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Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation since 02/19/2024 in all areas

  1. Well we made it boys! C4D on the cover of 3D world magazine ! Was commissioned back in January to create a character for the cover , and an article with an over view of the modelling process. Brief was -Disco Astro naught, so I went with it, was changed quite a bit over the length of the process but quite happy how it ended up. This marks a significant miles stone for me as an artist, definitely something cool about seeing your work published!
    6 points
  2. pm request, spline morphing : ) There is some help from delay effector to add secondary motion 224_Spline_morph.c4d
    3 points
  3. Updated stream from our closed alpha release:
    3 points
  4. Donovan made some quick introductory videos for Nodes, check them here 🙂
    3 points
  5. Hi Y'all, I'm the Product Manager for Capsules and Scene Nodes at Maxon. Maxon has just released Cinema 4D 2024.3 and I thought I'd share a Quick Tip on a feature that didn't make it into the official announcement. The latest release of Cinema 4D (2024.3) let's you easily preview each step in your Scene Nodes graph with the new "Connect to Output" command. **To Connect a Node to Output** 1. Select the node 2. Tap the `Q` key on your keyboard _I remember this as Q to "Qonnect" to Output_ _The selected node's top-most Geometry port will connect to the top-most Geometry output port of its parent group._ **Alternate Methods** 1. RMB + Click on a node 2. Select "Output Geometry" in the context menu. **Requirements** - You must be using Cinema 4D 2024.3+ - This only works with nodes that have a Geometry output port inside of a Geometry group (Nodes Mesh, Nodes Spline)
    3 points
  6. Well, you won't believe this. When trying some of the ideas you suggested, I got the spinning wheel of death. Might have come out of it, but after 5 min., I forced-quit. Now, I still had r19 open. Many models sold online are build with Max and provided in a couple of formats such as r11. I have r19 so I can open and save a scene to open in newer versions. Anyway, I thought, what the hell. I opened the same scene in r19. Broken textures as expected. I brought up the old Texture Manager, which for me anyway, used to be super slow to load fully. It loaded instantly and I tried Relink Assets and BOOM! It fixed all the links properly in 3 seconds. I reopened the scene in r25 and all is well. I have my workaround, but not explanation as to why the scene cannot be fixed in r25.
    2 points
  7. This is a very unwise move and it will kill Cinema 4D in the long run. No students = no future users. Cinema 4D is already dead in a lot of Universities and Colleges in the US. The absurd price and all the shenanigans with the student license made it a non-starter for most schools. Although this price hike won't change much the situation, because what happened last semester (Maxon canceling the student licenses MID SEMESTER!!!) already killed any good will schools had with the software. This is just the nail in the coffin. Keep in mind that Blender is not the competition here. Even though most of my students come to my classes (I teach around a hundred students per semester in a high ranked Animation program in the US) with Blender experience they are really interested in learning the industry standard software. And Maya student licenses are free and super easy to get. And after graduating they will have Maya Indie for U$305 bucks only. Meanwhile, Cinema4D charges a stupid high price for the student license, takes forever to get said license and has no indie version for former students. Considering this, Cinema4D is simply not an option anymore. Unfortunately, I understand why @DMcGavranis doing this. Even though this will kill Cinema4D in the long run, schools and students will keep paying for the Maxon One Student licenses not because Cinema4D but because Zbrush and, in some cases, Redshift. Zbrush is really the 3D cash-cow for Maxon now. Zbrush simply has no competition in the industry. 3D schools are hostage of Maxon in this case. And Redshift is the choice of schools without big budgets (like State schools) who need a faster renderer for students using Maya. It's cheaper to use Redshift than buying more powerful desktops or building a renderfarm for Arnold. And Octane's (the only other option) implementation in Maya sucks, while Redshift is super well integrated. Anyway, in the end I just feel really sad because Cinema4D is my favorite 3D software. It's pretty sad to see it going the way of Lightwave 3D.
    2 points
  8. Attribute Transfer SOP. It won't be perfect because your topology is wildly different, but it might be close enough to do the job:
    2 points
  9. You can do it even easier, if you convert a vector into a float, by connecting a vector port into a float port, you will get the length of the vector as a result.
    2 points
  10. speaking of, I actually wanted to implement manhattan distance as well... 🤣
    2 points
  11. Looks like there is an issue with the triangle mesh option in the collider tag. Use convex hull or box. And if you can try to keep the "thickness" higher. It is used in the collision calculation and larger values make it more robust. Between rigid body objects this won't lead to a gap. In only adds to the gaps between rigid body objects and collider objects. And: Avoid initial setups with intersections of collision shapes. If you have a stack of stuff with all objects sitting flush on top of each other and the bottom one intersects with the floor collider, the fist execution will have a collision resolution that propagates through the whole stack. You can start we a relaxed state with a bit of a gap and let them fall into the stack via the simulation. Once they have come to a stable rest you can set that as the new initial state for the simulation.
