Decade

True cryptomatte isn't. You can get an Object ID pass where all the objects are different colours from Standard/ Physical as follows: - Make a new render setting - Enable Material Over-ride - Make a material with only luminance enabled - Add the 'Variation' shader to the luminance channel - In the variation shader, change 'random colour mode' to 'replace' - Use this material for the Over-ride material This is still a seperate render, because it's a modified beauty pass, but it's very quikc to render & you can batch it using takes, to render with your main

No one ever answered this, but I'm going to drop it here for posterity, as I came across it searching for something else. The answer is to export the weights for each mesh via the weights manager, then gather all your meshes in 1 file & re-import the weights onto each of the meshes, after adding a weight tag with the relevant joints to each mesh. When importing the weights, it simply checks the weight tag for a joint of the corresponding name & applies the weighting, so as long as you've dragged all the joints into the weight tag prior to import, you're all good. Exporting & importing weights can also be used to fix skinning issues in situ - for example, you noticed a problem with the weight painting but animators have already used the character in lots of files - you can simply correct the weighting in the original file & import it into the animaton scenes. Of course, xref chracters is another alternative solution for this, as it let's you have te character auto-update.

I'd agree with the general consensus that I prefer how Octane looks out of the box & I think it's faster overall. The software & content bundle Octane comes with is pretty fantastic, in my opinion. You get a lot for your money especially if you work in a company where there are animators that would use Cascadeur, Environment Artists that would use Kitbash etc There are some advantages to Redshift though, that are more 'Pipeline' or 'Team' advantages Redshift is more Neutral/ Plain in it's output, which can be an advantage for some types of work, especially where a lot of the look is done in comp. The Viewport display of the materials is much better than Octane, which if you do a lot of previs/ playblasts is handy. Everyone with a Cinema 4D licence can open the scenes & see all the materials correctly, they show up in the viewport etc. If you use a 3rd party engine, they get nothing. Exporters see the Redshift materials & their textures, so if you go to Unreal or other packages a lot, it's much more convenient with Redshift. Basically the advantages of being native material system. I've written a python Octane->Cinema 4D material convertor, but it's rudimentary & still needs Octane to be installed, so it's a lot less ocnvenient than just using 1 material system for everything.

You can export the character via FBX to Unreal as a Skeletal Mesh Unreal is very particular about what it will accept - anything except joints & meshes that are either skinned onto or parented under those joints will be ignored So if you hierarchy you are trying to export is peppered with nulls & has the controllers parented in etc, then you'll get problems. The missing objects will result in incorrect orientations for their children. The best way by far is to have a separate Bind Rig, which has only joints & meshes & is constrained to an animation rig that contains all controllers IK etc. You then bake the Bind Rig to PSR keyframes & export only that

In 2024 this is resolved, the FBX import had been re-jigged & you can now choose -Z on the import to have stuff come in the right way up. HOWEVER, there is a new bug where skeletal mesh exports via fbx won't open in Unreal, so the exports the other way need to go from Cinema 2023.2.2. I've reported the bug so hopefully there will be a fix soon. Otherwise, I haven't had any need to change from the default when exporting from Cinema to Unreal. One caveat is that in the case of skeletal meshes, Unreal will ignore any objects other than joints & meshes in the hierarchy & therefore mess up rotations if they are present. You can use the 'replace with ...' command from the tools menu to substitute nulls & splines etc with joints while retaining animation. This lets you get those animated hierarchies into Unreal ocrrectly Although the ideal is to design your rigs with a seperate bind rig of just joints & meshes.

I actually have that exact Omen with a 3090 as my main machine at work. It was a pandemic buy, when HP were the only people in the UK that had 3090's to buy at a semi-reasonable price. They decided that a single fan watercooler was appropriate for the 10900k, with the result that it sounds like a harrier jump-jet taking off when doing an Unreal project build or a heavy CPU render. I managed to partially tame it with Intel XTU by enforcing a 125w power limit, at the cost of some performance. The 3090 is also towards the noiser end. That aside, it's been a solid system & it gets rinsed every day. But there's no reason at all to be building with one now - I agree with Mash - you want an i9 13900k or Ryzen 7950x system, for the vastly improved single-core performance as much as anything. I ilke the Ryzen's a bit better, as the 13900k is is such a power hungry beast it needs a lot of cooling. But they are both good for perormance really. You're starting to get 96GB configurations of DDR5 now too, with 2x48GB sticks. Could be a nice option for a little more RAM.

Have you tried 'Set Driver' & 'Set Driven' by right-clicking the channels ? It just creates an XPresso with Range mapper & links it up for you, but it is a bit quicker than doing it fully manual

When Cinema went subscription only, I just stopped having my own licence. Now my boss pays the subscription instead.

Everyone is using multiple apps nowadays across most of film, TV & commercials. Z-Brush, Substance, Unreal etc, etc. All of the programs you mention are also going to need supplementing with other software too. That's just how things are now., doesn't matter what program you're using.

That's nice for hobbyists or certain freelancers in certain industries. But I'll never work on a project that qualifies for the indie licence, nor will anyone else at the company where I work. It's just not a like-for like comparison. Even then, the Cinema 4D full commercial is only about 50% more on this offer than Maya's Indie, which seems pretty good value.

Tools -> 'Replace with' is one of the most powerful functions. Change any part of your rig to a different object type, while preserving all connections, substitute a bunch of copies from an imported scene for render instances etc etc. Other one is 'Set Parent' & 'Unparent' instead of dragging & dropping in the hierarchy - move your animated objects to different places in your hierarchy with no hassle.

A year's Cinema 4D commercial is less than 1/3 the cost of a year's Maya full commercial, even before the discount. I that so terrible ? £462 for a year with the discount seems pretty decent to me.

