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Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation since 03/28/2023 in all areas

  1. As a personal side project to provide more information on Scene Nodes to everyone interested i started a small page. https://nodebase.info Feel free to request topics that should be covered
    15 points
  2. (Probably my first original 3D article) This is a list of 10+1 useful yet overlooked or unappreciated features in C4D. 10) Scene Nodes Scene Nodes made their debut with R23 as an experimental feature drawing developer resources resulting R23 and the next couple of releases deprived from any major features. Due to its unusual for C4D UI, workflow and intuitiveness standards most users tried to stay away from it in a “let others figure it out first” response. None-the-less Scene Nodes are here to stay despite many people’s beliefs it would soon flop. Now many users do not hesitate to use Capsules but still quite few will spend time making their own, propagating the belief that SceneNodes maybe are not that powerful to produce what they expect or compete with other systems like Blender’s GeoNodes or Houdini. The Truth is that behind the scenes more and more people are working with SceneNodes and soon tutorials and new Capsules will be popping more frequently as witnessed with the last couple of releases. 9) Polygon Reduction This little generator is rarely used. Due to its name and function most users will rarely even considering using it because “Who wants to compress their geometry in a pile of ugly mess anyway, especially when Remesh is around to do it better”. Actually the Polygon Reduction can come in handy in abstract modeling, weird animations and my favorite: as an indirect uniform instance distribution. Polygon Reduction has a useful Preserve 3D Boundaries option. So when the Object Surface distribution mode of a Cloner fails to satisfy and you end up hitting the Seed value for half an hour to land a distribution where you don’t have intersecting instances, try to populate your surface uniformly use the Polygon Reduction as an instance in Vertex distribution. If the scale of your instances is not an issue throw a Push Apart Effector. 8 ) Sculpting Although not as powerful as ZBrush is, if you don’t want Forger because you don’t work on a tablet or don’t want a subscription to ZBrush, then this is your best alternative. It includes all the essentials for sculpting plus many advanced tools. It’s a quite complete tool case. Probably the most invaluable feature is to turn your sculpts to a Displacement Texture using the Bake Sculpt. Blender boasts its recent 3.5 release about its VDMs (Vector Displacement Maps) after ZBrush later this year made it possible to copy sculpted details as brushes and reuse them while C4D had it all along since R15. Plus the very useful and overlooked Projection tool. Which can also project tubed meshes ! 7) Camera Calibrator Tag This is another tool most users haven’t ever used myself included. It is used for Camera Mapping and provides many useful parameters and options for a quick camera placement from a reference image. It’s basically the equivalent of Motion Tracker but for still images. 6) Tension Tag The Tension Tag is placed in the Character Tag menu so most users that aren’t concerned with Character Rigging overlook it and don’t know it can also be used for modeling. Although you can achieve the same effects using the Displacer Deformer, the Tension Tag is more preferable for animations when the amount of deformation of a polygon from its initial state alters the Weight Map of the object allowing for local effects on regions of structural stress. Try doing this Reaction Diffusion without Fields! I think it’s faster too. And we have the Tension Tag to thank for this since R17 (I think). 5) Feather Object Right in the middle of this Top 10 list lies the Feather Object. I don’t just rarely see projects that use feathers. I’ve just never seen any feathered projects ever. And I’ve never used that object myself either! I might have seen a scene or two during MAXON’s demo showreels but you never know what percentage of those scenes are C4D. It’s a quite interesting generator with many parameters carefully designed to model any type of plume. It’s also a generator that doesn’t work on geometry like the Hair object but on guides. It essentially generates guides for guides. So if you want to turn any hairy model into a feathered model just put the Hair object under the Feather oblject! (also works for splines) 4) Instance Object Who uses Instance objects, right? Cloners create instances themselves by default why should I need an Instance object ? Maybe it’s used only when you turn a Cloner to an Editable Object. The truth is that the Instance Object can make your scenes a lot lighter when you don’t use a Cloner yet you do use a lot of copies of the same objects. Most users overlook it because the first thing that comes to mind when you need a lot of something is to clone it with the Cloner. Probably the Instance Object is what makes the Cloner work in stealth mode. I'll let the Master Shapiro show you one practical use of this object. 3) Smoothing Deformer Oh the Smoothing Deformer! With a bent tube as an icon (a flat iron R25+), it doesn’t really excite. Also the name doesn’t excite either. Usually users when they want to smooth things out they’ll use the Subdivision Surface generator (SDS). But what if you don’t want to increase the number of your polygons? Yes you guessed right. But wait, what are the Relax and Stretch modes? Stretch will try to maintain the overall shape and volume of your object. So any hard edges will be preserved while polygons try to be of homogenous area. The Relax is the most interesting one. People ask all the time how to make stills with realistic cloth wrinkles and will resort to cloth simulations or even sculpting… Look no further, this is your salvation! With just a few mindless brushstrokes with the Brush tool this deformer will blow your mind. 1) Plane under SDS. 2) Plane without SDS, just play with the Brush (Mesh->Transform Tools [M~C]), 3) SDS again 4) Just apply the deformer in Relax Mode. 2) MoSpline Turtle My favorite. MoSpline is not a rare tool on users arsenal. Who doesn’t like those sexy curves, and the icon is the most elegant in the whole app (talking about the old one). But the Turtle mode is just absent from any C4D project I’ve ever seen. It’s like it doesn’t exist… I guess people see those unintelligible symbols and delete the poor tree before a virus turns C4D into Houdini. The Turtle mode is highly unappreciated. Although it does have room for improvement in its capabilities, what someone can achieve with it is quite impressive and there is no other way to do it (except maybe coding it in Python). Anyone with affection for fractals appreciates this tool. Unfortunately most people love only the colored Mandelbrot type fractals. Line fractals deserve some love too! 1) XPresso Well, what did you expect? Although a lot of users do use XPresso, still very few are well knowledgeable with it. Most users relate XPresso only with Thinking Particles and this is the main reason most users resent XPresso, because it doesn’t deliver easy, fast and intuitive particle setups. There are also many shady corners in XPresso that are rarely used in scenes so most people don’t know how they could even be used. What for should someone use Dynamics nodes or Hair nodes ? Who knows ? Anyhow, XPresso is very powerful tool if you know how to use it, and it has an overlooked cousin feature the Driver Tag that developers made just for those who don’t like XPresso. Bonus Feature Pyroclusters The most underappreciated feature ever. Today it’s totally outdated because we have Pyro. But if you don’t have RedShift or any VDB compatible renderer what will you do? Just look at those clouds! 0 voxels, 0 GPU RAM needed. There are some preset shapes you can use like box and cylinder which I have no idea what practical purpose they serve but the Hemisphere can be used to see clouds from below. The downside is that you don’t have the flexibility Pyro offers because you need a particle setup, and sometimes particles are not enough so you have to use Thinking Particles which leads us back to XPresso. Other limitations follow like that they are not compatible with VDBs because they use apperceptive 3D shading algorithms instead of voxels, so you can’t export them to an other application and that PyroCluster does not work in conjunction with the depth-of-field functionality. Other than that, if you work natively, Pyroclusters can provide some comfort when you need some fluffy clouds or smoke. This is a special case of under appreciation because people do not appreciate the ingenuity used for this one-of-a-kind feature. I should be making a YT video 🤔
    13 points
  3. Martijn Korstanje aka Kingcoma is a well known 3D artist from Netherlands and our fellow member.Currently lives in Belgium and is active in industry for 20+ years. He worked at graphics and 3D companies in the past but for last 15 years he has his own company. Apart from addictive 3D passion he enjoys nature, traveling, photography, Lego, how stuff works and loves driving his car. We are very happy to present him and his fabulous work! Describe yourself in a single word: Downtoearth : ) How did you get into C4D and 3D in general? A couple of centuries ago, some new computers arrived at the school I was attending. Instantly loved working on it (I think we used to work with Photoshop 5) and a couple of years later I bought my first Mac. Spent almost every day practicing and discovering new things, for hours and hours. I was a pretty quick learner, so once I got the hang of Illustrator and Photoshop, I came across Swift3D, and started experimenting with that (very basic 3d). Because there were lots of limitations and I really wanted to make my drawings and characters come to life, I searched for other, a bit more advanced software. 3ds max was only available on windows, so that was out of the question, and Maya had a HUGE learning curve. And then I bumped into cinema4d. Love at first sight! I can’t count the evenings / nights / days I spent learning it and trying out new things, but it’s a massive amount of time. Which area interest you the most? Modelling techniques. I’ve always been a fan of nice and clean topology, and I really enjoy figuring out the best and nicest way to model something, whether hard surfaces or organic / characters. Other then that, I love doing animations. How things move, how slow or fast things move, how a character moves when he’s just standing there. What does the left hand do when the right hand’s busy doing something? Whenever I have character animation jobs, I always find myself standing up and acting a bit first, to see what a ‘natural’ movement is and what not. Really silly, but super helpful. What other apps are you using and what for? Mainly Illustrator, Photoshop and aftereffects. Illustrator for vector paths, creating logo’s or creating packaging or visuals that need to be put on 3d models. Photoshop for textures, compositing and retouch. Aftereffects for animations, putting together all different parts (rendersequence, sounds, music, texts, logos, etc) Which learning resources you used and would recommend? In the very beginning, there weren’t that much tutorials online, so you had to figure it out yourself or look for help on different forum (such as core4d, previously c4dcafe). Most tutorials were screenshots and written text. Later, more and more video tutorials came along, which are very easy to follow and you can actually see what’s going on and what you’re missing or doing wrong. Whenever I need to learn or check something nowadays, I usually check Core4D, Cineversity, tutorials from GreyScaleGorilla, or when I can’t find it on there, general google searches. Do you think talent is overrated and can be offset with a lot of hard work? I don’t think talent is overrated. I think when you have talent, it comes a bit more natural and some things are a bit more ‘easy’. The thing with 3d is, it’s not just one thing. It’s a boatload of things. You can be talented in modelling, but really suck at texturing. Or you’re an average rigger, but you master simulations. Your drawing skills aren’t all that, but when that Xpresso or Python script editor open up, you’re on fire. Overall, I think everyone has something they're good at (or better at), and I think in 3d-land, you always have to work hard, talented or less talented. Your character work is stellar, what made you focus on them? Thanks! As a kid, I wanted to be a comicbook-artist, always drawing creatures and characters. Later it shifted to Illustrator, and after that, I really wanted to translate my thoughts and creativity of those characters in 3d, so I could animate them, look at them from all sides (which you can’t with 2d obviously) and put the expressions and humor in them I so clearly see in my head. I also admire Pixar / Dreamworks characters and animation, the details in them, the movements, the humor. When I watch animations, I don’t just watch them, I anaylise them (sometimes frame by frame) to try and learn new things or ways to improve myself. Your best advice for newcomers, tips or tricks to pick up? Have fun, don’t take it too seriously and practice, practice, practice. Give it your own twist, don’t just copy something blindly, and don’t stop learning new ways or techniques! Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I really hope I can continue doing what I’m doing now, making fun and friendly characters to brighten someones day or to put a smile on someones face. Thoughts on AI? It’s a bit frightening, hence the answer above.. I hope I can continue doing my job til I retire. I probably keep doing 3d even when I’m retired though. But yeah, as many other artists, I’m worried about this. AI as a tool to help the artist is great, but AI taking over would be lame. Lately there are more and more examples of AI that I receive in briefings, but they’re only used to show ‘something like this’ or an overall moodboard / look&feel. Fortunately, clients can be very tricky and very unclear as to what they want exactly or it’s the oposite: super-extremely specific and detailed. It’s part of my job to assist them in the whole process of creating the perfect character or visual for them, and advise them where I can. Top 3 wishes for C4d I don’t have any wishes actually, I’m very happy with all the tools available right now and I don’t have any problems making the things I want / have to make. If you could send a message for Maxon, what would you say? A big thanks. It’s a marvelous piece of software which I love to work with and not a week goes by where I find something new which I haven’t seen before (or found out about) after all these years. I think it’s amazing people can create software like this, have all the options you can possibly imagine, making it possible for people like me to create art and have the ability to do what I love to do most. Message for Core4D? Also a HUGE thanks. For all the talks, insights, tips, tricks, questions, answers, tutorials, models, contests. I wouldn’t be the artist I am today without the people, help and knowledge found on Core4D. If people want to contact you? They can, of course! I’m just an email, phonecall or whatsapp away https://www.kingcoma.com phone +32 479 43 61 82 email: info@kingcoma.com Thank you very much for your time and all the best in future endeavours!
    13 points
  4. If I may be so bold. In my experience, a lot of universities running 3D courses seem quite myopically blind what the real world demands are of 3D artists. They look at what the most exciting things are for students, predominantly working in the movie industry and seem to blindly target that as if it will be getting their students a job at the end. The reality is that the vast majority of 3D jobs are for generalists, people who can model, clean up cad, texture, light, animate, render, post produce in AE + PS. For every person spending 2 years working on animating Groot's left nut, theres 100 more working at a less prestigious company creating every day artwork. Product renders, adverts, previz, theatre shows, projection shows, town planning, architects, packaging visualisers.... We recently went to some university recruitment days looking for new staff, and honestly the experience was quite miserable. Maybe 30 stands from employers looking for people and perhaps a couple hundred students handing out resumes and virtually everyone who we spoke to was unsuitable. More or less all of them had chosen one single specific niche, looking for a job at a studio. I need someone who can take a client's idea and run with it from start to finish. Instead all we found were 20 people that want to do nothing but rig characters, 20 texture painters, a dozen modellers and a random scattering of uv layout people, simulation engineers and TDs / scripters. Not one of those people could produce anything from start to finish.
