FLima

I think having a proper particle system would be just to offer option A, when we alredy have a well functioning option B (X-Particles) When things are already so well integrated to the software, I dont see the point honestly. A lot of things you either need a plugin or another software (Marvelous, Zbrush, etc) The thing that I feel C4D needs more love is with Character Animation, since we dont have any plugin that can re-work that, or it is not something that can be done outside of C4D and used inside the software (character rigs, etc..). But then again, I might be biased, just because that is what I work with hehe. Or a nicer bodypaint, since we already have a good layer system inside the texture making part...but we dont have symmetry.

This looks awesomeeeee!! 😮

Octane is free because it is a very beta version of the render, and they warn several times that it is not for production, since its buggy as hell.. Redshift will come to Blender eventually (I saw them testing earlier last month) and for sure, it will make things a lot interesting! Not sure when will come out though! Hopefully soon.

Man, your fanboysm and emotional attachment to a software has began to overshadow what a cool software Blender can be in the right hands. It is sad that not only you are not contribuiting to this topic - that would be, presenting facial rigs in C4D, or discussing it in a constructive manner - but you are also on this rampage against C4D artists (on a C4D forum for crying out loud...), trying to disprove at any cost that quality animation work can be done in C4D, or that Blender it is vastly superior in every aspect. I usually keep my cool and try to be as helpful as I can with people, not only on this forum but every other forum I am part of. But when i see an attitude like yours, diminishing people's work and effort, or asking them to prove... to you?.. what they can do with the software... just because it does not conform to your ideal way of work or the software of your choice, it is extremely sad, specially (and I repeat) on a C4D forum. Learn to accept that people can produce awesome results when they are comfortable to use their software of choice, and let their work speak for itself. Extremely awesome work has been produced by both Blender and C4D users, by insanely talented people who knows how to use each software extremely well within each software's limitations. And many softwares can be combined to produce amazing work, which is by far, the most important measure on how sucessfull certain process was...which makes this "one-man-war" of yours even more pointless.

Oh, if you could share a bit of the process with the proxy hair! ❤️ That would mean a lot 🙂 I almost did it in a older project I did, using C4D and Zbrush, but i couldnt find any good sources to learn that from. So I ended up doing stylised hair / like the game Overwatch a little bit, which ended up working out in the end, specially for animation: PS: I am mesmerized by your awesome topology and how you built this from scratch 🙂 I am looking forward to see the final result!!

I loved the designs of your character, and looking forward to see the final animation!! About the render, yes, omg... they would do so much more justice to your whole scenario and characters, specially how light would spread (and hide) specific parts of this cool scenario you've built! The guinea pig with realistic hair in redshift or octane, would be cute!!! but I appreciate you are using whatever render you have and not pausing your production because of it! About the first post, you mentioned you were having trouble with the cloth dynamic. For some reason, I always try, as much as I can can, use dynamic bones in most situations, even if its a skirt, and involves several strips of dynamic bones around. There is this game I love, Persona 5, and the main character, Joker, has a very fancy cape. He goes all around the scenario, and has some very fast moves. I found a Joker model on sketchfab, and his rig is exactly like that, lots and lots of bones for the cape. You can sim clothes, if its for a cutscene or something, that is very calculated, but if I have a character, and I want to move it around during the entire shortfilm, I like to have as much control as possible of what happens to his clothes. Looking forward to see more!

I think this is not very productive to this discussion man... I love all the input and experience you are bringing regarding Blender on the Blender topic. (I even bookmarked those videos you shared) But yeah, this discussion is more regarding C4D facial rig tutorials, etc.. and even though I know there arent, unfortunately, many good rigging tutorials for the software.. I dont think turning this into a software war will help anything.. If you see what guys like Everfresh, Orestis and others are producing with the software, you would know that these things are possible within C4D. Just, unfortunately, there isnt much information regarding these how to achieve these results around... not even paid tutorials. (I reached out Orestis for a specific tutorial on a procedural landscape just a few days ago, but unfortunately, couldnt find any other resource)

Oh, I second that. I've been... for a very long time, trying to find some good facial rig tutorial. I do my own facial rigs...but when it comes to the mouth, I get lazy.. 🙂

I saw this, and I was really impressed! By I think this is only early test stage right? I also love the wax look ❤️ !

