3D-Pangel

Wow...well...on the plus side, it appears that you still have basic services like power and internet otherwise you would not be able to post to the cafe. I would also assume that the rest of your family (children, parents, in-laws) have checked in an they are okay as well. Next big question, are the roads in and out of town okay? Will there be disruptions in food to the supermarkets, gas to the gas stations, etc. I mean, you could be perfectly fine but still be in a pretty rough spot like these poor cows: There is only so much grass left that they can eat! Dave

Okay.. just checked out the Cycles home page...so some of my questions have been answered. I will admit that the yearly maintenance cost of 90 pounds is a bit excessive as that is 50% of the purchase cost and 60% if you are an X-Particles 3.5 user. Think about it. Even C4D's Studio MSA is only 18% of the new license cost...so at those costs, you are strongly motivated to renew your MSA. But at 50% of the cost, I could afford to miss a few years and just buy a completely new license in the future. So how do you guys want your revenue stream to be managed in the future? Consistent or lumpy? The development effort and your costs are all the same but I would imagine people will not signing up for the maintenance program unless they saw a huge benefit...and that benefit is tied to the Cycles development pace and Insydium's ability to quickly keep up. So the big questions are: 1) If Cycles is cranking out a significant hunk of new and more powerful versions with each release (such that it is worth half our initial costs as that is what the maintenance program costs), 2) If Insydium can keep up and 3) Even if Cycles does pump out huge updates, that is a lot for Insydium to digest and integrate into the plugin so can it still be done quickly within the maintenance cycle. That is a lot of "if's". So for me, I would buy Cycles 4D now and then sit on it for at least 2 years....just to see how things go. That might be smart given what MAXON is working on with their own GPU rendering solution (which also has similar features). Now, reduce the maintenance costs to 30 pounds (20% of the initial cost), and you have me for life. So as a I said before, how do you want your revenue? Consistent or lumpy (30 pounds each year or "maybe" 180 pounds every 2+ years). I don't know. Charging 90 pound maintenance fee is a big bet for a new venture. Dave

The light emission capabilities alone have me drooling. Plus---and this is huge---Cycles 4D now supports TFD! Never would have expected that! Great job! What I find daunting though is the whole science behind nodal material system management. For example, when to use certain nodes that do not necessarily correlate to a material effect (eg. math nodes) and why I need to use them (eg. do I always need a blackbody shader with an emission node?). So while powerful, I would imagine that the learning curve is somewhat steep...at least until you wrap your head around it. Are there any "nodal system" best practices out there as a Cycles tutorial? I would imagine that any Cycles tutorial would be sufficient as not much was dropped in the C4D implementation. Also, while the Cycles road-map is impressive, does each release mean a change to the Cycles-4D plugin or can we just download the new Cycles release and see what works? That is, is the Cycles 4D plugin tied to a specific Cycles release? When will the Cycles 4D demo be available? Will the price be going up any time soon (is this a release special right now?) or will the discount for X-Particles 3.5 customers be removed in the future? Thanks, Dave

Nigel, Glad to know that you are okay along with the other New Zealanders on this thread. My thoughts and prayers go out to you all. How is your house? Any cracks or loose pipes? I ask because we had a 3.0 earthquake in New Hampshire (the 'Granite State') and there was a hair line crack in the drywall and a PVC drain pipe joint cracked loose. So I can only imagine what happened to your property when it was only 250 miles from the epicenter of a quake that was 100,000 times stronger. You did say the house rolled a bit which is just frightening. There was also a 6.0 quake in Venezuela this weekend as well. Makes you wonder what is going on! Plates are definitely shifting around a bit. In any case, take care of yourself and keep us posted. Dave