    2 points
  12. I accidentially used the standard transform, use the Transform 2D node for better results.
    2 points
  13. In answer to your question, there's a few issues to sort out there. 1. Collision accuracy. Coins are poking through that floor due to 0% geometry accuracy in the dynamics tags. Turning that up sorts it, but slows vp right down, so I presume that is why you set it that low, temporarily ? 2. We can control the exploding and lack of settlement with the deactivation controls, which in 2024.3.0 are enhanced, as I recall, to encompass angular, linear, sleep and damping thresholds, which I found had great effect in stabilising your coin pile collapse, thusly... pkrAllIn CBR.c4d CBR
    2 points
  14. Bouncing ray setup. It fires a spline in Z direction from referenced object and bounces from detected geometry set number of times 236_Bouncing_Ray.c4d
    2 points
  15. more scary than real news. At least when the news lies to you their mouth and voice are in sync and don't have a dead pan look in their eyes. Also, you know who physically is telling you the news, their bias and agenda. With AI, the idea that it can be without bias has already been proven wrong with chatGPT. Also, someone is funding this AI news channel, and who is a vested partner with that corporation funding the channel, and so on? As it stands nefarious governments, corporations and individuals are already using AI to promote their own interests. I still see a time when AI will he hacked and poisoned to promote false information purposely. After all, we will be conditioned to trust AI 100%.
    2 points
  16. You may be forgetting that with Loft objects the resolution is not derived from source splines but from the object itself. Massively increase U segments in Loft Object... I don't like this method for doing this sort of thing because it is quite difficult to get (and verify) identical segmentation on each side unless you symmetrize later. Also note distribution of edges, which is kinda arbitrary and not that great if we're honest. By the time you have sorted that out for regular spacing and whatnot, you may as well have modelled it from polygons with symmetry and got a more usable base going forward ! If we definitely want to use splines, then Extrude is the better generator because that does take its interpolation and point counts from the spline, and it is trivially easy to add the little ridge bit on one end later... Of course if you need splines for further modelling tasks you can still use the ones you have, or generate them anew from your evenly divided model using Edge to Spline... CBR
    2 points
  17. I import cad data most days for my job, here's my 2 pence. Forget about materials. CAD software can assign a colour, maybe apply a basic 2D image, but it doesnt tend to go much beyond that. The materials youll get through into c4d are pretty much going to be a slab of colour; in short you're going to have to remake and apply materials no matter how well your cad data comes in. What you want from your client is either photos of the product and you do it by eye, a physical sample and you do it by eye, or some sort of CMF document, Colours, Materials, Finishes. It will list stuff like "Black PET plastic, MT10020 textured finish, semi gloss" for each and every part. You can then go through and apply materials as needed. This document will be what they send the factory so they know how to make the product. File formats, step is the best youll get. it bundles everything into one file and sometimes gives you base colours. It also means you can select the polygon count yourself. Explore the import settings!, dont just take the defaults and expect nirvana. You can import materials from cad materials, from cad groups, from cad layers, it depends how the cad guy made the project in the first place. You can also define polygon density; some advice there, set angle to somewhere between 30 and 5 degrees, then play with sag, this controls how polys are added across larger curved areas and not just the corners. 20 degrees angle with 0.02 sag can give a good high quality finish without going mad in rounded corners. Increase sag for few polys on large curves, 0.03, 0.04 etc Work cad cleanup into your time budget. For a hero product (keyboard, mouse, computer case) we will take a day to tidy the object list, get all the pivots and groups ready for animation and to texture the product.
    2 points
  18. A little faith is good for the soul... CBR
    2 points
  19. hehe, looks cute. obviously that must mean gravity XD really love some of ui features they've added, like this little cutie that pops up when using commander: makes using cinema4d pleasent :3
    1 point
  20. Did you even read what I wrote? I specifically wrote that Blender IS NOT the Cinema4D competition here. Maya is. Maya is free for students, the student license is given without hassle (while Maxon treats students as criminals and takes forever), Maya has WAY more features than Cinema4D (it's not even close), Maya is a industry standard in more industries than Cinema4D, and Maya has a cheaper indie version for the students after they graduate (U$305 if you make less than $100.000 annually). The only advantage of Cinema4D is that is easier to learn and used to have a better UI (not the case anymore). This is not enough for the ridiculous price difference, mistreatment of students (every semester my students tell me horror stories of Maxon cancelling or denying their licenses. This never happens with Autodesk software) and lack of a cheap professional version post-graduation (the indie version)
    1 point
  21. I am investing some time into a Lumen Rendering workflow as well right now. The fact that you see what you get in the final image is such a workflow boost it is amazing. Makes up for some Unreal quirks in building projects
    1 point
  22. it isn't any better XD. I didn't know we had a node like that 🤣 damn scene nodes making things easier than I thought. I tend to think at way more of a raw level than what scene nodes already provides. that distance node should already provide everything necessary. although it's still fun to try and implement these things on my own and develop them further 🙂
