3D-Pangel

For some reason I was expected Marvel's Ant Man with this thread! ;-) Excellent sculpting so no criticisms there. But is this character supposed to be an ant/human hybrid? I ask because right now it looks like a human wearing an elaborate ant head piece and mask. To make it look like a hybrid character, you need to continue the ant's skin plating down the neck and under the shirt and maybe even show a bit of that plating on the arm as well before is transitions to a human arm and skin. Just a thought. Dave

Oh...I thoroughly enjoyed the prequel trilogies. Yes, there were a few moments where I winced a bit, but overall I love the story, the action, the fight scenes, etc. And yes, Rogue One was a shining star in what has been an otherwise very disappointing set of Star Wars movies from Disney....but remember, they had to reshoot 40% of that movie. So Rogue One could have gone off the rails as well. The only good thing I can say about The Last Jedi was that I did not waste my money on it in the movie theaters (thank you Audience ratings in Rotten Tomatoes). The first Star Wars movie to come out that I did not see in a theater but watched at home via Netflix (also the first Star Wars movie not to make the cover of Cinefex...so what does that tell you!). I will say that as that movie played out, I just got more depressed because it was sooo stupid. I mean everything was bad about it. The dialogue, the characters, the plot...all of it was bad. Well no...that is not true. John William's music was very good. I felt a bit similar when I saw The Force Awakens but felt that there was a lot they were not telling us to be revealed in later episodes that would help explain that movie a bit better. Well....after The Last Jedi just basically trashed that story line as well, you are left with two movies that are just plain duds. I have no confidence in Disney's ability to handle this franchise. Netflix for me from now on with their movies. Relative to modeling, I will have to say that Star Wars models are a lot more intricate than Star Trek models. With Trek, you do deal with very complex shapes and curves. With Star Wars, you are dealing with vast amounts of hull plating, nernies, etc that all must be modeled. Each are difficult and each has its own challenges. Personally, I don't think I have the mental stamina to stick with a Star Wars model. Just look at the details Vector put into his TIE fighter. I would have gotten as far as the cock-pit and died of mental exhaustion let alone survive all the detail he put into the wings. Really amazing stuff. Dave

While not a current WIP, my first exercise to learn C4D sooo many years ago was to model the Death Star Reactor Chamber. This was done way back with R9. Not bad for a first attempt with C4D using R9. I owe it all to Nigel's blue airplane tutorial!!!! Right now, I am more into Star Trek than Star Wars with my STIII Space Station WIP in full swing. To be honest, I loved that world and only mildly winced during some of the more awkward moments of the prequel trilogy (sorry...Jar Jar Binks just didn't do it for me). But with great love and affection, I overlooked some of the bad writing ("Are you saying love is blind?" -- ouch) and went to see every movie in the theaters when they came out. They were events and needed to be seen in a movie house on the biggest screen you could find with full Dolby stereo blasting at you! That all ended with The Last Jedi. I will leave it there. Please don't convert this thread into a Disney SW bashing party. There are plenty of other sites out there on the web for that. Rather, let us cling to the great memories from the late 70's and early 80's when we watched that saga unfold for the first time and sat amazed at it all. Dave

Wow.....it is what an amusement park on Pandora would look like!!! Just incredible.....put it on the MAXON home page! Exceptionally well done in every conceivable way. I also had to laugh at this statement: "I'm working on a BIG passion project in the form of a pilot episode". ...Wait! That short animation was NOT the big passion project? Oh my. Dave

The inner core starts to take shape. Lots to do as I just roughed out the shape and literally slapped a texture on it. There is actually a ton of modeling on the inner core more so than on the rest of the structure. I could easily spend 40 hours on the inside alone....which for me is about 10 weeks. Honestly, I wish I was retired so I could do this full time. Dave

Okay...this is weird. All I did was shut off the normal channel and turn it back on again, and the floating windows disappeared. Interesting. I zoomed back a bit and you can really tell now that the lights seem a bit more connected to the hull. Just compare the lights at the bottom of the image where the normal map is applied to those at the top where the are not applied. Great suggestion!!! Dave

