3D-Pangel

Not sure if anyone picked up on this, but notice what they used for background compositing: Had they used blue or green screen, then the reflected blue or green created by those screens would have thrown off the overall color tone/saturation on the actors/props. No matter how well they were matted into the background, the lighting on them would have been slightly off from what it would have been if they had actually existed in that environment. This is the level of attention the VFX artists/supervisors pushed for with Dune and why that movie just looks so much more real than what you would find in a Marvel movie or any other big budget VFX movie. You can see that philosophy talked about in how they even shot the Ornithopter's using t wo helicopters to get real life camera distances, angles and dust effects. Other things to note when watching Dune: The star's faces are not always perfectly lit during a VFX sequence. They go into complete darkness when a VFX explosion goes off in the background because that is what would happen should an actual explosion been filmed. The camera would have dropped a few F-stops to get the exposure on the explosion correct while throwing the foreground actor into complete darkness. Normally, the mentality is "keep the big budget star visible at all times as that is what the audience is paying to see!!!" Err...not really. Dave

Progress on this WIP continues. The ceiling rails and mechanicals are taking shape and were patterned after the ceilings in the docking bays designed by Ansel Hsiao. Ansel's reference photo: My take on that design: And how it appears in the full model: I could probably add a few pipes up there, just to create a bit more visual "noise" to break up the pattern. Next up.....finish the back wall (including working blast doors rigged with Expresso) and adding the cargo pit in the middle of the floor. Dave

Glad to know that Igor is doing well and quickly becoming a name in the Houdini world! This really is great news. Dave

I would imagine that if you don't have Octane, the only value of fine tuning the look of the simulation in Embergen is to validate that your channel settings for heat, temperature, density, etc are correct because the only thing you will be exporting are those channels in the VDB file. You would then need to fine tune everything again for Redshift. I know Embergen's real-time feedback and GPU acceleration make it very attractive over X-Partlcles, but to me the workflow of using Embergen has a few more steps - especially if you want a 3D element to interact with the simulation. Am I understanding the workflow differences correctly? If so, I wonder if the workflow advantages of real-time fluid simulation feedback in Embergen offer that much of an advantage to a non-Octane user --- particularly if in Step 3 you realize that you want to change how the animated object is interacting with the fluid simulation. Now, if Embergen worked with Redshift and/or made plugins for DCC apps like C4D, Maya, Houdini, then I would definitely be jumping aboard the JangaFX bandwagon. But right now, I just don't see it. If there is something I am missing, please let me know. Dave

Wow...that is really ingenious how you did it. Sometimes, creating a low tech look can only be accomplished with a high tech approach. So you want just the shadows to be heavily pixelated? The first thing that came to mind was to use shadow maps with an extremely low resolution but the lowest custom setting in C4D was 40 x 40. That created this result (settings to the side) So while the pixelation is there, it is not as pronounced as you desire. Another approach would be if you had Redshift and set the initial ray cast levels extremely low as well but that could have other unintended consequences. Interesting challenge to make something look 8 bit with 64 bit tools. Dave

Welcome! Glad to have you as part of the community. Dave

Stefano, A hearty welcome to Core4D. I just checked out your portfolio of work at 3D Render and Beyond and am completely amazed at the quality. Just outstanding. Dave

Relative to simulations, I am sure that you have heard of X-Particles by Insydium. As an Octane user, I would also imagine you are aware of Embergen from JangaFX. What you may not have heard of is Pixel Lab which sells pre-made libraries of VDB files fire, smoke, and clouds (both animated and still). Dave

Welcome Rafael! How long have you been using C4D? Your work shows very well, so I would imagine that you have been using it for quite some time. I love the red roses animation and I expected that the wind simulation was from using Forestor but I did not see it listed. I did see "Synthwave" listed, but Google search shows only music plugins by that name. So how was the wind animation done? Dave

Thank you very much for those insights. They are changing how I am thinking towards my next GPU. Dave

Very happy to welcome someone of your experience/knowledge to Core4D. Also very excited about your YouTube page (I just subscribed). I am always on the hunt for good hardware tutorials and good rendering tutorials -- Redshift especially but even Physical Renderer as well. Question: I noticed your review of the RTX 3090 Surpim X. The cost of that GPU in the US is around $3500 (today's prices --- past sales did have it lower). What attracted you to that card over the RTX-A6000: A bit more money (around $700 more if you purchase it with a workstation from Lenovo), but twice the memory. Thanks, Dave

