3D-Pangel

Along with the long over-due update to C4D's UV capabilities and nodal materials, then Cerbera's wish list for modeling tools, Briankoko's wishes for VFX tools and Rectro's well thought-out and comprehensive list pretty much sum-up my hopes for not just R20 but probably for a few more releases after that. Many would think that R18 and R19 put a good dent in the gap between C4D and the competition, but after reading this thread you realize just how much farther they have to go! But if I could take this in a different direction here is my ultimate and obviously unrealistic set of wishes: 1) MAXON gives us everything we have mentioned in this thread prior to 2020. Revamping the core has been the bottleneck to any progress in a number of aging areas (BP in particular) and it has been the long held belief that MAXON will not invest in improving any code wrapped around the old core. So as a community, C4D users have patiently waited as the industry has moved forward. Remember that MAXON has assuaged our impatience with statements about how this great new architecture will set us up for big changes in the future. There have also been insinuations that improvements will come faster than anything we have seen in the past. These promises have kept the truly faithful camped on the MAXON doorstep. So if the new core is finally here in its entirety (having taken 3 to 4 versions to fully release), then if you don't want to break that faith, you better deliver -- especially if you are raising MSA prices. I don't care how many releases it takes - but I do care how long it takes. The expectation you have established around the new core is that catch-up the competition will happen and it will happen fast -- how you program manage new feature releases needs to strongly respect how patient we have been. That is why my expectations are not for R20, but for 2020 and I don't care if takes you 8 releases to get there...but I do care how long it takes because I fear our patience is coming to an end. 2) Either MAXON meets our expectations or Blender makes its program easier to use. Honestly, there are some really neat areas of development within the Blender community and at a fraction of the cost of C4D. The total cost of ownership (Blender and plugins) is still far less than C4D Prime but you get so much more. MAXON needs to respect Blender and realize that Blender sets the floor for what users want in terms of features. We all hate the UI and the instability, but amazing things are still being done with that program. 3) MAXON stops relying on plugin or 3rd party developers to round out their tool set. Focusing on built-in pipelines to other programs like Houdini, Allegorithmic, etc is nice, but it is not a winning strategy for staying competitive. In fact, it is almost and admission that they can't stay competitive on features. We are not going to give you nodal materials, but you can use Substance Design and import the .sbsar file. We are not going to give you fluids or OpenVDB support, so please use Houdini and import the file. Now, it is okay to not compete on features but you have to compete on something and the only thing left is to compete on price. Sorry, but in a highly technical market with a strong development pace, competing on stability and ease of use will only get you so far. People will always want what your competitors have and will take stability for granted when they jump ship to another program to get it (and its not like Maya, Modo or Houdini are bad options----they are great options). They may regret it in the end, but what does that matter to you when you have lost the sale. So my wish is that MAXON commits to changing what C4D can NOT do rather than what C4D and its plugins can do. If they don't make this commitment, then they should lower their price. In summary, my hope is that everyone at MAXON is extremely nervous about over-promising and under-delivering with R20. Since R16, they have set the expectations that the new core will bring great change and while they never said that R20 will be the "big" one, the general consensus of the community is that R20 is when the big changes will yield BIG NEW FEATURES. Right, wrong or indifferent, it is MAXON's time to deliver on those promises. Dave

Congratulations. The trailer does not do it justice. I encourage others to view the rest of the short clips out there on Vimeo and DeCarlo animation to get a true sense of the heart of this story (I love the clips of the selfies with the alien) and how well it is directed (as evidenced in the first scene which does a good job of setting the tone). Was all the modeling, rigging and animation done by one person (Thomas DeCarlo). If so, that is quite an achievement. Keep us updated on how well you do at the festivals. Dave