Okay....the results are in and while encouraging, they are a bit unexpected. Below is when using the bump map. As anticipated, the depression around each light is a bit soft. So while it grounds the lights to the hull in a distance, should you get close, this could be a problem: Now, when using a normal map something weird happens. If you notice, the actual depression with a normal map is crisply defined -- which is why I favor them for non-organic models. But notice that the lights appear off...almost out of sync with the luminance map for the lights. Let me keep working on this....the results are encouraging, but there are more things I need to try. Dave

If I have your attention, I must be doing something right! Good suggestion on the doors --- I never even considered that approach...you almost make me want to redo them one more time. Relative to the port holes--- Another excellent suggestion. Yes...they do look a bit floaty and that did bother me a bit. I was just happy to finally get a pattern that made sense, so I was going to live with it. But I am eager to try out your suggestion … so I will get it to it tonight after work. Normally, I hate bump maps in non-organic models. They just don't read well to me. Normal maps tend to be better. Let me try both (I think there is a H2N shader that converts any image to a normal map). If normal maps don't work out as well, then blur in the bump map will probably take a bit of the curse off a bump map - that and the new parallax bump capability in C4D. Thanks again....in one post, you gave me two suggestions that in my wildest imagination I never would have considered!!! Dave

The Dock doors start to take shape.....finally getting something that I am happy with. At this rate, I should be done with this project by next Christmas...but I am having a blast and looking forward to every challenge and utter frustration along the way. Dave

Thank you! From you that is high praise! One thing for sure....if I don't get what I want, I keep trying. Given that this is a hobby, I can only eek out about 4 hours a week by the time the rest of work and life is taken care of. So those little dots represent about 2 weeks of time (or 8 hours of experimentation). Today is a rather unique day....I killed back hauling dirt yesterday (dead lifted a 150 to 200 lb sack over my shoulder.....I thought I could do it...I did...but I paid a price). So I hooked up a heating pad to my office chair and have been working on C4D all day. I am now working on the space dock doors. Three attempts today so far. Just not happy with it. I am using a design by Robert Wilde for inspiration. The inner door break on his design has some pretty neat geometry but I am struggling with the topological flow. To many cuts and then he indents and bevels the inner door "C" glow. If not done right, you get a lot of crappy triangles and phong errors. Here is what I have so far: But this is what I am going for:

My texture journey continues.....I was never happy with the black/white mask I had created for the tiny ship windows that I was getting from JSP. Not that JSP is a bad tool, it isn't. It's actually a must have in my opinion. But while there is some control of the random patterns it creates by creating vertical or horizontal sections, it places those sections randomly across the image. I was looking for something unique in that I wanted to lights to reflect floor levels in the space station. They needed to line up and be restricted to individual rows of pixels in the final image. Not easy to do with a random texture generator. So what I did was to create a plane that was roughly 184 x 324 polygon is size. I then textured it completely black and colored the 4 polygons in each corner completely red. I placed a camera above the exact center of the plane and had it facing it straight down. I set the render size to the same ratio as the number of polygon and did a few quick renders while repositioning the camera to insure that the red corners were exactly at the corners of the rendered image. Next was to go in and do a few loop selections to select the floor levels I was looking for and then remove polygons from each of those selections to get the randomness that I was looking for. I will admit that this part was tedious. When done, I painted the finished selections with a flat white material to generate the black/white mask of windows I was looking for. Once rendered, I then painted the red alignment squares in the corners black. The finished image is below: And this is how it makes the windows appear in the final render. It definitely sells the concept of floors within the space station.