IMHO - You have raw natural talent with modeling if that is the level of work you can accomplish by being self-taught. If getting a paying job doing CG is the goal, my advice is to focus on being a specialist and developing a really good demo reel of your modeling. I agree that the competition is tough out there. While I have never looked for work in the CG field, I would imagine that the level of competition is lower for a generalist but there are many, many more people to compete with at the generalist level. Conversely, there are fewer specialists but the competition is tougher. You already have a pretty good start being a specialist character modeler so I would stick with that. Maybe purchasing MILG11 tutorial at HelloLuxx might push you to the next level as it appears to explain the "why" as well as the "how" behind certain techniques. Understanding the "why" is always advised as it provides a base from which you can develop additional techniques. Also, it does not matter how you obtained the skills. What matters is quality of the work so don't let yourself be imitated by those who have a formal education. It is also important that you can create models that other specialists can use (riggers, texture artists, etc), so understanding the proper techniques is very critical which is another reason why I would suggest MILG11. In addition to the finished work, your demo real should also show the mesh, highlighting key areas where intelligent polygonal flow stands out as well. Finally, focus on sculpting and retopology next. Get away from cartoon shapes and try to create realistic creatures (real or imaginary). Study anatomy and fill the models with high levels of realistic, anatomically correct surface details. If you can create something that looks absolutely real, even though it is un-shaded, poorly posed or flatly lit, then your work will most definitely stand out. I have always been inspired by the works of Neville Page so start their to get a sense of what "form language" really means in a model. Now, this may push you more into Z-Brush than C4D, but you need to also master the tools that the industry depends on for character modeling, and I would imagine that C4D is not at the top of that list. But, if you can't afford Z-Brush, don't let that stop you as it is the work you create rather than the tool you used to create it that matters most. Agreed! Never give up on your dreams! Never say never! Case in point: about 15 years ago there was this young kid (around 16 to 18 years old at the time) on the old trueSpace forums from Norway. He was creating outstanding work in trueSpace which had about 10% of the capability that C4D had that time (and probably 1% that C4D has now). Like yourself, he was a natural talent and self-taught at the time (though he did go on to get formal education in CG). He and I struck up a pretty good email relationship and I recall him saying that his dream was to bring ILM level of SFX to the Norway film industry. Honestly, I kind of chuckled at that and said that he had a better chance of working at ILM than creating his own studio in Norway....I mean, how big is the Norwegian film industry let alone the Norwegian VFX industry? Well, we fell out of touch over the years and fast forward about 15 years and I am watching some pretty neat movies on Netflix with some really outstanding VFX. Movies like Troll Hunter, Bolgen (or "The Wave"), and Ragnarok. All these movies were Norwegian made with English subtitles and were really good! As I am watching the credits, up pops this kids name (ALF M. LØVVOLD) who is now the General Manager and co-founder of a VFX company in Oslo called GimpVille . I was really surprised and reached out to him again just to make sure that he was the same person! He responded...yep, it was him! We have since renewed our email relationship and he admitted that it wasn't easy, filled with hard work and some very scary days that always come with starting your own company, but he persevered! Go to the site and watch their demo real...really impressive. Gimpville did the VFX work for the Oscar nominated Kon-Tiki (best foreign film), so their work is up there! They also won a national "Pioneering" award given to Norwegian businesses....probably because they did exactly what Alf set out to do: bring state of the art VFX to Norway. So never give up! Keep pushing yourself because talent and hard work will always find a way. Dave

There is so much to learn in this field that it really comes down to an early decision to be either a generalist or a specialist. There just isn't time in any one lifetime to master "everything"! Unfortunately, as this is just a hobby for me, I have accomplished just enough to keep me interested. Small wins on certain WIPs that encourage me to keep turning on the computer but not enough for me to ever be considered a "specialist" in anything. For me, it will be a life-long pursuit but never a destination and at times, I do identify with this graph: Right now as I am within a decade of retirement, computer graphics is (for me at least) the perfect "retirement" activity as I strongly believe that you need to keep firing the left side and the right side of the brain during your retirement years. CG will definitely do that...it requires your entire brain if you hope to be any good at it. And nothing comes easy. It all takes hard work to really master. That's why I love C4D because this stuff is hard enough and C4D's logical interface and stability at least keeps the energy on improving your skills rather than fighting the program. ...yeah...that's called raw natural born talent. Consider yourself very lucky! Dave