    12 points
  5. Dear members We are happy to announce brand new Youtube channel with focus on C4D node system. In our research we realized that training content for nodes is very sparse and lacking in quality and depth. We already have two lessons available which will be part of ongoing series. Humble request from our side is that, even if you are not into nodes, please subscribe in order that the channel grows which will enable us to monetize it down the road. On longer timeline this can enable us to reduce the subscription period or even remove it alltogether and open up forum for many more artists. https://www.youtube.com/@CORE4D Thank you and enjoy the content! P.S. Any member willing to contribute to the channel is more than welcome - drop us a message : )
    10 points
  6. *Shakes 8 ball "Acquired by Adobe in 2025" *shakes 8 ball some more The year is 2030. Unreal engine continues to grow and becomes the defacto render engine for most 3D work due to the balance of realism and render speed. c4d is still going fine and profitable, but blender has become the number 1 app due to the fact that it has been 7 years and the c4d student licences still don't work, thus there havent really been many new users. Octane 2029.2 still crashes every 3 hours, if you ask for tech support they will still blame your psu and gpu drivers. c4d 2030 still has no particle system, 90% of all new c4d features are now provided by Insydium which now has a higher monthly cost than c4d itself. 2035. C4D is now available as a plugin for the Insydium Suite. 2037, Adobe adds a new feature to Photoshop that people actually asked for 2039, Yīngyǔ xiànzài bèi jìnzhǐ, yīnwèi wǒmen de zhōngguó bàzhǔ rènwéi tā wéibèile rénmín de yìyuàn. Xí huángdì wànsuì
    10 points
  7. What's new in Cinema 4D 2024 New in 2024.0 Redshift is now the default renderer in Cinema 4D. Innovations in the simulation systems Another component of the simulation system: the new Rigid Bodies. Many characteristic spline rope parameters such as Strechiness, Friction, etc. can be defined by a Vertex Map at the point level. A specific graphics card can be selected for simulation calculation. Innovations in the Pyro simulation A Pyro emitter can now also use particles, points and MoGraph matrices. The emission volume of Pyro can be automatically faded out at the edges. Low-resolution Pyro caches can be subsequently subdivided more finely and distorted with noises. Any simulation image of the Pyro simulation can be defined as an initial state. The initial state of a Pyro simulation can be controlled individually for each property via volume objects. The colors of a Pyro simulation can be assigned with temporal falloff and smoothing. The fuel of a Pyro simulation can be assigned buoyancy. Pyro turbulence is smoothed by default. The calculation of Pyro velocities can be limited to areas of simulated density and temperature to save memory. Multiple Pyro caches can be managed simultaneously in one simulation and easily switched. Modeling innovations The Projection Deformer projects geometry onto any object. Selections can be repeated at will with the Pattern Selection. Subdivision Surfaces have a new mode Linear Pre-Subdivision. Brush/Magnet have a new mode Surface Smear. Point and polygon numbers can now be displayed in the viewports. Innovations with vertex normals The Normal Editing Manager can be used to edit vertex normals. The Vertex Map manager VAMP can now also transfer Vertex Colors and surface normals. The Phong tag can take polygon areas and angles into account during automatic vertex normal generation. Pose Morph can now morph vertex normal directions. New features for Nodes and Assets Note Nodes allow comments to be written directly into the Node Editor and to be customized in size and color. Scaffolds allow you to highlight sections of a Node setup with a colored background. The Break Spline Modifier Asset provides several methods for dividing splines into individual segments. The Electric Spline Modifier Asset can be used to calculate flashes and spline bundles. The Connect Node combines any number of single geometries and geometry arrays into a single geometry. The Generate Tangent Node can calculate a pair of tangents for controlling spline curves. The Create normals if missing Node automatically calculates Phong normals for a mesh geometry. The Modulo Selection Node provides new options for inverting and saving the selection. There are also new options for saving selections at these Selection Nodes: Select Facing, Select Bounding Box, Noise Selection, Non-Manifold and Random Selection. The Not Node inverts Boolean signals. The Clone onto Points Node duplicates any geometry onto the points of another geometry. The Explode Mesh Islands Node splits polygon islands and outputs them as separate mesh geometry. The Explode Spline Segments Node splits all spline segments and outputs them as separate spline geometry. The Transform Geometry Node is the further development of the Transform Element Node and has been accelerated in processing by orders of magnitude. Inputs and outputs to Assets and groups can be integrated directly into the setup as Nodes. Miscellaneous innovations The Align to Spline tag has some new options and can overshoot tangentially at the spline start/end. New VAMP calculation method can take UV islands into account. When Cinema 4D is started for the first time, the language of the operating system is now used.
    9 points
  8. What's up guys, back with another 2d to 3d translation.
    9 points
  9. Hello, I am currently interested in creating roads and intersections, and I am making a new plugin to manage that. I realized that there were a good number of possibilities for intersections, and I would like to make the most flexible plugin so that it could adapt to any situation Here is my progress and the current features, I post on a WIP because I think there will be lots of special cases that I haven't thought of and I would like to be able to manage them. First, the road are defined by splines : The plugin generate textured road polygons from the splines. It also add a line on both sides of the road : If two points of the splines are close enough, they will be magnetized : If two or more spline points are close enough, the splines are unite into one road of two lanes, the material of the line changes : If the direction of the splines are different, the material of the line changes (defined by the user) : We can add many lines in any directions : A twist in the spline affect the road path : We can disconnect and reconnect the lanes by moving the spline points : The line material will try to match as possible (still work to do here) : A preview oif the setup and wireframe in C4D : The road is a object with two UVW tags and some polygons selections to dissociate the lines : The next step will be the intersections. For the moment I develop it as a C4D plugin but I think it will also be an online tool with some exports options. I'm based on European roads for the moment, but I would like to look at signs from other countries to see the differences. Looking up for your comments and suggestions !
    8 points
  10. Nodes have powerful distributions which are not available in rest of C4D therefore here is a small asset which resolves this. This asset generates point cloud which can be used as target for cloner or matrix and utilize it in MoGpraph. To use simply import the attached zip via asset browser Once imported you can used the object in graph or in object manager: Use cloner or matrix in vertex mode to generate visible objects Depending on what is chosen in distribution result is generated (Mandelbrot example) This asset has following distributions: - Mandelbrot - Mandelbulb - Trigonometry More distributions are on the way 🙂 Distribution.zip
    8 points
  11. This uses the Boolean Intersection technique ive described on youtube but combined with Volume builder twice to finally create 1 click edge damage concrete the proper way. This of course also works for other materials. It took me a long time to get on the right track to get the concrete technique right to not make it look wrong. The key is to try keep sharp edges and a flat surface mostly, but options for holes and grunge are there. How to use: Just drag any mesh there, thats it. Make sure the mesh is closed, otherwise you will need to go to the volume builder and enable the "optimize and close holes" which makes it much slower however. Tips: You can tweak the top volume builder Dilate and erode settings for surface details or sharper softer outcome. You can tweak the bottom volume builder to change the edge damage. Also try increase Iterations in dilates and erodes. Total calculation time is a couple seconds only on my 12900k but the boolean is the bottleneck and can get laggy, however I do a mesher reduction and polygon reduction to optimize. I think this could be further optimized by using the boolean from the Nodes system which I strongly assume is multi threaded (Edit: there is no geo boolean in nodes yet?), but I haven't gotten to that yet. If that were the case, you could feed this much more powerful things. You can also try high quality boolean. You can also drag multiple meshes at a time. Test settings on a small mesh for performance always. The polygon reduction on top does a good job in making game ready meshes as well, also applies vertex colors for AO and edges ready for shaders to be used within engines such as unity or unreal. Recommended process is: - Drag in, wait - Create instance - Collapse instance - Drag instance into poly reduction (tweak if wanted) - Create instance of poly reduction - Collapse poly reduction - Export mesh with the vertex colors / Use in production But do as you like, the mesh is there. Edit: I should also upload this to downloads Download below. Shrikes Damage Generator.c4d
    8 points
  12. Poly is a new web-based AI-driven texture generator. It is a text-to-image AI that will produce a material based on a prompt and an available Style preset. It needs about 30 seconds to generate a texture. The result will be previewed on a 3D sphere object along with the corresponding Ambient Occlusion, Albedo, Normal, Roughness and Height maps ! You can use Poly to upload and edit your own images and make them Seamless, Upscale them or even produce Normal, Height, Roughness and AO maps using AI. The app is free to use but the subscription plan lets you choose more styles and unbounds you from the maximum 2K resolution to up to 8K.
    8 points
  13. dear members and guests Happy new year from the team to all of you. Firstly a big thank you to all subscribers and members who selflessly help and are active on forums, we would not be here alive and kicking without you. Forum is growing steadily with new members joining daily. We are starting 2024 with updates to our system and overall backend improvements. Due to upgrade we also have a new theme which now corresponds to our new logo. If you find some issues with forum readability please reply here. We also added some widgets for additional information and better experience. In following period we will continue with interviews with industry professionals and would very much appreciate suggestions or contacts you may have in that direction. This is very valuable and we got a lot of praise for starting this section. Simply drop us a message : ) Youtube channel will be soon restarted with tutorials since we arranged a partnership with one of our members who is also professional voice artist. This means that we will be able to get amazing tutorials from very skilled individuals who were restrained before by lack of English. For example, Yichen (who made the core primitives) will make detailed nodes/mograph series. Best Core team
    7 points
  14. 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/
    7 points
  15. Here is the most extreme performance gain that I found during testing: 1 fps in 2023 vs. 49 fps in 2024! This is not the usual performance boost and certainly a crazy example, but there is a noticable speed increase in almost every scene. 2024performance.mp4
    7 points
  16. I am 62. I have no use for any social media outside of the Core4D. Now....get off my lawn!!!! 😀 Dave
    7 points
  17. Here's a Python Effector animation based on an idea by Expresso Mechanic on YouTube 1 platonic.c4d
    7 points
  18. 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
  19. I have a lot of thoughts about this, most of which I have already shared with Maxon. The few bugs that remain aside I am mostly happy with the current SDS modelling toolset, but there are lots of things they could add to it, and few I hope they will improve about it. 1. Smooth edges needs an 'equal spacing' option, so we can turn that bit off when we don't need it, as we often don't ! 2. The brush tools and their smoothing / relax modes need a flood button that applies a set level of brush function to just the selected polys, effectively replicating what HB modelling Bundles's HB_relax used to do. We need to remove the human, brush-based element from these operations and apply these things exactly evenly sometimes. It is noted that Iron tool does similar things, but lacks curvature awareness, so this is mainly needed for the relax mode of the brush. 3. We also need an equivalent of HB_Round edge that works in the way that did, which is not the same as the way smooth edges works. We need both, and both integrated ! 4. Last one from HBMB - the whole start retopo setup and project mesh buttons. With some limitations these tools do still work in latest Cinema, but they really should be native by now. 5. My oldest ongoing fix request - make UV mapping work with OpenSubDiv. It still doesn't since its initial integration back in R17 or so - we get weird SDS distortion that is unsolvable. 6. I want Mirror back in the r-click menu ! 7. Normal Move / Scale / Rotate work on all components now but only appear in menu for polys modelling ops. 8. Q needs to only operate SDS and not any other generator. 9. One sided Bridge patch tool needs improvement so it can patch huge gaps around corners without bulging out / ruining its usabiility. 10. As always, I'd like a boole tool that performs more reliably in more difficult (animated particularly) circumstances, and with a workflow that doesn't involve having to combine operands under nulls or connects at any point... 11. Select similar. 12. Straighten Edges also needs a make planar button set. (Flatten does this, but would be nice to have within SE tool too) 12b. I sometimes miss a dedicated 'Make Planar' button for all component selections, outside the Flatten tool. Whilst I like that tool, nothing quite beats Max's system where we make a selection and can hit a single button to instantly make it planar to any axis and in any coordinate system. We can do it with zero scaling of course, so it's more a small QoL request. 13. Axis in Normal Mode needs to orient more helpfully to single edge selections and retain changes in Axis controls needs to be more predictable and robust. 14. Slide tool needs to not fight polygon snap, as it can do sometimes. 15. Line Cut needs to work more reliably, not insert the extra points it sometimes does, and actually make cuts on any visible line it touches. Currently it misses far too many that have to be repeated. 16. Although its algorithm (particularly in advanced mode) works very well, and much better than anything we had before) I remain unconvinced that Thicken works in the best way it could. With the current system of a mere percentage between inner and outer thickness it is impossible to type specific values in each, or to get specified differing thicknesses inner and outer, which is sometimes required when working with arch-vis blueprints for example... 17. Highlight a)ngons and b) tris buttons in the Mesh Checker so we don't have to piss about with Structure manager to find them ! 18. Slide tool needs negative extension beyond borders. 19. Terminate loop - function that takes a poly selection and terminates a loop within it. CBR
    6 points
  20. Finally got around to finishing this old car model i started about 5 years ago XD never got around to rendering it either, this was a fun little evening project 😄
    6 points
  21. This guy has started doing tutorials on Scene Nodes. Leaving it here, since not many at Maxon are spending time making Youtube tutorials on their own Scene nodes. 😛
    6 points
  22. What I think is the major unsung capability, which has been building over the last couple of versions, is the procedural power brought by nodes and capsules. Due to its nature it is not upfront, but the new workflow possibilities afforded by object manager stacking of capsules, and new nodal solutions, is pretty amazing. We need more sample files and tutorials to see this aspect brought forward.
    6 points
  23. personally extremely happy with this realease. 2024 solves alot of genuine problems that users have been dealing with for a very long time. two of the most being, no proper vanilla vertex normal editing system, and viewport performance. now, maxon has finally added weighted normals and a vertex normal editing tool and has implemented it really well. we also now have a very impressive viewport speed that finally brings out the power of the new core. also, I didn't know that the deformers are multi-threaded now, which is also a huge performance improvement. pattern selection is a gigantic deal for modelers, and combines super well with the procedural modeling system that capsules provide. adding to that we now have a display of point indexes, which allows us to properly do procedural operations on specific areas of a model. in this regard we are getting much closer to houdini levels of procedural modeling. the continuous work being done for the simulation systems to be more unified is also excellent. Maxon are heading in the correct direction with Cinema4d and I am very happy to be a customer right now. Also, maxon support has been excellent, they have properly gotten back to me rergarding bugs and crashes and have helped me out. good job team and keep it up 👏 👏 👏 👏
    6 points
  24. These are the kind of comments that I honestly don't understand. Have you even tried the release for a minute? The performance gain is something the whole community has been asking for for the last 10 years and now almost every use case benefits from it. Finally the new core shines through... and your conclusion is "nothing groundbreaking"? I also don't know how one could come to the conclusion that Maxon concentrates more on ZBrush than Cinema. C4D just got a massive update in this fall release, ZBrush didn't.