    1 point
  23. Nice one! But in what way is it better from the one we already had ?
    1 point
  24. made a really quick thing that allows you to calculate the distance between two points: did this in like 5 minutes but i want to play around with it more one day as I believe some really cool things can be done with just this simple calculation 😉 for now, i have it prepared for further experimentation later down the line... sn-distance-between-two-points.c4d
    1 point
  25. Ok, here's a closer look at stage 2 where we have just made our overlapping extrude editable... and then on the right, once we have added loops top and bottom and at 50%, which helps with SDS tightening later. The entire bottom and top loops get scaled in on XZ (presuming Y is up) with subtly different amounts, and we use the Remove A / B option in Plane Cut to decapitate it flat at both ends... Solving that to quads at the ends can be done a number of ways, all of which are quite hard to put into words, so I'll show you a closeup of what I did at the top for example... we don't actually have to be this tidy (will be covered in black wrap) but it's nice if we are... This gives us the following SDS result, which is looking fairly decent, but of course remains cylindrical so far, so we need to sort that out next... CBR
    1 point
  26. If you need assistance at that level of detail you may be waiting a while I'm afraid - quite a heavy workload at the moment, and those sort of posts take hours to compose. However I have built it (to proof-of-concept level), and so can give you edited highlights now... There are about 4 principal stages, thusly... 1. Helix spline in Extrude, but with very specific settings. In the helix the number of points is 8 x number of complete rotations. The end angle is -360 x number of rotations. Do 1 more spirals at each end than you need (I did 8 total), as you will be slicing this flat at both ends later. There should be zero spline interpolation, so that each full turn contains no more than 8 points in the resulting geometry. The Extrude should also have no (depth) segments initially, but should be deep enough to overlap itself by about an 1/8th of the depth of each band. 2. At this point we need to take an editable polygon copy of that via CStO, so we can edit and add loops to it. We need to add loops using Loop Cut (K,L) to both top and bottom of the spiral, so that the border edges can be scaled in on XZ to fix the overlaps and tuck the wrap under itself nicely. A further loop can be added to define the narrow darker strip at the bottom of each wrap at this point. 3. In the next group of steps we need to re-orient the model (but not its axis) by 22.5 degrees on H, top and tail it to flat, non-spiral borders at both ends using Plane Cut (K,J), solve the ends to quads and scale groups of edges apart to better match the elongated shape, before selecting the edges and bevelling them to gain additional support loops there, and harder creases on the corners. 4. Last stage is FFDing that with a great many Y segments so you can match XZ curvature around the handle from top to bottom of it... I will pop back to add further detail as time permits this week... CBR
    1 point
  27. *some minor updates*
    1 point
  28. DigitalArtDeathmatch Now accepting artwork submissions for the DigitalArtDeathmatch at BeepleStudios with beeple!!! Submit your artwork for a chance to be featured at the event or compete in a LIVE digital art tournament at the event!!! https://beeple-studios.xyz/event/digital-art-deathmatch/
    1 point
  29. Pm request - rolling sphere! : ) Important note about this is that nodes (at the moment) require keyframed values since system needs to have access to previous values in order for proper rotations. 81_Roll_it.c4d
    1 point
  30. Check out Puget Systems online and look at what they use for their rendering machines. You can also configure custom machines to see what goes together. You don't have to buy a machine through them, although they're pretty good. But they do a lot of testing on the parts they've chosen to use, and it might provide you more information to base your decision.
    1 point
  31. This is a bare bones setup to transform selected UV polygons UV Rotator 01.c4d
    1 point
  32. Sure the scene file wouldn't be more helpful ? Pickleball CBR 01.c4d CBR
    1 point
  33. Worry not - a fair few people make that mistake, some of them repeatedly, even when it is pointed out ! It warms my moderated heart to see that you care 🙂 CBR
    1 point
  34. This is why I love InstaLOD. It's not AS important for offline rendering but if you're going to create realtime ready models, like we do right now mostly, then it's your best friend. If I have a product, let's say a motor with a bunch of screws and hex nuts and whatnot, I will select the main body and set the max sag to the highest I can get it, and solely control the detailing by the max angle, which I set very low. Then for the smaller details like screws, I set the angle to something like 22 degrees and control mostly by lowering the max sag. This way I have precise control over which parts get how much detail. In my experience controlling with max degrees works better with cylindrical and "organic" shapes. What working with max angle as "main constraint" also helps with is that cylinders that are inside each other will get subdivided evenly, instead of unevenly. What I mean by that is this: Subdivision controlled by max angle, subdivision is even Subdivision controlled by max sag, subdivision is uneven Controlling the subdivision with max angle is scale independent since a cylinder will always be 360° no matter if it has a radius of 500m or 5mm Controlling the subdivision with max sag is scale dependant since it looks at the distance between the CAD model and the generated geometry So if you want perfect overlapping cylinders without the disgusting artifacting from above, use something that nicely divides 360° like 45, 22.5, 11.25, etc. for max angle and don't use max sag or turn it up so high that max angle is mostly the more aggressive setting that decides the geometry shape The cool thing about InstaLOD is that you can do this for every single part in your assembly, and get instant feedback. C4D just imports the entire thing in one detail setting wether you like it or not. So you end up with either reimporting and mixing and matching (which can take A LONG time depending on the size of the STEP) or living with not so great subdivision. It cannot be understated how much a tool like InstaLOD helps making great CAD conversions.
