Cerbera

Yep - I'm in too - always happy to learn cool new stuff from Hrvoje... and I'm particularly interested in that little turtle, and all its L-system goodness ;) CBR

Probably not. IME, no1 gives a sh1t what qualifications you've got; they are only interested in your showreel and how much you charge.

No, I didn't overdo it, but my standards are high. Everybody will be different of course, and there is no right or wrong to it, other than the results you produce, and how they stand up to everyone else's...

That very much wasn't my point. Quite the opposite, if anything. I was trying to get across that if you are going to ask people to pay you for your expertise in this program , then you'd better have that expertise. Too often I see people selling their services far too soon, when they have nothing like the level of ability they need. So just warning against that really... I'm not the fastest learner, so I waited 7 years until I felt I had enough skills in enough areas of the program to be confident that I was able to solve 99% of the challenges clients give me with no external help. How you feel now is how I felt in Year 2. So it really is just the addition of time and experience that moves you from one hobby-wise state of affairs to something more commercially viable.

You can want to be perfect at both - nothing wrong with that as long as you are prepared to put the years of work in... You just gotta keep doing stuff in the program, every day. And work at it until it does pop, or whizz, or whatever else you're looking for...

So perhaps your key talent is to be a technician rather than a creative spark ? What do you do to inspire yourself and improve / develop your ideas ?

Well, talent is just natural disposition for something, so you don't acquire it from anywhere specific. You either have it (less time investment required), or you don't (maximum time investment required). Or you may be good at some areas of the program, and worse at others, which is the case with most people that use it I would imagine. For example, I have some natural propensity for modelling and hierarchy, and absolutely none for Xpresso. So I got my Xpresso chops with hard work and (a lot of) time. All depends how your brain is wired, and what sort of tasks you have optimised it for so far in life. Some people find this easy, some people find it a constant struggle. 3D is, at the end of the day, quite hard, despite how easy MAXON try and make it for beginners. CBR

Any good ? CBR

I do like a bit of dark art, and that's very dark, and very excellent :) Great, original work. CBR

Yeah, that doesn't really happen with MAXON :) We see what's in R19 when R19 is released. At least we get to see the new version before we have to renew our MSA's, but that's about as much heads-up as we get, other than what the rumour mill generates. However, MAXON have responded to frequent criticism of / exasperation with this policy, and have now got a corporate blog that also doesn't give much away, and the occasional little video snippets of things that are coming soon, but is at least something. Still won't tell you what's in 19, alas. The only rumours I have heard involve updating UV tools / Bodypaint, but that could be wishful thinking, and it would be mad to rely on hearsay to make any purchase decisions. CBR

Hmmm. My first impression is that this is going to be very very hard to try and do in C4D. Even in the latest release I can't think of many tools that could help. We can rule out cloth, collision and dynamics straight away because of 'proximity explosion problems'. Which only leaves hair, joints or connectors really. And I don't envy the person who tries to set that up using either of those ! Maybe hair can do it ???? But you'd have to be something of a hair expert to make that happen... Very interested to hear from anyone that can see a way, because initially at least, I really can't ! :) CBR

Well said. I find there are quite a lot of clients like that in the game :)

Pretty much only if you are using it with dynamics and require a low poly version to run that at speed in the viewport.

So, if you wanna get paid £50 an hour, which seems reasonable, that budget gives you 100 hours to get that done. Let's ignore all the paths, and the greenery for now, and just look at the 18 houses and 2 massive buildings. Just for sh1ts and giggles let's pretend we're doing 20 houses, which leaves 5 hours tops to finish each one. That may be enough for the smaller, less complex ones, but I'd bet it's not for the big ones, or even the more complex smaller models. And that's just the modelling. If they want things exact dimensions as well, that takes even longer ! And all those hedges might take quite some time to get looking just as they want, and by the time you've factored in trees, and sky, and lighting, and placement, and roads, and plots, we're running to about +50 or more hours over the 100 we allowed ourselves while we were trying to get paid properly :) So working at roughly that sort of scale, if you have to put in 200 hours to get this done, then you'd be on £25 / hour, and less if it takes longer. I have done jobs for £25 an hour, but it's not ideally what I'm looking for, and £5000 for all that does seem at the bare limits of feasibility if the buildings are as detailed as you suggest.. I certainly couldn't model and texture all that in 100 hours. But then I am quite slow :) I'm sure there are speed-freak modellers out there who would tear through this, and perhaps it's one of those you're bidding against. I am working on a long term Film Foundation project at the moment for a record low of £10 per hour, but I've chosen to do that because of the artistic integrity of the project, and because it's all of the sort of work I most like, and none of the stuff I don't, and doesn't get in the way of better paid work. So I guess you just have to weigh each job on its merits and how much of PITA' it is ! CBR

What, this sort of thing ? Where you only need incredibly simplified buildings, or was much more detail required ? And how many of the houses were the same ? It's really difficult to tell without all the details. CBR

Yep, that is what he asked :) But going forward with it, those rounded panels will really get in his way when he gets to the front detail, so merely pointing out that he is probably best to continue with the straight versions for that reason.

I disagree ! :) Left looks more finished, but is less accurate - those panels (in the film model) don't have any chamfering on them, just a tiny, hard bevel, and dead straight edges except the inner ends, which do the rope-like curves shown below. CBR

Cool idea for a project :) Models not bad so far, but is there any reason I can see faceting on the chair and bed sheets ? Are they missing a phong tag ? CBR

Can you not just drag it into the HUD ?

Oh yeah. It's a very rewarding model. Top-level work, my friend ;) CBR

Well the new one is definitely better than the old one. Still don't like the style or the colours. But you aren't doing this to please me, are you, so you should keep making what you like :) If there aren't clients involved the only person your images have to make happy is you. CBR

Yeah that is properly excellent. CBR

Well... I didn't like the style, the constantly jiggling text, the colours or the jarringly 'middly' guitar in the soundtrack, but that's very much subjective, and some people love all that :) But it's all competently made and put together, so not much to suggest in the way of improvements there, which is, I guess, why you haven't had so many replies so far ! CBR

No, I honestly can't. Polygon reduction will do a horrible job of it, and Cinemas tools for getting displacement / normals maps out of high poly geometry are confined to its own sculpt objects. The only way to proceed is to manually retopo the scan, with whatever tool-set you have in R16. I'm not at all sure that C4D is the program to do this in. It's UV tools are not up to dealing with massive resolution, or millions of polys either. CBR

Looks mostly good to me, except the ears :) I can't see them close enough to judge if that's a good UV or not, but it looks a little 'spidery' to be ideal from what I can see, if you see what I mean... CBR