Agreed. Scale is the hardest challenge and as I was not happy with the lights either, I took another whack at it. This time, I actually have the lights as a different texture that just uses the alpha and luminance channels. So when the lights are not part of the hull texture, then I can make independent scale adjustments to both. The problems I was facing is that as you decrease the scale on the lights, you can see a repeat to the pattern and it just looks like a virtual sea of random dots without an order to it. I really want to see the lights ordered along levels rather than a random pattern. JSP helped with that but at a scale value of 10 still ends up looking like a random sea of dots even when you lower the "Drawing Chance" settings to 1.9% (which is pretty low). I wish it had the capability for minimum as well as maximum pattern length as too many single dot lights add to the randomness when your expectation is for order as this is a man-made structure with floors, etc. So what I did was create two patterns using JSP -- one that was just vertical and one that was just horizontal lights with a minimum brightness setting of 0. This still created the random sea of dots but when you bring each image into an image editing program and decrease the color depth to 2 colors (0 or 255), it drops all dots at 128 or less to 0 and thus thins out the pattern a bit. As I am using this as a mask, I really don't care if the color depth is just black or white. I then selectively started to clone the vertical and horizontal patterns I liked to a new image until I started to get the pseudo man-made pattern I was looking for. Once completed, I copied it and renamed the original to "Lights" and the copy to "Less lights". I then opened up "Less Lights" in an image editing program and thinned it out some more with a black paint brush so that there were areas of no lights. Finally, as the last step in an insane bid to have as much control as possible, I made individual loop selections for each level of the doom (15 in all). On each one, I dropped either the original lights texture or the "less lights" texture and adjusted the offsets individually to insure that nothing looked repetitive. Now that I had that level of control, I could increase the number of tiles on each level until I got the sense of scale I was looking for. Finally, I added a bit of glow to the light textures as well. Interestingly enough, the goal never really showed up until I started to map textures to individual selections....not sure why. Here is a close up showing the glow: To answer your other question about modeling scale, I am matching a scale used by Alex 3D as he does have some outstanding Star Trek models which are available for download. He is also working on his own version of the Space Station for STIII. It looks like he stopped working on it for some time his WIP page is dated 2013. Once I get this to a point that starts to look pretty interesting, I will be reaching out to him. Dave

Jay, I did checkout JSPlacement some time ago, but it was a little glitchy on my old Win 7 machine. I tried it again on my newer Win10 machine and it works well. I have been doing some texture tests on the top dome using maps for specular and luminance from JSPlacement. The base texture is an old deathstar texture that was originally much darker but I passed it through the Colorizer shader (I love that shader) to lighten it up a bit. Here are the results of my testing: Getting there! Thanks for your help! Dave

Wow.....I wonder how long it has been full as there were no alerts from the forum software....or any that I can remember. I had messages dating back to 2013 so it is very likely I did get some warnings but completely ignored them. I cleaned a few out so now it is 75% full. Thank you for letting me know! Dave

Finally found some time to get back to this WIP and make some progress. As C4D is a hobby, I do bounce around a lot with my projects -- trying, experimenting, learning, but never completing. I wanted one big project for this summer because all that jumping around was not giving a sense of satisfaction of accomplishing something. Here is some of the mesh details: The model is huge because it will be seen with Star Trek ship models as well. The works of Robert Wilde is the inspiration for this and I have over 66 reference images found from searching the web. I finally got the shape/dimensions/proportions correct because rarely are there any orthogonal views to work with for every element of this model. Now that the basic shape is done, next is to insure that I have the just the right texture with the appropriate specular highlights. Here is an example of what I hope to achieve (for me it is a lot harder than it looks): Any ideas on how to get this affect? Thanks, Dave

Not sure if anyone from GSG pays attention to the Cafe threads, but if they do then my recommendation is for them to consider what Helloluxx charges for tutorials. Based upon what I have read, the Hellolux tutorials are also well presented and very informative but are priced about a third of what GSG is charging. Any XP4 tutorials planned from Helloluxx? Dave

Okay.....for someone who is inexperienced, you picked one of the more challenging subjects to model, light and texture and that is automobiles....and you did a great job with it. If you had said that you were extremely experienced with 3D modeling, I would have no reason to doubt you based on this work. Also, you have drawn the attention and respect of both Vector and Cerbera in this thread, two of the best modelers I have ever seen -- so don't let that go unnoticed. So please feel good about what you have done because you have some serious skills. Relative to when you hit a wall or not....I have found that talent will always beat out native tools or external resources (plugins, textures, 3rd party renderers). What it really comes down to is time and your creativity. There are always clever work-arounds to most limitations of any software package, the question though is what makes sense for you, your business, and/or your client. For example, you could position 200 lights manually to get some pretty good ambient lighting effects and fast renders or just turn on GI --- each approach costs you something and the question is whether or not you are willing to pay those costs (time, money, mental health)....there is no right answer. It all comes down to whether or not you are getting the render you want or need (eg. for a client). In fact, the only pragmatic piece of advice I could give someone of your skill (which vastly exceeds my own....and I have been futzing with C4D for 10 years now as a hobbyist) is to study the real world with an extremely critical eye. Pick apart the shadows and the highlights found in nature. What is it about the subject be it a car, enironment or character, that makes it look real. And always remember that the best details in a WIP are those which you would ONLY notice if they weren't there. Dave