    6 points
  25. Dear members We are introducing new section where we will interview industry professionals, artists, programmers and various interesting individuals across the board. Understanding what motivates and drives someone, gaining insight into minds, methods and approaches that are used, tips, tricks and plethora of valuable information in particular field of interest will make this series very interesting. Already we have couple of interviews in pipeline and some are with very elusive individuals which usually never go public but they agreed to do it for CORE4D : ) We will not shy away from asking any question, even if the subject is provocative or controversial. Stay tuned, first interview will be available shortly!
    6 points
  26. Feel free to check out my small Github Repository as well. Splinify is a generator capsule that will create curved or linear splines from edges. For curves you need to switch the capsule to Bezier mode https://github.com/bmarl/Neutron
    6 points
  27. Here is some quasi unfolding with MoGraph 🙂 175_Poly_Folding(MG+XP).c4d
    6 points
  28. Hellou everyone Due to donation of one community member who wishes to stay anonymus we are able to make primitive packs free for registered members. Member used them in daily work and wanted whole community to benefit from them. We sincirely thank the member in question, this will help running and maintaining the community. Grab them here! and We also like to thank multiple members who are reporting spam and crap posts on daily basis. Unfortunately, this is a result of heavy increase in malicious activity against our community and things sometimes get through. We are working constantly in background to keep things in check. have fun browsing! P.S. Anyone willing to make a similar contribution (known or anonymus) can contact either @Igoror @Corebot, we are open for any ideas
    6 points
  29. Hi all We are proudly presenting our second plugin based on wonderful new nodes technology for creation of parametric surfaces CORE 4D primitives 2.0 https://www.core4d.com/ipb/store/product/44-core-primitives-20/ Some things are impossible to model correctly. Expand your primitives with these premium parametric surfaces based on pure mathematics. Fully adjustable, fast, seamlessly integrated as capsule or node they are fully compatible with Cinema 4D in every respect Package contains following 12 primitives: * Menger sponge * Mosley snowflake * Fermat spiral * Archimedean spiral * Hyperbolic spiral * Tan spiral * Koch curve * Dini surface * Braided torus * Umbrella surface * Sierpinski triangle * Taubin heart Requirements: Cinema version 2023+ is required Here they are in action
    6 points
  30. I see that as something quite positive. Newtek never really focused on Lightwave, it was always playing the second fiddle behind Newteks video tools. Good luck to Andrew and the team, it would be a shame if a landmark application like Lightwave perishes.
    6 points
  31. Kicking off the new year the right way !
    5 points
  32. My understanding is that fundamentally the new c4d core has been in c4d for about a decade now, however nothing particularly changed after it was added because of how it was done and the amount of time to truly convert everything over. When the new core was added, c4d was converted to run as a plugin for the new core, so the c4d you see is actually a subset of the new c4d app. As new features were created, they were made to run under the new core. So for example the material node system runs natively in the 'real' c4d whilst xpresso nodes are legacy and thus run in the plugin sandboxed c4d. Off the top of my head, physics, poly modelling, effectors, volumes, the viewport, timeline, mograph, rendering have all been moved over. With R2024 they sort of moved the main object handling system over which is why some stuff is many times faster. However, some parts are still legacy and hold stuff back. In particular sketch, hair, motion tracking, TP and a few other bits. As these legacy parts continue to be shed, more speedups are likely,
    5 points
  33. CINEMA 4D 2024.2 Cinema 4D 2024.2 makes a number of updates to the software’s Unified Simulation Framework. Rigid bodies, support for which was added to the framework in Cinema 4D 2024.0, can now be scaled when animated by effectors, making it possible to create more realistic simulations. There are also new deactivation parameters for rigid bodies in idle states, and the option to override global damping settings for rigid bodies, soft bodies, cloth and ropes. Pyro, the gaseous fluid simulation software toolset added in Cinema 4D 2023.1, gets a new Dynamic Surface option, making it possible to emit directly from deforming meshes. It is also now possible to set Time Scale for key simulation parameters, and to post process simulation volumes with noise patterns, and simulation upresing has been extended. Animators get a new Key Reducer for reducing the number of keyframes in an animation while preserving the overall shape of the animation curve. The feature is particularly intended for processing raw motion-capture data. For procedural modeling, Cinema 4D’s node graph gets new Symmetry and Thicken nodes, plus a new Resample Spline node for simplifying splines. Workflow improvements include support for Asset Version Pinning, making it possible for artists to continue working on an older version of an asset, even where a newer version exists. Users can also now drag Substance materials into Cinema 4D to create new Redshift materials. The new Substance Material Node makes it possible to import .sbsar files into Cinema 4D, and use them directly within the native materials for Maxon’s Redshift renderer. In addition, animation is now supported when importing files in glTF format. The Project Asset Inspector now displays missing fonts and Node Assets, making it easier to relink external resources when importing a scene. Another change since the release of Cinema 4D 2024.1 in October is that Maxon has stopped listing single-product subscriptions for Cinema 4D on the front page of its online store. Instead, the front page of the store lists Maxon One subscriptions, which include Maxon’s entire product range, and joint subscriptions for Cinema 4D and Redshift. https://help.maxon.net/c4d/en-us/Default.htm#html/33010.html?TocPath=_____2 Spectrum 2 The switch to Spectrum 2 will the be first major change to the look of many Adobe applications in a decade, the firm’s current Spectrum design system having been in place for over 10 years. It governs most aspects of the way that Adobe apps look, including how interfaces are laid out, the colors and fonts they use, and the way that their icons are designed. Compared to the fanciful justifications that big companies sometimes make for design changes, Adobe’s rationale is pretty pragmatic. Although the blog post announcing Spectrum 2 includes a few choice phrases about making Adobe tools “even more intuitive, inclusive, and joyful”, its key aim is simply to improve usability. When Spectrum was designed, its products were mainly desktop applications, but now they’re increaasingly mobile or web apps, and the way they look needs to suit those platforms too. In particular, there are formal standards for making web content accessible to users with visual impairments, and Adobe describes these Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as the “definitive starting point” for Spectrum 2. Key parts of the work include giving users more control over the tonal contrast of interfaces, and ensuring that the palettes they use are accessible to people with color vision deficiences. The Spectrum 2 website goes into detail on this, but the take-home messages seem to be that compared to Adobe’s current professional-looking but rather minimal UI designs, the new interfaces will be more colorful, with heavier icons, and feature more rounded corners. According to Adobe, Spectrum 2 will begin to appear in updates to its products “later this year”, beginning with its web applications, with a “larger rollout” in 2024. https://adobe.design/stories/design-for-scale/introducing-spectrum-2 Chaos, Epic Games, Foundry, Otoy, SideFX join Alliance for OpenUSD Formed earlier this year, the AOUSD aims to make OpenUSD an ISO ratified standard, and to expand it from an entertainment-industry technology to “embrace the needs of new industries”. As well as Pixar itself, the founder members were Adobe, Apple, Autodesk and NVIDIA, with Cesium, Epic Games, Foundry, SideFX and Unity all announced as future general members. All five have now officially joined the AOUSD, as have renderer developers Chaos and Otoy, CAD modeling technology firm Spatial, retailers IKEA and Lowe’s and tech giants Hexagon and Meta. The AOUSD has now published its first two-year roadmap, which is early-stages stuff, focusing on defining a formal specification for the OpenUSD core. The Alliance has also announced a “liaison relationship” with standards body The Khronos Group over glTF, the 3D data format for web and real-time apps that Khronos oversees. It’s partly just an agreement not to tread on one another’s toes, by coordinating the roadmaps of the two standards to “avoid needless incompatibilities”. However, it fits with the AOUSD’s goal of broadening OpenUSD out to new markets, with the two organizations aiming to create pipelines for generating “sophisticated 3D content that can be pervasively experienced on a wide range of platforms”. https://aousd.org/news/alliance-for-openusd-unveils-roadmap-for-core-usd-specification-and-ecosystem-collaboration Substance 3D Designer 13.1 Substance 3D Designer 13.1 streamlines workflow in the software’s node graph, particularly when using Frames to organize the graph visually, or to add comments to it. Frames now automatically expand when moving the nodes in them around, as shown above, and there is a separate option to refit the frame inwards to fit its contents. It is also now possible to use HTML markup to format the text in a frame’s description. General workflow improvements include support for fuzzy search in the node menu, better node placement when pasting nodes from another graph, and auto-saving of 2D View options. In addition, Substance 3D Designer can now export files in AxF format, the vendor-neutral standard for transferring materials between CAD and DCC tools, supported in visualization apps. Designer itself has been able to import AxF files since 2017, but the update makes it possible to export changes as a new layer in the AxF file, rather than as a Substance .sbsar file. However, AxF is now disabled in the Linux edition of the software. Substance 3D Designer 13.1 is available for Windows 10+, CentOS 7.0/Ubuntu 20.04+ Linux and macOS 11.0+, Perpetual licences are available via Steam and cost $149.99. Substance 3D Designer is also available via Adobe’s Substance 3D subscriptions. Substance 3D Texturing subscriptions cost $19.99/month or $219.88/year; Substance 3D Collection subscriptions cost $49.99/month or $549.88/year. Subscriptions to the Linux edition require a Creative Cloud Plan for Teams priced at $1,198.88/year. https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-designer/release-notes/version-13-1.html V-Ray 6 for Cinema 4D Update 2 V-Ray 6 for Cinema 4D Update 2 adds initial support for rendering scenes created in real-time renderer Enscape: a feature previously introduced in the V-Ray for 3ds Max and SketchUp. Users also get beta support for the .vrscene format, making it possible to import scenes from other editions of V-Ray, and a new live link to Vantage, Chaos’s real-time renderer. Support for Open Shading Language has been reinstated, with the OSL Material making it possible to load OSL shader code files. In addition, it is possible to import and render MaterialX .mtlx materials via the VRMat material. The material conversion system introduced in V-Ray 6 for Cinema 4D has been extended, with new options to convert Cinema 4D materials to V-Ray Classic materials, and Redshift materials to V-Ray Node materials. V-Ray GPU, the software’s GPU/CPU render engine, can now render assets generated by Enmesh, V-Ray’s new surface geometry replication system. For manipulating render passes, there is a new Shadow Select option in the Light Select render element, and support for chromatic aberration in the V-Ray Frame Buffer. In addition, IES lights have been added to online asset library Chaos Cosmos, now included with all V-Ray subscriptions. V-Ray 6 for Cinema 4D Update 2 is compatible with Cinema 4D R21+, running on 64-bit Windows 8.1+ and macOS 10.14+. You can find more detailed system requirements here. The software is rental-only, with node-locked V-Ray Solo subscriptions priced at $466.80/year, and floating V-Ray Premium subscriptions priced at $694.80/year https://docs.chaos.com/display/VC4D/What's+New+in+V-Ray+6%2C+update+2 Redshift 3.5.22 As with the previous release, the update improves performance in Redshift RT, the software’s experimental near-real-time render engine. Key changes include asynchronous shader compilation, reducing the time to first pixel by using temporary flat shaders for initial previews, then replacing them with compiled shaders. Redshift RT also now supports texture compression to reduce GPU memory usage, with five compression presets making it possible to trade performance against visual quality. To improve interactivity when navigating scenes, users can now choose Russian Roulette sampling, which randomly skips rays that have less impact on the final image, or adjust undersampling settings. In addition, on NVIDIA GPUs, Redshift RT now supports DLSS, making it possible to boost performance by rendering frames at lower resolution than the viewport, then upscaling them. In addition, Cinema 4D users get improved support for Substance materials in .sbsar format via the new Substance 3D Material Node in Cinema 4D 2024.2. 3ds Max users get support for the Redshift Color Correct shader Redshift 3.5.22 is available for Windows 10, glibc 2.17+ Linux and macOS 12.6/13.3. The renderer’s integration plugins are compatible with 3ds Max 2018+, Blender 2.83+, Cinema 4D R21+, Houdini 17.5+ (18.0+ on macOS), Katana 4.0v1+ and Maya 2018+. The software is rental-only, with subscriptions costing $45/month or $264/year. https://redshift.maxon.net/topic/49701/version-3-5-22-is-now-available-2023-12 D5 Render 2.6 First released in 2021, D5 Render is an increasingly powerful architectural renderer with linking plugins for a range of DCC and CAD tools, including 3ds Max, Blender and Cinema 4D. As well as rendering scenes directly from a linked DCC app, users can import models in FBX, Alembic or SketchUp’s SKP format, apply PBR materials, and assign HDRIs, lights and LUTs. Other features include object scattering and shot dressing tools, support for volumetric and particle-based effects, and path-based animation tools for crowd characters or vehicles. The software supports DXR-based hardware-accelerated ray tracing on current NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPUs, and is capable of rendering 16K still images and panoramas, and 4K videos. The community edition of the software is free for commercial use, and is fully functional, with commercial Pro subscriptions adding access to advanced features and an online asset library. To that, D5 Render 2.6 adds new AI-based tools, including a new feature for matching the atmosphere of a render automatically to a source image, and AI-generated texture maps. At the time of writing, Dimension 5 Techs hasn’t posted the full release notes for D5 Render 2.6, but this is the summary of the remaining new features from its email newsletter: Optimized Video Editor Multimedia Material Transparency UV Randomizer Procedurally-generated Vines Human Point-of-View Walk Mode Local Exposure New HDRI Library New Futuristic Particles New Low-poly Trees File Compression D5 Render is due for release on 14 December 2024. The software is available for Windows 10+. It requires compatible GPU: Dimension 5 recommends a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060+, an AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT+ or an Intel Arc A3+. Integration plugins are available for 3ds Max 2014-2016 and 2018+, ArchiCAD 21+, Blender 2.93+, Cinema 4D R20+, Revit 2018.3+, Rhino 6.1+ and SketchUp 2017+. The Community edition is free; subscriptions to the Pro edition, which includes advanced features, access to the full asset library and sequence rendering, cost $38/month or $360/year. https://forum.d5render.com/t/release-notes-of-d5-render/ V-Ray 6 for SketchUp Update 2 V-Ray 6 for SketchUp Update 2 features a major update to Scatter, the software’s object scattering toolset, adding new modes for scattering objects along curves, on UV grids, and within bounding boxes. It is also now possible to scatter lights as well as geometry. The V-Ray Frame Buffer (VFB) gets support for chromatic aberration, and the option to use solid colors in the background layer. V-Ray GPU, the software’s GPU/CPU render engine, can now render assets generated by Enmesh, V-Ray’s new surface geometry replication system. There are also updates to handling of IES lights, curve editing, and workflow with cloud-rendering system Chaos Cloud. V-Ray 6 for SketchUp Update 2 is compatible with SketchUp 2019+, running on 64-bit Windows 10+ and macOS 10.15+. The software is rental-only, with node-locked V-Ray Solo subscriptions priced at $466.80/year, and floating V-Ray Premium subscriptions priced at $694.80/year. https://docs.chaos.com/display/VSKETCHUP/V-Ray+6 Silo 2024.0 and Milo 2024.0 First released in 2003, Silo built up a reputation as an efficient, focused modelling package. It has a streamlined set of polygonal and subdivision surface modelling tools, a topology brush for drawing new topology over a reference object, and interactive real-time UV unwrapping. As well as creating low-poly assets for games or real-time applications, it can be used to rough out base models for sculpting in ZBrush, and supports Pixologic’s GoZ bridge system. Although development stalled during the 2010s, the pace picked up again with the release of Silo 2021, with Nevercenter also launching Milo, a new standalone Unreal-Engine-based real-time renderer and VR viewer. Since then, Nevercenter has been putting out relatively small, but regular, updates to the software, with Silo 2024.0 adding one new feature, File Instance. It’s a file-referencing system, making it possible to use external files – either separate Silo files, or 3D models in standard file formats – as instances within a Silo project. When the external file is updated, the Silo model will update automatically. The update adds a new gradient background that can be used to create a sky backdrop or create more stylized effects. It’s locked to screen space, so it remains fixed as a model is rotated. Silo and Milo are available for Windows 10 and macOS 10.15+. Perpetual licences of Silo have an MSRP of $159, which includes Milo. The updates are free to anyone who has bought the software in the past year. https://nevercenter.com/silo/features/#release_notes Corona 11 for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D The intervals between major updates to Corona have been getting shorter recently, so Corona 11 comes only five months after Corona 10. Perhaps as a result, despite a new Tile Map for generating procedural tiles, and an Edge Map for weathering the edges of thin objects, the changes are primarily updates to existing features. Chaos Scatter, the current object scattering system, gets new options for scattering objects based on altitude, or oriented towards a Look At target. In addition the integrated version of Open Image Denoise, Intel’s open-source render denoiser, has been updated to OIDN 2, and now supports GPU denoising: currently, on NVIDIA GPUs only. The 3ds Max edition also gets the Corona Power Tools, a set of scripts for automating repetitive tasks, like replacing objects, randomizing their transforms, or cleaning up a scene. The Cinema 4D edition gets support for Pyro, Cinema’s new smoke and fire simulation toolset. Corona 11 is compatible with 3ds Max 2016+ and Cinema 4D R17+. The software is sold subscription-only online. Corona Solo subscriptions cost $53.90/month or $358.80/year. Corona Premium subscriptions cost $67.90/month or $478.80/year. https://blog.corona-renderer.com/chaos-corona-11-released/#more-10526 Autograph 2023.11 Released earlier this year, Autograph is pitched as a next-gen tool for motion design and VFX. Like After Effects, it uses a layer-based compositing model, with its timeline featuring a standard layer stack and dope sheet, but combines it with a 3D mode for manipulating 3D assets. 