Really outstanding work. I was just watching some of the free sample tutorials from MILG11: Hard Surface Modeling in C4D (found here) and your work really exemplifies everything that can be done right with polygonal flow. Whereas that instructor (Toby Pitman) rigorously pushed himself to be a tremendous modeler with daily exercises, etc., I somehow get the sense that for you it is just natural. Especially when you say "It didn't really take that long...it was fun!" for something so complex that mere mortals would die in frustration before they even roughed out the shape of her hair. Any stories of about your training, 14 hour days at your computer, self-sacrifice and personal struggles to get to where you are today in your modeling skill would be really appreciated right now....because if that level of modelling came from natural talent, what hope do the rest of us have? ;-) Dave

More on ProRender found here A list of features is found here ( I highlighted two that I am very excited about): Below are some of the supported features: API (C-style) Unbiased/biased path-tracing State of the art sampling algorithms Multiple importance sampling Many lights support wAdaptive rendering Physically-based materials Layered material support Standard uber-material Volumetrics Physically-based camera Lens and sensor simulation Physical bokeh Motion blur Analytic and physical lights Point, directional, spot lights Area lights Image based light with IS IES profiles support Incandescent material Physical skylight Post-processing filters Numerous image reconstruction Tonemapping Based on open technologies OpenCL OpenGL (interop supported) OpenImageIO OpenVDB So if you know that this is coming to C4D (hopefully by R19...but who knows), then does that kill your interest in Cycles 4D from Insydium? For me, it does not. Why? Well, it is Insydium after all which means it will be well integrated. Also, I am imagining the pace of development within the Blender open source crowd may be a bit faster than within the AMD open source community (just my opinion though). Also you get a whole new material editor system with Cycles 4D (nodes). No mention if ProRender will also produce a similar change to C4D's material system. Not saying it won't...but you just don't know and a year is a long way off. Overall though, great news! Big thanks to MAXON! Dave

openVDB support is a nice feature, unfortunately it appears that you still need an external renderer to use it. Their 2.8 page shows a screen shot of them working with openVDB data, but the render window has the "Arnold" watermark. Once C4D embraces OpenVDB in their renderer, then I may get back into Navie (not having upgraded since 2.0 after I purchased XP 3.0 and TFD...how many fluids renderers do you need?). Also, 2.8 is embracing OpenCL ....but not sure where they are with OpenGL. But overall, this plugin is coming along nicely with some finely nuanced fluid solutions constantly being incorporated into the package which increase realism....and their indie pricing is now attractive for CG enthusiasts such as myself (too bad they don't offer an 2.0 to Indie 2.7 upgrade option). I will admit the interface looks a bit daunting but then again, I have not bothered to study the 2.7 tutorials. Dave

Very interested in this but a little concerned over comments about not being able to handle parametric objects. A very quick mis-read of this post as I was scanning the thread. Apologies...just returning from a long business trip and quickly catching up on the news so I am into "C4D Forum Triage" mode. I also posted before I watch the Cycles 3D video from Insydium.....and that concern quickly went away. After watching the video, I am sold. The emissive capabilities as a light source alone sold me but when they mentioned that it would also be able to handle material pre-sets made by Blender users was also intriguing as I would imagine that library is quite extensive. But apart from all that, the node management system seems pretty straight forward and obviously years ahead of where C4D is right now. I would also like to know more about light types. When watching the video, I did not see volumetric as an option. C4D's volumetric lights are not exactly accurate (IMHO) and I would love to have a few more controls around box lights, etc. It would be great to see in-detail what Cycles 4D lights can do. Dave