    1 point
  35. Thanks everyone. I will look into InstaLOD but it seems like what I've currently got in the best method. I also have access to PolyTrans64 with their Granite plugin that lets me export to STEP/save as C4D, unsure if that is the same type of program but it's what I've used at least in the past before C4D allowed importation of CAD. Just wanted to make sure I didn't begin all this labor needlessly. Every time I come back to animating a CAD I feel more and more strongly that I need to learn modeling and also learn more about a particular CAD program so that I can make changes. Kinda overwhelming, been putting it off for years, but it seems that this necessary at this point. Thanks all. I'll do what I can with what I got for now. Have a nice day.
    1 point
  36. If you want REALLY good CAD conversion I can recommend InstaLOD. It allows you to have fine control over every single object in the STEP file, set detail settings for every single one, automate repairs, clean up the materials (so you don't end up with metal.01, metal.02, metal.03, metal.04, ...). etc. There is a free version currently, but you have to request a license manually. https://instalod.com/fsl/ We're using the tool for over a year now for all our CAD data needs and you wouldn't believe how much time and nerves this thing saved us.
    1 point
  37. Thank you! Yes, it is a bit clunky, and I find things that you can do in Cinema without thought take a lot of set up in unreal. But I'm addicted to that speed!
    1 point
  38. small QOL features for efficiency. Things like having modeling features such as bevel and edge loops actually use the scroll wheel to add/reduce subdivisions or loops. It's 2024, we should need to move our mouse away from our model to touch ANYTHING in an attributes panel on on screen UI specific for tasking like this. Modeling mode. Once you're in points/edges/polys mode... dear lord don't force us to use "M" or "U" to select ANY MODELING TOOL. That crap is redundant. C4D should see I'm in a component mode therefore I want to edit the model with modeling tools. Snapping.. make it better. See Maya, Blender and Max(?). UV tools and official support for UDIMs. 2024... UDIMs. Relax and welding brushes in UV. Texel Density toolkit built into C4D. This one won't last forever... https://arsen-ch.gumroad.com/l/texel_density
    1 point
  39. Hi there, thanks for the interesting questions. I’ll do my best to answer : The whole of the original MoGraph Module as it was known back then was designed, architected and coded by just us two, that first release I think including testing to release was maybe 9 months. Of course that was only the start, I was with Maxon for 15 years and as time went on more people become involved in the MoGraph project, it took a lot of work to make that happen. As for till done, well MoGraph is never done. I did my best to ensure Cinema was the best tool for motion graphics artists in all areas so that workflow goes through everywhere, Fields for instance I added later and was designed to unify a set of disparate workflows. The other projects I worked on were all sorts. I worked with David on the Character Animation tools, VAMP, updated morph system and stuff like that, the MAX UV tools were mine back in the day, the “Powerslider” (mini timeline) was one of mine, doodle, lighting tool, viewport interaction model and camera navigation, spline tools, lots of the UI and general UX including core concepts about interactivity, mouse behaviors etc. (though Tilo is the real genius behind most of the modern UI code in Cinema), there’s a bunch more I don’t even remember and even elements that were just lifted from my older plugins by others. While I wasn’t always working directly on MoGraph I got to touch a lot of the application and form a lot of the workflows that I hope make it a good choice for artists. Ok so the node based compositor was known as Spider, it was functional, realtime, fit into the Cinema 4D Post Effect system but lacked many of the nodes required to be what I’d call complete. It was akin to maybe the compositor you nowadays see in Blender. Yes scene-nodes were a long time coming and still a long way off where I believe they should have been.. I’m in my 40’s, that little painting application was programmed in BBC Basic which was a combination of self taught and learning from listings that used to appear in Magazines and you had to meticulously type them out, I must have been 7 or 8. I remember earlier on in London messing around with TurtleGraphics LOGO to do things on the classroom computer which was fun, I used that to make some early for me motion graphics, color line fills. I have a fine arts degree, I really had almost no education in IT. While there were classes I remember that the selection system for which classes you could take meant that it became an either or and I picked the options I preferred doing. I did take a one or two semester IT course in 6th form but they weren’t interested in teaching auxiliary courses to a high standard so I didn’t get much out of it, in the end I used it to build an FBM screen saver and a UI system in MS Basic (slow as heck). I really only do programming out of necessity. There’s something I need then, I do it. Waiting around for others to do it for you is a recipe for disappointment. Oh I don’t have favorites when it comes to programming languages. They all have their positives and negatives. C++ might be the one I continuously go back to, but only because that’s what so many people want or need. In the end the real difference between your experience with different languages isn’t the language itself so much as the API’s you’ll be dealing with. Some are well written and documented, others are a disaster of boilerplate and lackadaisical documentation, usually a sign that the author really wanted to use a different programming language entirely. In the Oscars photo I am front row, second from right.
