3D-Pangel

I need all the capabilities of the C4D object manager, material manager and texture manager (now the Project Asset Inspector --- not a fan of that name) and the ability to make changes to a parametric primitive after it has been added to a scene (loosing that capability in Blender's as soon as you drop the tool really irritates me). Having the same intelligence that C4D has in accessing and changing everything in the scene would remove a lot of the inherent "clunkiness" of Blender. But I am beginning to feel that Blender experts embrace its quirks. Having to delete the cube with each new scene irritates but seems to be a big part of the Blender culture....kind of like the Suzanne primitive. Since when does clunky and/or odd become a selling point? But I will admit that I do envy those who have mastered the program such that is navigation is now second nature. They are getting a really capable package that maintains a frenetic development pace such that its toolset in some ways beats their competition in terms of features and stability ---all for free! Dave

Wow. Apart from it being just gorgeous on every frame, it is also a shining example of humility...… Why you ask? Well, amongst all the credits being shown, they never snuck in one for themselves! Not sure I could ever be that humble after creating something that good. Dave

The 3D enthusiast in me loved the topology and the modeling detail but got a headache thinking about aligning all those parts. The mechanical engineer in me loved it. The bottom springs connected to the 4 bar linkage keep pressure against the power lines while the top four springs keep the connecting bar standing straight - otherwise it would be pushed back as it ran against the power lines. Nice design. Don't forget that the bottom feet probably have some form of electrical isolation underneath them to insulate the rest of the train from the current. Can not wait to see more! Dave

While not a magazine used for learning a particular application, I do love Cinefex. A great magazine that goes into professional FX on major motion pictures. They also have an iPad edition as well. What I do get out of that magazine are the discussions on how the artists strived for that last 5% between what looks good to what looks real. That attention to detail in lighting, texturing, camera shake, and the art of putting detail into the scene that you will ONLY notice if it is NOT there. Those are invaluable and very hard to learn lessons. Unfortunately, what was once a bi-monthly publication has not produced a magazine since June, 2020 due to COVID. If the movies are not being released, then they can't publish the magazine. I hope to get the next issue in February and looking forward to reading up on Season 2 of the Mandalorian....but we will see. Dave

Absolutely agree...just look at my avatar. Unfortunately, I think this will fall on deaf ears. Now, IMHO, indie is another word for hobbyist. If you are a true independent one-person shop generating a revenue with C4D, then the subscription model probably works for you. What you create is for clients and not for yourself. Once the job is completed, your attachment to the work ends when the paycheck comes in. But hobbyists like myself are attached to our work. We want the option to hold onto what we have created without being locked into a yearly subscription cost. For us, it is all about the end-game. At some point, we will stop using the program and everything we have created is now gone as well. That creates a sense of loss that keeps us from going with subscriptions. Many on this forum are not hobbyists and have trouble understanding this point of view. But if an indie version is to be considered, then there has to be some limitations to it. Usually these are render size limitations as that pretty much keeps anyone from doing commercial work with the indie package. As for me, I am good with some limitations on render size in exchange for a lower annual perpetual license cost. As long as it looks good on my monitor, I am good. Not sure if the other packages you quoted have limitations or not with the indie version. The other point I agree with you on is that I too love C4D. It just feels like home. It all makes sense. It has an internal logical consistency in how it is designed. The software does NOT get in the way of creation. That is tough to walk away from but at some point there could be financial situations that force that decision. Honestly, I do fear that day. But...as lofty as your objective is, be prepared for nothing to come of it. Dave

That is a perfect description of Chris....brain synchronicity with C4D....or what I like to refer to as "Stream of consciousness workflow" -- you will it to happen and C4D responds such that you are not even aware that a mouse and keyboard were involved. That is level of Chris' mastery of C4D and it shows in his teaching because there is nothing he cannot explain clearly. Dave

Time code is at 7:08 in case anyone is wondering. Great to hear it...if only to fully understand how to exactly pronounce your name. I do hope to meet you someday and want to make sure I get it right otherwise you will run into this problem again but in person! His overall recognition starts at 7:00 with (I think) a shout out to Srek (Bjorn) at 7:06. Great speech too. An overall class act! Dave

Yes...Hugo Award winning author. I have mentioned that sci-fi is my favorite genre for 3D modeling. I guess I just have sci-fi on the brain. Dave

