3D-Pangel

If I may recalibrate the discussion a bit. The issue is NOT that there are commercial projects out there that will require a dancing monkey to wave a burning flag on the beach while getting hit with an ocean wave (cloth, grains, fire, water and character animation). The issue is NOT that Houdini is the ONLY program in all of existence and for time immortal that could ever attempt such a task. The point is NOT how inadequate C4D and/or XP is at anything slightly more complex that FUI effects for the Marvel movies. The point is that the workflow to create such a project outside of the host DCC app will be FAR more difficult than using a plugin that exists within the DCC app or having those capabilities built into the DCC program itself (like Houdini or Maya). This point was made based on JangaFX's products being standalone programs. So, in keeping with the point of this thread, this is a workflow discussion around JangaFX's approach to fluid simulations. Properly implemented fluid simulations are recursive calculations when they involve solid objects: the fluid moves the object and that moving object then affects the fluid simulation. Therefore, for all this to happen outside the host application usually entails that your animations need to be cached up to the point of export to JangaFX and then what you get back is a cached file of the simulation and the animation which can then NOT be changed without repeating the whole caching and export/import process all over again. Not an impossible hurdle to overcome but just a bit more cumbersome from a workflow perspective than what you would have with fire/smoke as the fire/smoke simulation does not affect the motion of the animated objects in the host DCC application. Again...just a bit more cumbersome...but probably enough to be annoying and therefore in need of a solution. This annoyance grows if LiquGen and Embergen remain two separate applications and you need to jump from one to the other if you want fire and liquids to coexist together. So, where I was hoping this conversation would go is that with the introduction of fluids simulation, JangaFX realizes two things: Fluid and fire simulations need to be able to work together Tighter Integration with host DCC applications (and not just 3rd party rendering applications) needs to be part of their development timeline when they introduce LiguiGen. Therefore, over time and in response to these issues, will the introduction of liquid simulations to JangaFX's toolset drive a rethink on their approach to being platform agnostic? JangaFX makes great products, and I am sure they will continue to grow in adoption over time. Therefore, with that growth will they feel the need to offer plugins for their stand-alone applications as well? That is where my mind was going when I brought up the issue on LiquiGen workflow. But if we want to keep praising Houdini, bashing XP, and/or bashing C4D then can we at least do that in a separate thread? Dave

So essentially, you are advocating that any fluid simulation system outside of Houdini should only be used for single system physical simulations like filling a glass with water? So simple non-VFX big budget scenes like ice cubes floating and moving around naturally in that glass during a product shot of Don Julio #70 Tequila being poured over ice should immediately cause the artist to bail on C4D and start learning Houdini? Not sure how you could do a natural interaction of ice and fluids realistically in a product shot where the fluid simulation pushes and moves the ice around while the moving ice also affects the motion of the fluids. That is a multi-physics simulation at its most basic. I don't know, but simple product shots like that are keeping it real and are the bread-and-butter shots for the independent artist. While I have not surveyed the entire industry, I think it is safe to assume that the first "go-to" tool for artists working in the product advertising field is NOT Houdini. Also, what is the point of GPU enabled fluid simulations if they are ONLY going to be used for simple scenes? Sorry, but my original point stands. If you want to do more than filling a static non-moving glass with water and get into multi-physic simulations, then the workflow using a JangaFX's stand-alone apps becomes a problem. And if all you are going to do is fill a static glass with water, then that is something XP can handle today very easily and completely within C4D. Dave

Apologies if this post is a repeat but I think it got wiped out when Core4D had its crash this weekend. I do agree that being able to download the Maxon asset library one asset at a time (as opposed to the entire 6 Gb file) has its advantages, but does it also mean that access to that asset library is just one more perk ONLY available to subscription licenses holders? Dave

You make a very compelling argument for creating smoke and fire. But I fear that workflow will be tested for LiquiGen as fluids not only get impacted by an object's animation, but they can also impact the motion of the object itself. For example, imagine a burning flag being hit with water. Here you have cloth, liquid and fire simulations all working together: liquid can push cloth, cloth can push back on liquid and the moving cloth can then drive a fire simulation. To manage each one those simulations discretely would be a series of best guesses to get right and therefore very difficult. This is where XP has an advantage as the underlying architecture for each simulation is particles. Cloth simulation set's each vertex of the cloth as a particle. Those particles can then be acted on by the particles in the fluid simulation and in turn the cloth particles can affect the motion of the fluid particles. I think this used to be called "n-systems" level of simulations where multiple physical simulations can work together. Now, pretty sure JangaFX will get there but it will be dependent on caching those animations during export - which locks you in. For example, say you want a tidal wave to overtake a moving car and then push it down the road. The car will be key framed prior to export but will then its entire animation will then be cached and locked in after you import it from JangaFX. I hope (and this is the big dream) is that fluid simulations do take a huge amount of time to get right and by the time JangaFX reaches the same level of interaction that you can get with XP today, XP has been ported to run on the GPU.

A nice greyish blue actually. I kind of like it. But with today's digital compositing tools, is color inversion still part of the process as I thought it would all be based on difference matting/color keying. Dave

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