Mike A

Anyone up for helping an xpresso challenged user 🙂 I have a basic linear spline drawn on the XY plane. I want to generate a copy where the point positions are smoothed (averaged) on the Y axis only. The Y position average being based on a user definable number of surrounding points. The important constraint being: I want to maintain both the same number of points and their X position. All the tools / methods I've found for 'spline smoothing' so far end up redrawing splines with new point numbers, or new point positions. I need an exact match on everything apart from the point Y position. My Xpresso vector manipulation skills are not up to the job! Any willing volunteers - or any obvious solution I've overlooked? Thank you!

As an R21 Perpetual licence holder I'm waiting with bated breath for all the new things I probably won't get : )

This is an interesting thread for me as I keep coming back and chipping away at learning some of the very basics of Houdini. From my point of view it seems the main difference is 'access to the fundamental building blocks'. C4D hides - or at least makes it much harder to access - a lot of the really core data manipulaion from the user. That's good in many respects - more artist friendly. But it becomes an issue when you hit the limitation of the provided tools / controls. In that case in C4D you're sometimes at a dead end. I've had that happen on one or two projects in the past. In Houdini you've got access to just about everything at a really fundamental level. That's great if you need the power and have the understanding to manipulate it, but it can be demanding and overwhelming if you don't.

...and CPU's not to exceed 37° at any time... : )

Pushing this back on track... Any suggestions of good training on Houdini for absolutely new users - ideally users coming from C4D ?

Scouser or Mancunian, I'd be happy with that : )

jed, I've not been a regular user of c4dcafe until fairly recently - so this is the first time I've watched a video of yours. Not only was it interesting, but as a fellow northerner, I couldn't help but smile, and felt right at home - what an accent : )

Dave, There is one slight issue with your analysis... The vast majority of the population has some degree of immunity to the standard flu - that's why only a small proportion of us get it each year. None of us have immunity to the new Coronavirus. That's why many of us will get it. Multiply that by the suspected higher mortality rate and you have a much bigger problem. The other thing you might want to consider: Do you have any family, friends or aquaintences who are elderly or in poor health? I do. If someone passes Cv on to them - they have a much higher mortality rate. I have people in my family who will probably have a 50/50 chance of survival if they get infected with Cv. Bear that in mind folks.

You might be better off drinking it : ) To be useful as a disintectant you need about 70% alchohol content - around 125 degree proof.

Maybe MAXON and Adobe could do swapsies : ) Red Giant for Allegorithmic... LOL!

OK - great to see this has been worked on for the R21.1 update... thanks to all who heard our cries and took action. However - I've got the offline help installed, but I'm not getting any context sensitive linking to the 'right-click > Show help' menu. Any ideas?

I'm really hoping Rick is still subscribed to, and reading, this thread... : ) The other aspect of the help system that needs improvement is the search function. Currently it just seems to be a simple search on the main content text. It would be really helpful to have a specified phrase - ie: "a multi word phrase" in quotes.

PS: Re the "with our limited resources" comment... Prime users will soon be paying 'studio' level subs, perpetual 'studio' users could be facing a 50% increase in upgrade cost next year, you're telling us you're going to have all these new renters coming on board... OK, maybe I shouldn't have opened that particular can.... ; )

Everfresh could have typed the response for me : ) - I'm perfectly happy to have that additional option as long as it doesn't detract or interfere with the core info - and that it's clearly separated from that info, not all jumbled up together. The sort of help info I typically need is: What does 'parameter A' do? - or some other very focused bit of info. I need the info I want, quickly and accurately to get the job out of the door. For me, Cineversity fulfuills a different role: it's for when I want to explore or discover a new feature or toolset in more depth - and I have the time to watch and absorb a longer video or playlist. Hence the need to keep these two routes clearly separated. I noted your comment about the current difficulty of incorporating user reported typos, inaccuracies etc - and your efforts to enable the integration of that input. I'd very much like to see that improved. If you could enable an easier route for user contributions that would be a very good thing. I'm not talking about directly accessible user content here, but about submitting content to yourselves that you could review, consolidate and consider for your next 'documentation update'. I guess my ideal solution would be an online system that gives you the ability to make continuous updates, corrections etc - but one that would allow the user to download a local copy (of the core info - similar to R20) at any time of their choosing for local off-line help. This could then be updated by downloading a revised copy of the help as and when the user felt necessary - and when they had good connectivity to do so.

Rick - thanks for being a 'willing listener' on this important matter! I'd pretty much echo Macgyver's comments 100%. 1. Please - no community content. That's what Google's for. When I'm looking for help in complex software like C4D I want direct, detailed, in depth, authoritative information - that I can find immediately and easily. The very last thing I want is a link to 23 random youtube tutorials... or similar. I hate the fact that Adobe have done this to their help system. Please don't follow them. 2. Just like Macgyver - I have a good amount of 'screen real estate' at my studio and high speed connectivity. But I typically want to refer to the help most when I am away from the office with my 15" laptop - minimum screen estate - and poor, or NO, connectivity. Yes, I understand that a system that can be updated more easily etc would be good. But my priority - by far - is a help system that meets the requirements above - as R20. Mke

Ralph, I work with a lot of customers in defence and other areas who are totally banned and unable to connect their machines to the internet in any form. So how are they supposed to get help? Your quote: " Online connectivity is something people assume nowadays..." Please don't assume - you can end up making bad decisions - like this one. "Having the help online greatly increases our flexibility and speed of deployment, especially for the numerous languages we support. It’s the modern agile approach and we are embracing it." Great to hear it's benefiting MAXON. Does it benefit your customers? It won't help me. I'm frequently travelling with effectively no internet connection. At the absolute minimum please make this easily downloadable for your users. Like a lot of other users here I thought the exisiting C4D help system was one of the better features of the software.

Very cool and fun stuff!

ROFL ! - check out my icons : )

If the scene fits in card memory... 6, 8, or 11 GB won't matter. 11GB is better - you can handle bigger scenes without needing Redshift to use out of core memory - which will slow things down - but unless you're dealing with huge geometry and multiple massive texture maps an 8GB card will do fine. I recently rendered 8 million instances (circa 25 billion polys) on my 3x 1070 Ti's (8GB) without a problem ; )

Glad it helped : ) The render looks good. Now that the mining boom has cooled off I bet there are some good Ebay deals on second hand 1070 Ti's and the like : )

To fix your Aliasing issue on the superbright shutters I think you need to look up help on the 'Max Subsample Intensity' in the Sample Filtering settings of the Redshift render settings. I don't know, but 17 minutes sounds like a long time for this render to me, even with a 970. What is your render time for the Redshift Benchmark image: https://www.redshift3d.com/forums/viewthread/12843/ Hope this helps.

Fantastic! You've got some great stuff there, and I'm personally really looking forwards to the material nodes playlist. I'll also be recommending the intro stuff to a colleague of mine who is just starting to use C4D.

Thank you! I'm very much looking forward to viewing these!

Understood : ) There's some good stuff on Lynda.com . You used to be able to get a free 30 day trail, not sure if that's still available - but it would be worth a look.

Well, if you have a budget I have over 20 years experience as an Adobe Certified After Effects Instructor - I'm based in the UK, but Amsterdam is just a short hop away. 2 days would enable me to get you up and running. If you want to go from 'zero to hero' budget 5 days. Send me a PM if you want a quote : )