So the bitmap node will read a pixel value off an image based on its pixel position? That will definitely be useful in the future. Thank you. Dave

So let's back-up a bit. Why not use the Physical Sky object? Well, very long ago, I tried it and did not like the color options based on setting time of day, day of they year, global position, etc. Great tool, but I found myself trying different months and locations to get the look I wanted which was just too much trial and error. Since then I just put it out of my mind and never touched it since. I am trying to create a day-to-night animation and never even consider the Physical Sky Object and tried to approach it with Xpresso. It wasn't until this thread and some of the research I did to determine the color temperature of the sun based on its position in the sky that I remembered the Physical Sky object (like 20 minutes ago). A quick re-acquaintance with the tool and I find out you can over-ride those cumbersome day, location and time settings with your own gradients. Then I came across this calculator which has this gradient This completes what I am after as I can now create and save my own custom gradient for the Physical Sky object. So my sincere thanks. As always, I learn a little bit more about Xpresso with each question so your help is not wasted. Dave

Wow .... I really butchered that name. Yes...my apologies to Per Anders. Dave

Thank you. Amazing at how simple it seems once you see the solution. There are a couple of nodes I need to research to fully grow my knowledge with Xpresso but it is always easier (for me at least) to learn via a practical example that I struggled to solve. So I guess everything else about sequencing the lights that comprise the gun fire only at full extension of the muzzle made sense? It worked, but I just felt that there had to be a more elegant solution. Again...thank you! Dave

Attached is an Xpresso rig I developed to simulate a sci-fi version of an anti-aircraft gun. Two gun barrels that fire in sequence: left gun fires, then retracts while the right gun extends forward until it fires and it retracts...and the process repeats. In the attached file, I built this so that the controls range from -100 (left gun firing) to +100 (right gun firing). At 0 position, both guns are in a neutral position and the gun fire and muzzle flash are off. gun turrett.c4d You simply move the control slider all the way to -100, create a key frame, move a few frames forward to +100, create a key frame. Keep doing this for as long as you want the guns to fire. To see the effect, be sure to render in the -100 and +100 positions. So here is my question....is there a better way to do this with the Xpresso rig I built? I keep thinking that there is an Xpresso command I am missing that would make this a lot easier to develop in the future. My next question is: how could I just set three values: Guns on at frame X, Guns off at frame Y, and frames between left fire and right fire is Z. Thanks, Dave

What I want to create is an Xpresso rig that as you move a light through a 180 degree arc in the sky its color changes as the sun would change color during the day (yellow-gold in the morning to bright white at noon to red at dusk). I know that you can control the RGB values of a light with Xpresso but is it possible to range map the suns arc (from -90 to 90) to a position along a color gradient? I mean I could just define the RGB values along the way but working with a color gradient would allow more control in when the transitions take place by adjusting the knots. Is this possible and what Xpresso commands should I start researching? Thanks, Dave

Some of you may find this article interesting. My biggest take-away is that 4 Oscars are being issued for hair simulation. One each to Pixar's, ILM's, Weta's and Disney Animation's in-house development of their own hair simulation program. Kind of odd. My only take is one of two things: 1) There are a huge number of approaches to developing hair simulation programs such that there is enough uniqueness in each of these companies approaches that warrant each one of them get an Oscar. - or - 2) The Oscar committee could not make up their mind so every nominee get's a participation trophy. Just glad that didn't happen in 2019 when Piers Anthony won for MoGraph in 2019. BTW: Anyone know what he is doing now? Dave

YES! ohhh...I am sorry....was that question directed at me? Dave

Welcome to the Cafe.....IMHO it is the friendliest, most helpful community on the internet. Always a smart choice....use what you have until you outgrow what you have. Now the question is what do you want to do with C4D? If it is modeling, I think Cerbera made an excellent case for sticking with R16. While there have been some very good improvements since then (when was the polygon pen introduced?), R16 should suit you just find. If it is Mograph, then R16 will still be a good choice, but you are missing a whole realm of possibilities with fields introduced in R20. Do you want to sculpt? Not sure if that was introduced in R16 or R18. I think it was R18. Ultimately, your modeling skills will grow to a point where you want to improve your texturing skills. Well...the standard for material controls these days is with nodes and they were introduced in R20. So what do you want to make today? Dave