You modeled the wing panels? How do you even approach something like that? I just can't get my head wrapped around it so I am just impressed. That is why I am just so impressed by you, Jay and people like Ansel Hsiao. You all have the mental toughness and discipline to put together massively complex models. I know that for sci-fi, kit bashing greebles is good way to shorten the process, but you still need to make the greebles and you need at least 50 sets of unique greebles to insure some level of uniqueness across the whole model. I think I found an approach for the bay ceiling. It actually came from a fan film made with UE5. Very impressive and can be found here. The first few opening shots show a close up of the ISD bay ceiling which has the right elements of detail and scale (note the catwalks) that I am looking for: Dave

Thank you Vector. From you that is high praise indeed. Use your Interceptor model!!! OH BOY!!!! YES! (did I just shriek that out loud?). Let me finish working on the ceiling first as that will give some idea of how to incorporate it in the scene. I would hate to have you send it to me and then not be able to figure out how it fits into the overall model. I think they hang from the ceiling --- not sure -- as that has never been shown in the movies but rather in video games. So not sure if it is "cannon" or not....but really who cares. I probably need to re-visit Ansel Hsiao's work to figure all this out. Everything is modeled in real world scale so I will work with a proxy as I work on the ceiling. Once I am done, I will send you the docking bay. Thank you so much, Dave P.S, In the interest of full disclosure, there are two areas in my modeling where I had to use triangles (the kitbashed parts from Alexander Ivanov on the back wall are all Max to FBX to C4D so they are full of triangles). I am ashamed to admit it as I needed to just keep going. They will be fixed before I ever send anything to the "Quad Father"

Christian, Welcome to Core4D! Your work looks interesting, but the images are rather small so is there a website that you could post that shows this work? Also, relative to photo realistic rendering, that is a worthy (albeit huge) goal. I strongly recommend the work of Pwnisher (Clinton Jones) on YouTube as some of his work is amazing (just look at this video break down to get an idea) and he posts some very good C4D tutorials that go deep into all the creative decisions and techniques behind his work. Welcome and happy rendering! Dave

Given that is the final day of the regular NFL season, I was only able to model the crane today. For some reason, I really enjoyed adding that piece of detail...not sure why. Interestingly enough, it was also very dark in the original movie as well as determined from this grainy reference photo....a 720P video on YouTube was all I could find for reference Dave

Mike, Absolutely will I be making an animation. Once the ceiling is finished, I will be duplicating the shot of the Millenium Falcon entering the bay in "A New Hope". When I saw the movie for the first time, I just loved how the airlock white lights illuminated the Falcon as it entered which was a nice subtle touch for 1977. Amazing that I picked up on that detail. I came to find out that when the filmed that scene, they modeled just the airlock lighting and anchored it to the motion control system. The Falcon was locked off and did not move. As the scene was fairly simple, the Falcon just had to appear to move forward, it was pretty easy. That become more of a problem in a later shot when the Falcon was leaving the landing bay because it had to do a 180 degree turn with a slight tilt to the left. Once the whole bay is done, I would then like to link it to an outside model of a section of the equatorial trench so that I can also replicate the approaching shots as well....but that is far off in the future at this point. Again, need to find the time. I cannot wait until I retire, and this becomes my "day job"!!!! Dave

Nothing like positive feedback from people I hold in very high regard (Igor, Vector, Mike, Jay) given that they are way more talented than I am to keep you going. So I am very thankful for your feedback. I think I am now going to move on AWAY from the front wall. I tossed out the previous approach of just random geometric shapes to actually using some kitbashed parts (courtesy of Alexandar Ivanov mentioned above) that I converted, textured and partially remodeled to account for FBX conversion issues and/or fit the needs of the scene. Honestly, kitbashing is not as easy as it sounds as the goal is to make them look like they belong. So, the thinking with each one was to think about its purpose in a docking bay: providing and recycling air, heat, decontamination, fire suppression, redundant power to keep the airlock always operational, etc. Once I thought along those lines, stuff started to look okay to me. I was also using images from Aircraft carriers for inspiration, especially for how they paint everything the same color (pipes, machinery, structural supports, etc). These images will definitely come in handy as I now approach working on the ceiling. Also, all along I have been playing with the lighting, reflections and GI illumination. I think I now have that at a level I am happy with. Dave

Interesting. No discussion though of how procedural textures are handled within the USD file format. Everything appears to be mapped based. Also, not really sure how C4D exports to .usda or .usdc as any scene, whether it has mapped or procedural based textures, is the same file size (e.g., same size as the file without any materials at all). While I am not well versed in all that is in Pixar's USD format, I still think Omniverse will have trouble keeping up with (at a minimum) the output of any DCC app or 3rd party renderer that uses procedurally generated textures. Not sure if MatX plugs that hole or not. Again, not saying that it won't be (or is currently) handled by Omniverse but just that I have yet to hear it being addressed. Dave