Well, one of the more impressive elements of that animation are the sound effects and editing. Very professional and add huge amounts to the enjoyment of the film. But I don't think this is the right forum to discuss that (in fact, I hope you are posting this animation as well to the Final Cut Pro crowd....BTW: I just love the voice "Oh...this can't be good"). One thing I would probably want to learn more about is how to rig a model for rag doll physics as I am sure there are some constraints that need to be applied to insure that joints bend realistically. Was it a simple matter of just using hinges? Was it that simple? Also, while you go from key frame to physics simulation, can you actually combine the two? That is, have the arms key-framed to flay about and grab for things while the body is falling. Or the legs kick a bit after they hit the ground. Not sure if that is possible (eg is motion blending possible?). In short, just tell us everything! ;-) Dave

Just outstanding! I almost felt guilty enjoying it soo much (I mean, they are scenes of human based characters being squashed, chewed on and crushed after all. It reminds me of the first time I played with the Endorphin demo years ago....I had a sadistically good time whacking those little rag dolls around). But apart from the subject matter, the animation, music, editing and animations were just spot on impressive. I am saving that link as I anticipate many viewings in my future (oh my...what does that say about me?). I also watched Ragdolls 1 and 2. Loved those as well but Ragdolls 3 takes it to a whole new level. MAXON should put this on their home page with an article about how you made it. Just tremendous. Dave

A quick scene in Forestor --- so nice to use!!! As I was making it, I was wondering if 3D Quakers would be creating a new version of trees to use on their landscapes....You don't want to create a full tree as that could become too polygon intensive. Rather, what you want is some variant of multi-floral plant that looks like a full tree from a great distance and can then be painted onto their landscapes but is in actuality a miniature tree with a much lower polygon count than a standard tree. Just a thought. Dave

I love the work you are doing. For a number of reasons which I won't go into here, relative to pricing, one thing which I would like to direct your attention to is Poliigon Textures. You purchase credits either in blocks or on a monthly or annual subscription plan and can then use the credits for individual texture purchases. All textures and texture maps come in a variety of sizes and you are essentially using one credit for each texture/texture map. You want color, diffuse, normal then it is 3 credits total regardless of size. If you want the bump map as well, that is another credit (4 total). Now, I will admit that the web-page really makes this system sweet to use but it is rather powerful for the user because it is a GREAT way to search for textures and you are only paying for exactly what you need (meaning what you are going to immediately use). Personally, I would like to see more texture developers sell in this manner....but I know that the web-development is probably not trivial (and creating quality textures is hard enough). Dave

Don't hate me for pointing this out as the modeling work is nicely done and I don't want to detract from the effort you put into it....but I did find this rather humorous.

Wow....just wow. Charbel, I only have about 40 or 50 questions...I hope you don't mind ;-) But I will keep it down to a handful. Is that landscape procedurally generated ---- that is, the detail holds up the closer you get? Is the interface nodal based for creating erosion types. Will it use C4D sculpting tools? C4D seems to suffer with scenes that are object heavy more so than polygon heavy. How is the viewport performance with these terrains in R19. Any chance of posting a video just showing that object being manipulated in the viewport As these will be two different programs (Moonrocks and Forester), what level of inter-operability is being considered. For example, you build a landscape, you populate it with trees but then you decide to change the landscape. Will the tree positions automatically update to the new terrain especially if the mutti-cloner has the option for placing trees based on terrain slope (well, that is my assumption)? Infinite terrains.....in scope? I know you can't answer this question....but at least you know where my hopes are heading. I know you can't answer any of these (well....maybe question 5) but the results are right up there with World Machine. Even Vue users would have to export their terrains to World Machine to get half decent erosion results, so you are already years ahead of Vue in terms of terrain output quality. I see another Insydium in the making here with 3D Quakers. Better start hiring. ;-) Dave