    1 point
  40. Per-Anders Edwards is Oscar awarded developer, designer and artist. Widely known as one of the duo of brains behind MoGraph and highly innovative individual . Born in Sweden, currently resides in California. He worked in many design agencies, Maxon and currently works at Mercedes Benz Research & Development North America. Apart form designing and programming, he enjoys playing the guitar, painting and has interest in tech policy. He also loves annoying Sam Altman. We are very happy to present Per and are very thankful he opted to give us this exclusive interview! Describe yourself in a single word : ) Serendipitous How did you get into C4D development and 3D in general? I got into 3D early on in childhood, not that I was some precocious kid; it’s just that I grew up in the 80s and 90s playing Elite on my Acorn Electron and Outrun at the arcades. CG was fresh, a big deal flashy thing wherever it appeared not just for me - it was a part of pop culture, in the Cinemas, magazines, even on the news on TV. This was an era of relative to today at least tremendous tech optimism. Tron & The Last Starfighter were milestones of course I remember well and of course Red and Tin Toy, the amazing work Pixar brought out setting the bar again and again and of course then Terminator 2, Jurassic Park in the 90s. 3D CG was even showcased in science museums heavily, I remember seeing an early VR headset at a museum of nuclear science in the north of England in the early 90s. It was hard not to be into 3D CG when you’re surrounded by a million voices telling you how cool it is, when you’re immersed at a formative time. Fortunately for me my dad was every bit into technology as I was and he brought one of the first 8bit home computers er… well… home. He and my brother wrote an accounting program with it but once I got a hold of a computer I wrote a painting application and versions of space invaders, then little 3D toys based on my own logic. It wasn’t till the early 90’s when I got a Commodore Amiga I got my first taste of a DCC thanks to the magazine Amiga Format having Real 3D (later to be Realsoft 3D) on a cover disk. I managed to create a few animations, but raytracing was sloooow. Things picked up a little when I moved to my dad’s Mac and first got to play with Bryce, Ken Musgrave and Kai Krause’s idiosyncratic take on 3D and UI. Also not fast, but faster and fascinating. Over time the interest petered out though with the life and needs of a growing lad. It wasn’t till I was working at a post production house in North London and we were using 3D Studio Max for little CG stings so I had to make a few videos for clients that needed 3D elements that my interest was rekindled. When enough of the clients begged that I become a freelancer because they wanted to work directly with me (and save a penny I’m sure) I decided to pick up Lightwave as the tool for when 3D was needed. A choice made based on the readily available community, there were plenty of other freelancers who I’d bump into constantly who used it in London. When I moved to America in the early 2000’s I decided to shift to just 3D work, and to see what else was on offer as a fish in new water. After testing just how quickly I could work in all of them I found I was fastest in Cinema 4D, it even aligned with my needs using the After Effects when I looked at how they were updating their timeline, to me it was the most artist friendly 3D tool at that time. That’s not to say it was perfect. The software development then came as a necessity, there were missing tools I was used to having and when you’re a freelancer time is money. You have to be able to work fast, so I started to fill the gaps. Which area interests you most? Stepping away from C4D for a moment. For me in my own personal projects right now I’m enjoying the world of VR and AR. While it’s not exactly early days they’re still in that charmingly awkward phase of UX development where nothing is really set in stone and everyone’s as incompetent as each other at it, and this makes for many opportunities. What other apps are you using and what for? I use a bit of everything. You have to be adaptable to be a freelancer and you should always be enthusiastic about the field you freelance in. These days I find myself encountering and using Blender more and more. When it comes to development work then of course my main weapons of choice are IDE’s and text editors, VSCode, the Jetbrains tools and the occasional forced under duress use of Nano etc. Unfortunately more and more I find myself being sucked into the world of Jira, Excel and PowerPoint. Which learning resources you used and would recommend? Oof, opening a big ol’ can of response here. I have many thoughts on learning. Different tactics work depending on your initial passion for the subject. Sometimes you have to learn something you don’t really want to, sometimes it’s just an internal need that can’t be satiated enough. Use every one! This is your passion or at least interest. It’s like you’re climbing a cliff, you need every handhold available to you as you scrabble your way up. As a technique I found that answering other peoples questions without assumption was very successful and would recommend the same to anyone. It’s great because you’re forced out of your comfort zone and ways of thinking, to research and do things you haven’t done before, and your answers are documenting your progress for you in an analytical way. If you try this then take on the QA mindset and never assume when you’re learning - always make sure you test and do the thing yourself before you respond, you don’t want to be the blind leading the blind. When it comes to growth mindset and learning I’m a believer in the value of routines rather than goals. It’s not really about introducing structure, instead its because they really help overcome fear of failure. Failure is a huge positive potential that’s mostly squandered. Especially in the arts failing means you have improved your discernment to the point that you can recognize that failure for what it is! That’s a