Very interested in this but a little concerned over comments about not being able to handle parametric objects. Did I read that right? Not sure if that means it would not be able to support Forester or not...or at least the library of trees/plants that come with Forester. Someone also mentioned if integration with Substance Designer was possible. That would be great, but again probably out of Insydium's control unless Alegorithmic was already working with Blender on that. Not sure. While this has been talked about since the early summer, I was also wondering if Insydium has been contacted by any of C4D's model or plugin vendors about whether or not they should start working on a port to Cycles 4D. While I don't expect that discussion to occur with the developers of TFD or Realflow (for obvious reasons), some news that discussions with the C4D Depot team (makers of Infinite Oceans, etc), Laubwerks, The Pixel Lab or 3D Quakers (Forester) have occurred concerning their model libraries being rendered by Cycles 4D would be encouraging news. Also interested to see a video that just goes deeper into X-Particles integration with Cycles 4D. What new effects can be created that you currently can't get with C4D's native renderer would be a key area of interest. Finally, there was a mention that X-Particles customers would get a discount. Any more information on that? Any pre-release pricing specials planned? Thanks, Dave

I love it when plugins from other platforms get ported over to C4D so I wish you guys great success. Question to those who use Syflex on other platforms: What does Syflex offer over C4D's native cloth simulator? It looks (based on a quick scan of the Syflex web-site) to be speed and ease of use. Possibly better handling of self-collisions as well. I did not see anything on cloth tearing. Cloth simulation with high stiffness values and tearing is a great way to simulate physical destruction of metal structures so does Syflex have that capability? Will a set of tutorials be released as well? Thanks and interested to see more! Dave

Who was the first? I have been on a number of business trips out of the country with more to come, so my time on the Forum has been limited and will continue to be limited for at least 6 more weeks. But to come back to news such as this is bad enough but now there was another passing that I missed? This is horrible. Dave

Wow! I just learned the sad news. What a gentleman he was. I met him once at Siggpraph 2006 and he was just the most unassuming and polite person you could ever hope to meet. Just a generally nice guy. I even had trouble converting a model from Sci-fi.net to C4D and he offered to help with one of his plugins. So my heart is saddened by the loss. Based on the post at CG Networks, I gather he was a private person but my thoughts go to his family. I have no idea if his passing creates a financial hardship for his wife or children (if any) but if anyone knows please let us know. While not a character animator, I would buy his plugins if that would help out his family. I will keep them all in my prayers. Dave

Very nicely done...especially the little touches like the bump map on the river and the waving bear. I would agree that painting tree's on selections would be a great feature for V2 (if one is planned). Another good feature would be the ability to provide local rather than global wind forces - that is, have the trees react to wind generated by the car as it drives by...while that would not add much to this animation given the scale of the car, it would be a pretty cool feature nonetheless. So as great as that plugin is, it still has plenty of room for new features in the next version. Unfortunately, with no announcements from 3D Quakers for over a year on anything....you have to wonder what is going on. Also, 3D Quaker was working on a car simulator...not sure where they are are with that but it looked pretty interesting and would really make this awesome animation even more believable! I also have one question about your animation: Did Kathie make it?!? ;-) Great work! Dave

Wow...this must be a sign of a successful release when we start complaining how the tools are "named" rather than how they operate! Okay...if we are going to take our criticisms to the absolute nit-picky level, then I would like to have a word with someone about the R18 splash screen! Really....is that that best that MAXON can do? A couple of lines on a white background? Also, anyone notice that there is still a "R18 - RC" next to the version number. Did someone just miss updating the version number when it was released or are we still getting release candidates? Whew! Glad I got those burning issues off my chest. I feel so much better now. ;-) Dave

At the time of announcement, I was not too excited about voronoi fracture. But after just playing with the point control I am simply blown away with how well MAXON thought out the implementation of this new tool. Wow! Endless possibilities. Really brilliant MAXON! Question: While it works with Thinking Particles, has anyone had a chance to get it to work with X-Particles? I would imagine that you would need to pass XP through TP to get that level of operation. I have yet to install all my plugins but just wondering if anyone else has already worked that out. Dave

