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With Dave's (3d-Pangel's) inspiration and impetus we have a new thread that I think will be fascinating and beneficial: "Designing Sci-Fi in 3d" This discussion will be very open to all approaches and choices of software. Since this is a broad topic I suggest we generally focus for the first day on: TOOLS. What are specific features, plugins, addons, small standalone programs that we can leverage when building our designs? Feel free to jump in and add any candidate tools.

Way to set the stage with the big stuff 🙂 Since i am not an artist at all i have to start on a slightly lower level. Please find attached a paramettric Modeling function that creates a Groove from selected edges. As part of a modeling stack you can use it to create those grooves that can be found on nearly all surfaces somehow SciFi. It has options to subdivide and smooth the grooves to allow more organic shapes. Edge to Groove 01.c4d

There are numerous tools specifically intended for "Greebling", which is a quick way to mash a lot of various tech meshes onto surfaces. Kuroyume was well known for having a c4d tool for this, but his software support (and even online presence) is highly unpredictable. Ironically the best successor, Merk's PolyGreeble, has also seen off-and-on support...I believe due to the dev's health. Here is a screengrab from Poly Greeble creation:

Trypogen, third party c4d generator for environments, props...trippy Alien creature eggs...organic whateva in space.... Other possible Merk plugins with sci-fi relevance: TopoWire, Symex, TopoFormer JSplacement A texture generator primarily used to create faux-geometry via displacement. This is free standalone app. Since it creates a simple map this is handy for any/all DCC's, as they all feature displacement functionality.

Hello C4Ders, I recently put a computer build together, and I am using an RTX 3090 graphics card, and my render per frame is taking about 4 minutes. I render the same frame from the same scene on my laptop which has an RTX 1660 Ti, and the render is 45 seconds per frame. I am not sure how this is possible, and I don't know what I am missing. Not sure what to do. Thanks!

Thought I would share this link to an Adam Savage Tested video as a means of inspiration. This video captures the classic visual language for surface paneling that we have all grown up to accept as "real" in sci-fi since 2001 A Space Odyssey. This is exactly what we want to do in CG....and hopefully in less time than it took Adam Savage to do physically (rather long at 40 minuts....really only watch the last 30 seconds to see the finished result but I will watch it tonight) Dave

You could put all children on a layer and set the layer to be hidden in OM. One could also write a small Python tag to force the Null object folded/unfolded.

I am definitely thinking about using Blender -- in fact, do a search on "modeling greebles" on YouTube and the majority of the results are Blender Tutorials! Honestly, it does appear that Blender is the tool of choice for the sci-fi community now that Max is slowly imploding on itself. Thus my interest in seeing how RandomFlow FBX output works in C4D. A simple test to get an idea. As RandomFlow is not that expensive, I could just buy it and give it a try, but maybe the whole Merk experience has left me a bit gun shy. Not sure. But thank you for the test files! I do appreciate it (expecially the Tie fighter). Dave

When Redshift is rendering, here are my temps, are these too high?

Random Flow is really cool. I recently got it as well. THIS artwork was made within the first couple of hours.

As Might said, that's waay too many MBs to show us a hex tube !! Always simplify / optimise the scene files please. Yes, in geo so simple there is no need for imported Normal tags, so you can bin those off, and set the phong angle to less than about 40 degrees. CBR

To be honest, I didn't download the project file. 28MB for a few low-poly poly objects looked a bit over the top for me. But I'd suspect those Normal tags to be the culprit.

Divider, third party generator for c4d. Uses: create panel cuts for ship exterior or interiors.

As this is a very specific divergence from the topic of this thread, I'm starting a new thread, "Designing SciFi in 3D." We can keep this open to all DCCs and discuss general strategies as well as specific techniques.

