HappyPolygon

Very few nodes, interesting result

I had half the picture with this tool until recently. I don't use Redshift and didn't know how useful it could really be with it.

I totally understand that. It wasn't my intention to ruin the thread or change the topic. I just wanted to prevent any bias from new C4D users towards other applications with a node system. If you need that deleted PM me (or delete it yourself), no problem, it'll be like it never happened. I don't bother writing.

Is it possible to use a Selection node in the OM to select every Nth polygon ? I thought String Selections would support functions like rand() and mod() but was wrong.

As I've already mentioned here : Most of these can also be made natively in C4D without the use of a node system, for reasons I already analyzed. Having said that I will compare some Blender and Houdini scenes with C4D for C4D users that may not be too familiar with C4D or don't know how to reverse engineer a final image in terms of C4D tools. And I'm doing that only to debunk the "almighty Blender node system" for new C4D users. Of course some scenes are impossible with classic C4D tools and I'm going to note that, I'm not trying to glorify C4D, I just find that this thread might not do justice to the capabilities of some DCCs and get misunderstood by some readers leading them to overestimate the use of nodes. In my opinion anything related to Houdini is just going to be superior in terms of Nodes just because nodes is what Houdini is made of. It's like comparing a fish with a duck on how fast they can move only by their swimming capability. I hope Maxon doesn't interpret the node enthusiasm of users in the wrong way (as the preferred way of working and not considering practicality) and make everything node-dependent. OK here we go: 1) Cloner, Random Effector, Step Effector, Fields 2) Scattering Effect using Cloner, Fields using Vertex Maps, Push Apart Effector 3) XPresso for the springs (I guess this counts as nodes), Fields and Plain Effector for deforming the rail. XPresso could be omitted if a Pain Effector with a Field can scale the springs towards -Y when passing above them. 4) Cloner with animated instances and Delay/Time Effector, maybe some FFD Deformer to avoid physics simulation (requires a special setup), a Vertex Map can be used instead of the Delay Effector. I think this can also be done using Hairs instead of Cloner. 5) Looks like hair clamping available under the Hair Material. Can also be done using some attractive forces to guide hair to a single point. I don't think the final image cannot be done in C4D. But the tool being used to grow hair like this is not present in C4D (yet) 6) Field with Vetex Map and Grow effect. It's possible in C4D but a bit expensive to replicate due to the great number of polygons. It could be faked with a Sub-polygon Displacement texture but that should be done in an other app. Doing it as a static image is totally possible using Splines on Fields. But making the Splines have multiple Outlines spreading outwards parametrically is not possible yet (as far as I know). I have a hunch a Spline Outline tool is underway on the next release. 7) Hair, just because a non-experienced C4D user might think hairs can only be very thin non polygonal lines. 😎 oops, meant to type 8 ) This is exactly the reason why we needed nodes in C4D in the first place. Modeling this in C4D, totally doable, very easy. Making the "Wafer" effect is even easier with the current state of nodes in C4D. But making this whole setup with real-time drawing the boundaries of the structure and have the rest of the area grow foliage ... I have a strong feeling that this is not possible (yet). These kind of demonstrations make me wonder though... Why make such an elaborate node structure for one model ? Doesn't the client know the area of the construct yet ? Don't get me wrong, generative/evolutionary Architecture is a thing but C4D, Blender and Houdini are not CAD apps. A variety of similarly looking structures could be a time saver for game assets but I think that a tool like that is more suited to be natively used in the game engine itself. But making a movie with similarly looking buildings to populate a large area, yes, totally worth it. I just think this particular example does not sell the importance of nodes well, it's just the WOW factor. 9) I would say, hair with cloners, or splines and cloners BUT, I don't know how to make an instance spline or particular hair strand grow to a particular state using Fields or Effectors. MoSpline can grow splines the way depicted here but I don't think they work with Fields like this. Happy to discuss how some node scenes could be done in C4D with alternate methods because in this early stage of SceneNodes I find the comparison a bit trivial.

I think it's back online now. I had a similar thread about the online documentation.

I'm not 100% sure but I think this is exactly the kind of job a new programmer takes. That and code peer-review.(Of course I don't refer to some deep bug on some complex newly developed feature but a bug like the interface not responding or an object appearing inverted and such) @MighT could you share some insight ?

