3D-Pangel

....It's the most wonderful time of the year There'll be much C4Ding And screens will be glowing When renders are near It's the most wonderful time Yes the most wonderful time Oh the most wonderful time Of the year...... All, It is that time of year again. As I find out about special deals and promotions that always seem to come forth around Black Friday, I will post them here. So far, I only have one (but it is early yet): C4DZone - 50% off all plugins on 11/24/2017 ONLY. I also certainly invite others to do the same as well. Just a few things to remember when you post: Include a link to the site. Be sure to specify the dates of the sale Be sure to include and coupon codes (if any) Mention the amount of the discount Thanks, Dave P.S. And in case anyone is wondering: Black Friday is traditionally the day after the US Thanksgiving Holiday (always held on the last Thursday of November -- which for this year is 11/23/2017) and the biggest shopping day of the year as people ramp up their spending for Christmas. That is why it is called "Black" Friday because sales on that day put most retailers into the financial "black" (or profit) for the year.

Cerbera, Thank you for the advice. Yes...modeling with Booleans would only be a starting point for me and certainly not something I would leave in a parametric state. I would use it to rough-out form and shape and then convert to polygons and then clean up. If there was any face with excessive n-gons or triangles, I would try to convert to quads (most like using the quad-cap plugin to make it a little faster). Like you, I take some serious satisfaction from a clean mesh with nice polygon flow. This plugin would help me add to my ever growing library of nernies. Sometimes, I just create a nernie for the sheer pleasure of it without any intended purpose. The cut-in capability of the Meshboolean plugin would really be helpful with creating hull plating. That is just sooo tedious and not as satisfying as your really just cutting up a flat surface...but for some reason, doing it with textures or bump maps feels like cheating. Weird. Also, nernies need to have some design sense to them. Not just cubes or cylinders lumped onto each other. So using textures does not allow you as much control in creating a 3D design logic to the nernie. The best nernies are when you copy their shape from real life objects that have a purpose. This may be a result of the pre-CG models being made from kit-bashed car models (for example, the tip of the Millenium Falcons front mandibles is the top of an engine block). Those physical models from the 70's have set the visual style we copy today in 3D. One of my favorites modelers in Ansel Hsaio (FractalSponge in the Max forums). Check out his work here. I have a word for his work: nernie-porn. Honestly, I could just stare at the detail in his ships for hours and always find something new. He never posts a mesh so I have no idea how clean his geometry is but given the sheer quantity of polygons he puts into his models, there has to be some level of efficient modeling in his work or the images could never be rendered. Visit his site and just marvel at how any one person could the mental discipline to visualize, start and actually finish the models he creates. And to be equally fair, I marvel at your work as well with the same level of respect and admiration! Dave

All, From the makers of Lon-Lat Connection Kit and Streetview 4D at TheGreatSummit.com comes MeshBoolean From the video, it looks pretty interesting especially the capability to automatically bevel boolean edges and perform "cut-ins" (my personal favorite). Now at its core, this is still using C4D's boolean algorithm's and Boolean modeling is generally frowned upon given the geometry it creates. But, it still looks pretty useful for creating objects that have no intention of ever being subdivided or have simple textures applied. I would love to hear more about this plugin from any early adopters out there (I think it was released on 11/1), the beta-team or the developer himself. One video was not enough as it sounded like there were more features that were not covered. I would also love to see a tutorial where they actually boolean and texture a complex object just to get a sense of the type of objects that are being created and what the downsides may be should you over-use booleans as a means to create non-organic shapes. In short, as a lover of sci-fi art, will this be a great nernie creation tool? Thanks, Dave

Interesting. I see a few references to people using cracked software. Personally, I stay away from that as I have a ton of respect for the people who sweat brain cells making this stuff work and therefore feel they should be compensated (of course, I am always looking for great deals....sorry, you offer me 40% to 60% discounts, and I am yours!) One interesting story back in the early 2000's. I just subscribed to Computer Arts and Computer Graphics World and started to download some demo's that were in that magazine in my search to find something better than trueSpace (which really shouldn't have been that hard). So my email was now out there as someone interested in getting animation software. Well, I get this email from some group in China offering to sell me pretty much cracked versions of every DCC piece of software out there at the time. So I forwarded that email to every DCC publisher on their list advising them of what was going on. I only heard back from one company...and it was Lightwave. They were so grateful for me looking out for them that they sent me a free T-shirt! It wasn't quite the deal I was looking for, but I appreciated the offer. Dave P.S. I did ultimately purchase Lightwave but it was when they were bundling it with Vue Infinite. So as I just purchased C4D, I sold the LW license and in essence got Vue Infinite for free!!! See...always looking for deals.