So I heard back from e-on. They said essentially this: So, if I don't renew my maintenance contracts I will still get the next update. But once that maintenance contract expires, it cannot be renewed unless I get a new license. So it pretty much leaves me in the same situation where I am trusting that the Bentley/e-on merger is still investing in the development of e-on's products as they stand today. Other than "we are still alive and well", there is no hard evidence that this is the case. I hate this situation. For you old timers out there: You know what this reminds me of? The old trueSpace ProTeam deals prior to tS7 (back in 2005). I never bought into ProTeam, but it was the same situation. tS7 was long overdue and Caligari is still pushing maintenance programs via ProTeam. I jumped to C4D at that time but for those that bought ProTeam maintenance license, there were screams of class action suits, etc because it took years for tS7 to get released and people were getting nothing for their ProTeam license. Now, I would imagine that e-on is a bit better run and larger company than Caligari (which is not hard to say - Caligari was that bad), but still I am getting the same vibe. You know, it is like this that just makes you appreciate MAXON. I mean, for all that we may have complained about R17, they at least still release something every year, have a long term development plan and given the money they are making for Nemetscheck, you "may" not have to worry about mergers, or sales to other owners (I say "may" as you never really know in the business world what the future holds). From this perspective, there is trust in MAXON that we all take for granted....and we really shouldn't. At the very least, I may just renew Vue xStream and let the other two lapse (CS and PF). Still not sure. Dave

I did send them an email....but we all know how that goes. Here is what I sent: If they say that they can do nothing for me...or that they don't respond...well...all I can say is that I am darn glad to have purchased Forester and some of the C4D Depot products (which is have a 50% off summer sale right now). Dave

So I have a few of e-on's products (Vue xStream, Carbon Scatter and The Plant Factory) and all of my 2016 maintenance contracts are coming up for renewal. So after the merger with Bentley Systems in September, 2015, e-on as a company really hasn't done much. Just look at their list of press releases. A big old fat white space next to 2016.So given that the money I shelled out last year at this time netted me nothing in return in terms of updates, and e-on is really not communicating anything officially, I have to wonder if e-on is a dead company. Did I miss something? What is the word on the street concerning the future of this company? Oh...and please remember this: Regardless of what you may think of what MAXON puts into each release, they at least release something every year!!!! Just thought I would offer that perspective. Thanks,Dave

Downloading now....should only take about 20 minutes...pretty zippy. Thank you MAXON! Great timing...right before a 3 day weekend!!! The only thing that could step on this joy is if the Cineversity servers had a crash. Dave

My understanding is that TFD only uses CUDA based processors for GPU simulation. While not specifically stated as such, this page from the TFD help manual leads you to that conclusion: https://help.jawset.com/en/c4d/gpu_simulation Note that under "supported GPU's", there is only a reference to GPU's with an nVidia compute capability of 2.0 or greater. Not sure AMD cards have an nVidia compute capability level!! ;-) Dave

Thank you. Starting to look at 3D Coat as well. They have some pretty slick import/export app (call applinks) that were developed by 3rd parties for C4D R15. Not sure what broke the development, but I can imagine it was R16's reflectance shader that kept them from being updated past R15. But that applink does what you would want an applink to do...one click to import and export in and out of C4D. You can see it in action here Seems pretty straight forward to use with better pricing for the amateur than Substance Painter (I think it is about $100 less)....plus you get sculpting. I will be playing with the demo this weekend as well as their C4D applink. Dave

Well Hrvoje....we were positive for a whole two pages at least! Can any tell me the pipeline into and out of Substance Painter from C4D and how well that works for them? I have had my eye on Substance Painter as its Indie pricing is very appealing, but not sure how well the programs integrate together. They created a great bridge for Substance Designer but I really have not heard too much about C4D/Substance Painter integration. Dave

Wow....I thought I felt the earth shift to a new orbit this morning! Huge standing ovation to the MAXON team for actually sharing both some information about new features and a pseudo timeline ("you will get your hands on it within the R18 release cycle"....which means between R18 and R19). Let us not downplay the significance of this!!! And if you want it to continue then please positively acknowledge it!!!!! I personally have already picked up a case of Hefeweizen for delivery to Rick Barrett's house. Unfortunately, it never made it to the post office... ....but it was the thought that counts! Just awesome MAXON.....just awesome! Dave