Well...as a follow up to my Death Star Landing Bay Interior WIP, I am modeling the outside equatorial trench as well. Right now it is just a texture but I would like to add some geometry to it. And the model extents are huge as ships will need to added so everything is in real world scale. The bays themselves are baked down versions of the full scale WIP I did. Literally just boxes with textures rendered with GI from the larger model. Everything is instanced. So I am preparing for a high polygon count once you add the exterior service details (tower guns, hull plating, etc.). Also, the exterior surfaces have a slight curve to them that actually matches the estimated diameter of the Death Star itself (120 Km). A little too obsessive with accuracy? Not sure. So my approach is to copy groups of faces to another file. Then use RandomFlow on those faces to create the hull plating and some interesting details. There is also a good C4D plugin called Divider which may work just as well if the goal is ONLY to create asymmetrical hull plating. Separate those details from the original faces and copy them back into the original model on a separate layer so that they overlay the original outer hull. I have to be really careful with balancing the amount of detail so that you get the just the right impression of detail but not going too far such that you end up with nothing but visual noise and so many pinpoint highlights that the renders look bad GI. In short, it will take an artistic eye that I hope I have to strike that balance. Some people have a "more is better" approach when using procedurally generated greebles or hull plates. Not so. That is why I study Ansel Hsiao's work as he can strike that balance. Dave

@bezoThanks for your kind words. Even more so, after you had been hit hard right at the start... I personally apologize for your bad onboarding experience and I can not thank you enough for making me aware of this bug.

We have just released an update to version 1.3. This update fixes the crash found by Bezo earlier in this thread. We definitely recommend every customer to update to this release (as always, update is free). The bug was present in all previously released versions and also, due to extreme development craftmenship, hit all Cinema 4D versions, the plugin got released for. SORRY!!! Existing customers will be notified by email and in Asset Juggler Discord. The demo version can also be used to update. Changes (more details in included PDF documentation): Fixed: Crash bug (in versions 1.0 to 1.2) Fixed: Border of popup dialogs was not shown in Cinema 4D S26

Try compare Redshift Feedback Display on both computers if are the same/similar Btw, contain your new build also integrated graphics too? Compute Devices tab contain 3090 only?

Yes I should have made that clearer. You need the same amount of segments in your columns as you are joining to at either end, so 8 segments in the cylinders is what we need there. CBR

We have just released a small update to version 1.2. The update is of course free. Existing customers will be notified by email and in Asset Juggler Discord. The demo version can also be used to update. Changes (more details in included PDF documentation): Added: ANY option for Asset 1 of Rule Types “Force Pair” and “Exclusion”. Added: CSV reports per Asset Group Added separate commands: Folder to Render Queue Select an arbitrary folder, all project files found in this folder will be added to C4D's Render Queue. Split JSON Metadata Splits JSON Metadata report files into one file per combination.

It doesn’t look good most likely because the rotational segment count on your cylinders is to high, look at @Cerberaexample then look at yours. If you lower the segment count to 8 then you’ll be able to sew them together seamlessly

I'm talking about the Sky Object, not Physical Sky. Other generators that don't have checkmarks include Foreground, Background, and Floor.

Er... not sure about versions previous, but S26 Physical Sky has a checkbox ! So 1 mark back for consistency at least 😉 CBR

@MJV I'm obviously one one of those. And as a developer certainly tainted in my views. But could you maybe elaborate on the failure of logic? From my point of view these options are fundamentally different. The dots only toggle visibility, while the checkmark toggles execution during scene evaluation. I would certainly argue against mangling these two functionalities into one. I need them separated all the time. Best example, using some Xpresso workflow to clone something onto some generated mesh. There I need the mesh to be generated, but do not want it to be visible.

The statistics tell you that the lack of memory does have a negative effect on your performance. The more the Renderer has to work out of core the lower the performance., this can be a very significant drop in speed.

Agreed, I do this all the time between apps. Btw, are you aware of this? Simple copy and paste between DCCs. https://github.com/heimlich1024/OD_CopyPasteExternal I used it before, but I am unsure if it still works for the latest C4d release - no updates in a long time ;-( Still works for Blender, Houdini, and LightWave. Unsure about the other apps.