 3D software. But if it's not to your taste, that's fine. C4D is great, use that.

Another welcome improvement: A much improved HDA creation dialogue with better branch and version control.

I empathise - it's frustrating when that happens. I was also hoping for lots of things that didn't arrive, but hey, that's how it goes for Maya / Max / C4D / Blender / Houdini... or any other. : ) The funny thing is I've just read a thread with various VFX artists who were 'disappointed with H20' because they felt their needs for even more powerful VFX features were being ignored : ) It must be tough being a developer : ) You've just got to go with the 'least bad' option - or a combination. 🙂

I think we have to consider the background here... Sidefx's traditional market, and priority, is high end VFX - as you well know. The production pipeline for that is totally different to the daily work of a solo Indie artist. Modellers model, lighters light, animators animate etc. Yes, that means there are frustrations for the Indie artist with our do-it-all requirements. I think Sidefx do realise that they need to cater for these other workflows - Christin Bargiel noted the widening of the Sidefx customer base at the London presentation - so hopefully they will increasingly take that into account. But, I think if you use Houdini, you need to accept that as an Indie you're on the periphery of the current customer base and that will mean some frustrations. My USD know-how is close to zero, but I think I read about some issues with USD and camera switching, so that may explain the current lack of that feature. I do think SideFX could do with focussing some more on quality of life / ease of use aspects - but, like many other developers I suspect they have a considerably longer list of things to do than resources to deliver them.

It's an inherent feature https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/sop/detangle.html but like most nodes in H it's an 'atomic component' and requires the right attribute inputs and set up to work well.

I was just playing around with some particle trail generation and detangling in Houdini and then remembered this thread - so I thought I'd post my result. No branching on this one - I was focused on the 'detangling' : )

I don't use Octane - so can't help on this unfortunately, but using a long focal length perspective camera (500mm+) is probably your best option.

If you can attach it to a PM here, send it to me - not the assets - just the PrPro project file, I'll see if I can do it for you. What version do you want to open it in?

It proved to be the case. Here are two lines A and A drawn over the lines on the deck. They are parallel and It's very likely those lines are parallel on the actual ship. Parallel lines like that mean it's in ortho projection. There are some ortho projections in cinema, or you could set up a custom ortho (parallel) camera. However if you are transitioning from a perspective image to an 'ortho' one all you can really do is transition from a typical perspective camera to a really long focal length perspective camera - while moving the camera away. The longer the focal length the closer to an ortho view you'll get. However if you do this you'll get a somewhat disturbing effect as you do the transition - depending on how much focal length difference you need to transition across. Could you ask your client for a perspective shot?

My strong suspicion is that the image is in orthographic projection, not perspective - hence why the camera calibrator is confused - and is giving you such a long focal length 'solution'.

I hope you'll still be here - and let us know how you get on : )

Good luck - I think Blender will serve you well. It's an amazing piece of software. In my limited interactions I've found the Blender community to be very helpful, so I'm sure you'll be able to find help when the going is tough.

While I'm also a Houdini enthusiast - and fully understand Eikon's enthusiasm : ) , I'm thinking maybe it's not for you... but you never know : ) Moving from any software to another in an area as complex as CG is tough, I know. I started learning Houdini seriously about 18 months ago and it's been a significant investment. I don't think you'll find anything better than C4D in terms of ease of use. Blender is harder, Houdini harder still. If you do want to get a start with Blender, I've found these free tutorials to be good:

This whole project is looking very impressive Cesar!

I think that's one up on Sharknado. There'll be five sequels out before you know it : )