good thing. You keep working at it till you figure out how you can fix or avoid the mistake. The more success you have the harder it is to fail. But you place that expectation you think others have of you on yourself and I really found this a lot the more I worked at Maxon, the mindset there and the lack of free time and building my own voice and and and… well and it exacerbated my own introversion and risk aversion which in turn reduced my ability to learn and progress and I would say while I was successful I capped my own potential. That reduced my value to the company. Once I left I found it incredibly liberating to bring in routines where there was no pressure for success. To focus on the exact opposite of what they always tell you to - quantity rather than quality! The quality comes anyway of it’s own accord anyway, you can’t help but learn and improve faster if you’re failing faster too. You build that critical discernment. Just remember the mantra of “No pressure!” (beyond the commitment of starting, of it being routine of course). You don’t need to produce a lot, it doesn’t have to be good or successful in any way, it can even deviate completely from the plan, you need only do and take the first step each day. Success, learning, a loss of perfectionism and entering a growth mindset are byproducts. We all subconsciously build ego around success, then try to repeat it and avoid failure. This fear of failure is perfectionism and that stops growth, you no longer want to take risk, or try anything outside of your comfort zone and eventually it’ll stop you completely, it’s a prison that shrinks your horizons and world. It’s incredibly important for your own spirit to recognize and avoid that outcome, break perfectionism for your own happiness. An example of routine that fits the bill is the morning pages from Julia Cameron’s “The Artists Way”. A great book well worth reading if you haven’t already. It’s a fantastic starting point, from there you can find your own routines, your own daily “me” time, whether it’s exercise, or even if it’s a process you introduce to your work itself. Do you think talent is overrated and can be offset with a lot of hard work? I’m on the side of nurture on this. I don’t believe in the idea of innate talent, I do believe in certain innate aptitudes that can help, for instance having larger but skinny hands makes playing the guitar easier, but also that you have to put in the work. Those who seem “talented” simply put in all the work that you don’t see, even if it’s their first time trying something, they put in the foundational work required to quickly pick up this new thing. That could be physical fitness, mental flexibility, mechanical understanding. It can even be the work others put in, like giving them a solid support structure, financial security so they can take risk. It’s all like putting together a recipe, you can make a pizza base if you have cauliflower, chick peas etc, but it’s much easier if you have wheat flour, salt, water. Bear that in mind the next time you see someone for whom it seems easy. How did you imagine and conceptualize MoGraph? When I was hired by Maxon at Siggraph I agreed on the provision that they would also hire my at the time coding partner Paul Everett. Paul had mentored me on the C4D API and C++ then joined forces with me writing plugins. I wanted to develop plugins that could do certain things that you could not with the only scripting language available in Cinema at that time C.O.F.F.E.E. Together we’d released two top tier plugins “Mesh Surgery” a modeling toolset that innovated workflow simply by being completely interactive and realtime (a novel idea at the time and for the processing), and “Storm Tracer” a fast volumetric particle rendering system. Paul had a storied history developing his own plugins before he met me, and shortly before I joined Maxon I’d written an extensible node based compositor in Cinema called Spider (which was never released). It was this background that lead Maxon to approach me. The first project we did was MoGraph. I wont go into the full background of the project, however suffice to say the original desire from the company wasn’t exactly what they ended up with. In fact they weren’t even after a motion graphics toolset, more of a procedural modeling tool do fill a recently opened gap with some ideas talked about doing text transitions. Thing is, I’m a 3D graphics freelancer. I know what I wanted. Knew what was great and what sucked about using Cinema 4D, and critically I knew what took time and what I needed to be much easier to achieve. So I had my own set of goals and fortunately for me Paul was right on board. in the end Maxon was happy to trust us to do what was right and that we knew would be better than the original brief. Paul is tremendously intuitive at coming up with novel ideas himself, I’m very focussed on workflows. To me you as a user shouldn’t be forced to make decisions that a good design should do for you, there’s no excuse as a developer other than budget, after all we can do anything. Also I just want an easy life as a user - laziness is a great driver of innovation! So I came up with the Effectors system (I still regret the naming, but often what you do in development ends up sticking) and Cloner as a solution to some of the workflow issues I faced when dealing with particles. I wanted to have ”particles without particles” a directable solution, so this was embedded throughout. Paul meanwhile took this idea to the Matrix object where you could feed in an actual particle emitter and apply deformers to the particle axis and the MoGraph text object where you could explode and direct elements of text at all hierarchy levels. I’d make a spline deformer, Paul would make a displace deformer and so on. We built a whole load of procedural modeling and animating objects, deformers, tags and shaders around Cinema’s brilliant but slow Object System. We were very symbiotic and spend time together on each piece of code, I added the Thinking Particles integration to the Matrix etc. At the end of