GazzaMataz

Gee fanx for these links Alex I am now really getting my head around Unreal after watching these two tuts. The ones I started on where way too fast and more games orientated.

You said that you used a Mixamo character for the archer, what I would like to know is how did you get the character to plant his feet on the ground on an uneven surface? Did you have controllers to help plant the feet?

And having looked around on the net and some tuts can anyone make any recommendations? I always seem to pick the ones where the teacher is rabbiting on at 90 miles an hour…

Fanx for the link Jeff, mucho appreciated! I will watch them very soon. Been watching another of Winbush's videos converting and importing a C4D file into UE but that why I thought what's the point?

Gee fanx Mash. This kinda reminds me of a project I was trying to develop 20 years ago. The studio I worked for did a lot of work for a pharmacy and used to produce a catalogue with all their products in. I came up with the idea of creating a virtual shop where they could walk around it and pick up products, see the details and then add them to their shopping trolley. At the time I said it would probably need to be developed in a game engine but since we didn't have that capability we did the next best thing which was model it all in C4D, render out parts and stitch it altogether in Flash so that viewers could kinda jump from one place to the other in the shop and pick products. It never really took off… If we had UE like it is now I think it would have worked. Think I will start learning a bit more of this stuff as I am beginning to feel a bit left behind.

One more question on the UE front. I still cannot get my head around the need to use it. If you spend hours modelling, texturing, lighting and rendering in C4D to achieve your result why would you want to export it all to UE? Is it mainly to speed up the rendering. Obviously I can understand it if you are exporting models into it to create a game for which it was designed for but I don't quite get the rest…

Sorry I should have been a bit more precise! I am looking at creating a landscape which also has trees and other plants. I have put together a quickie fly-through using just elements from C4D using a landscape object and a plain as a sea which looks like it might do the job. It doesn't have to be super real (thank god) but reasonably good. I have done this before but I used World Creator and since I have Fused I was thinking Terraform but when I plonked a couple of the Taiao trees in it, it suddenly started to crawl. My C4D version was much quicker. I think the thing that phases me is generating a texture map for the landscape that doesn't tile with obvious seems and looks quite convincing. I don't mind paying, for yet another plug-in, but if I do I want to get the right one if that makes sense 🙂

Hi Peeps. I have a Insydium Fused licence which is about to expire and am in need of a landscape setting. Now I did have World Creator but that has expired too. So I am wondering if I should not bother with these two or go look at something from Unreal? I will be needing a scene where the camera flies through a country side full of trees and vegetation so am now sure what would be my best option. Trouble is with something like this is it will SLOW down any real-time movement when I start adding loads of stuff so I am open to suggestions.

Yup you need to add and extra edge loop on the elbows and knees for this to bend properly. So an edge loop either side of the elbow loop and the same for the knee. It will also help if those loops are angled. For the elbows when you look down they should be pointing inwards and for the knees when you look at them side ways they should be pointing to the knee. The mouth is not good. Whilst you will be able to create pose morphs for movements it will look a bit lumpy. you need those splines at the side to cut into the corners of the mouth and have another two edge loops going around the mouth. You might want to add another loop around the eye too. Hope this makes sense and helps.

@Zeden - thanks for the tip, I don't envy you having 8 rigged characters in a scene in any version before 2024 - been there done that 🙂 OK I am doing a little animation with a simple character in 2024 and I have noticed quite a speed up HOWEVER! I have noticed that when hitting the space bar the frame rate starts out at about 100 fps and when I repeatedly press the play bar to watch my animation each successive time the frame rate drops and after about four times hits 15 fps? Then I find that if I flick into another viewport and back to my main one the frame rate goes back up again… Something is wonky?

@Cerbera The scene was my Halloween flick with the skeleton walking down the alleyway to the pumpkins I posted the other week. It seems that the witch character was the item causing a major slowdown. It still seems that when you have several characters rigged with the advance character rig in a scene things slow rapidly…

Hi Peeps I have finally got around to installing C4D 2024 on my workstation and was looking forwards to a speed-up in the viewport for my animations. So I loaded my last Halloween flick which was achieving 5-6fps in C4D 2023 and was rather disappointed to get only 6-7fps in C4D 2024… Am I doing something wrong? Is there a switch or a setting I need to configure? I was really hoping to get more of an improvement and the scene I am testing isn't that busy with characters.