I would keep an eye on Rocket Lasso (Chris Schmidt) on YouTube. His "What's new in R23" video spends a lot of time on the animation improvements and he does state that he will be developing more rigging tutorials in the future. He did create this subscription only training series for Greyscale Gorilla found here Not sure if he is still with Greyscale Gorilla as he is developing his own plugins now (Recall) so maybe there will some animation/rigging content in the future at the Rocket Lasso site. Just a thought. Dave

Awesome. Personally, I am a dog person but I like the description of their personalities. So how come there is no model of Cookie yet? When you have young children, you have to address the pet issue. I was not a pet person...pretty much dead set against living with any animal. So as a compromise, I wanted any animal that came into our house to live in a cage. So we started with fish...then gerbils....then guinea pigs. Well....14 years ago we ultimately got a dog for my oldest daughter who was having a rough time in the 7th grade. She needed a goal to focus on to get through school that year so it was my wife's idea to promise her a dog at the end of the school year provided she get good grades, etc. I was not happy with that promise, but realized it was the best thing for my daughter so I accepted it. Well, 10 years later as she is moving out of the house to start her career after college, she says she is taking the dog with her. I said no. I told her that the dog is no longer her dog. The dog has become my dog now. So I bought her another dog. Dogs have personalities, there is thinking going on and pretty soon you understand them and they understand you. It is really amazing. This probably explains why they ultimately become a member of the family....even for an anti-pet person like myself. Dave

Is it just me or does it seem that C4D is quickly loosing the perception that it is not a good tool for character animation. Really impressed not only by some of the character work that is being created recently but also the improvements made to pose morphing with R23 (as well as a number of other improvements to the general animation system). A really amazing example of all that C4D can do is shown here: Honestly, this animation by Günter Nikodim should put to rest FOREVER anyone's concerns about C4D not be a serious character modeling, shading, rigging, and animation tool. Be sure to also check his rigging reel. Was it Horgavinski who was our resident C4D/Maya master animator? Not sure if it was or not but I do remember that being an expert on character animation in both programs, he had tremendous insights into what capabilities were lacking in C4D. If he is still a member of this forum or if I am confusing him with someone else who is still a member, I would love to hear their insights into how far C4D has come with character animation over the past few releases. Dave

Okay....people should not be doing look development work for the next Avatar sequel from an internet cafe in the middle of Wellington. That is just common sense and you senior people trusted with that level of IP know that. But I think those lines were probably already crossed long before the pandemic as well. I mean, how many people do work on airplanes? That is why they have those polarized privacy screens you can put on your laptop to minimize the potential for on-lookers. You can't see anything unless you are the user looking straight on at the screen. Even when I am in an airport lounge, I keep my back to the wall when I open my laptop so no one can glance at my screen from behind. Standardizing a work-from-home policy is not going to increase or decrease that behavior as I would submit it has probably been going on all along. It comes with the territory once you give the employee a laptop. If you really want to keep something secure, the work is kept only a private network and the only access is through a workstation at the office....but they are the corner cases. Dave

Trust issues with the employee center around "are they doing the work" and those are quite easy to figure out. In fact, most managers should already have a pretty good idea if their direct reports are to be trusted or not with remote work. You will know pretty quickly if they are not getting the work done. Just look out for: late with completing assignments, too many excuses, you can't reach them during normal working hours, they take too long to return phone calls or text messages, and my personal favorite, when you do call them they sound like they are outside rather than in an office. Now if a direct report is always asking for more to do, if they step up, if you hear about them helping others....then trust is established. I would tell my direct reports that trust is given automatically, but you will rule the day that it is lost because the last place you want to be is "on my radar". Not hearing from me every day is a good thing because that means you have earned my trust. Just because you work from home does not mean that you can hide from everyone the fact that you are not getting work done. Everyone, both peers and managers, figure out who is working and who is not. Slackers cannot hide forever and ultimately they get managed either up or out. So should companies move to a WFH model, I believe trusting the employees will sort itself out over time. But honestly, those who can not be trusted is really no more than 5% of the workforce as most people want to work and value their job. Now if you are concerned about them stealing IP, well....everything can be tracked. When you connect to the companies servers, the data you download is tracked. When your laptop connects to a non-company server....every transaction is tracked. Downloading restricted material to a USB drive will be flagged. Email and text attachments are tracked. Uploads are tracked. Screen captures are flagged (what was the active app at the time of the screen capture). Even if you do it off line, that transaction is still logged on your machine. That log can either be uploaded the next time you connect to the companies server or stored for forensic analysis later. And companies can scan those transactions at will and without you knowing it at any time. And even if you are an IT wiz who thinks they can cover their tracks, there are better wizards who can figure out what you did (as a manager of a bunch of engineers who built and tested the servers we sell, I have seen it all). Big companies have these experts. AWS has these experts for those companies using their network because the last thing they want is bad press about the loss of IP on their network. So over time, ALL trust issues will be resolved. Honestly, I think WFH may become standard for everyone. My heart goes out to all those working in the commercial real estate market. Dave