3D workflow is based around Universal Scene Description, and the software has its own integrated real-time physically based renderer, Filament. Autograph sells itself on ease of use, with its system of Generators pitched as a simpler alternative to a node graph, and Modifiers described as a simpler alternative to expressions. However, its major claim is to be the “first responsive design video software”, with a workflow geared towards artists who need to deliver a project at multiple resolutions and aspect ratios. Autograph 2023.11 “completely refactors” the software’s vector graphics and text engines. New functionality in the vector graphics engine include a new system of Shape Layers, the option to organize 2D shapes into Shape Groups, and a Shape Instancer for instatiating shapes. A new Table to Path Generator draws vector paths based on CSV files, for data-driven animation. There are also a number of new Modifiers, including options to modify shapes with procedural noise, or according to the frequencies of an audio mix. The new text engine comes with a new Text panel for editing text, with support for adjusting text styling or alignment on a per-character or per-paragraph basis. All of the text formatting parameters can be animated, and a new Text path Generator converts text to deformable, animatable paths for more complex effects. The update also extends Autograph’s audio toolset, with imported audio files now visible in a separate, dedicated section of the timeline, synced with the image section. A new Audio Mix container makes it possible to mix audio tracks, with the option to nest mixes by using one Audio Mix as a sub-track within another. There are also new Channel Pan and Curve Equalizer modifiers for filtering audio. And for generating animation procedurally from audio, a new Audio Analyzer Generator uses a track’s frequency spectrum to drive any parameter that can be animated in real time. Autograph 2023.11 also comes with a sizeable list of workflow improvements, particularly to the animation controls. A new system of Timeline Work Areas makes it possible to define playback ranges of interest; and the keyframe editing panel is now available in the Dope Sheet as well as the Curve Editor. The software also now has a CPU renderer that can be used as a fallback when rendering projects on machines that have no GPU, such as CPU-only render nodes. It currently only supports Autograph’s 2D features, but 3D support is planned for a “next release”. In addition, Autograph is compliant with the current CY2023 specification for VFX Reference Platform, and now supports Rocky Linux, widely being adopted as a successor to CentOS. Autograph is compatible with Windows 10+, Ubuntu 20.04+ and RHEL/Rocky Linux 8+, and macOS 10.15+. The software supports Apple Silicon processors natively on macOS 11.0+. Perpetual licences of Autograph Creator, for users with annual revenue under $1 million/year, cost $945; rental costs $35/month or $315/year. Perpetual licences of Autograph Studio cost $1,795; rental costs $59/month or $599/year. https://www.left-angle.com/public/doc-autograph/dev-master/chapters/whats_new/2023.11.1.html#general iClone 8.4 and Character Creator 4.4 iClone 8.4 is by far the bigger update, adding a complete new crowd simulation toolset. Users can distribute crowd characters throughout a 3D scene using a set of new Scatter tools, with options to spawn actors in a specific area, on top of objects, or in preset formations. The movement of characters around the scene can be controlled by a game-style navmesh, or by creating linear paths for them to follow, using simple point-and-click controls. Built-in flocking and avoidance behaviours control how close crowd actors get to one another. To very the appearance of crowd characters, users can arrange them into Actor Groups with custom material settings. The groups can then be paired with specific motions. To improve performance, characters can be switched to Lite mode, which locks certain animation functions; and the toolset supports DDS image compression to reduce load times. iClone’s Motion Director toolset, which lets users animate characters semi-automatically using game-style controls, also gets a sizeable update. Key changes include the option to mix custom upper body motions with Motion Director-generated leg movements. Characters driven by Motion Director also now have customisable avoidance settings. In addition, the update introduces a new run-time solution to reduce foot slippage, although it’s currently limited to the embedded Motion Director packs (iMDs). Character Creator 4.4 is a smaller update, with the software now including a HumanIK (HIK) profile when exporting a character in FBX format, for use in apps that support HIK, like Maya. Search workflow in the Content Manager has also been improved, with a search history, support for multi-word searches, and greater support for custom tags. Both iClone 8.4 and Character Creator 4.4 are available for Windows 7+. New perpetual licences cost $299 for Character Creator, and $599 for iClone. Both updates are free to existing users. https://forum.reallusion.com/544738/iClone-84-Now-Available Substance 3D Modeler 1.5 Released last year, Substance 3D Modeler lets users sculpt both organic and hard-surface models in virtual reality, or in desktop mode using a mouse and keyboard. Like its precursor, Medium, which Adobe acquired in 2019, it uses Signed Distance Fields to represent 3D space, rather than treating 3D geometry as a polygonal mesh. As a result, workflow combines elements of digital sculpting and Boolean modelling, with users able to build up forms with virtual clay, then join them or cut into them with Boolean operations. You can find more details in this story on Substance 3D Modeler 1.0. Substance 3D Modeler 1.5 updates the software’s surfacing toolset, adding a new Flatten tool and updating the existing Buildup and Smooth tools. The Flatten tool, as the name implies, creates a flat surface on the virtual clay, and is intended for both hard-surface and organic modeling. The Smooth tool now supports movement- or rate-based smoothing for more precise control. The Buildup tool, for building up or carving away clay from a surface, now supports custom alphas, and the option to set the size and rotation of the brush when in single stamping mode. You can see the new stamping workflow in action in the video above. In addition, Crease is now a tool in its own right, not an option within the Buildup tool. The update also makes it possible to get a more accurate preview of the way that a model will appear in other software, with initial support image-based lighting (IBL) and PBR materials. Users can now set environment images to generate highlights and reflections on a model’s surface, as shown above, although it isn’t currently possible to import custom HDRs. The PBR material system is currently described as “basic”, with users able to set roughness and metallic values for a material layer, and export the material IDs to Substance 3D Painter. The update also establishes the basis of an export preset system, with users able to pick from readymade presets for common use cases like 3D printing and real-time rendering. The option to create and share custom presets is planned for a future release. Other changes include the option to open files while working in VR mode, and a new Fill button in the Color Picker for filling the current material layer with a solid color. Substance 3D Modeler 1.5 is compatible with Windows 10+, and these VR headsets. It is available via Substance 3D Collection subscriptions, which cost $49.99/month or $549.88/year. Perpetual licences are available via Steam, and cost $149.99. https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-modeler/release-notes/v1-5-release-notes.html https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/substance-3d-modeler/release-1-5/highlightclips/ExportPresets.mp4 After Effects 24.1 Adobe has been overhauling 3D compositing workflows in After Effects for some time now, beginning by introducing new 3D gizmos and camera controls in 2020. Workflow remains layer-based, but it is possible to manipulate layers in 3D space. The latest update is the probably the most significant addition to the toolset since that release, moving a number of new 3D features that had previously only been available in separate beta builds of the software into the main stable release. Of those, the one that has been in beta the longest is native 3D model import. Users can now import 3D models in glTF and GLB format directly into After Effects, rather than having to use a third-party plugin like Element 3D. OBJ import remains in beta. As well as geometry, 3D lights and cameras can be imported in glTF and GLB format. Imported models can be rendered in the same 3D space as native After Effects cameras, lights and other 3D layers using the new Advanced 3D renderer. First announced in September, it’s a hardware-agnostic GPU-based render engine, and is intended for final-quality rendering, unlike the existing 3D Draft preview mode. According to Adobe, it should let motion graphics and visualization artists render less demanding shots directly inside After Effects without having to round-trip shots to DCC applications like Cinema 4D, a version of which is included with After Effects. The Advanced 3D renderer also supports image-based lighting for photorealistic work, and 2D/3D workflows for creating more stylized images like the one shown above. The former makes it possible to light objects in the workspace with a HDRI environment map. It only supports the .hdr format, but you can convert images in other formats inside After Effects. The latter makes it possible to use a rendered frame from a 3D model layer as a source, in order to apply 2D effects to portions of 3D scenes. According to Adobe, users can create “highly stylized renders using effects that reference another layer, such as Displacement Map, Vector Blur [and] Calculations”. In addition, After Effects 24.1 introduces new 3D snapping options. It is now possible to snap layers in 3D space while dragging the constrained X, Y, and Z handles and dual-axis combo handles of the 3D Gizmo, in order to position them more precisely. Finally, outside the 3D toolset, After Effects’ animation presets have been updated. The release notes don’t go into a lot of detail, but as well as adding new presets, existing presets have been updated to “incorporate more modern design elements”. After Effects 24.1 is available for Windows 10+ and macOS 12.0+ on a rental-only basis. In the online documentation, the update is also referred to as the December 2023 release. Single-app After Effects subscriptions now cost $34.49/month or $263.88/year, Adobe having raised the prices of many Creative Cloud subscriptions last month. https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/whats-new/2024-1.html Plasticity 1.4 For anyone creating models for fabrication, the key changes in Plasticity 1.4 will be the new Dimension and Measure commands. The former sets absolute dimensions for parts of a model, including the distance between faces, the dimensions of primitives, and the radii of circles, cones, cylinders and fillets. The latter lets users create 3D annotations showing the distance between two points on a model, simply by clicking on those points in the viewport. The annotations are aligned to axes, and update automatically as the model is edited. The update also adds new options for creating 2D curves, including Tangent Circle and Tangent Arc, and Offset Vertex, for adding new vertices to curves. Workflow improvements include support for Blender-style scene navigation, including [Alt]-MMB to center the view, and the option to hold [Alt] while orbiting to snap to an orthogonal view. For users with Studio licenses, other changes include support for importing files in FBX, DWG and DXF format. The latter two are only available on Windows and Linux. In addition, Plasticity now supports 3DConnexion’s SpaceMouse input devices. Plasticity 1.4 is available for Windows 10+, Ubuntu 22.04+ Linux and macOS 12.0+. It runs on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. The update is free to existing users. Perpetual node-locked Indie licences cost $149, and import and export files in OBJ, STEP and Parasolid XT format. Studio licences support a wider range of file formats and cost $299. https://www.plasticity.xyz/ Magic Nodes 2 Released earlier this year, Magic Nodes lets artists build up a composite by wiring together nodes in a graph which the extension then translates into standard After Effects layers. As well as providing the flexibility of native node-based compositing tools when it comes to modifying composites, the extension removes the need to create precomps, improving performance on complex shots. Whereas the initial release was focused on compositing rendered elements into video, Magic Nodes 2 adds support for 3D layers and cameras, opening up a wider range of use cases. The update also adds the option to create multiple node graphs within a single After Effects project, and to keep more complex graphs organized by grouping nodes. In addition, the plugin is now GPU-accelerated – via OpenGL, so it should be hardware-agnostic – and supports After Effects’ Multi-Frame Rendering system. Magic Nodes 2 is compatible with After Effects 2017+ on Windows and macOS. A Basic perpetual licence costs $89, and is limited to five graphs per project file; a Premium plan costs $149, and includes access to sample projects and one year’s maintenance. https://hollywoodillusion.com/magic-nodes Ornatrix 8 for 3ds Max Ornatrix 8 for 3ds Max introduces several new features originally released in Ornatrix 4 for Maya, the Maya edition of the plugin, earlier this year. They include Graft Grooms: a new type of preset designed to make it possible to create entire grooms through a simple point-and-click workflow. Users drag across the surface of a character to draw a graft surface, from which Ornatrix generates the hair automatically. There are presets for different hairstyles, but users can also create their own custom grafts, which can then be reused between projects or shared with other artists. Other changes include a new system for ‘boxing’ Ornatrix operators, which combines set of operators in a single Groom operator. Unlike the existing Bake command, operators combined in this way remain procedurally editable, and can be unboxed again to make it possible to edit them individually. There release also features update to many of the key modifiers, including Surface Comb, Edit Guides, Clump, Curling, and to the hair baking system. Under the hood, Ornatrix has been moved to Embree 3, a newer version of Intel’s CPU ray tracing library, “significantly” improving performance. Support for the Alembic file format has been extended, including the option to export propagated strands like feathers, and a MXS flag when exporting grooms to Unreal Engine. Ornatrix 8 is compatible with 3ds Max 2014+. New perpetual licenses now cost $599; rental costs $50/month or $420/year. https://ephere.com/plugins/autodesk/max/ornatrix/docs/8/Whats_New_in_Version_8.html
    5 points
  34. In the musical mograph thread I found that in your scenes was that you are using very high substep settings. This is what caused the gravity to stop working in at some point. That's not really a bug but a limitation of using 32 bit precision. The system uses 32 bits (Bullet is 64) for better performance. What happens is that the value changes per substep are becoming so small that 32 bits can't represent them anymore. This is also explained in the manual btw. Reduce the substeps and it will work as expected. For a simple scene like that (at least when it comes to the simulation aspect of it) you won't need them anyway. In the other thread I didn't spot any issues other than several pages of discussing weight vs. mass/density. In the musical mograph scene you are using a gravity of 3000. What would you expect to happen to your weight in this scenario? You may have an intuition for how heavy a ball of 20 cm radius of a certain material is. But do you also have an intuition for how heavy that would be if the mass of the earth was about 3x larger than what it is? If I missed any bugs in that thread, feel free to point them out. An as a general remark: There is software that simulates physics with a precision that can tell you whether your real world bridge will collapse or not. But it will be busy for many hours until you get the result. Any simulation is an approximation and has to decide whether it wants to favour precision or interactivity. The new simulation system in C4D does the latter. The idea is to mimic physical behaviour with high enough frame rates, that you can quickly do iterations to tweak the sim until you are happy with the result.