the day these ideas solved problems I faced as a 3D artist, with workflows that were at the time as intuitive solutions as I was able to create with the knowledge I had then. Once people saw what it was coalescing into we agreed that Motion Graphics was the ticket, and the name MoGraph I just threw in there because I was tired of constantly typing MotionGraphicsModule. It was obviously a highly successful collaboration between ourselves and Maxon. MoGraph was only the start of course, that first developer meeting we had in person I set out a map for the future they’re still following, organization, design department, new core, nodes etc. having worked extensively with Cinema’s object system I had… opinions. I had a headline feature in every release from 9.6 onwards. In fact my tools and guidance helped the company grow 2000% over the time I was with them, and even though I left some time ago I still occasionally recognize one of my or Paul’s old shelved tricks being unearthed as new feature content. Your best advice for newcomers, tip or trick to pick up? People skills, be genuine - will open doors that a 5 star portfolio alone will not. The trick there isn’t in being friendly and likable when everything is going well, anyone can do that. It’s in being able to deliver bad news but make your client still love you for it. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Drinking fresh mango juice. Thoughts on AI? Tremendous tool but also highly dangerous. From a UX perspective it’s implicit design which always makes Undo the whole workflow, something I’m not keen on. Experience has taught me that a professional knows what they want, to achieve that the tool should enhance their control, not take it away. In general it’s a magnifier of human behavior. In particular when it can be used for profit of one kind or another - it’s a magnifier of greed. As such there are very real risks and ethical concerns around how we use AI. Our policy makers are far behind the ball on this one, and unfortunately people like Sam Altman put on a circus and leverage the general ignorance on the topic to gain advantages that would see the rest of us deeply disadvantaged. The bogeyman of sentient and agentic AI (or AGI) is nothing more than that. It’s a tool to legislate away competition and build a moat for these people. Deep learning, machine learning is currently architecturally incapable of reasoning. It’s akin to a lossy encryption algorithm with a fuzzy logic key. It is tremendous at recall though and this is enough to fool many when they underestimate the size of its training corpus or do not understand the tokenization and importance weighting process. The real risks are human and economic, the potential for dystopia at our own hands. Even the E/ACC crowd identified this. I’ve always fought for artists. It’s for this reason that I put myself firmly on what I am sadly fairly certain will end up being the wrong side of history and back them in their fight against generative AI abuses, corporations scraping their work. You might say being right but on the wrong side isn’t much of a strategy for success, but it’s about compunction and I’ve only ever gained by supporting people. Top 3 wishes for C4D If it isn’t clear by now I make my own solutions 😄 In a more diffuse way I would hope that it continues to do well and enables new generations of artists to achieve. The best good you can do in the world to make it better is to enable others opportunity. If you could send a message for Maxon, what would you say? Hey! I charge consultancy fees for that you know? 😉 They know where to find me if they need the introspection and understanding of what’s really going on within their structure and what they can do to resolve the problems they face. Message for Core4D? Keep being awesome! This forum is tremendous help and eco system driver for C4D. Tell us something we could not possibly know about you but you find important Client first! It’s pathological with me. When Warner Brothers approached me to head and build their virtual sets department and when AWS wanted me to join their top sales team in a very high level role I dissuaded both from hiring me because I simply felt my complete lack of experience in those fields would be a huge detriment to their goals. Oh I’m sure the seven figure salaries would have assuaged my conscience a little but that little voice in the back of my head is always gonna be screaming “you’ll never get repeat business that way”. Since then no surprises I actually have more experience and contacts in both worlds, you never know what the future might bring! Life always has a way of working out. If people want to contact you? They can and they should! https://www.linkedin.com/in/per-anders-edwards/
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  41. I have no idea how I missed this interview ... Ah, yes, I was having a surgery... Can't wait for the next ! (interview) @PerAnders Only you 2 coded the whole MoGraph or you were the Lead/Senior developers of the team ? It wasn't mentioned in the interview for how long you worked for MAXON. How long did it take you to complete the MoGraph module ? Where you kept working there to maintain the tools for next releases ? What other projects where you involved in ? Was it complete ? What kind of compositor ? AE/PS style ? I guess SceneNodes where in the ideas shelf for decades The interview has many bio omissions and the story of how you got in to 3D somehow confused me because we have some similarities... How old are you? I too got a copy of Bryce when still 11 years old but my father wasn't in to technology so I got to know how to code after I got in university. In what language did you code your painting application and how old were you then ? Are you a self-taught programmer or did you graduate from an IT University ? Info is somewhat confusing because you shift from programming as a child to a graphics artist in early adulthood and then shift again to programming as a permanent career. What's your favorite programming language ? Where are you in the photo ?