Some people may say that even that can make a lot of difference...

This is the 2019 annual economic report of Blender, https://download.blender.org/institute/2019_financial_report_v05.pdf As they say And these are the people working the magic behind it: https://www.blender.org/about/credits/ 151 programmers (for the 3.0). How many programmers does C4D have ? I don't think more than 20 (need citation). And there are still 14 open positions. By acquiring more assets from other companies Maxon gets experienced programmers something that is not easy at all. Add the pandemic to the equation and it's like searching for a needle in the hay. Even an junior programmer can save a senior a lot of time on fixing bugs so the senior can develop a new feature. Currently the main advantage of Blender is manpower.

7500 nodes and 7 8-hour-long sessions for a scene. Thanks but NO. Most videos about GeoNodes I've seen are totally feasible with already available tools from MoGraph. C4D has a totally different approach on Nodes than Blender. Nodes were introduced as a Procedural, Parametric and Generative editing tool to compensate for some non-parametric, non-procedural, non-generative commands of C4D. Nodes were never meant to be a modelling paradigm. You never model with nodes if you want one specific geometry (unless you don't have anything else to do with your life). C4Ds Object Manager already offers procedural and parametric capabilities it's in its nature. The problem is with some commands that are not Procedural, Parametric or Generative. Best examples the Extrude and Delete commands that when incarnated as a nodes offered so much parametric modeling potential. An other reason why SceneNodes had to be invented was the fact that the ObjectManager was getting too complicated with seemingly orphan Fields and other kind of objects that were simply reference-linked to effectors and generators (of course this is an issue that has to do with how the user decides to deal with his mess). SceneNodes offer better visual relations between said operations with less clutter in the OM. Better than OM, SceneNodes offer the capability to fork the same operation to more than one object regardless where it lies in the hierarchy. The main moto of C4D is still intuitiveness and high-level geometry manipulation with minimum effort. They just decided to take things from the bottom-up and build the system with really basic nodes. Judging from the evolution of SceneNodes from R23 to R25 I can hope for further simplification of the node ecosystem, more powerful/advanced nodes (there are many operations like DualMesh), advanced information exchange with the OM and some mirroring of node parameters to their command and generator counterparts (for example the Trefoil and Spiral distributions to the Cloner). The way I see it, it's already possible to build node-trees that copy many of the expensive plugins out there. The problem is that there has to be some familiarity of certain aspects of node information exchange and conversion. Hopefully in the near future the end user will not have to worry about what type of data flows between nodes, they will be intelligent enough to process only what makes sense on their operation context and ignore/pass everything else. I find this a worthy innovation to make C4D a bit more competitive.

I think apps like these can help a lot in Concept Design

Most of the bugs concerned Exchange and Scene Nodes. If you take those out the number of bugs doesn't differ much from other updates. Importing new formats was always buggy. SceneNodes are too complicated. It's virtually impossible not to have bugs. And since it's a relatively new feature and has undergone overall changes it's expected to be that buggy. It's a good thing they find those bugs because it means people use these tools a lot.

NVIDIA Canvas is a painting application that uses AI to generate landscape images from simple brush strokes. This enables artists to rapidly ideate, a daunting task at the beginning of a project when faced with a blank canvas. Canvas is for artists who need to conceptualize landscapes for their projects. For example, Concept artists can rapidly explore new ideas Archviz designers can quickly draft backdrops and environments for their buildings Creators can rapidly paint a landscape rather than searching hours for the perfect stock photo Moreover, Canvas is accessible so that any RTX user who wants to draw amazing landscapes, either for work or play, can do so with simple brush strokes and the power of AI. What are the requirements to run NVIDIA Canvas? NVIDIA GPUs: GeForce RTX, NVIDIA RTX, Quadro RTX, TITAN RTX NVIDIA Driver: 460.89 or later, NVIDIA Studio Drivers are recommended. Windows 10 2004 or later Input: Mouse and keyboard Optional: touch screen Optional: tablet and stylus (e.g., Wacom Cintiq or Intuos Pro) https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/studio/canvas/ And an Update