I wanted to know, how are you folks cooping with this weird times we are experiencing. And if you have any advices to share 🙂 Over here, I am trying to adapt and learn everyday new routines. I used to be an evening person, being more productive from 18:00 and so on, and continue to work until 2:00 am... but after all this pandemic started, I found myself being completely unable to work for a few weeks, until I realised that starting to work on early morning, 6:00 am, was being super helpful. I became a morning person! And since I also struggle with depression and anxiety, I decided to limit how often I watch the news, usually 3 to 5 times a week, usually at noon, so i dont trigger any weird anxiety episode at night and have insomnia (which would only make things worse). Generally, I am feeling better now for the past 2 weeks! I am productive again, and I am back at producing personal artworks, and I was even able to rig a quadruped for the first time, from scratch 🙂 So yeah, would love to know your work/daily routine and how you are managing to get work done, and still having fun meanwhile (well, within the limitations we are experiencing right now). Stay safe everyone!

I think this is definitely a good take, and I can feel by your excitement that you are indeed enjoying it a lot 🙂 The existence of Blender, by itself, is already a great thing for all of us. Having a complete free software, offering pro level solutions, that competes in a lot of things with paid softwares! I started with 3DS Max 15 years ago, and switched to C4D thanks to a friend, who helped me achieve the results I wanted, and explained to me a bit of Xpresso and etc. The speed C4D offered things and how amazing I could organize my scene, it was something I could have never imagined before. With all this worldwide unfortunate changes, we dont know how will it be for all of us. Maybe I wont be able to afford C4D's subscription anymore (I am already struggling with it...) and the idea that all my files will be locked and I wont have freedom to access them until I pay the again, it is really, really horrible. I understand that this is business, and as a company, they need to survive///but with all this crisis that we are about to experience, maybe it will be a forced change on how companies think, and see us, long time users. Blender doesnt offer me yet great reasons to switch. For me, animation is still a bad experience 😞 And no light linking, etc... the armature/pose switch, feels like a weird and unnecessary step in between.. but I love that there is at least an option, for all of us, in the worst case scenario... to continue to work and produce awesome results. A lot of us integrates different softwares to our workflows with C4D. (Zbrush, Painter, Marvelous Designer, etc) And Blender, for me, is already helping with some of the things, together with C4D (modelling for instance) So thanks for posting your videos and blender info/tips.

This will change the industry drastically!! Now... let me get back here to my polygon reduction process... hehe 🙂

I hear ya.. but you can simply click on the objects in the C4D viewport and automatically see its keyframes too. This is okay when you have a very pre-defined and big things to select, but when you have little eyebrown or several small elements, and you want to edit all its keyframes as fast as possible, you need to be able to select it just by name, like you can do it in C4D... it makes no sense why it has to be this complicated in Blender. Also when you want to add a loop to certain keyframes, you need to select individually on which item you want to add the modifier "cycle" for instance... axis X of foot controller. then Y axis of foot controller.. You cant just select a whole group of things and set "repeat forever/oscilate" and be done with it. There is awesome things on Blender, I actually like rigging on it more than C4D, and the auto weight, just WORKS! In C4D , it is always a gamble.. I try so many different auto-weight settings, and C4D never gets it right on the first time... Im now using mixamo to set bones and skins on my characters since C4D cant do it properly... And I think Blender has a very bright future ahead.. but yeah, animation, is not good 😞 A lot can be done by experienced users for sure, but after you use C4D, and see how straightfoward it is, it is difficult to adapt.

