GazzaMataz

OK having watched a Maxon CMotion tut I wanted to put it to the test. First I tried it with the Advanced Character Rig and it was relatively easy. It's useful for figures in the background walking. With the Toon Rig it's a bit more involved. You have to add all the controllers and their parameters into the CMotion object and set them up, it takes time but it can be done. Don't think I will use it much but it was worth learning. Here is a little flick of what I did. Hopefully this will be of use to all the character animators out there who use C4D. Alf CMotion Walk HB v01.mp4

Well couldn't bothered to do the texturing yet since I want to get to grips with the Toon Rig. So here is a preliminary pass. It will need extra bits turned on but I am feeling confident with the rig now 🙂 The eye highlights seem to have gone a bit wonky… Alf Animation Test SR HB v01.mp4

Right! I started refining the UV maps but noticed that there was some more modelling required on the hands so I had to re-jig the UVs. Here is what it looks like. If anyone see anything that they think will not work please let me know 🙂

Thanks Vector. I think I am happy with this now. All I need to do is redo the UVs. Then re-apply the Toon Rig and get animating. Oh and add some texture maps - that might help 😛

Thanks for this Vector. I have been tweaking still and have a new version shown below. I did try your eye shape but I realised that I could achieve this with the rigging tools in the Toon Rig. I've gone for a slightly more rounded eye perhaps less lidded… And I have reworked the thumb and tweaked the number of loops on the neck.

OK, so I went in and added integrated eyelids and whilst I was at it I reduced the polygon count since it was way too busy (this model was done twenty years ago in Animation Master originally). Initially I liked it but now now the eyes seem to have lost a bit of that devilish look. He looks a bit more friendly, perhaps even tipsy? I have spent quite a while on the eyelids reshaping them but they are not quite there I think…

Gee fanx Vector! I also forgot about the 'Fit Circle' tool, too stuck in my old ways. I am modelling an accurate watch at the moment that tool would have helped quite a bit on that. I kinda figured integrating the eye mesh into the head was a better option, I mean I made this character over twenty years ago and want to revamp him so he is defo going to look at least a little better 🙂

OK Hrvoje! Here is a wireframe version. You can see that it might involve a fair bit of work integrating the eye into the head but might be the better option.

OK I have been meaning to do this for a while and have just re-visited this character that I created over twenty years ago. I originally created and animated it in Animation Master but recently decided that I wanted to port it over to C4D and use the Toon Rig to create a few animations with it. I want to see what I can do with the Toon Rig on this character. Now the bit I have had trouble with is the eyes. Originally I just stuck them on, but because of their oval shape they are very hard to create blinks for using the Toon Rig (I have tried). So I was thinking integrate the eye into the head. So I have attached renders (no texturing at this stage BTW) to see what peeps here think. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

I think that the problem with this model is that it is actual size and some of those edge loops are REALLY close i.e. 0.01cm and so C4D finds it hard to calculate. Where the knife is cutting the polys on the back is probably me switching off 'Visible Only' and forgetting to turn it back on again… I get so focused that I miss things!

Hi Joao I know that you posted this link just over a year ago but I just wondered if you would still be interested or use freelance C4D artist who have a speciality in character rigging and animation? I started out after training at Animation Mentor using Maya but also used C4D which I found easier. I found more and more work using C4D so ended up using that for most of my character work so Have become something somewhat unique. If you want to see some examples of the work that I have produced which has included non character work please take a look at my website: www.gazzamataz.com. It has my main showreel and others including my character animation showreel. I hope you get the time to look at my work and look forwards to hearing from you. Gazza

Thanks for all the replies peeps and the workarounds. Seems I am not the only one getting these problems 🙂 Here are a couple of snaps to show the sort of scenario I was describing. As you can see I have an nGon connecting two point and when I try and use the knife tool to cut between them it either doesn't work or it creates a cut and an nGon line. So I have to select the two points on top of each other and weld them. Mind you that doesn't always work either. Another annoying thing is that even though I set the knife tool to only cut visible it still sometimes seems to cut polys that are not visible. See the third image…

Is it me or or does the knife tool in C4D have a mind of it's own? I have been working on a model which does have a reasonably high poly count and I have found that when I using either the knife loop tool or cut tool that it just doesn't seem to want to cut or doesn't cut as you expect… Especially when I am trying to cut an nGon line (I know that you can convert nGon lines anyway). I am wondering if this is a GPU driver issue or just a bit of a bug? I am using the latest version of C4D and running two nVidia RTX 2800tis driver version 531.79.