    5 points
  35. Hello Everyone! Do you want to animate characters? But hate rigging? I'd like to present Ace5 Studio's various characters. https://shop.ace5studios.com/ Just recently released Melissa, but i don't think i posted my other recent packs here either, so enjoy. You can use MELISSA25 to get 25% off Melissa 🙂 Cheers, Aleksey
    5 points
  36. 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
    5 points
  37. I agree with Dave’s post just before - there have been so many threads in the past where it was noted, ‘Maxon can’t look at updating such-and-such a feature until they address the underlying core performance and object handling, this or that feature really requires the internal architecture to be sorted out before they can address those other issues’ etc. I’m probably paraphrasing badly but this was noted more than once. Some threads here and on Reddit are downbeat because they think the release is ‘just a speed increase’, but I suspect they’re missing the bigger picture. Everyone can read between the lines but I suspect the Maxon devs are happier this release is behind them rather than ahead of them. And even with a couple of less feature heavy updates here and there, generally the releases from last year on have shown a lot of promising stuff finally arriving, so I expect C4D 2024 to help this process along quite a bit. There were posts years ago noting that a Bodypaint update would likely require a big internal rewrite before they could look at it. We seem to be finally arriving at that station, so who knows.
    5 points
  38. So what ? With that logic Autodesk is not the MaxStudio company. Microsoft is not the Windows company. And Rolls-Royce is not a car company. I think the hard-to-swallow pill for some users is the fact that C4D is part of an ecosystem of CG applications. All successful artists use more than one app to achieve the best results. As long as there are huge competitors out there with years of experience and R&D on specific areas the following will never be part of C4D or updated and if they do they will still not reach the same level of their competitors. Gas simulation (Pyro is not that great, it's better than nothing and without RS it's just air) Liquid simulation Granular simulation Garment simulation (it's hard to reach Marvelous Designer quality) Crowd simulation Particle simulation Video Composition Hybrid GPU-CPU rendering Procedural Texturing Rendering Sculpting Maxon provides applications to accommodate the following weaknesses of C4D: Sculpting - Forger, ZBrush Rendering - RedShift Motion Capture - Moves by Maxon Particle Simulations - Red Giant Trapcode Video Editing - Red Giant Universe Video VFX - Red Giant VFX Video Retouch - Red Giant Magic Bullet Video Compositing - Cineware Bridge to UE - Cineware for UE For me they look like the old Modules C4D had up to - I think - R12. You pay, you take a module. Now you pay you take a whole app. Are you serious ? They have more incentive they can handle ! They have literary 722 pages of descriptions of features. Why do you think they outsource Capsules to Chris Schmidt ? Why are they still hiring ? It's because developers aren't easy to find. Being a developer isn't a profession like being a baker. Every little corner of C4D that can be polished, every crevice in every feature that can be filled, every CG area that can be occupied, every available technology that can be exploited has been documented. It's just a matter of planning in order to develop what is best in terms of client needs, current trends, urgency of deployment, time of development and future usefulness. It's a hard balance. The future is bright as long as there is no WWIII and climate change.
    5 points
  39. I try to get myself kicked off the beta by being overly blunt at least once or twice a year, hasn't worked yet.
    5 points
  40. Fused 2023.3 Insydium has released Fused 2023.3, the latest update to its collection of Cinema 4D add-ons. The update includes new versions of particle and multiphysics systems NeXus and X-Particles, plant generator Taiao, terrain generator TerraformFX, and procedural modelling toolset MeshTools. NeXus gets the option to use particle properties to drive parameter values, new modifiers for object avoidance, flocking and generating cellular growth patterns, and a new simulation up-resing system. X-Particles gets the option to generate new particle effects from particle caches. In addition, all of the products are availble as perpetual licences via Insydium’s Fused Complete product bundle, as well as via subscription. Whereas a perpetual licence of X-Particles and 90-day trials of the other plugins used to cost $715, the new $1,336.50 Fused Complete option provides a full set of perpetual licences. The price of 12 months’ maintenance has fallen by $20, to $337.50, while the price of an annual subscription has risen by just over $28/year, to $526.50/year. The Fused plugins are compatible with Cinema 4D R19+, running on Windows 7+ and macOS 10.13+, with the exception of TerraformFX, which requires Cinema 4D R20+. Fused Complete costs $1,336.50 and includes perpetual licences of all of the software, while 12 months’ maintenance costs $337.50. Fused subscriptions cost $526.50/year. Prices exclude tax. https://insydium.ltd/news/latest-news/insydium-fused-2023.3-update/ https://insydium.ltd/products/whats-new-in-fused/ Grove 2.0 F12 – aka developer Wybren van Keulen – has released The Grove 2.0, a major new version of the software for generating biologically plausible tree models. The release transforms The Grove from a Blender plugin to a high-performance standalone application with add-ons for both Blender and Houdini. Other changes include better simulation of the way that trees bend under gravity, a new Stake tool for adjusting the forms of the trees generated, and a new system of UV islands for unique bark details. The Grove takes a parametric approach to generating trees, with controls that mimic the factors determining the forms of real plants, resulting in more realistic-looking models. Once the overall form of a tree has been set, The Grove fills in details by using ‘Twigs’: instanced geometry representing not only actual twigs, but leaves, flowers and fruit, sold separately to the core app. The resulting textured geometry can be exported from the user’s host software in standard file formats, including FBX and OBJ, for use in other DCC applicaitons. Users can also generate wind and growth animations for trees, which can be exported in Alembic format. The Grove 2.0 is a major update, changing the software from a Blender add-on to to a standalone application written in high-performance programming language Rust. The new Grove Core, which lacks a user interface, does all of the under-the-hood work, running tree growth simulations and generating the resulting 3D models. Users control the software via add-ons for host applications – which now include Houdini as well as Blender. The Houdini plugin makes it possible to control the form of a 3D tree via a geometry (SOP) network, although it’s officially in beta, and currently lacks the interactive editing tools of the Blender plugin. For Blender users, benefits of the new architecture include performance improvements of “anywhere from 5 to 20 times”, and the fact that simulations are now portable. Simulations are saved to the working .blend or .hip file, and move with that file. The update also reworks the way that bending of branches is simulated, causing trees to respond more naturally to gravity, and dispensing with the old Solidify and Fatigue controls. The Grove also now more accurately mimics the way that trees shed their lower branches as they mature. New tree-editing tools include Stake, which keeps trees upright until a specified height; and there have been updates to the Auto Prune system and the Attract and Deflect forces. Other changes include a new system of UV islands for painting unique details onto tree bark, supplementing The Grove’s existing seamlessly repeating bark textures. The Grove 2.0 is compatible with Blender 2.80+ and Houdini 19.5, running on Windows, Linux and macOS. The Starter edition has a MSRP of €89 (around $97). The Indie edition has a MSRP of €149 (around $162). The Studio edition has a MSRP of €720 ($783). Individual Twigs cost €9 ($10). https://www.thegrove3d.com/releases/the-grove-2-0/ https://www.thegrove3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/SoFast.mp4 https://www.thegrove3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/HoudiniPhysics.mp4 Autograph 2023.6 Released earlier this year, Autograph is pitched as a next-gen tool for motion design and visual effects. Like After Effects, it uses a layer-based compositing model, with its timeline featuring a standard layer stack and dope sheet, but it combines it with a 3D mode for viewing and manipulating 3D assets. 3D workflow is based around Universal Scene Description, and the software has its own real-time physically based renderer, Filament, which can be used to render 3D assets for integration into compositions. Autograph sells itself on ease of use, with its system of Generators pitched as a simpler alternative to a node graph for creating procedural content, and its Modifiers described as a simpler alternative to expressions. However, its major claim is to be the “first responsive design video software”, with a workflow geared towards artists who need to deliver a project at multiple resolutions and aspect ratios from a single file. It can also be used to generate multiple design or language variants of a project by connecting database data in CSV format to the software’s Instancer. The tools can be teamed to track deforming surfaces and generate matching animated UV maps, making it possible to create digital makeup or tattoo effects, or apply logos to clothing, as shown in this video. In addition, Autograph is now compatible with online GLSL shader-authoring platform Shadertoy, making it possible to copy shader code from the site and paste it into a Shadertoy Generator within Autograph. Updates to existing features include new Shape Path Generators and Modifiers for creating and manipulating 2D shapes, including Circle, Rectangle, Polygon, Star, and Trim Path. The 3D toolset gets a new Camera UV Project Modifier, and support for Catmull-Clark and Bilinear subdivision for 3D mesh primitives generated in Autograph. Improvements to camera workflow include the option to import animated cameras from DCC applications or tracking software like SynthEyes via USD format. There are also UX improvements to Project Panel, Viewer Panel and Properties Panel. Users of Autograph Studio, the full edition of the software, also get a new Python API, making it possible to automate common tasks or extend the UI with custom PySide panels. Pipeline integration changes include support for hardware-accelerated AV1 encoding on AMD, Intel and Nvidia GPUs. Left Angle also now seems to be focusing its attention primarily on Autograph. Although Artisan – its cloud-based shot review platform, launched at the same time as Autograph – is still mentioned on the website, it is no longer promoted on the homepage or listed in the online store. Autograph is compatible with Windows 10+, CentOS 7/Ubuntu 20.04+ Linux, and macOS 10.15+. The software supports Apple Silicon processors natively on macOS 11.0+. Perpetual licences of Autograph Creator, for users with annual revenue under $1 million/year, have a MSRP of $945; rental costs $35/month or $315/year. Perpetual licences of Autograph Studio have a MSRP of $1,795; rental costs $59/month or $599/year. https://www.left-angle.com/#news|id=92 https://www.left-angle.com/public/doc-autograph/dev-master/chapters/whats_new/2023.6.1.html Open Image Denoise 2 Intel has released Open Image Denoise 2, the next major version of its open-source render denoiser, integrated into CG applications like Blender, Cinema 4D and Houdini. Open Image Denoise 2.0 (OIDN 2.0), released in late May, made the formerly CPU-only denoiser compatible with current AMD, Intel and Nvidia GPUs. The 2.01 update, released last week, improves performance on Intel integrated graphics. First released in 2019, Open Image Denoise is a set of “high-performance, high-quality denoising filters for images rendered with ray tracing”. The technology is now integrated into a range of DCC tools and renderers, including Arnold, Blender’s Cycles render engine, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Modo, V-Ray and Unity, where it is used to denoise lightmaps. OIDN builds on neural network library oneDNN, meaning that like Nvidia’s OptiX GPU denoising technology – also integrated into many renderers – it uses AI techniques to accelerate denoising. But unlike OptiX, OIDN isn’t hardware-specific: while it was designed for Intel 64 CPUs, it supports “compatible architectures”, including AMD CPUs and Apple’s M-Series processors. To that list, we can now add GPU architectures: Intel previewed GPU support in Open Image Denoise last year, with the functionality becoming publicly available in OIDN 2.0. (Confession time: the update was actually released at the end of May, but we only spotted it while researching a story on Chaos’s Vantage 2.0 renderer, which incorporates OIDN.) The change should enable software developers to take advantage of the full processing power of users’ machines, and to support CPU and GPU denoising with a single code base. As with CPU denoising, GPU denoising is hardware-agnostic, being supported on AMD GPUs via HIP, on Intel GPUs via SYCL, and on Nvidia GPUs via CUDA. OIDN 2.0 supports AMD’s RDNA 2 and 3 architectures, so it should be compatible with Radeon RX 6000 and 7000 Series and Radeon Pro W6000 and W7000 Series GPUs. It also supports Intel’s own Xe-HPG architecture, used in new discrete GPUs from the Arc Pro A-Series. And it supports Nvidia GPU architectures from Volta onwards, so it should be compatible with desktop cards as far back as 2018, including GeForce RTX consumer GPUs and Quadro RTX and RTX workstation GPUs. OIDN is also supported on the integrated GPUs in Intel’s Core, Pentium and Celeron processors, with the 2.01 update improving performance on integrated graphics under Linux. Open Image Denoise 2 is compatible with 64-bit Windows, Linux and macOS. You can find a full list of CPU and GPU architectures supported on the OIDN website. Both source code and compiled builds are available under an Apache 2.0 licence. https://www.openimagedenoise.org/ Unity 2023.1 Unity has released Unity 2023.1, the latest tech stream update to the game engine and real-time renderer. It features changes throughout the software, including support for ARM-based Windows devices like new Surface Pro and ThinkPad tablets, updates to multiplayer networking, and better support for XR devices. New water-authoring tools create waves and surface currents Higher-quality hair and fur rendering Better rendering of skin and transparent objects Screen space lens flares New LightBaker backend makes it possible to edit scenes during light baking The Unity Editor is compatible with Windows 10+, Ubuntu 18.04/20.04 Linux, and macOS 10.14+. Unity is only available via subscriptions. Free Personal subscriptions can be used by anyone with revenue of up to $100,000/year. They have a non-removable splash screen, plus the restrictions listed in the comparison table of the subscription plans. Plus subscriptions cost $399/year. Pro subscriptions cost $2,040/year. https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/2023-1-tech-stream-now-available https://docs.unity3d.com/2023.1/Documentation/Manual/WhatsNew20231.html Multiverse | USD 8.1 for Maya The update adds a new light linking editor, making it possible to perform light linking between lights in the Maya dependency graph and scene items in the USD stage. Light linking is currently supported in 3Delight, Arnold and Redshift. It is also now possible to snap Maya geometry to Multiverse compounds in the viewport. Multiverse | USD 8.1 is available for Maya 2018+ on Windows, Linux and macOS. It is compatible