Wow...just wow! I know you wanted to highlight your sculpting....but the sculpting and texturing on those wings just makes the entire piece. In short, great color design through-out! Really well done. I also get a hint of SSS on the wings as well. Great DOF on the first image too! Dave

Very nice. Thank you very much for sharing. And now allow me to share...... If you loved that, then you will love these: Mosa Tile Generator: http://generator.mosa.com/app/?#search SmartNorMap (make your own normal maps online): http://www.smart-page.net/smartnormal/ And while not programs, some good free stuff here: Free PBR: https://freepbr.com/ Free HDRI: https://hdrihaven.com/hdris/ Still more FREE HDRI: http://noemotionhdrs.net/index.html Always some good free stuff from Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8v61m Need a panoramic cloud shot?: http://www.artssphere.com/textures.php How about cut-out images of people: http://skalgubbar.se/ Or do you wish to set something on fire: http://mitchmartinez.com/4k-fire-stock-footage/ (be sure to check out his bullet time examples) And in case you ever get tired of what you are doing and just want to zone out and relax: https://www.skytimelapse.com/2017/ ...all the product of a misspent life surfing the web (...or just being really good with search engines). Dave

Very good! Also thanks for sharing! I remember that I was a a bit nervous posting my first work. Relative to tutorials, Cineversity is always a great place for tool specific instruction whereas other sites may focus more on project or technique based tutorials. When just starting out, you need both. With that said, you are off to a great start. Dave

Just outstanding.....in every single way imaginable! I just love the lighting more now that you said it was without GI Dave

I will admit that logical layout of the user-interface is a nice feature of this plugin so preserving a clean GUI but at the same time providing additional features and options will be a challenge. I can only suggest using tabs on the existing window. Tabs could be as follows: Weld - This is where you put options for eliminating co-existing faces, whether or not the widget is protruding or extruding (the top three buttons on the existing window), whether you are welding or floating, etc. One other option is whether or not to scale the widget to the selection or not. This would be grayed out if you have Weld selected because in that situation, scaling to the selection is the default. Adjust - The angular controls on the current layout Populate - Are you populating one widget at a time or are you auto-populating within a selection (with a window for providing the named selection). For either is it a 1x1, 2x2, 3x3 (via drop down list box). If you are auto-populating, then a future option could be to allow either full population or alternate. An example of alternate would be that if you selected 3x3, then between every 3x3 grid of polygons in that selection which do get a widget is another 3x3 group of polygons that don't get a widget. Just a thought. Below each of these windows are static controls that don't change with each tab for selecting the asset, executing the plugin on the asset and Undo. Again, just some more thoughts. But at the very minimum, I think the option to eliminate co-existing faces is critical and must be incorporated somewhere. Dave

Okay.....what I noticed in the discussion to date is that all the widgets only fuse to the parent at the base. Also, all examples shown in this thread have the widgets on every other polygon of the parent and NOT on adjacent polygons of the parent. Therefore, I am not sure if the following two things are possible within the plugin: If two widgets are placed on adjacent polygons on the parent, would the bases of adjacent widgets fuse to each other? What if other polygons other than the base were to touch when placed on adjacent polygons? Would they fuse as well? Here are some images to help explain what I am asking - first start with the design of the widget Therefore, if you follow the rule that the faces no do not exceed the extents of the base, when populated on adjacent polygons on the parent, you get the following result: If done correctly, some neat shapes could be created Now, what I also picked up in this thread is that you can only place one widget at a time. Pick a polygon on the parent object, populate it with a widget, pick another polygon on the parent, populate it with a widget, etc. What I did not see is the ability for the plugin to select multiple faces on the parent and to automatically populate every selected face with the same widget (eg an "auto-populate all" capability). Is that possible? If so, then is it possible for you to extend the 1x1, 2x2, 3x3, etc capability discussed in the third post. That post discussed sizing a single widget across a single group of 1x1, 2x2 or 3x3 selected polygons. Therefore, would it be possible to place multiple widgets across 1x1, 2x2 or 3x3 adjacent polygons within a much larger selection of adjacent polygons on the parent? That is, say you select a large group of adjacent polygons on the parent and then define whether you want the widget to populate 1x1 (every polygon), 2x2 (every group of 4 poygon's: 2 in the X and 2 in the Y), 3x3 (every group of 9 polygons, 3 in the X and 3 in the Y) etc. So say you have a selection that is 12x12 polygons in size. With 1x1 selected, 144 widgets get automatically populated (one on every polygon of the plane). With 2x2, 36 widgets get populated: one for every adjacent set of 2 polygons in the X and Y), and with 3x3, 16 widgets get populated on that parent plane (one widget for every adjacent set of 3 polygons in the X and Y). The 3x3 example shown in the image below should help explain this: Again, this could lead to some interesting shapes when subdivided Hopefully this helps explain what I was asking. Again, not sure if all this capability is already in the plugin or not so my apologies if it is. Thanks, Dave