Hi Peeps Thanks for the replies and sorry for the long reply! I did start a conversation with Maxon Support which dragged on since I couldn't seem to pinpoint the cause… Until now! What was causing the issue was having the Redshift RenderView open whilst rendering through PictureViewer. It would render 100 frames or so then hang. If I closed Redshift RenderView it would render fine every time. Maxon Support said it was to do with memory management since all the GUI in C4D 2023 is now done on the GPU. So problem fixed (hopefully).

Hi All I am using C4D 2023 under Windows 10 with nVidia driver version 517. I have a 1920 Threadripper cpu, 32gb ram and two RTX 2800ti gpus. Now when I start rendering scenes I find that C4D 2023 is quicker than previous versions but when a scene is half to two thirds done it stalls… This doesn’t happen to one particular scene but a variety. I can save the scene when the render stalls but when I close picture viewer C4D hangs and I have to false quit. My scene files are usually 250-400 frames long. Anyone else having these problems?

Hi Martin Thanks for the reply. I think what one of my problems is that Maxon keep changing things and when I open an old project made in S24 or earlier in 2023 it can lead to errors. I think a lot of this has to do with Redshift too. That always seems to cause peculiarities usually textures - blame the nVidia drivers eh? As for Xrefs I cannot really do without them and they are essential to the work that I do which is mostly character based. I know a lot of the pitfuls in them so can do workarounds and fixes but generally they are OK but as you say SLOW! If I have a scene with several Xrefs characters in it and generated using the Character Object the whole project starts to crawl. So if Maxon are reading this can we have an update to Xrefs please?

Hi Peeps This is strange. I am using the latest version of C4D and rendering using Redshift. There are nine Xref characters in my scene. When I render to RS RenderView it takes just 10 seconds per frame. When I render a sequence of say ten frames to Picture Viewer it takes 5 minutes preparing and then 27-40 seconds per frame. I don't get it? And then if I take the whole scene and paste it into new C4D file it speeds up to 28 seconds per frame??

What drivers are you using CBR? I am still using game versions since I do play the odd bit of Skyrim 😀

Anyone else getting flickering and qwerkiness whilst trying to move UVs around in UV edit mode in C4D 2023? I am wondering whether it is a driver issue…

Thanks for the replies chaps - much appreciated 🙂

Aggh! Never thought of that… Keep forgeting that you need to be on the internet to do anything nowadays 🤪

This is a bit strange but I fired up C4D 2023 this morning and was met by a blank quickstart dialogue box with the message that it couldn't find it… Never seen anything like this before and it's not like I have reinstalled it or done any changes other than installing the Insydium Suite - could that be responsible? I know I can turn this off but I am wondering if something might be going wrong under the hood…

I am bit confused… I have installed C4D 2023 knowing that it has CPU Redshift rendering but I was under the assumption that I would also need to purchase the Redshift module as well to make it render. However, it appears that Redshift seems to be built into C4D 2023 without having to have the Redshift module. Is the RS that is built-in just a cut down version? I am a bit confused.

Thanks for your input Vizn. What I should have added is that it doesn't just happen when there are Xrefs in the project. It's real weird since you can save a file and it takes ages, then save it later and it saves in an instant. But as you say it's saving the changes and there are not many it's quicker? I have yet to try R25 and R26 so maybe it has been sorted sped up but I am loath to do that at the moment in the middle of a massive project.

I think that this might be linked to the fact that I am using Xrefs but I am mystified why when opening a file containing Xrefs it can take ages and saving it it can take ages and that's saving/opening the file to a dedicated SSD drive. The mystifying bit is that this doesn't always happen sometimes it will open in an instant and save in an instant. I have 32gb RAM on my system and don't usually have any other apps running other than AE. I also find that a file slow to open and save can be sped up by copying all the project files content and saving it to a new file, so I am thinking there is some sort of under the cover caching going on? Hope this makes sense and that someone can shed some light on this conundrum :-)