Thank you for that link to Facebook. So the big new addition is going to be a separate landscape generation product called "Moonrock". It looks like it produces some pretty good results. Hopefully, they add "slope" as a distribution type to the mutlicloner menu to provide the ability to control tree placement based on the terrains slope (if the slope is too steep, you can't put a tree on it). Also wondering what road options/tools they are going to provide....that looks really interesting. The terrains pictured do show different textures so it would be interesting how that is controlled. Overall though, with trees, animated trees, and terrain generation, 3D Quakers is stepping nicely into the 3D landscape arena. Plus as it is written for C4D, I would imagine it will operate far better than Vue xStream ever did within C4D. While it looks exciting and we are all born impatient, I am glad that they are taking their time to make it robust within C4D (according to their Facebook posts). While Moonrock is new, they are also talking about upgrades/new features to Forester 2. My hope is the ability for local (rather than global) wind control (eg. Think helicopter rather than hurricane). One other hopeful addition is to allow the trees to be controlled by other dynamic forces other than wind....such as ground movement, trunk impacts or trunk separation, etc. Sounds straight forward, but hugely complicated to implement realistically. But would't it be cool to animate a tree falling in the forest --- realistically (and in my world, it would not make a sound if no one was there to hear it ;-). Looking forward to 3D Quakers future!! Dave P.S. You may wonder....why didn't I just check Facebook if I was so interested in any news on Forester. Well, I hate to admit this, but I really despise all forms of social networking. To me they are just a huge waste of time. So I avoid sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. I don't know...maybe it has to do with my rebellious nature...if everyone is going right, I will go left. The Cafe is the only site I visit as well as LinkedIn....that's about it.

Not sure if this has been discussed before as I imagine not a lot of C4D users are also Vue xStream users, but e-on software is quickly going the way of Newtek. Since their acquisition of Bentley systems in 2015, e-on has been extremely slow to update their Vue platfom, releasing roughly 1 major and 1 minor release in the past 3 years. Then, right after announcing an half-point update to Vue 2016 in November, 2017 (see how slow they are?)....their site gets hacked and goes down for months. I just don't mean hacked, I mean completely crippled. User account information has been taken completely off-line and any type of self-service to get updates or downloads of what you have purchased in the past no longer exists. Also their ability to send out reminders for service contract renewals is gone as well (mine lapsed on Valentines Day last week and I did not receive one reminder). Overall, I think they have a long and rough road ahead to regain customer confidence. How do you recover from not providing timely updates and then losing all customer support capability? Plus, they are losing their market share to Terragen -- which is quickly replacing them in the film industry....at least that is my impression based on what I have read in the trades and even the e-on web-site does not show any film involvement since 2012. Overall though, I am not that sad. While I love environment creation, I found Forester to be much easier to use within C4D than Vue xStream. Vue xStream within C4D just brought the program to a crawl relative to rendering for even the simplest of scenes. That really prevented from using it within C4D and I found myself either importing/exporting assets between the two. With Forester, no such problems. I could move to Terragen, but I have a very high bar when downloading a demo: If I can't pick up the basics quickly when watching a starter tutorial and have to constantly stop, rewind, replay to capture the simplest of functions, I tend to shy away from making a purchase. Not so with Forester. So my hopes for a Vue replacement rest with Forester. Also, 3D Quakers next release of Forester hinted at landscape creation if you look at their most recent gallery. That would definitely fill the void. But what happened to Forester 2.0? They hinted at a major release way back in May, 2017 but little has been said since then? They are more tight lipped than MAXON, and that is saying something. If anyone knows anything more about Forester 2.0, please share or point me to a forum where it is discussed more openly. Now that my maintenance contract has expired, I am completely happy to be walking away from Vue and the only place I want to go is Forester---so I hope they have something! Thanks, Dave