Beautifully done! Easy to vote for this and happy to do so!

Will do because I am sure it will make a great feature.....unfortunately, I am on a business trip so I won't get to it for a few days.

Looks very interesting! It reminds me of the old Fusion Thing plugin from Lots of Pixels. Not sure what happened, but Lots of Pixels shut down their web-site but if you are looking for a few ideas for the next release of your plugin, this Vimeo video may be of interest. One thing I would like to see is what would happen if two widgets were placed adjacent to each other with touching faces (not touching edges at the base but touching faces on two different adjacent widgets) Do they just overlap? The neat thing about Fusion Thing is that should the widget be designed so that the faces exactly align with the same number of edges and points when placed immediately adjacent to each other, they are fused. Now that would be very, very cool! Dave

You have to visit the web site included in the first post as those two pictures do not do it justice. Work like this just amazes me on two levels: 1) the sheer amount of talent that is required and 2) the mental toughness and discipline to see it through to the end. Honestly, I would have been exhausted after doing the radiator. The reference sketch alone that Matthaus did is remarkable. To see it as a model is mind blowing. Matthaus, Something to consider: I am sure that you have enough content to be able to sell a library of engine parts. Not sure if a product like that exists yet, but I am sure it would create interest. Dave

....but of course {sheepish grin}. I really wish you guys would make things more obtuse as that is what we have come to expect from other software interfaces. Being so straight-forward just puts us off our game. Thanks, Dave

Rick, Thank you... That just makes perfect sense but it does beg a follow on question in terms of how do you increase the emmissive capability of a material? Look at the attached image rendered in R18 using GI. The model comes from Steffen Morrell (Stonemason in the forums) who sells his models in the Daz3D marketplace (for an incredibly cheap price -- this whole model was only around $30). This one is Urban Future 5. I love to convert them to C4D and then use them as a mechanism to challenge my texture/lighting skills (see the thread "Is this cheating" for another example): There is just no way to get as good a result for the lighting from that neon-like awning on the right than to use GI and cranking up the illumination to 4500%. It really has that garish over-bright glare that you would expect in a cheap part of the town. You can also see a bit on the red neon tubes and glow from the neon sign in the upper left. I tried it with area lights, etc. but it just did not look as good (and took a bit more tweaking as it created fireflys should you combine those area lights with GI). So how would you achieve this same affect of a bright emmissive material with an un-biased renderer? Dave P.S. Hearing great things about your Siggraph presentation on R19, but I have yet to get to it. If the answer is at Cinversity, just point me to it!!!

Started to play with ProRender and of course started with the more render intensive scenes. I was really impressed with how much more quickly it was able to generate a preview render in the viewport. Even if this is not going to be your final render of choice, it plays a huge role with being able to do interactive render tests with lighting and textures. The only confusing thing is that while PR uses GI and the feature list on PR has emissive textures (if I remember that list correctly), the illuminate settings on a material are all greyed out. Is this feature not implemented yet or am I missing something? Thanks, Dave

Some more sad facts about Harvey: Estimated to be over $20 billion in damage. The area of Texas that is flooded is equal to the size of Lake Michigan (one of the US great lakes). 450,000 people are affected. Not sure if "affected" means anything and everything between loss of power to evacuation and/or loss of homes but that is a lot of people. Harvey spun back into the ocean and has gained strength and will be coming back into the eastern part of Texas with some impacts to Louisiana (who suffered greatly at the hands of the Cat 5 hurricane Katrina some years ago). Houston is the 4th largest city in America and Texas is responsible for 1/10th of the US economy. Houston is a major oil producer for the US and oil refineries were shut down and/or damaged by Harvey. Beyond witnessing the heart-wrenching agony of the devastation caused by Harvey, the effects of this hurricane will be felt through-out the US. My only hope is that the loss of life remains very low but until this storm clears and the waters recede we may not know what the death toll really is as people were pretty much sheltered in place during the hurricane and then trapped as the water levels rose from the 36+ inches of rain. The only bright spot to this whole catastrophe is watching how the people of Houston are coming together to help and save lives. All the political and identity politics that have divided the US over the past year seem to have been quickly forgotten because only one thing matters: saving lives. Only one thing matters: providing shelter to the un-sheltered. Only one thing matters: given aid to the injured. Only one thing matters: feeding the un-fed. Only one thing matters: Giving hope to those who have lost everything. Only one thing matters: The person whom you disagree with today could be the neighbor pulling you to safety tomorrow. Keep the people of Houston in your thoughts and prayers...and learn from their sacrifice! Dave