Okay....TOO MUCH INFORMATION! That just shredded my image of you. Honestly, prior to that comment, given my high esteem for your talents, this is how I imagine just a simple thing like your desk chair! Well...at least you said you were wearing pants! Dave

Igor, Very sorry to hear about that storm in your life. I hope that you are now doing better both work wise and health wise. I actually have been a remote employee for Cisco for about 10 years. At that time, Cisco didn't even like having people outside of San Jose - let alone working from home in New England. But the situation was such that, as a manager, all my direct reports were in other parts of the world, I was always traveling (I just spent 50 days working a crises at one of our factories) and they need the office space at their campus in Massachusetts. So they actually asked me if I could work from home in New Hampshire. Hmmm....the Mass offices were a 50 minute commute and if I worked from home I wouldn't have to pay Mass state income tax (5.9%) as NH has no state income tax. I made my decision in 0.09 milliseconds. But, being a "remote employee", put a target on my back. I constantly had to prove my worth every day all the way up to the VP's and above. Every phone call was answered no matter when the call was made (remember that San Jose is 3 hours behind the East coast. Call me at 10PM -- I answer). When you did call me, you did not hear birds chirping, ocean waves, the wind blowing, or car sounds in the background. I was in my office. Nothing was ever late and the lines of communication were never clearer. But still, with all the frequency of an un-loved season, I would have to defend why I was a remote employee to the Senior VP (remember, they asked me to be remote). Finally, there was a big crises in Malaysia. My VP asked me to go over there and figure it out and then stay to fix it. It was a 3 month stint. After that, I was told that I was no longer on the radar. Then Covid hit and we all became remote employees (and that won't end until next June). Guess what? The company did NOT fall into ruin. Things were getting done. Cisco has "campuses" through-out the US. San Jose building are being sold. The 3 buildings in Massachusetts are being sold and only 1 is being leased back to house Cisco employees (well...actually the product development labs more than the people). You can only do that if you formalize a work-from-home strategy. So management does evolve when they finally accept that people are working. If you are a professional, you don't take anything for granted. You are an "at-will" employee which simply means your job is NOT guaranteed. You always need to show your worth whether in an office or at home. Once management sees that, if they are smart, they will trust you in that arrangement as they have much to gain too. Dave, P.S. Work from home does NOT work for new hires. They need to meet people, put names with faces and learn the culture. So I don't think 100% remote is a good idea. But 3 days a week! Hey...that works!

I watched the Pixar movie "Soul" and noticed this at the very end of the movie. So interesting that Pixar was able to make a mainstream, full length animated movie while under a pandemic lock-down that touched on some very complex themes while still being highly entertaining. Essentially, something this challenging is a highly collaborative exercise but it was accomplished with everyone still working from home. So...it begs a question: If Pixar can do it (and do it well), does that mean it can be done again? Is this tag line at the very end of the movie credits (where most people from home are no longer watching) added for humor only or was it a declaration of things to come for only those people who would watch the entire credits: namely people already in the industry? I mean, most companies are seriously thinking about the savings on commercial real estate/utilities/taxes by having their employees stay home permanently. Why would Pixar be any different? Let's assume the answer is that it is a declaration of things to come. What does this mean to the industry? Well, it means that talent can be accessible from ANYWHERE. It means that freelance VFX and animation artists do not need to lead nomadic existences relocating to various studios across the world in the search of work. High speed VPN internet connection and Zoom is all you need. You don't need to move which is a plus for the artist. It is also a plus for the companies because it is a lot easier and cheaper to recruit talent if you don't have to offer enough compensation to convince people to relocate to high cost of living areas like California or New York. Humorous tag line or a hint of things to come? Time will tell. Dave