with Arnold 5.2+, 3Delight 2.0+, Redshift 3.0.67+, RenderMan 23.2+ and V-Ray 4.3+. The software is rental-only, with Pro Offline subscriptions starting at $270/year for interactive floating licences and $90/year for render licences. Pro Cloud subscriptions cost $30/month or $300/year. There is also a free Solo edition for indie artists, which can be used in commercial projects. https://j-cube.jp/solutions/multiverse/ https://j-cube.jp/solutions/multiverse/docs/setup/release-notes.html#v8-1-0-2023-06-30 Wonder Studio Wonder Dynamics has launched Wonder Studio, its much-hyped AI-powered online platform for inserting 3D characters into video footage, after several months in closed beta. The platform “automatically animates, lights, and composes CG characters into a live-action scene”, tracking and replacing an actor in the source footage with a 3D character, even matching the facial animation. It supports custom characters created in Blender and Maya, and can export clean plates, roto masks, and tracking and motion-capture data for use in previs, motion graphics and VFX pipelines. Wonder Studio got a lot of attention in the mainstream tech press when it was announced earlier this year. In part, that was due to the names associated with Wonder Dynamics: the firm was co-founded by actor Tye Sheridan, while the advisory board includes Steven Spielberg, who directed Sheridan in Ready Player One. However, the buzz also came from an impressive demo reel (embedded above), and the fact that Wonder Studio is designed to slot into existing previs and VFX workflows, not to replace them. According to Wonder Dynamics, the platform’s AI automates “80%-90% of manual VFX work”, particularly repetitive tasks like roto, leaving artists more time to focus on creative decisions. s well as simply rendering out the resulting video, which can be done at up to 4K resolution, Wonder Studio can also export the data that was used to generate it. That includes clean plates and alpha masks for the actor, both exported as a sequence of PNG images; motion-capture data in FBX format; and for Blender users, a complete Blender scene file. As well as the maximum poly count for 3D characters and the 4K render resolution limit, Wonder Studio has a number of technical limitations. The biggest is that it doesn’t currently support character-character or character-object interactions, limiting the scope of the shots that it can process. It also only has partial support for occlusion, so the quality of the output may drop where a character is obscured by foreground objects in the shot. However, it already looks a promising solution for previs and less demanding VFX projects – and a clear indication of where AI film-making tools could go in future. Wonder Studio is browser-based, and runs in Chrome or Safari. It does not currently support mobile browsers. The platform is compatible with Blender 3.3.1+ and Maya 2022+. Free accounts have a maximum export resolution of 1080p. Lite subscriptions are priced at $29.99/month or $299.88/year and can also export mocap data. Pro subscriptions are priced at $149.99/month or $1,499.88.year, raise the maximum export resolution of 4K, and also make it possible to export clean plates, roto masks and the Blender scene. All account types permit commercial use, although the Terms of Use give Wonder Dynamics a non-exclusive licence to use any content created via the platform, including to develop its AI models. https://wonderdynamics.com/ https://help.wonderdynamics.com/intro-to-wonder-studio/introduction/faq Move.ai Move.ai has introduced monthly pricing for its promising AI-based markerless motion-capture service, which lets users extract motion data from video footage of actors. The $50/month subscriptions provide 1,200 processing credits per month, equivalent to 20 minutes of video. In related news, Move.ai has also announced that Move One, its new system for extracting motion-capture data from single-camera footage, will be available in beta next month. In related news, the firm has also announced Move One, a new system that will enable users to extract motion-capture data from footage captured using a single camera. It will be rolled out in beta in August, initially on iPhone. Registering for a free account on the Move.ai website enables you to trial experimental mode on two minutes of footage, after which, processing video requires a subscription. Paid subscriptions cost $50/month, which provides 1,200 credits per month for processing video, or $365/year, which provides 1,800 credits per month for processing video. Credits are consumed at a rate of one per second of video per person animated. Processing more video requires extra credits, which cost $0.07 each for users with monthly subscriptions, or $0.04 each for users with annual subscriptions. You can find more details in Move.ai’s Fair Use Policy. https://app.move.ai/billing/subscription-management Chaos acquires AXYZ design The buyout is Chaos’s latest within the architectural tools market, following its acquisition of Corona and merger with Enscape. In this case, the software it has bought complements, rather than competes with, its own products, which include production renderer V-Ray and real-time renderer Vantage. There’s no mention in Chaos’s announcement of AXYZ design’s other major product line, its metropoly range of posed and animated scanned human characters. AXYZ design characters are available as stock content in a number of rival architectural rendering tools, including Lumion and Twinmotion. We’ve contacted AXYZ design to ask whether the metropoly characters will remain available, and whether it will continue to supply characters to other software developers, and will update if we hear back. https://www.chaos.com/blog/chaos-acquires-axyz-design-and-its-4d-animated-human-technology-for-archviz https://secure.axyz-design.com/en/blog/1077-246-axyz-joins-chaos Skybox AI Model V2 Although it’s a small change in version number, it’s a significant update, rolling out the platform’s AI Model V2, which increases the visual fidelity of the images generated. As well as generating images with more fine detail and better volumetric lighting, the new AI model has a “vastly better understanding” of creative prompts. You can see side-by-side comparisons of the old and new AI models in the video above. Skybox AI is currently available free in beta. It’s browser-based, so it should run in standard modern web browsers, although some features are only available on desktop machines or larger tablets. Blockade Labs hasn’t announced a final release date or pricing yet. https://skybox.blockadelabs.com/ Phoenix 5.2 They’re primarily performance updates, making simulations “up to 20% faster” than Phoenix 5.1. Specific changes include the option to run the PCG Fluidity method for smoke and fire simulations on the GPU rather than the CPU, and updates to the FLIP solver, cache generation and particle previews. The is also a new Simulation Speed rollout for troubleshooting performance, showing which phases in the simulation are taking the most time to compute. However, there are several new features, including the option to guide liquid simulations by using the new Directed Velocity option in the Liquid Source. Direction of flow can also be controlled with a texture map. In addition, it is now possible to vertically expand the simulation grid for ocean simulations. Changes specific to 3ds Max include the option to float or dock key rollouts anywhere in the interface, including in a new floating Main Window. There is also a new Axis Lock option to lock the rotation of Active Bodies in simulations. Maya users get support for Isosurface render mode in TexUVW, making it possible to transport texture coordinates along fluids; and better support for interactive rendering with V-Ray CPU. Phoenix 5.2 is available for 3ds Max 2018+ on Windows 7-10 and Maya 2019+ on Windows 7-10, RHEL/CentOS 7.2 Linux and macOS 10.11+. It is available rental-only. Subscriptions include both 3ds Max and Maya editions, and cost $70/month or $390/year. https://docs.chaos.com/display/PHX4MAX/5.20.00 https://docs.chaos.com/display/PHX4MAYA/5.20.00 Infinigen Researchers at Princeton Vision & Learning Lab have released Infinigen, an intriguing free tool for generating procedural 3D environments, including terrain, plants and creatures. The software, which is available to compile from source, is based on Blender, and so should export be able to assets in any format that Blender can, for use in other DCC applications or game engines. Generate 3D terrain, plants and creatures based on a set of procedural rules Developed as part of the research paper Infinite Photorealistic Worlds using Procedural Generation, Infinigen generates 3D environments procedurally using “Math rules only. Zero AI. Just graphics.” It modifies Blender primitives into environment assets via a library of procedural rules, organised into readymade generators for different asset types. There are generators for terrain, plants (and plant-like underwater objects like coral), and even creatures, including carnivores, herbivores, birds, beetles and fish. According to the paper, the system produces “high-quality” animation rigs, and can generate hair and fur, with grooming handled automatically. It can also simulate skin folding and creasing, using cloth simulation. There are 50 procedural material generators for generating textures. Combine generated assets into complete 3D environments, from mountains to oceans Infinigen includes scatter generators, distributing assets over terrain to create complete 3D environments. Environment types shown in the paper range from mountains, rivers, coasts, plains, forests and deserts to underwater scenes, caves and even icebergs and floating islands. The system simulates dynamic water using FLIP simulation, sun and sky lighting using the Nishita sky model implemented in Blender, and weather effects using Blender’s particle system. Environments are generated as full geometry – the system doesn’t ‘fake’ details using billboard textures, or even bump or normal mapping – so they will probably need optimisation for use in entertainment work. It should be possible to export the data in any format that Blender supports, including FBX, Alembic and USD, for use in other DCC applications or game engines. Infigen can generate a range of render passes, including depth, surface normals, and Cryptomatte-style ‘panoptic segmentation’, and data passes like optical flow and 3D scene flow. An integrated transpiler can also convert the underlying Blender node graph into Python code. Controlled from the command line, and may take a while to process According to the instructions in the GitHub repository, generating environments is done from the command line, controlling the type of environment generated with flags. The software is benchmarked on a fairly high-end system with two Intel Xeon Silver 4114 server CPUs and a Nvidia GPU, so the process may take a while to complete. The standard test commands shown on GitHub take “approximately 10 minutes and 16GB of memory to execute on an M1 Mac”. Currently mainly a research tool, but is intended to grow in future In its initial release, Infinigen is primarily intended as a resource for computer vision research. However, the researchers say that “in future work, we intend to make Infinigen a living project … through open-source collaboration with the whole community”. You can find out how to contribute on the project website, and planned features in the online roadmap. In the immediate future, code for water, fire and smoke simulations – not included in the initial release – is due in “mid July”. In the longer term, it may also be possible to generate cities: the researchers expect the system to expand from natural environments to built environments and artificial objects. Infinigen is available under a 3-Clause BSD licence. At the minute, the GitHub repository doesn’t provide compiled binaries, so you will need to compile it from source. The software has been tested on Ubuntu 22.04 Linux and macOS 12+. It currently requires an Apple Silicon or Nvidia GPU, but support for AMD GPUs is planned. Windows users are advised to use WSL to set up an Ubuntu terminal environments on a Windows machine. WSL is compatible with Windows 10+. https://infinigen.org/ PhotoLine 24 Although recently overshadowed by the Affinity tools, PhotoLine is a versatile alternative to Photoshop, with support for 32-bit linear workflow for bitmap images, plus both vector design and page layout features. Version 24 overhauls its layer workflow with the option to save the layer structure of a document, including the visibility and blend mode of the layers, as a Layer Composition. Layer Compositions can be used as presets for future documents, or to compare variants of a document. Workflow improvements include the option to use the Layer Tool to move or copy the contents of a selection without creating a new layer, and to search for fonts in the Layer List. It is also now possible to use 16- and 32-bit images as layer masks and clipping layers with full bit depth. Outside the layer system, new features include support for formatting marks in text. A number of the brush tools have been updated, with changes including support for transparency in the Replace Color brush, and a new Replace mode in the Copy brush. UX improvements include automatic snapping when detaching and moving document windows, and an overhaul of the look of document windows on Windows to match the rest of the UI. Pipeline integration changes include support for open-source image editor GIMP’s .xcf file format, and better support for the PDF, SVG and TIFF file formats. https://www.pl32.com/pages/rnote.php Plasticity 1.2 First released in April, and pitched as “CAD for artists”, Plasticity is a streamlined NURBS modeller. The software is intended to provide a low-cost, artist-friendly alternative to tools like MoI – which Kallen describes as a “huge inspiration” – and Fusion 360, and is aimed at concept art as well as industrial design. It features a streamlined UI, with on-screen clutter reduced by context-sensitive widgets and pop-up UI panels, and uses key bindings and selections modes that should be familiar to Blender users. Plasticity 1.2 is available for Windows 10+, Ubuntu 22.04+ Linux and macOS 12.0+. It runs on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. The update is free to existing users. New Indie licences cost $99 and import and export files in OBJ, STEP and Parasolid XT format. Studio licences support a wider range of file formats and cost $299. Both are perpetual node-locked licences. There is also a free trial edition, which only imports STEP files and exports OBJ files. Although there are over 30 new features in Plasticity 1.2, the focus of the update is surfacing. The initial release of Plasticity was optimised for making what Kallen describes as “mechanical-looking” models: models made up mainly from planes and primitives rather than NURBS patches. The update focuses creating pure NURBS models, introducing new tools for quickly generating patches between 3D curves, including the option to turn open curve loops into patches. More advanced features include the option to specify G0, G1, G2 continuity individually at edge boundaries. https://www.plasticity.xyz/ ZBrush 2023.2 New features in ZBrush 2023.2 include the Anchors brush. It enables users to set anchor points along the length of a SubTool, then manipulate the geometry between those points. It has a range of different modes, including Scale and Inflate, which resize the SubTool, and Move, Rotate and Twist, which repose it. The latter look to be a quick, controllable way to repose characters: in particular, making it possible to pose limbs with greater precision than is possible using existing tools. The Anchors brush being used in conjunction with the new Proxy Pose system introduced in ZBrush 2023.1, which makes it possible pose models with less-than-ideal topology. Maxon describes it as ‘version 1.0’ of the tool, so its