I know exactly what you are talking about...I spent an extended amount of time working in The Netherlands and when a good portion of your country is below sea level, you have to think long term because it just takes soo long for the infrastructure improvements to keep the sea at bay. Plus, they had a single minded focus on every objective and, like the Germans, were disciplined and focused on that objective. Very tough to do business with if you had divergent goals (which can happen between two different companies on any project) but once you get alignment, things moved easily and swiftly. Overall, an absolute pleasure to work with. Great country too. Great people and the summers were to die for (sun setting at 11:30 PM gives you a whole day for stuff after work). Of course, you don't want to be there in the winter when you only get 4 hours of sunlight a day. Dave

You know...you are making me a believer. When you spoke like this 2 or 3 years ago (how long has it been?), I thought "Well, he is a dedicated employee, new to the company and probably just 'drank the cool aid ' a bit too deeply". But now I am beginning to see what you saw...which really amazes me because it implies that MAXON had a pretty solid vision some years ago. Things may have taken longer to implement than planned (not sure about that, but nothing ever goes smoothly on big projects), but they have never taken their eye off the ball. Yes....now can you define the term "near" when you said "people are going to be very happy in the near future" Not going to let that one get away!! ;-) Dave -- Waiting for R19, Dreaming of R20

Fair point. Sounds like the heavy lifting to lay the foundation is over ("[implementing the new kernel] was a huge undertaking"). So is it safe to say that the pace of modeling tool improvements will increase significantly? That is, bigger changes across the board within each release cycle? Dave

I love it. Just love it. In fact, I love it so much, I would pay you real money to get your recipe for your reflectance shading. I struggle with that constantly to get the right balance when trying to simulate hull plating on a space ship (called Aztecing.....I think) but you nailed it. Please help me out!!! Dave BTW: Here is my pathetic attempt at hull plating reflectance:

100% Agree. In fact, you may also want to consider increasing the exposure so that the details in the shadows show a bit more and let the highlights from the main key light become over-exposed. That is how they lit the models in 2001: A Space Odyssey which pretty much set the tone for how all space scenes have been shot since. Dave

So are my suppositions about using the connect tag with the object insertion modifiers to extend dynamic connections to more than just voronoi fractured objects correct? Also what exactly are the feature benefits of the new modeling kernel being used in some of the primitives? What can we do in R19 we could not do before with these primitives? Not much is said about this. I need to look into the media core more closely....if it has you excited then there must be something I am missing (yes...playing 4K files is nice, but as a hobbyist, I really don't work in 4K a lot). I kind of passed over it in the face of those things that do get me excited (viewport, veronoi, proRender, etc). Dave P.S. Relative to your explanation of the falloff object, were you coached by Donald Trump to say that? It is a conspiracy I tell you!!! A conspiracy!

Speaking of Insydium, I understand that they previewed some features of XP-4 at NAB this year. I wonder if they will be doing the same at Siggraph but I did not see them on the roster of presenters. Very glad to hear that Cycles 4D is improving significantly. I shied away from it for the same reasons that Nerv outlined. That and the learning curve with using a nodal material system. I honestly expect that all next generation programs will be using nodal control systems and it will be coming to C4D in the next few releases. So it was a question of how many learning curves I wanted to climb (the C4D learning curve with nodes can't be avoided). But what may push me to get into Cycles 4D earlier is dependent on what is next with XP4 (who has also been thinking about nodal controls). My expectation is that XP4 will really start to show some neat fluid simulation capability from their purchase of ExplosiaFX. Now if that marriage is only enhanced by rendering with Cycles 4D, then I am jumping in to Cycles. I understand that XP4 is planned in the fourth quarter of 2017. If so, It looks to be a very exciting fall. Dave