Gene's Mom! I would strongly recommend Cineversity as the courses are short, tool focused, wonderfully organized and very clearly presented. Some of the tutorials you may find elsewhere tend to focus on techniques/projects when what your 12 year old son needs to first learn are the basics. To start, there is a 22 part series entitled "Getting started with Cinema 4D" found here for free After that, there are a whole bunch of "Beginner Friendly" projects. Just look for "Cinema 4D Basics" at the Cineversity web-site (found here) Once he has burned through all those, then you may want to ask him what interests him the most: modeling, texturing, lighting, animating, motion graphics, etc. and what type of projects he likes to work on: characters (people, animals, fantasy creatures), environments (landscapes, buildings, rooms, outer space, etc). Once he has a few of the basics under his belt and you get a sense of what he likes to work, then given the special circumstances, I am pretty confident that someone at Cineversity could guide you on further areas of study and course work. And of course, everyone at the Cafe would love to see his work, offer encouragement and even make a suggestion or two. This is one of the friendliest and most giving C4D sites on the web so I am very glad you found us in your search. Also understand that while Cinema 4D is one of the easiest and most logically designed applications out there, it is still pretty complex mostly because computer graphics is complex. There is no way around it. It will be filled with acronyms that are intimidating to someone who is not technical. But don't let that stop you and Gene because the genius of C4D is that it works logically and the layout just makes perfect sense. Also, never be afraid from asking questions at the Cafe. There is no such thing as a dumb question --- we have all asked them and probably will keep asking them after decades of using the program (I know that from personal experience). The Cafe is always very friendly to the "newbie" users out there. Good luck, Dave

Thank you. Oddly enough I found tbb.dll in the TFD and X-particles folders. From a first look, without extensive video tutorial training, this plugin is NOT intuitive to use...so while it is free, it will probably remain unused in favor of XP and TFD. That is a shame because I understand it provides outstanding results. Hopefully, all the Vimeo tutorials stay on-line. My heart goes out to Samir and his family. I do recall that the development of Effex 1.5 took a bit longer than expected some years ago as he had a serious accident. Now I hear that he is back in the hospital. I don't know how many rough patches one person can endure in a lifetime, but Samir is definitely having his share of them and I hope that he pulls through with flying colors. Offering Effex for free though indicates that whatever the outcome, his life will be taking a different direction...and I can only hope it is for the better. Samir, if you have time to still read the forums then I wish you the best and my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. Dave

You can dig a bit deeper into the Naive web-site by clicking on Support and then Video Tutorials in the link provided in Rectro's post and that will bring you to this archived web-page: https://web.archive.org/web/20170812235132/http://www.fluidsimulation.de/navie/index.php?content=tutorials Note that version 2.8 videos are listed on that archived page. Now, when you click on a video tutorial, you get the "wayback" response that the video is no longer available, but you will get the Vimeo video link which, when copied into your browser, "may" bring you to the video. I used it for the "Installation" video from version 2.6 and it worked. Now I installed Navie 2.8 per the instructions in R19 and it does not work in Win 10. Maybe it has something to do with Navie's on-line updated no longer being active, but has anyone else tried this in R19? Did it work for you? If so, how did you get it to work? Thanks, Dave Angelini

I just love this thread! Great work and such clean modeling. Your work has the same quality of my all-time hero of Star Wars modeling: Ansel Hsaio. While we wonder how you are able to find the time, I just marvel at what Ansel takes on. Look at his take on the Tie Fighter found here. And of course don't forget to see some of his Star Destroyers (he has many versions....). I don't want to diminish your accomplishment by showing you Ansel's work, because your work is just as outstanding. But sometimes after working so long on a model we all need to poke our heads out of our terminals and look around for inspiration or at least find something that provides the motivation to go add that next chunk of 100,000 polygons to a model. Hopefully his work provides that energy because I can't wait to see more of your work. Dave

Welcome to the Cafe....and I must say you've made one hell of entrance. I just love that work: modeling, texturing and lighting. The materials (especially the fresnel glass in the center and the marble rings) are spot on! I would love to see a full animation where the gears, rings and planets are all in motion. From a design perspective, I do have one comment because I think the most aesthetically pleasing designs are those that look like every element has a function: The exposed gears should have a purpose and in an Orrery one purpose would be to rotate the planets about their individual axis. As such, it would probably help sell the concept that this is a functioning Orrery if the gear openings were better aligned to the planet's locations. This is an easy fix....just move the planets closer to the gear openings. Hopefully, this improves the aesthetics because now function determines design rather than the other way around. But that is a small nit relative to just an outstanding work overall!!! Dave

