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Paul established a US-based entity for Maxon, to serve North and South America and introduced Cinema 4D to The Americas in 1998, His initiatives included strategic partnerships with industry-leading production studios and design firms, along with orchestrating product bundles with Adobe After Effects and Apple Final Cut Pro. Paul's leadership and strategic planning played a pivotal role in Maxon's unprecedented growth. Today, Cinema 4D stands out as one of the fastest-growing and widely-used 3D products for digital content creation. He takes pride in being part of a team that facilitated the emergence of 3D in the motion graphics industry. In 2016, Paul was honored with the Studio Daily 50 award, recognizing influential creatives and technologists. Known for his creative energy, customer service advocacy, and support for training and education, Paul is often invited to speak at industry events, particularly on the subject of motion graphics. Describe yourself in a single word Enabler (the good kind 🙂 ) How did you get into C4D/ Maxon and 3D in general? In the early 90’s I got my first job in the 3D industry – marketing managerfor ElectricImage (a 3D animation product on Mac). This was in the early days of 3D. I was there for a few years (learned a lot about the industry, artists and studios). They were purchased by the company Play (wellknown for the Snappy). Play was formed by former marketing people from Newtek. I was pretty sure my position was redundant, so, I went back into freelance marketing. Maxon started out as one of those freelance jobs. Which area interests you most? Facilitating, inspiring, motivating and helping creatives be successful in achieving their vision. What other apps are you using and what for? I assume this question is more geared towards artists. How about I tell you one of the things I find really interesting out there? I think Rive (https://rive.app/) is an extremely innovative and unique new offering and a significant breakthrough in the creation of real time vector graphics. At its core, Rive is a new graphics format. Rive graphics are not just static; they can be animated, interactive, and functional. The format and its players are open source so designers can create interactive content forproducts, apps, websites, and games - and Rive runs anywhere (web,iOS, Android, Windows, Unreal, Unity, C++, etc.). A huge advantage is how greatly it speeds up workflow by reducing designer-developer handoff. Which learning resources you used and would recommend? This forum of course, Cineversity, of course! School of Motion, Linkedin Learning, and YouTube/Google searches for anything useful. Do you think talent is overrated and can be offset with a lot of hard work? I’ve always felt there were two types of 3D animators and digital artists ingeneral - those who are naturally artistic and less technical, and those who are more technical with less artistic background. We used to call it right and left brained, (but I’ve recently read some scientists call that a fallacy). And there are those amazing exceptions – the people who seem to have both artistic “talent” and an innate understanding of technology. Talent is an intrinsic skill (as in something that comes natural to you). But it is a skill. So yes, I do think those not born with it can develop artistic sensibility. Your best advice for newcomers, tip or trick to pick up regarding marketing and industry? Create. Even with talent, nothing comes without practice and execution. Create what you love, what inspires you. Be inspired by others. Inspire others. Thoughts on AI? Artists worrying about how AI is going to affect the industry and their careers is completely understandable. But it cannot be ignored. It’s here and it’s not going away. The best thing to do is figure out how it canultimately serve and empower you. Part of being a creative professional is adapting to what is thrown at you, whether it be a client’s desires or technology advancements. Top 3 wishes for C4D a. That it will continue to humbly serve the artistic community. b. That it will continue to innovate and impact the industry. c. That it will be remembered as having a positive impact on the industry and secure a place in design history. Message for Core4D Stay positive, stay passionate and keep the community spirit. Tell us something we could not possibly know about you but you find important or funny : ) In my early 20’s I was an actor. I did mostly stage musicals, but I did doone film. I was a pirate in the movie Hook. I was also in the Hook Coke commercial – like everything else it can still be found on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUIAPbXevaA For fun, I still perform in a band with my buddy and my daughter https://thelaurelcanyonband.com/ Plans after a long journey with Maxon? Clear my head, look out into the horizon of the industry and get a good idea of what’s happening in the industry and where it’s going. Hopefully, I will find something where I can focus my passion and energy. Yes, I am actually looking for a job (it’s been rumored I am retiring – no way!! I have too much energy left.) – hopefully, it will besomewhere in the industry. This industry is my family. Also, some exciting news. This week I've accepted an invitation to be an Advisor for the team at Rive. It’s not a job. I took an advisory position for a product I think has a tremendous amount of potential in the interactive design industry. I encourage everyone to check it out. Really innovative and fun. If people want to contact you https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulbabb/

Judging only from what McGravan has shared, this is not wat will happen. All I see is an easier way to access the capabilities of Thinking Particles "porting" them to the standard model. For example XParticles offer APIC and FLIP simulations, particle caching, compatible with native rendering as well as Cycles4D rendering, XParticles contain extra data like temperature for fire and smoke simulations. C4D's Pyro system is purely voxel based (not driven by particles). I guess you will still be able to recreate the xpPushApart and xpFlock effect but slower. We haven't seen any equivalent of the xpInfectio modifier. Also I have no idea about what the Rigid and Cloth dynamics XParticles offer and how they compare to C4D's simulations. So it is possible that XParticles still provide a better engine for those. But if you don't rely on the above for your job you can safely abandon it. The only thing I'm definitely uncertain about is how this will compare with the xpFluidFX Granular solver in terms of viewport refresh rate. The banana teaser was impressive. Could there be a big surprise announcing the acquiring of XParticles from MAXON and all we see is XParticles icons redesigned ? I doubt that. It would be much more realistic to acquire the bankrupt U-render than Insydium.

Ephere Ornatrix Hair Fur & Feather plugin: Review/Preview Part 1. In part one we will take a in depth look at this plugin and why you may use this over Cinema 4D built in solution. Cinema 4D own solution is robust, stable and very capable, but if you want to take things a step further Ornatrix is the way to go.

Hi. You can convert Ornatrix hair to guides. You can either keep the amount of hairs needed to populate the whole area, or reduce the amount in the viewport so fewer guides are made, but then your using the interpolation of C4D to produce the hair so it will vary a bit from Ornatrix interpolation. 1: Add curves from strands after Hair from guides operator 2: Press export spline. 3: Select spline and chose from the C4D hair tools Convert from spline. 4: Add the Hair mesh or selection set in the Hair objects Guides Link. 5: In the C4D hair tools select Set Roots and apply. PS: I will be making a video on this, as this has not been covered, so look out for that later on today. Dan

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