functionality should evolve in future releases. ZBrush’s Contact feature has been updated. Originally designed as a way to make clothing move with a character when the character is reposed, it also now functions as a way to snap one piece of geometry to another. Users can draw out a transpose line between two SubTools to have ZBrush automatically move and rotate the first SubTool, using surface normals to align it to the second. By setting up to three Contact points, it is possible to control how the SubTool being moved is rotated. Finally, ZBrush 2023.2 adds two new slider controls to Spotlight, ZBrush’s projection texturing system. They control how a surface is displaced when applying an alpha, with the new Spotlight MidValue slider clamping the maximum displacement, and controlling whether the surface moves inwards or outwards. Spotlight Alpha Blur smooths the displacement. ZBrush 2023.2 is compatible with Windows 10+ and macOS 10.14+. New perpetual licences cost $895; subscriptions cost $39/month or $359/year. https://support.maxon.net/hc/en-us/articles/9352841458076-ZBrush-2023-Releases Redshift 3.5.17 Arguably the most significant change in Redshift 3.5.17 is the new MatCap Shader node, which Maxon describes as “lay[ing] the foundation for non-photo-real materials in Redshift”. At the minute, it’s rather more limited, but enables users to create simple stylised materials by mapping an image onto a mesh relative to the render camera, as shown in the image above. Other new features include the Jitter node, which makes it possible to generate colour variations across large numbers of objects that use a particular material. Suggested uses range from generating variation in environment assets like foliage or rocks to creating more stylised motion-graphics-style effects. Performance improvements include better scaling of CPU rendering performance across multiple CPU cores, or across multiple CPUs in a system. In addition, the Blender plugin now supports macOS; and Maya users get support for Maya 2024 on macOS and Linux, support for the Windows version having been added in the previous release. Redshift 3.5.17 is available for Windows 10, glibc 2.17+ Linux and macOS 11.5+. The renderer’s integration plugins are compatible with 3ds Max 2015+, Blender 2.83+, Cinema 4D R21+, Houdini 17.5+ (18.0+ on macOS), Katana 3.0v1+ and Maya 2016.5. The software is rental-only, with individual subscriptions costing $45/month or $264/year. https://redshift.maxon.net/topic/47698/version-3-5-17-is-now-available-2023-07 SpeedTree 9.5 Released over two decades ago, and now owned by Unity, SpeedTree generates textured, wind-animated 3D trees for real-time and offline work, using a combination of procedural generation and manual editing. Although there have been several different editions of the software over the years, it is currently available as SpeedTree Cinema, for visual effects and feature animation work, and SpeedTree Games. Both include SpeedTree Modeler, the actual plant-authoring software, and SpeedTree Library, a library of readymade 3D plants. SpeedTree Games also includes the SpeedTree SDK. SpeedTree 9.5: new Frond editing workflow lets you adjust parts of a leaf individually New features in SpeedTree 9.5 include the option to manipulate sections of Fronds individually. Users can now isolate parts of a leaf, like individual leaflets in compound leaves, by masking them in the Cutout Editor, then apply procedural changes. Suggested use cases include randomising the look of leaves by curling sections, or having forces like wind and gravity affect sections differently. Other new features include Projectors, a new system for adding procedural details to models. It uses ray casting to create the distribution pattern, projecting light rays into the scene, and generating details wherever the rays strike a surface. On trees themselves, that makes it possible to create natural-looking directional effects, like moss only growing up one side of the trunk, or snow settling on branches from above. It can also be used to scatter objects on the ground surrounding a tree. Other changes include support for height maps in the Leaf, Batched leaf and Frond generators. As well as being a way of adding detail to parts of a tree, IDV says that the change “allows you to identify subsections on a mesh via … the Cutout editor, eliminating the need for external modeling software”. The paint tools have also been improved, with new options including brush size, falloff, and opacity margin. SpeedTree 9.4 added global lighting properties for real-time trees, new gradient and radial noise patterns in the Map editor, and the option to import cameras in FBX format to use as scene cameras. Other changes since SpeedTree 9.0 include new Decal and Mesh detail generators, for generating surface details, and the option to add perspective and orthographic cameras and save them as part of a scene. SpeedTree Cinema 9.5 and SpeedTree Games 9.5 are available for Windows 7+, CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 18.04/20.04 Linux and macOS 10.13+. The software is rental-only. Indie subscriptions, for users with revenue under $100,000/year, cost $19/month or $199/year. Pro subscriptions, for users with revenue under $1 million/year, cost $499/year for a node-locked licence, or $899/year for a floating licence. Enterprise subscriptions, for studios with revenues over $1 million/year, are priced on demand. https://docs9.speedtree.com/modeler/doku.php?id=streleasenotes Forger 2023.4 The update adds a hierarchy system, making it possible to organise more complex models by collecting component parts into groups. New sculpting features include the Sketch Sculpt brush. It’s intended to “easily create new shapes with the stroke of an Apple Pencil”, although sadly, we can’t find images of it in action. New modelling tools include standard Sweep and Lathe tools, plus Fit Circle, for adding round details to Forger models, and Set Flow, for adjusting the curvature of selected edges. The lighting toolset gets Area and IES lights, in addition to the lights added in the previous update. The camera toolset gets support for orthographic cameras, and a new default Action Point camera behaviour, in which the camera can be rotated around a point of interest. Forger 2023.4 is available for iPadOS 15.0+. The base app is free, but is limited to three active files. A paid subscription, which costs $1.99/month or $14.99/year, removes that cap and unlocks a live link to Cinema 4D. https://www.maxon.net/en/forger Howler 2022 for free The developers of hard-to-classify digital painting, animation and video processing tool Howler have made a full recent version of the app available to download for free. Anyone downloading Howler 2022, which was originally released in 2021, is encouraged to upgrade to the current version or support the project on Patreon to raise funds for future development of the software. An idiosyncratic low-cost natural media paint package with a lot of unexpected features Originally released two decades ago, Howler – originally Project Dogwaffle – is an idiosyncratic sub-$100 digital painting and content creation tool for illustration and animation work. Its core strength is natural media painting, but it throws in a number of unexpected feature sets, ranging from terrain generation and particle sculpting to video repair and rotoscoping. You can see the features added in Howler 2022 itself in this story. Howler 2022 is available free for Windows only. Anyone downloading it is encouraged to upgrade or support developer Dan Ritchie on Patreon to fund future work on the software. The latest release, Howler 2024, has an MSRP of $59.99. https://www.pdhowler.com/Download.htm USD 8.2 for Maya The update makes it possible to have both the Multiverse | USD plugin and the native USD for Maya plugin (maya-usd) loaded simultaneously in Maya. It is also now possible to transfer Maya shading networks to Katana, writing USD files containing the networks, and having them reconstructed automatically in Katana. Multiverse | USD 8.2 is available for Maya 2018+ on Windows, Linux and macOS. It is compatible with Arnold 5.2+, 3Delight 2.0+, Redshift 3.0.67+, RenderMan 23.2+ and V-Ray 4.3+. The software is rental-only, with Pro Offline subscriptions starting at $270/year for interactive floating licences and $90/year for render licences. Pro Cloud subscriptions cost $30/month or $300/year. There is also a free Solo edition for indie artists, which can be used in commercial projects. DaVinci Resolve 18.5 Blackmagic Design has released its latest updates to DaVinci Resolve, its free colour grading, editing and post-production software, and DaVinci Resolve Studio, its $295 commercial edition. DaVinci Resolve 18.5 is a major update, adding initial support for USD-based workflows in both editions of the software, plus a new AI-based relighting toolset and improved AI-based video upscaling in Studio. The Studio edition also gets new AI-based video editing tools, including AI-based audio categorisation, transcription and captioning. VFX artists working in movie pipelines based around the Universal Scene Description format get the option to import USD and USDZ files, including geometry, materials, lights, cameras and animation. There is also a basic set of tools for manipulating, relighting and rendering imported USD assets. Other new features relevant to visual effects work include Multi-merge, a new tool for managing multiple foreground sources as a composited layer stack, shown at 22:10 in the video at the top of the story. Multi-merge makes it possible to composite shots using a layer-based workflow as well as the node-based workflow available in Fusion, Resolve’s 3D compositing environment. In addition, DaVinci Resolve Studio’s native AI depth map generator is now available inside Fusion. Colorists and effects artists using Studio get Relight, a new AI-based shot relighting system. With it, artists can add virtual direction, point or spot lights to a shot, and adjust their colour, surface softness and specularity, as shown at 23:40 in the video at the top of the story. Light intensity information is placed in the alpha channel for use with any of Resolve’s existing grading tools. Studio’s existing Super Scale feature for up-resing video gets a new 2x Enhanced mode for “extremely high quality 2x output”, with manual controls to adjust noise reduction and images sharpness. The 18.5 updates also improve DaVinci Resolve’s handling of projects with missing LUTs. Rather than interrupting playback with a warning dialog, missing LUTs are now shown via an overlay at the bottom of the screen. The files can be relinked via a Missing LUTs tab in the LUT gallery. Other workflow improvements include the option to override color management settings on a per-timeline basis, and to copy color grades to all of the angles within multicam shots when flattening multicam clips. In addition, DaVinci Resolve now automatically creates the inputs and outputs required by Resolve FX effects plugins, removing the need to drag plugins as independent FX nodes. Video editors using Studio get a number of new AI-based tools for working with the audio in media clips. The software can now automatically sort clips by type (dialogue, effects or music), and can also automatically transcribe dialogue, and generate text captions in a new subtitle track. Workflow improvements include the option to specify the intervals at which timeline backups will be created on a per-timeline basis, and metadata panel support for marker subsclips. Under the hood, the edit timeline playback engine has been “hugely improved”, which should smooth playback on lower-powered systems where a project cannot be played back in real time. There is also a new dedicated render cache management window for setting the size of the data caches DaVinci Resolve generates to improve playback performance. Changes to the media formats supported include the option to export PNG and JPEG image sequences and animated GIFs; and encode support for ProRes, AV1, H.264, MP3 and AAC in MKV containers. Users can also now upload video directly to TikTok from DaVinci Resolve. There are also a number of changes to the remote monitoring toolset in DaVinci Resolve studio, including a new free app for iPhones and iPads, DaVinci Remote Monitor. DaVinci Resolve 18.5 and DaVinci Resolve Studio 18.5 are available for Windows 10+, macOS 12.0+ and CentOS 7.3+/Rocky Linux 8.6+. The updates are free to existing users. The base edition of the software is free; the Studio edition, which adds the AI features, stereoscopic 3D tools, HDR grading and more Resolve FX filters and Fairlight FX audio plugins, costs $295. https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=185029 Fusion Studio 18.5 Blackmagic Design has released Fusion Studio 18.5, the latest version of its compositing software. It’s a significant update, adding initial support for USD-based workflows, a new Multi-merge tool for layer-based compositing, a new AI-based depth map tool and GPU-accelerated clean plate and anagylph tools. One of the key changes in Fusion Studio 18.5 is initial USD support. Visual effects artists working in pipelines based around the Universal Scene Description get the option to import data in USD format, including geometry, materials, lights, cameras and animation. The implementation supports .usdc, .usda and .usdz files. Another significant new feature is Multi-merge, a new tool to “connect and manage multiple foreground sources as a composited layer stack”. It makes is possible to composite shots using a layer-based workflow along the lines of that in tools like After Effects, as well as through the node-based workflow traditionally used in Fusion. Users can change the order or visibility of foreground sources via a Layer List palette in the Inspector, and edit layer properties like position, size and apply mode via the layer properties palette below. Fusion Studio also integrates DaVinci Resolve Studio’s AI-based depth map generator, which automatically generates depth maps from source footage, for use in generating effects like fog and depth of field. The release notes also list GPU-accelerated Clean Plate and Anaglyph features, although there is no more information than that, and “up to 3x faster renders” when using the splitter tool. Fusion Studio 18.5 is available for Windows 10+, macOS 12.0+ and CentOS 7.3+/Rocky Linux 8.6+. New licences of Fusion Studio cost $295. The update is free to existing users. The Fusion toolset in the free edition of DaVinci Resolve has a maximum image resolution of 16k x 16k and lacks network rendering and advanced playback capabilities. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/readme/a1051ef8ed214997abd3985d58b1fb3b Inkscape 1.3 New features in Inkscape 1.3 include the Shape Builder tool, which streamlines the process of building complex vector shapes by performing Boolean operations on simpler 2D shapes. The update also adds a new Pattern Editor subdialog to streamline the process of creating repeating patterns, and improves on-canvas pattern editing. Workflow improvements include a new Document Resources dialog, which lists all of the assets currently used in a document, and the option to group fonts into Collections. Several UI elements have been redesigned, with Layers and Objects getting back its Opacity and blend mode sliders, and Live Path Effects (LPE) now combining LPE selection and editing tools in a single dialog. Canvas rendering is now multi-threaded, resulting in a “2–4× speedup” while zooming, panning or transforming objects on machines with multiple CPU cores. In addition, there is now an experimental new OpenGL renderer. It isn’t a full GPU renderer, but it reduces CPU usage, particularly when working on HDPI displays. There is a long list of smaller changes, including a rewritten PDF import dialog, better editing of page margins and bleed when designing graphics for print, and syntax highlighting in the XML editor. https://inkscape.org/news/2023/07/23/inkscape-launches-version-13-focus-organizing-work/ Ziva Real-Time 2.0 Unity has released Ziva Real-Time 2.0, its AI-based system for generating high-quality real-time 3D characters, complete with accurate soft tissue deformation. Originally known as ZivaRT, before original developer Ziva Dynamics was acquired by Unity, Ziva Real-Time has already been used in production on projects like Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man: Miles Morales. The software has now been rebranded Ziva Real-Time, and forms part of the Unity Wētā Tools product range, along with tools developed in-house at VFX studio Weta Digital, which Unity bought in 2021. Unlike Ziva Face Trainer, its counterpart for facial animation, the training process is done offline, in the Ziva Real-Time Trainer software. Users supply the data on which to train the AI model: an Alembic file showing the 3D character mesh in a range of poses, plus a FBX file showing the joint hierarchy of the character rig in the same poses. Pose shapes can be created by hand in DCC software, or come from scan data of live actors. The software also accepts range of motion animations, animation cycles and mocap clips as training data, along with cloth simulations from tools like Marvelous Designer or Houdini. As well as human and humnoid characters, the software can be used for creatures: the cheetah shown at the top of this story comes from the free sample assets available in the Ziva Dynamics online store. Once training is complete, Ziva Real-Time Trainer exports a ZRT file: a lightweight data file that be processed by the second component of Ziva Real-Time, the Ziva Real-Time Player. Available as a plugin for Maya, Unity and Unreal Engine, the Player makes it possible to drive the deformation of the character inside the host application. According to Unity, “even the most complex [ZRT] character and creature assets are under 30MB”, so they can be processed at “sub-millisecond speeds”. Ziva Real-Time Trainer is compatible with Windows 10+ and CentOS 7.6-7.9 Linux. The Ziva Real-Time Player plugins are compatible with Maya 2019+, Unity 2021.3+ and Unreal Engine 4.26+, all on Windows only. The software is rental-only, with node-locked licences costing $1,800/year and floating licences costing $1,900/year, both including licences of the Maya Player plugin. Additional licences of the Maya Player plugin cost $100/year for a node-locked licence; $200/year for a floating licence. The Unity and Unreal Engine Player plugins are free. https://docs.zivadynamics.com/zrt/release_notes.html#release-notes-2-0-0 https://zivadynamics.com/ziva-real-time Photoshop 25.0 Photoshop 25.0: new Generative Expand tool from Adobe’s Firefly generative AI toolset Adobe began integrating Firefly into beta builds of Photoshop in May, with Generative Fill. It enables users to select a region of an image to replace, then enter a text description of the content they would like to generate in its place, with Photoshop creating the AI-generated content as a separate layer. Generative Expand is similar, but it’s an outpainting rather than an inpainting tool, so rather than replacing a region of image, it extends an existing image’s borders. Users can extend the canvas using the existing Crop tool, then type in a text description of the new background they would like to generate. Again, the AI content is generated non-destructively in a new layer. You can find more information on Adobe’s approach to generative AI, including how the firm is collecting images on which to train its generative AI models, in our artist FAQs on Firefly. Photoshop 25.0 is the first time we can remember that Adobe has given a beta build of the software its own version number. The actual stable release, Photoshop 24.7, is a rather smaller update, and mainly fixes user-reported bugs, including Liquify and other filters lagging on macOS. Photoshop 25.0 is a beta build of the software, and can be installed via Adobe’s Creative Cloud app. Adobe hasn’t announced when the new AI features will be available in a stable release. Photoshop 24.7 is available for Windows 10+ and macOS 11.0+ on a rental-only basis. In the online documentation, the update is also referred to as the July 2023 release. Photography subscription plans, which include access to Photoshop and Lightroom, start at $119.88/year. Single-app Photoshop subscriptions cost $31.49/month or $239.88/year. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/generative-expand.html https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/whats-new.html Pulldownit 5.5 for 3ds Max and Maya The release updates Pulldownit’s Shatter It tool, which pre-fractures geometry in a scene before applying dynamics, with users now able to reposition or discard shatter centres by clicking directly in the viewport. The tool is also now multi-threaded, with shattering now “8x faster” than Pulldownit 5.0 in the Maya edition, and “up to 4x faster” in the 3ds Max edition. Thininetic has also updated the Bounded behaviour introduced in Pulldownit 5.0, which controls how far the distance detached fragments can move from the crack that created them. Users can now turn fragments dynamic on a specified frame, making it possible to cause cracks to tear the surface of an object along their entire length simultaneously. Workflow improvements include the option to create or modify for parameters for several cracks at once, and updates to the dynamic solver to generate better results with the default parameters. The Maya edition of Pulldownit also now supports Maya’s Cached Playback system once their keyframes have been baked, which should improve viewport playback. Pulldownit 5.5 is available for 3ds Max 2019+ and Maya 2018+. The software is rental-only. Node-locked licences now cost €280/year (around $310/year). Floating licences cost €350/year ($390/year). https://www.pulldownit.com//versions-logs.php?idcate=3 Rokoko Headrig Headrig is described as a “lightweight, comfortable, and adjustable motion capture head mount designed to accommodate an iPhone” – although according to the FAQs, it also accommodates Android phones. At just 240g, it’s certainly lightweight: in our not terribly scientific online survey of conventional mocap helmets, weights ranged from around 600g to over 1kg. However, that includes helmets designed to accommodate GoPro or RealSense cameras, whereas the Headrig is specifically designed for phones. It can be used with any facial mocap app, including Epic Games’ free Live Link Face or Moves by Maxon, though clearly, Rokoko hopes that people will use it with Rokoko Face Capture, its own iOS app. According to Rokoko, the Headrig fits “any adult head”, adjusting via a fastening wheel and a velcro strap. The Headrig is available to pre-order now for $195, plus tax and shipping, and is due to ship in September. It can be used with any standard iPhone – but not iPhone Plus or iPhone Max models – or equivalently sized Android phone. https://www.rokoko.com/products/headrig
    5 points
  41. Thank you ! Here is a new update of the UV Projector : the Adaptative Planar projection ! It projects like a plane, but the stretched UV are adjusted : I think it will be usefull for all planar mapping of photography what we want to emboss. Download : https://code.vonc.fr/projecteur-uv Video demo of the projection : https://code.vonc.fr/elements/6137306fc7aee/ressource_planaire_adaptatif_video.mp4 Example file : https://code.vonc.fr/elements/6137306fc7aee/ressource_planaire_adaptative_exemple.zip
    5 points
  42. Hello all. Been a while but Im back with a free tutorial for beginners to intermediate. I made a tutorial on how to model a simplified Bumble bee using primitives and basic tools. I will continue with this project in a second video on how to rig it and pose it. Full Video. Teaser Video
    5 points
  43. 5 points
  44. It's been 3 days now that I watch NAB 2023 Every single presenter showing how easy and fast Soft Bodies are: - ... and we make a Soft Body tag that looks like a balloon on the object we want to inflate and we press play ! *the object just drops* - Ooops, forgot to make a floor. *object passes through plain* - And this happens because we need to set a collider ... me:
    5 points
  45. Want to learn some nodes? Dive into this unique training which covers all the novelties in the nodes system for R25. Nodes? Capsules? Assets? Parser? Tessellation? If these terms are confusing and sound odd, then this volume will get you up to speed. Understand the concepts and techniques needed to use node sytem efficiently and to your advantage. Lesson outline 1. Intro_and_requirements 2. Capsules 03_Geometry_Caching 04_Database_parser 05_New_Nodes_And_Assets 06_Spline_Primitives 07_Spline_Assembler 08_Spline_Length 09_Spline_Property_Interpolate 10_Spline_Type 11_Evaluate_Spline 12_Tessellation 13_Spline_Primitive_Group 14_Line_To_Mesh 15_Formula_Spline 16_Data_Visualizer 17_Delete_Segment 18_Multitrace 19_Curl_Spline 20_Typewritter Duration 135 mins https://www.core4d.com/ipb/store/product/45-introduction-to-r25-nodes/ Note: Link will work only for registered members
    4 points
  46. J T, better known as Vector on forums is stellar freelance modeller and shining example of what passion and dedication can lead to. Born in Italy, living in UK, freelancing from 2015, having clients like Amex under his belt and portfolio of amazing work makes us very happy to present him. As you would suspect, he loves 3D, topology stuff, art in general, but also enjoys walks in nature, has a soft spot for donuts which he sheds of in gym : ) Describe yoursefl with a single word Short : ) How did you get into C4D and 3D in general? I actually fell into the whole 3d scene by accident way back in 2014. Me and a group of friends would game online, and record our gameplay footage to make videos for youtube. I started seeing rival teams posting videos with epic intro sequences and ( unbeknown to me at the time ) motion graphics. I was in awe and started talking to the guy on their team responsible for editing and making the videos. Turned out he was a 3d artist/motion designer and he used Cinema 4D! From that moment on I was sold, i started researching C4D and 3D in general and never looked back. I started doing 3D before work, after work, weekends. Every waking hour that wasn't spent sleeping or at work was spent in front of the computer, one too many evenings were spent asleep at my desk. Which area interests you most? Sub d Modelling and topology! Ever Since starting 3d almost a decade ago, modelling has always been my favourite area of 3d, i find topology fascinating and spend far too long procrastinating over what's the best way to model something and how the topology should be. I started with more hard surface stuff and slowly found my niche with toon styled characters, i'll still model the occasional car or space ship for work or for fun to test my modelling chops, but I always have the most fun designing and creating characters. What other apps are you using and what for? Photoshop, mostly for colour correction or to occasionally work on textures. After effects, mainly for compositing breakdown videos. Maya for character/modelling work if C4D isn't an option. Which learning resources you used and would recommend? I really never watched many tutorials whilst learning, i would occasionally watch some GSG videos, or some other channel if I wanted to know something specifically, but most of my knowledge was gathered from this forum ( formerly C4D Cafe ). I was incredibly fortunate to have members from the Community like Nigel, Cerbera, Everfresh, Igor, Vozzz, Hrvoje and many others to guide me along the way, having access to such a wealth of knowledge from industry professionals, and for free has by far had the biggest impact over the years, and to this day remains the only place on the web you can post any question/problem and almost certainly get an answer or solution. Do you think talent is overrated and can be offset with a lot of hard work? if you really dive into it, can you have one without the other? I think a lot of the time they go hand in hand, far too often people tell me " oh your works great, you're so talented " what they don't see are the thousands of hours spent in front of the computer screen, practicing, researching, doing things over and over again, i definitely think that people have a natural affinity to some things, They may learn faster or find something easier than others, but you'll never truly be great without all the time, money, sweat and tears. Your character work is stellar, what made you focus on them? When i first joined the forum, Martijn ( @kingcoma ) was regularly winning the forum competitions, and blowing everyone else out of the water with his amazing characters, @everfresh was posting his cool animations, and truly I was in awe of the characters they were creating, you could say they created a monster that day, because i made it my goal to one day reach that level. Your best advice for newcomers, tip or trick to pick up? Don't give up. the first time you open a 3d software package it's easy to be overwhelmed with all the buttons, interfaces and menus. Just remember, even your favourite artists had to start somewhere. Take it step by step, and most importantly have fun! If you're looking into modelling, Learn about topology, edge flow, polygon density. What constitutes good and bad topology, and why it's important from the very beginning! This will go along way to helping you grow and develop your skills as a modeller, and ultimately land you that studio job you've been dreaming about. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Vectron Toys! it's long been a goal of mine to have my own toy company, and bring some of these character I love to life! Thoughts on AI? We all watched Terminator right? and every other scifi robot/ai film ever? In all seriousness though, i think there's definitely a case to be made about treading lightly. Ai is improving. fast. Probably too fast for us to really grasp the concept of what we started, lost in the awe of it all. With out really considering the long term implications. I can see the potential for getting so caught up in the " can we get it to do this " that we don't stop to think if we really should. in terms of it's application in art and 3d, I can see it becoming a useful tool for certain applications. Iit should stay in direct control of the artist, not replacing them. We can only guess what the future holds but I don't think the machines will be taking our job just yet. Top 3 wishes for C4D Honestly, maxon adds new stuff every year and I still use the same 3 or 4 tools I always use haha. If you could send a message for Maxon, what would you say? keep up the stellar work! Message for Core4D? Really just a big thank you to the community. Forums and spaces like this are a rarity these days, through ups and downs, name changes and all, the community lives on, and continues to be a feather in the Cinema 4d cap. If people waant to contact you? people can reach me on my website https://www.vectron3d.co.uk Or over on instagram https://www.instagram.com/vectron3d
    4 points
  47. Wrong approach on distributing instances. You should have used the Spline Effector Notice the order of Effectors applied on the Text Untitled 4.c4d
    4 points
  48. Hey guys, new sketchbook for 2023 , with some new, and reimagined characters, cheers ! BART! Heisenberg/WW Tracksuit Chick F*ck Death Jiggly Puff Reimagined Real Boy - Pinocchio reimaged DeeDee Trippin ' Balls The Dark Knight, Inspired by Frank Millers Batman Marvin Reimagined Invisiboy Invisiboy 2 Grampster- You're never too old to be a G ! Look at that cute face !
    4 points
  49. Finally finished, this is what I love doing. Thanks to all at the CORE4D for pointing me in the right direction with some of the problems I had, you know who you are. Your feedback would be much appreciated, (but be gentle)
    4 points
  50. It's a Jungle out there! had a bunch of fun with this, pretty pleased with the tone and end result 😄
    4 points
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