I think that is the best approach to have Janine 🙂 And I hope you only continue to learn even more about the software. For me, as an artist, I love to have options. I have 18 years of experience with C4D, so a lot of the experiments I wanna make, it becomes natural, I can think directly about the result I want, and the steps I make are almost instant, since I know the software very well. The pricing thing is becoming a nightmare unfortunately. I am a subscriber, but I think it is extremely unfair to people who has perpetual license, to keep them from using the latest version and updates the software has to offer... Some of the things from Blender keeps me from using it fully though, like I mentioned before, its dope sheet and graph editor, for me at least, is a nightmare. I love making loops, walk cycles and easy repetitions, and with C4D, one click and you can set up a whole chain of objects to repeat, which is impossible in Blender 😞 I love the competition though, I think it will push more and more the paid softwares to observe things that works really well in Blender, like Eevee and the character animation setup. For now, C4D will stay as my commercial software of choice.

Yeah, I dont plan to replace C4D with anything. I am using blender mostly for some character animation, because I really love the auto-weight, and how it just works... But I dont feel that Blender, at least for me, is production ready. The realtime render is a LOT of fun, and characters and sculpting too, but yeah... not there yet

Resurrecting this topic, since I've return to Blender for my personal experiments/character animation.. Has anyone managed to adapt to Blender's Dope Sheet/Graph Editor during animation? I find it extremely clumky... cant select an object by name on dope sheet and automatically select its keyframes.... it has a very weird behaviour. In c4d, the animation process just flows nicely... Has anyone struggled with that also?

I gotta say, the changes for modelling, seem minimal at first, but using them, it makes a lot of difference. I am enjoying a lot! The new loop selection behaviour, to allow a continuous selection of a sphere for instance in different angles, is amazing. The new fill hole behaviour also, and the mirror selection tool.. damn, this is awesome! And of course, the UV improvements! I am still hoping there will be big changes for character animation...and a more "real time" interactive render region. But yeah, this is a good path! I'm excited for what comes next! PS: The GoZ interaction!! Thank you!! It was a much needed update.

It is very good to get an inside perspective of the software, from someone who is more experienced with it than me! Thank you Yeah, I can see that these modes are a bit weird to be honest... but I do like the idea of being able to move the bones of the armature in edit mode sometimes (and even changing their type! Like bendy bones!!) and it doesnt mess up the whole rig.. For some weird reason, I feel that the weight paint and bone structure is more effective in here than in C4D. But I might be wrong? But I really, really love C4D's object manager... It feels so more intuitive and well.. mograph 🙂 But I think, having a different option is always good for some specific things.

Thanks!! 🙂 Unfortunately, since the show is quite new, and they will be doing the official opening now in Montréal, I dont have access to full footages yet. There is one making of video that shows some of the acts I worked on And there is... well.. a filmed footage.. of a guy that filmed vertical... and screams sometimes in horrible exposure hehe!! But you can see an entire act I worked on (starts at 8:00).. but yeah, not good quality, be warned 😛

Hello all 🙂 wanted to share this project I did in August/September for Cirque du Soleil's new show, Axel. I used cel shading for everything, with linked materials via expresso (to copy the cel shader's settings to all the other materials) And well, lots of mograph hehe 🙂 I still had only the R18 license, so a lot of things would've been MUCH simpler with R21's capabilities of having different falloff in single mograph effects. But it was a cool experience regardless. For the final render, since I wanted to give it a videogame/pixel art look. I removed all the anti-alias from the standard render, and rendered a tiny image of 288x145 and stretched inside After Effects without anti-alias. It was literaly the fastest post-production process thanks to this neat little trick when working with pixelated style 🙂 Let me know if you have any questions on how to achieve similar effects, nice combination and workflow with cel shader for production, etc.

omg.....! Thank you Bentraje! I had no idea haha! Wonder how it is to work on this way!