I had one instance where the solo wasn't working, but I didn't have time to investigate, I worked round it. This is something that I use so habitually that I'll be pretty displeased if it's bugged. Thanks. I really wanted them in the right-click menu, but couldn't find how to customise that one, so I did as you suggested, For the icon-less commands, I create a new pallette set to show text only. Did the same with Set Parent & Unparent (Hilariously, I think they did an icon for one & not the otheR)

Thanks. I would prefer to edit the commands back into the right click menu, but couldn't find how to do it on a 5min investigation. So I did as you suggest. For these icon-less commands, I creat a new plaette & display only text, no icon, then dock that in where I need it. Had to do the same for 'Set Parent' & 'Unparent' (hilariously, I think they did an icon for one & not the other.

Pretty solid update all round. But why for goodness sake why have they removed 'fold all' & 'unfold all' from the object manager's right-click menu ? Absolutely critical command for any scene of even moderate complexity. Gone, because someone decided it was untidy or something. I wish they would stop p***ing about with the interface, especially for a point release.

Is it in the task manager ? (Bottom left of the whole interface)

It's also worth noting just how much other software & assets you get with the Octane subscription. Right now it's Kitbash kits, World Creator, MOI3D, Embergen & there's lots more. No-one is going to need all of these, but I'd be surprised if anyone can't find a use for one of them. It makes it imo very competetive for the price compared to redshift. I also agree with Zeden. As useless as it is for really rendering, Redshift CPU is useful to have because Junior artists can at least open scenes and see something of what the materials should look like, can design a few materials in a stripped back scene and can learn how Redshift works on a basic level.

Also, you've specced an x570 chipset AM4 Socket motherboard with an AM5 socket CPU. You'll need a B650 or X670 motherboard for the AM5 CPUs. You'll also need DDR5 memory to go with it. It's either : AM4 (5950x) + x570 + DDR4 or: AM5(7950x) + x670 + DDR5 You can't mix & match.

You need to perform a 'Current State to object' on the mesh, while it's in the 'rigged to T-Pose' position. When that's done, you can add a skin object to the newly created mesh (it will retain all it's weighting information in the weight tag) & hit 'Set to Bind Pose'. If the mesh also has morph targets, it gets more fiddly. To explain what is going on, you are using a rig to pose the model, but you are then wanting this pose model to be the base state of the mesh, before any skinning or other deformation is done. So you need to current state it. If you don't to that, then of course when you hit 'set bind pose', the mesh goes back to it's un-deformed state. Hope this helps.

Sorry, I see I haven't put my meaning across clearly. I meant X-Particles have come up with an extremely confusing system to maintain a fig-leaf of a permanent licence. The commentabout indie licences on other software is meant to be completely seperate. Just saying it's not comparing like-for-like

With this offer, it costs me £108 for this year. That seems OK to me. It's not that I'm not capable of learning Houdini, it's that I'm not mainly a motion graphics/ effects artist, but I still like to have some options there. Also, for my work, Houdini indie wouldn't cut it. Same when people talk about Maya indie etc It's not a like for like comparison. I do think they've made it hideously confusing overall, by trying to pretend they haven't gone subscription-only, when in fact they pretty much have.

While I get the reasons some people are angry, we really need to stop with comparing other software's 'indie' version prices to Cinema's full subscription. I work in a small-medium studio & NONE of the projects we work on qualify us for Indie versions, not Maya, not Houdini, not Nuke, whatever. Cinema's FULL subscription is 1/3 the price of Maya's full subscription. Now Maya probably is worth more than Cinema, but it's very hard to argue it's worth 3x as much, especially for our use-cases. That said, Cinema should definitely consider an Indie licence to keep the 1-man-bands & hobbyists on board. I'm not up to date on the educational stuff. but it would seem dangerous not to make life as easy as possible for institutions that want to teach Cinema. On a personal note, I had been stubbornly upgrading my perpetual all the way to R25, even after they made it terrible value for money to discourage it. This despite my work being happy to pay for a subscription for me. So Maxon have done me a favour tbh - instead of me giving them £1000 this year, my boss will give them £600.

"Another option is Houdini of course. Unreal Engine. Plasticity, Moi3D, Shapr3D for cheaper-cost hard surface modeling. " Of these, only Houdini could be a Cinema 4D/ Blender alterntive. The rest are great supplemental software. I've used Unreal Engine a lot over the last 3 years. It absolutely needs a traditional DCC feeding it for most tasks. It has wonderful possibilities, but most of the jobs of a traditional DCC it does badly imo

A better GPU generally allows for the display of more polygons without slowing down, or more complex viewport shaders without slowing down. If it has more memory, then that allows for more textures at higher res to be displayed in the viewport. But you'll only notice this IF you aren't being slowed down more by some single-threaded process, like generators, deformers, dynamics etc.

The main reason why, I & I guess most people were interested in nodes was to get around the performance bottle-neck of working with many objects. Maxon have been clear that you don't get that performance improvement unless you completely bypass the object manager & use only the scene node manager. So we need to be able to do everything there - character rigging, joints etc & in an intuitive way that offers a workflow as good as the object manager. Seems like we're a million miles away from that at the moment. And we also need to be able to use custom models - it's all very well to do motion graphics modelling all procedurally, but if you're doing landscapes, interiors, making use of libraries of assets, then that's not going to cut it. Again, we need to be able to feed in custom models without losing the performance benefits in object handling. And we need every render engine, including 3rd party ones to render the results. So for me, scene nodes really have yet to deliver on their main promise. What's worse, they're horribly un-intuitive & programmy. In fact, I find python scripting comfortable enough & reasonably intuitive when you know your way around - scene nodes seem worse & harder, they feel more like what I imagine C++ is like. I really fear they might be a dead-end that is never going to get where they need to get to. But I hope not.