Ahhh....trust has been restored because all versions are increasing in price and Studio owners are not being singled out. I don't begrudge MAXON raising prices once in 10 years but no one likes to be singled out for a price increase. Now that I know it is all versions, I am actually okay with it (funny how that works)....and my esteem for the MAXON USA team has also increased due to their ability to hold back a price increase for the non-Studio versions. Dave P.S. If I was a non-Studio owner right now, I would seriously think about upgrading to Studio (if the MSA prices are increasing, the upgrade prices are sure to follow though I am not sure if that will happen as well on 3/1). Pretty clear that R20 is going to favor the Studio feature set quite heavily...otherwise how could MAXON USA win the argument to NOT increase pricing for the other versions. Pure speculation on my part and I don't want to step on what Rick shared (for which I am grateful), but still something to consider.

Agreed. Studio owners have been getting the short end of the stick for years now. Now if Nigel predictions are true (which they usually are), they raise prices on us when R20 finally has some great new features that are purely unique to Studio. They finally deliver and then ask us to pay more when we have been paying way more than everyone else and getting pretty much an equivalent set of features for years now. I know it is not that black and white, but you get the point. The only saving grace for me (given my MSA due date and their rather predictable release cycle), is that I will get R20 with my current MSA that expires on 8/31 and R21 at $650 if I renew before 3/1/18. So thank you to MAXON for allowing that because it does allow me to fall in love with the new features prior to facing a price increase to $725. But for some reason, I just don't think $725 pricing will stay fixed for another 10 years. I think prices will continue to rise. Overall, how they handled this could have been better. Trust has been lost. Dave

So there is no confusion....here is the browser link to the email On the plus side: they are allowing to purchase another year at the current price if placed before 3/1/18. On the negative side: There have been some well-founded arguments that the annual updates add or improve capability of the Prime, Broadcast, and Visualize versions more so than what would be unique to Studio. Yet the Studio owners pay a premium. Had this price increase been to all versions, then I would have no issue as it has been 10 years with fixed pricing. But it is ONLY to Studio owners which further deepens the wound that we are paying a premium with the least amount of change to "uniquely" Studio features with each version. Maybe R20 and beyond will change all this...who knows but I am not banking on that. What am I going to do? Simple....upgrade prior to 3/1/18 even though my MSA expires on 8/31/18. Now, if things stay the way they have been in the next release (fewer new or improved features for Studio owners), then I may stop participating in the MSA program and just update every two years. Not sure about that, but the higher MSA costs for Studio tend to push me in that direction (provided they keep their upgrade costs the same). I do enjoy Cineversity and the CV tools though. I honestly wish MAXON just increased the cost of all MSA licenses. Just increasing the cost to Studio owners angers me (to be frank) and tarnishes what was once a positive perception that MAXON was a very fair company. I can tell that MAXON USA is not in favor of this, otherwise why pin this on MAXON corporate in their email. So my disgust is purely with corporate MAXON and not the fine folks at MAXON-USA who are caught in the middle. Dave I would be interested to know what is going on in other regions outside the USA.

I love the fact that the materials have rather unique patterns with good veining. Are you generating all channels from the original images themselves and are you making them tileable? If so, may I suggest trolling through https://www.thestonecollection.com website. Just select the inventory link at the top and they have all types of stone categorized for you. In most cases, the images are pictures of stone slabs and therefore are pretty much unusable, but occasionally they have a high resolution image of just the stone pattern which could be used for texture generations. Here is an example image from their web-site and probably something that would be a good addition to your library: petrified wood This is just an example as the original image that I downloaded was 7153 x 3462 pixels in size and over 21 Mb. It can be found here Not sure what digital rights issues apply to using these images for graphics work as their goal is to sell stone and not the images of the stone. But if the goal is to create architectural materials, going to sites that sell the actual materials (eg. marble, wood flooring, tile) usually provides a good source of images. I hope this helps. If not, then hopefully the suggestion of adding petrified wood to your collection is at least a good suggestion. Dave