Hello Robert! I did a quick test with 3 characters I've created from scratch yesterday, they are similar rigs (not super complex) but there are 3 different armatures. And the viewport had no problem at all. Note that I am using eevee and a custom toon shading, so not sure that would make it faster, but the viewport had no slowdown. One thing to note is that, it is a bit clunky the animation process. Having to switch from armatures to start animating them on pose mode, and not being able to animate 3 characters simultaneously withouh having to enter in their own pose mode. So yeah, there is another limitation, compared to C4D, which lets you animate everything, multiple characters at the same time. Blender feels really good for UV, texture painting and for me, the possibility to have a big control with unrealistic renders and instant preview of what I am working on (which Cinema 4D lacks completely) but it is not a perfect software... it has its own weird limitations, like these multiple armatures animation process, which is a bit weird.

That is interesting... havent tested yet. Will test it during this week and I will let you know!

Ok, not to end on a negative note with C4D... Blender doesnt have dynamic IK for bones haha 🙂 And it is so muuuch simpler in C4D! If you try to find tutorials on how to make bones behave dynamically in Blender, tutorials are around 20-40 minutes, and there is a reason for that. It is such a combersome process... So yeah, not everything is perfect with Blender.

I've been playing with Blender since the announcement that C4D would start on the subscription model... and even though, initially it was a major pain to figure out even the basic things (navigating through a scene, scaling, rotating, etc..) suddenly it all became natural and intuitive. I think this is not a "perfect software" and "wow, it is so much better than C4D" but for at least the things I need, toon shading instant preview, great workflow on grouping shaders and using them as reference to other materials without any problem, modelling, and all the symmetry options.. indeed, it feels like a breath of fresh air. I decided to pay for the C4D new license of r21 for one year, since I depend on the software to work (I still have my r18 license) and I thought it would be a major jump, specially with character animation (which is my main job as a freelancer) and to be honest, it was disappointing... bone glow is a bit of an improvement, but the mirroring of weights, and a lot of things are still super clumky and same as the previous versions. I started playing with rigging inside Blender, and it was just.. so.. mindblowing. Being able to add new polygons or remove them on an already rigged character without destroying the whole thing... fine tuning the weight painting and already having it perfectly mirrored and normalized on the other side without extra clicks.. and, by accident, I also discovered I had rigged a character with the mirror modifier still applied on, and it still worked perfectly!! Just half of the polygons, and completely rigged, left arm and right arm working independently, and even after applying the modifier, all the weight were applied intuitively. And, most important of all, the transfer weight system, in case you want to include a t-shirt on your already rigged character.. it just works!! the weight is transfered perfectly even if the t-shirt has more or less polygons in the same areas. Feels like witchcraft! C4D's VAMP is not helpful on that area at all.. it works nicely for some of the things, pose morphs, etc.. but for transfering weights, at least for me, is 1 out of 10 chances to work. I love C4D, and I dont think I will be one of the guys saying "Goodbye C4D forever!!" I am super thankful that this was one of the easiest 3D softwares to get into back in the day, and how intuitive (much more than Blender) to start making things. The object manager from C4D, the hierarchy and etc, feels so much better, and I will still be using it for a long time, specially when it comes to mograph (which, let's agree, it is one of the best features ever). But I wont be renewing my license next year. I will stay with my R18 old license. And I know this is a big software, that is super difficult to do a major overhaul with features. But I dont know.. I felt that, with the new subscription model, things would be improved at a faster rate. Like a much better character animation system, not just mixamo premade integrations or the premade character rigs... I want to be able to work efficiently on my own custom rigs. Also we need, very badly, a much better Interactive Render Region. The current one we have.., with the refresh rate.. it is just, unusable, specially when working with cel shading. I am hopeful that C4D will catch up, and aware that the dev team has a giant task ahead. I think this competition will be good for everyone. It will help 3D companies to rethink and push boundaries when they see what Blender is offering, out of the box, at a zero cost.