What does topology have to do with toon shading ? that face was probably modeled to accommodate specific poses. I can't imagine how could someone make her chick bulge for blowing candles or from stuffing too much food. Anime has its own rules for depicting characters. In manga you can't see a face from any possible angle and that has to do with the weird anatomy of it which is designed to look good only from specific angles commonly used in comic strips. When the characters had to be moved from 2D to 3D, modelers faced some challenges. Hard-core directors did not have any problem with that because they kept directing from the usual camera angles. The difficulty of modeling a toon character stems mostly from its 2D roots. take for example Angry Birds: look how distorted they beaks are even if they look straight to the camera. Although not always the case, they had to spontaneously change the beak direction when the character turned their head to keep the cartoon nature. This is an old problem of animators 75 years back when Disney had printed specific guidelines concerning Mickeys' ears seen from different angles. same with anime. the nose should be hinted by the shadow and not by the nose itself when in profile pose. so essentially it's a lighting thing rather a shading in anime and special rigging for cartoons with realistic shading. All i'm trying to say is that you should have a very detailed plan of how your character is going to be depicted in every frame before modeling it.

Maybe there's a bigger plan that will only be revealed when all pieces are in place ... Or the pandemic just made some companies really struggle and driven to find an umbrella to hide under. Now they are the three (Maxon, Autodesk, Adobe) and the free (Blender, Inkscape ...) It could always be worse.

It will probably end up with integration of redshift materials and rendering natively in ZBrush

We can only hope for a merge of technologies of ZBrush and Forger for an app able to run on all OSs and a free lite Zbrush version (I mean with more capabilities than ZBRUSHCOREMINI offers)

The only icons missing for me are those from the Picture Viewer, an omission non the less, but they are the least important ones

https://www.maxon.net/en/article/maxon-announces-an-agreement-to-acquire-the-assets-of-pixologic-makers-of-zbrush?utm_campaign=maxonzbrush&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=1639499772&fbclid=IwAR0l96HLzF63okGrJhs1l4rIDJy68SQ9EdO5UK0A9RsrnyMvrXRsZu2iXHA Can ZBrush retain its unique qualities as part of Maxon? http://www.cgchannel.com/2021/12/maxon-to-acquire-pixologic/

The Get Element node you use doesn't have a Data Type set. From the moment the user selects one of the options it's impossible to empty the selection unless he undo or creates a new node. Is this node intended to be created without a default Data Type ? Is an empty Data Type supposed to read any kind of input without implications? The user Manual does not document this type of parameter.

That makes more sense from HRVOJE's approach. I like that.

Thank you for shearing the graph. The Type Of node is created automatically when connecting the Distribution to the Decompose Container... I just used the example of the user manual about that distribution node. I just assumed that what ever is created automatically is necessary and went with it. It's really hard for me to wrap my mind around the philosophy of how information flows in C4Ds nodes. I'm a simple mind. I expect this:

This is supposed to work, but it doesn't. I don't know why nodes are so busted... Probably they aren't but the user manual is outdated with the examples. So I propose the following elegant parametric solution using the PyParametric tools and the PointObject script: extrude and follow.c4d

The 03 Advanced node example Inflate.c4d from the Asset Browser has errors. Get Points Error: Errors: 'Normalize / Input' (net.maxon.node.normalize@NRrd9S_bMJogMwWy98WbfG<in): No conversion possible from type 'Array<Vector64>' (net.maxon.parametrictype.vec<3,float64>[]C) of source port 'Get Points' (net.maxon.neutron.geometry.get@YXFP6wVQDFNrCkuUkvApaF/get>array) to type 'Vector64' (net.maxon.parametrictype.vec<3,float64>). Normalize Error: Errors: 'Normalize / Input' (net.maxon.node.normalize@NRrd9S_bMJogMwWy98WbfG<in): No conversion possible from type 'Array<Vector64>' (net.maxon.parametrictype.vec<3,float64>[]C) of source port 'Get Points' (net.maxon.neutron.geometry.get@YXFP6wVQDFNrCkuUkvApaF/get>array) to type 'Vector64' (net.maxon.parametrictype.vec<3,float64>). What should I do ?

I like software boxes. They give a sense of ownership prestige and internet independence.