Getting there....but all I see are changes I need to make rather than things I still need to do. The discipline to just keep going forward rather than stop and fix what has already been done is definitely something I struggle with. The Millenium Falcon model is one that I converted from an original LW model available for free at SciFi3D. I rigged it (landing gear) and added lighting and reuploaded back to SciFi3D. Back to modeling. Dave

Life has taught me that what was once old can become new again. Therefore, as we move to the ultimate in cross-platform standardization in 3D rendering, remember that solution has already been with us for quite some time: Pretty good hard surface NPR image if you ask me. Dave

In theory, there is something here that is worth paying attention to. Essentially, Omniverse wants to be the backbone of pipeline by linking in all the outputs from every mainstream DCC app out there. Ultimately, as all apps are written to take advantage of GPU acceleration via nVidia hardware and the growth of the Alembic standards across all apps, this does seem like the logical next step for nVidia to take. What I am not hearing is what is at the core of Omniverse rendering and/or if Omniverse rendering is able to accept support from 3rd party render engines like Redshift or Octane. I would suspect that it is using Unreal Lumen as you hear more about gaming in the video presentations than film production. But here is where Omniverse will collapse. I do see Substance Materials, but do all DCC apps support spsm and/or sbsar file formats? So, what is the common material format for Omniverse to work? I am not sure if Material X is as much of a standard yet as Alembic and based on my understanding of Alembic (found here), very little is said about material baking along with motion baking. Also, if you have to model in one DCC app and texture in Substance Designer, then exactly what is Omniverse giving you that you don't already have? So again, not too sure how this all plays into materials and rendering and should Omniverse try to keep up with how each DCC apps manages their own materials natively (e.g., without an industry standard), Omniverse cross platform compatibility to the latest version of each DCC app will go out of date very quickly. But...I like the idea and it is a good start. Overtime, particularly with nVidia backing as they are huge, it will evolve into something worthwhile. Dave

Thank you all. The toughest part was figuring out the dimensions which was done mostly by eyeball by looking at photo's from the movies and placing the "Figure" primitive in the scene to get the scale correct. I "hope" to not only finish the bay but to then carry it forward to an exterior view of the bay as shown in the scenes when the Falcon was approaching the landing bay. Originally, I just wanted to do the bay but believe it or not, I found this site: Death Star Dimensions which is going to be a huge help in modeling those exterior views. Someone actually went through each frame of the movie and counted pixels and then compared those counts to those of the Falcon. He/she used the scene of the Falcon passing through the air-lock portal to the bay as both objects where together and at the same position relative to the camera. Knowing the Falcons height, he then calculated the bays dimensions and then worked backwards from there. I am sure there is some fan-zine book out there that has all this information, but this site is free and he did all the work...sooo..... BTW: What prompted this WIP was tripping over the work of Alexander Ivanov at Artstation. He is a Max modeler who has modeled some impressive SW models and sci-fi greeble packs. I would rate his work right up there with my personal favorite: Ansel Hsiao -- the difference being that Alexander sells his models and at a really low price (especially when you can capture a 30% discount at Artstation). The models are all in FBX format and do require some conversion work to get them into C4D (rigging, lighting, and some additional modeling around the back engine interiors which are left oddly bare given all the detail he puts into his models). I have always loved sci-fi modeling, so this is the sweet spot for me. Dave

At the end of every year, my company makes us shut down and take PTO. During this time, I start a new WIP because it is the only real time when I have any time to focus at all. Here is render of the completed first phase: If you can figure out what it is from, then I have been successful. Hopefully, I will finish this one. Dave

Outstanding. I also love the DOF on the pipe and the warm lighting. I think some more burn marks and bigger dents on the edge (from banging the pipe on an ashtray to get out the used tobacco) as well as dark smudges on the pipe cleaning tools would really add to what is already great modeling/texture work. Though you won't see it due to the DOF in this shot, should you ever change to the composition to show the other end of the pipe, you will need to add some bite/chew marks to it. You have mad skills Igor! BTW: What is the significance of "James Jones 1865"? Is that a pipe maker? Dave

Belated Happy New Year everyone. May everyone enjoy health and a full return to a pre-pandemic normal life this year (finally). May your polygons always be 4 sided, your edge-flows well defined and your poles never exceed 4. Finally, may you boldly push your talents in 2022 farther than they have ever been pushed before with the confidence that your DCC application will never let you down. Dave