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  42. Thank you for that further insight into the process of the Oscar selection committee (Honestly, how many people can speak to that in this world! Just being interviewed would be an award in and of itself). I would imagine that it was a bit of relief that the selection committee made the decision on who would be the award recipient as theirs was an unbiased decision that no one could argue with. What a relief. Also, as a Senior Manager for Cisco, I fully understand the challenges of leading in a technical company -- particularly a diverse team including people from many parts of the world (I have people in 4 different countries) and many ages (one employee - a data scientist going for his masters in AI - fresh from college). Sometimes it is hard to navigate the political waters of any company unless you have crashed your boat on the rocks a few times. Failure is a great educator. And sometimes you can't prevent those for whom you feel some responsibility for from driving their boat directly at those rocks at full speed. I have cringed at what some people have said to others and wished I could take away that moment but there are times when that may not be the best option. Jumping in can sometimes make things worse for everyone. It is sometimes better to just be quiet, let the moment pass, and wait for the "teachable moment" in the future. Also, it is always better to praise in public, but correct in private. Pretty confident that whatever the outcome or the events leading up to it, both you and Paul grew from those early days at Maxon. Thanks again for sharing! Dave As an aside, I need to try that mango juice! Really....that is your goal in 5 years! Must be good juice!!! 😁
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  43. So i managed to figure this out, updating the priority tag to animation and setting the first constraint tag attached to the pivot to frame update, moving this up a bit higher and using the "set initial state" tag seems to fix this. Thanks everyone for the help.
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  44. Thats a good question, and your right there should be a good reason to justify a plugging in which is aimed at a feature set C4D has. I will address this in more detail in the video. What I can say on a simplified level for now is Ornatrix takes off where C4D hair system end in its abilities. This is mainly around control over particular guides, hair groups, its consistent interpolation methods, and its powerful modular approach. Modular: In C4D you have a single material with one set of attributes that change the outcome of the hair, these are called Operators within Ornatrix, lets take Frizz as an example. You can make and apply a map to control how much is applied and to where in C4D native hair system. This is also true with Ornatrix but things can taken much further. Due to Ornatrix modular methods you can apply as many operators as you wish in any order. A frizz operator is applied to the operator stack. like C4D it applies to the the entire hair. You may want one type of frizz on the top of the head, and another type on the sides. The only way to do this in C4D is to make multiple hair objects to have multiple materials. In ornatrix you can simply select the top of the hair guides, make it into a group, invert the selection make the group for the sides. Add two frizz operators and apply one to one group, and one to the other. No texture maps needed. What if within the settings of the frizz you wanted some hairs to receive more frizz not just the full length but just at the tips of the length? This can not be done in C4D, its all or nothing. You can use texture maps for the entire length in C4D but not on a per vertex level. With Ornatrix not only can you assign a group such as the top of the hair only, but within that group you can assign particular guides to receive more or less frizz, again no texture maps needed. These are called channels and can be painted with a vertex brush directly on the guides, or flood filled either as a value between 0 = Back to 1 White and all values between. You can make as many Channels as you wish either on a per strand basis or a per vertex basis. If you use a per strand basis the assigned value applies to the whole guide. A value of 1 would get 100% frizz, 0.5 = 50% all the way down to 0 no frizz at all. If you make a channel on a vertex basis you can brush with the vertex brush tool any value you wish down the length of the guide. This lets you apply frizz right at the tips for example. Not only do you get this additional control but no texture maps are needed. You can have has many frizz operators as you wish, this applies to all operators in which some operators gives you control on not just the amount but other attributes. Clumping: Clumping is essential to get realistic looking hair or fur, C4D clumping abilities are not only limited but very hard to use. In reality there are multiple layers of clumping from larger clumps to very fine layers. C4D only allows you to add one layer. With Ornatrix you can add multiple clump operators each one can take the last into account to further split larger clumps into smaller ones. You can again choose a group of guides, and particular channels for individual guides. Where Ornatrix takes things to a whole level higher is you can choose individual hairs and clump them, or remove clumping, or edit individual clump sets. You have so much control over clumping that C4D does not. Direct Hair grooming: You can make your groom using guides, add multiple operators to fine tune it, then actually groom the hair directly. This means you can use all the brushes directly on the hair itself. Bake operators to your guides: You can force certain operators to be baked to the actual guides, this means you can remove them operators which makes simulations for example faster. Remember you can apply operators to both the hairs or directly to the guides. Interpolation: The interpolation for how the the hair responds to the guides is essential for a good outcome. C4D is lacking in this area. Ornatrix really shines here. Some styles need different interpolations and Ornatrix gets you so close to the style your making with the guides. Other mentions: The Surface Come tool lets you draw arrows in the direction you wish the hair to flow. v2 has made this even better but C4D does not have this feature. This is especially useful for animals, but can be used on human hair. Push Away From Surface will push your hair away from the head, this is a one click fix for intersections. It works and works well. You have further operators to help add additional details such as more verts to certain strands, smoothing, collision prevention. You can save hair styles for later use, export for Unreal. These are just a few things to mention. The outcome is that you get the hair under control spot on to how you want it. Dan
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