Greyscale Gorilla is offering a 30% discount on this course. It provides over 20 hours of training into XP with 12 hours on XP4 alone. Unfortunately, even with the 30% discount it is over $200. So has anyone taken this training? GSG site does not offer any sample chapters as you would find at Lynda.com so I have no idea on how effective is Jon Bosley as a teacher. I am pretty confident this guy knows his stuff, but is anyone familiar with how well he can teach? The other detraction is that it is available via streaming only. Sometimes that can be a problem. Plus, my use of the product is dependent on how long GSG sticks around. While I have no concerns about their future, $200 is still a lot money to bet on. Finally, I am most interested in XP4 new features and find the Ensydium tutorials pretty good. Unfortunately, XP4 fetarures are presented as an Appendix rather than project based lessons for XP3 found in this GSG tutorial. Not sure how that is different than just using the Ensydium tutorials. Hmmm....as I type this...I have come to the conclusion that it is not worth the money just based on my questions and concerns. Besides, cheaper alternatives are out there. I would still be interested if someone who took the course said the training literally blew his/her hair back and felt very strongly that there was nothing else better on the market at any price (which would probably be cheaper as this has to be the most expensive tutorial I have ever seen). Thanks

You know you have been using Cinema 4D for too long when you find yourself saying this: "Honey!!! You better get here quickly! The Rebend Deformer is finally kicking in!" .....sorry...I couldn't resist. Dave

Agree....excellent work and a real valuable resource. I hope you keep it maintained or get some compensation from somewhere to keep it maintained. I do have one issue though with the sample animations though....in particular Rebend Deformer: Really? Can we find another example shape? This is a family site after all! Dave

Almost as good as Black Friday is NABS and the sales that come with it. Toolfarm has quite an extensive list found here A couple of C4D related items to note: Pixel Lab - 30% off Video CoPilot - 25% off (some of their model packs come in C4D format) Curious Animal - 15% off HelloLux - 20% off all training Laubwerk - 10% off e-on: 30% off (includes Vue-xStream which works in C4D) Some of these sales run to 4/18/2018 but most expire on 4/14/2018. If you know of any others, please post them here (models, plugins, textures....you know the drill) Thanks, Dave

I thought the model was great until I saw the larger image you posted. Now it is phenomenal! The skin and lips are just perfect and the hair is amazing. Even his coat (with the seams and buttons) is wonderful. Best of all...the eyes are alive! Very tough to do. Well deserved exposure Dan! Congratulations. Dave P.S. Please keep us posted where this leads you because I do believe it will lead to some pretty tremendous opportunities. I wouldn't be surprised if Peter Dinklage himself has seen it.

When you look at the edits, camera angles and overall sheer amount of character animation, it must have been like putting a jigsaw puzzle together because you kept it visually interesting. The close-ups and overhead shots were well timed and gave it some punch. I can understand why it would be mentally exhausting putting this together and staying focused for so long. So how did you approach it? Did you act it out on video first and do a rough edit to figure out the timings and direction? One small nit though....please add motion blur. The platypus was making some pretty broad dramatic gestures and the strobing was noticeable. Dave

So that is how you have been spending your time! ;-) Awesome devices. Actually, I think it is the basis for a new form of Animusic. 3D-Kiwi would love this. Dave

I remember hearing some time ago (and I mean years) stories about Blender being crash prone or that commands did not operate as intended. I will admit that it formed a bias that stuck because (in my mind) it was open-source software after all. In actuality, as I think about it, I would imagine that because it is open source, Blender probably has a more thorough peer review process of new code than other private development groups out there. I wonder if the comments about commands not working as intended has more to do with the confusing UI than the program's stability. So my apologies for jumping to old conclusions. Now Blender 101 sounds like a very interesting way to test the waters without too much of a time commitment. I will definitely continue to watch that space. Dave