OK hot on the heels of re-jigging this character I have started work on another of my characters. I had a comment that my characters had eyes that all looked a bit scary so I have made them round rather than oval, it also makes it easier to use the toon rig. Here is a sneak peak, not sure if I have made the character too adult now… And I do need to sort out that mesh topology around the mouth, it's a bit messy.

OK Zack I have downloaded and looked at your model but I am using C4D 2023. Your rig it not the greatest I am afraid to say… Some of the joints are in the wrong place and you need a few more spine joints. Not only that the mesh is not bound to the rig so it will not deform and you need to add a control rig. Are you using C4D R13 or later? If you are then you can use the Character tool to create a rig that will bind the mesh for you and add a control rig. There are tuts online to show you how. Again if you need to scale the rig once done make sure you use the Object Tool and not the Model Tool or your rig will mutate. One other thing when creating anything in 3D DO make your models real world sizes it makes life easier. At the moment your skeleton is 23cm tall. I also found that the Vibrate tag didn't work, but then I copied and pasted your model into a new document and then it behaved. Hope this all helps. Please ask if you need further help. I have done a few skeleton animations lately for Halloween if you haven't seen them already 🙂

When you want to scale a bound mesh/rig DON’T use the Model tool! Use the Object tool 🙂 Also if your vibrate ain’t working group the null and vibrate that 🙂

OK I finally took the plunge and started dabbling with Blender to see what it was like and since I do mainly character work these days I thought it would be good to compare with C4D. Apart from the y-axis being different I found the mouse navigation a bit annoying since you cannot set it to match C4D. Anyway, I watched a tut using the Human Meta Rig by creating a simple mesh character, applying the armature and then the meta-rig, but it didn't work… It applied the rig but it wasn't matching the actual armature. The only way I could get this to work was to scale my mesh and armature up to suit the mega-rig. Am I doing something wrong?

Hot of the heels of 'Dancing In The Graveyard' here is another Halloween flick I created - I just love a Victorian setting! 1334365552_HalloweenAlleyHB800v01.mp4

Interesting stuff peeps thanks for all the replies. Looks like Maxon is doing better than I thought. I also wonder if all the layoffs, strikes and reduced budgets are affecting the TV/film and games market more than all the other corporate and run-of-the mill work? I suppose it wouldn't hurt me to learn Unreal or Blender and add that to my software arsenal. I already know a bit of Maya although I rarely use it - it costs a lot too!

Well peeps I love 'The Season Of The Witch' so much I thought I would create a silly Halloween flick. Hope you all like it! Made me laugh anyway… Happy Halloween! 2020691599_GraveyardDancingHB600v01.mp4

Well I am not looking for a precise topic as such more like feedback as to how people here feel about C4D's future and whether it will fade away. I mean I have been using it since 1999 so it has been running a long time. I have learnt other DCCs like Maya, Animation Master etc but C4D is my favourite. As for the future of the CGI industry I think that is in a bit of a state at the moment and I think that the amount of jobs out there will shrink as AI makes a big impact. It all unerves me…

I hope this topic hasn't already been discussed, apologies if it has… I just wanted to ask what peeps here think about C4D's future. The reason I ask is having spent a bit of time on the internet and looking for work all I seem to see is Blender and Unreal coming out on tops all the time with Maya in there too. There seems to be a distinct lack of C4D mentioned or asked for. Plus I keep getting told learn Blender, learn Unreal… Personally I am fed up with learning new DCCs and quite happy to continue using C4D but I have a feeling that I might get left way behind. I would love to know what others here think?

Cool! Thanks peeps mucho appreciated!

Rather than me spending hours trawling the internet I thought I would be lazy and ask here first 🙂 My question is can you export a rigged character into UnReal or do you export only the model and then rig it in UnReal? I have only just started to look at UnReal so am a complete novice. I have dabbled with Unity and it seems very similar. Any pointers greatly appreciated 🙂

Right didn't get around to adding the bump maps cos I wanted to tweak the animation, it’s subtle… Alf Animation Test SR HB v03.mp4

Went to BodyPaint having UV'ed everything and started the paint work. Not finished yet but looking better I think? Needs a good bump map and some hair! Alf Animation Test SR HB v02.mp4