Have you tried using the Camera Crane to achieve what you want to do? It has some pretty good controls for pitch, banking etc. Just move the tag from the camera object and place it on the object you want to animate. Load a spline into the Base link, zero out base height, arm length, head height and width and turn on compensate pitch and heading. File is attached as well: camera crane as follow spline tool.c4d Again, not sure if this meets your needs but it does offer far more controls than what is found in your typical Align-to-Spline tag. I hope this helps. Dave

Congratulations to the Cafe for continuing to be a great resource to the C4D community. This place owes its reputation to those selfless individuals who supported it in the past (3D-Kiwi, 3D-Crew..remember him?) and the present (Igor, HSrdelic, Cerbera, Vector, Rectro, ABMotion, bezo, everfresh, westbam, et. al). My hopes for 2018? 1) That Igor overcomes whatever health issues he is facing. Very sorry to hear that you are hitting a rough patch right now and I hope you come through it with flying colors. Until then, my prayers are with you and your family (especially that cute daughter of yours in your avatar. I grew up while my mother was fighting cancer, so I have some idea of what she may be going through). 2) Long lost friends return to the forum and/or C4D. Yes....Nigel...I hope you come back to C4D as your tutorials were always appreciated. Also would like to see Srek return as I always appreciated his frank and honest insights into MAXON. 3) R20 hits better than 50% of our expectations over what we feel is going to be "the big one". While you may think 50% is a bit low, I personally think our expectations are too high for a company that places stability, brilliant implementation and software quality as a top priority. Slow and steady wins the race for me at least. 4) 3D Quakers releases the next version of Forester. They had made some statements 9 months ago about the new release late in 2017, so lets hope we hear something soon. If you look at their home page gallery, they have this terrain with the hills spelling out "Merry Christmas with Forestor" so this could give you some idea of what is cooking for V2. 5) MAXON Labs gets some love. Great start but would love to see more of what MAXON plays around with in their spare time (assuming that they have some spare time). 6) I find more time to learn and grow with C4D. Unfortunately, C4D is a hobby and I have family, friends, dog, house, and a day job which always takes priority. My goal for this year is to focus back on modeling (I started with modeling but have since focused on lighting, texturing, and animation and in the interim the modeling tools kept growing past my capabilities). My hope is to get back to "stream of conscious modeling" where you think more about "what" you want to do rather than "how" to do it. In short, the polygons just flow from your mouse almost unconsciously. I wonder if I can get there with booleans and triangles? NOT! My New Years Resolutions for 2018? Write shorter posts. Happy New Year everyone! Dave

NoneCG - maker of very realistic models of cities, etc. They are high priced but the detail is exquisite. 50% off between 11/24 and 11/27. My personal C4D favorite is found here.

A few more Black Friday deals have just come in: Model Collections: Evermotion: 50% off on Black Friday on all model collections. New Releases such as Archmodels vol. 192 and Archmodels vol. 193 will be discounted by 30% and they will cost €90. The rest of Evermotion products will be discounted by 50%! The Pixel Lab: One week only (though they do NOT specifically state the dates of that week, I would assume Black Friday is a safe date). For 30% off anything (with the exception of Octane Lighting Essentials) use code: megasale30 For 50% off the Mega-Pack use code: megasale50 Textures: Motion Squared: Black Friday sale (but if you go to the site, the sale prices are listed now). Various discounts on most products. Some $24 texture packs list for $9. $50 Cinema 4D Car Paint and LIght Kit listed for $24. Mega Bundle deals ($300+) for $99

And because one free on-line normal map converter is never enough: http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/

My personal hope is for a repeat of last years 20% off the MSA. I was a bit concerned about purchasing back-to-back MSA's in the same year but it worked! Saved myself $130 on this years Studio MSA....I just had to purchase it last November! It may not happen as I would anticipate that the buzz on R20 as the "big one" creates no need for MAXON to offer a discount on a service agreement for next year.... ....but then again, where is the Christmas spirit in that! C'mon MAXON...just imagine the look of joy on all the little kids faces when you give us a big fat 25% of even a 30% discount this year!!! ;-) Trust me...I would be singing "Thank you very much" in the streets if that should happen! Dave