Cerbera

You could do it with dynamics, but if you don't need to see them drop in the render it's not worth the bother when DTF or axis / object move would just do it without any simulation. But AFAIK DTF can't drop onto other surfaces not at floor level, so perhaps the manual method is best in this case. CBR

Of course - always good to try new things :) As much as I am used to the old 2 column familiarity I don't dislike the single column layout either, especially now it's gone back to latest threads. Don't work too hard ! You have to sleep sometime ! J

Thank you for those very kind words, and you do make some very good points there, Dave - I hope that is indeed the way it goes :)

Yes I should do some more of those... especially if it's gonna get pinned to the front page ! :/ CBR

Nope. 2 columns always worked well for me on PC, laptop or ipad. But I never tried it on a phone so maybe there were issues there... I do think I prefer the one column as it used to be, 'latest posts' rather than the latest 5 in each section we have - some sections don't get new posts very often and are taking up quite a lot of screen space... but hey, maybe it will grow on me, and maybe Activities section will be a decent alternative... But anyway, thanks for all your hard work in updating it... CBR

Bit of a 'swings and roundabouts' situation for me, that one... On the plus side, it's certainly going to make a lot of jobs massively faster, and save the world a lot of tedious manual retopo while we deal with the ever growing client stream of awful CAD models that need sorting out. But I quite like some of those retopo jobs, so will miss them if they become a lot less infrequent or disappear altogether. Might also mean that a lot less of those jobs are offered to anyone anymore, modellers or not... I don't think it can entirely replace the art of modelling though - flow seems largely undirectable, and in the videos I saw even though its choices were quite good on the whole, it seemed you were kinda stuck with whatever flow it went for, but TBH I'm secretly quite glad it can't do that - means that proper modellers have got another few years in the ring before we're entirely replaced by AI and our skills go the same way as roof-thatching and become 'lost knowledge' :) CBR

Let's take your included pic as an example... The camera is quite close to the racket, and the handle most so, so you should be looking for a model that will stand up to some fairly close up detail (so should be relatively high poly unless it is provided for use with Subdivision Surfaces) and you should choose one that has some handle detail in it, most notably the leather / material wrap that these things tend to have... as it is currently, the thing closest to the camera has the least detail in it, so that's perhaps not ideal. But also it's quite a cartoony style to the image, so realism might not be so relevant here for that reason... the most photo-real model in the world will still look like a cel-render if you set it up that way of course. CBR

Any reason it has to be a helix ? Couldn't your guy be flying round a moving / changing circle spline instead, which is a lot easier to manipulate procedurally ? You could alter its shape via simple parametric scaling (ticking ellipse would give you independent control in 2 directions, or if you need more specific forms, Pose morph etc). You could also change its angle and position via a Vibrate Tag or an effector or similar... wouldn't that have very much the same sort of final effect ? CBR

Exactly the same principle applies to the rear object but that needs additional loops because it (presumably) has additional corners to keep sharp... CBR

Here's the control loops I'd go for with that right-hand form... also solved the ngons for you, which will improve tool performance no end... CBR

OK. The reason you can see the lines from the other side is simply a viewport clipping thing - that just happens when an edge is very close to a surface and you view it from a long way out. As for why the loop won't go round both sides that's a topology thing - if it was quads in a linear flow it would. What can I tell ya - there's multiple reasons we use quads with SDS, and one of them is that the modelling tools work properly ! You have ngons in that mesh, which condemns around a quarter of the modelling tools to work unpredictably or not at all. But even if you had a kite quad there, as you could easily do at the tip of the axe, the loop still won't go all the way round in this case because the kite quad itself changes the direction of the loop so Loop Cut doesn't know what to do with it unless you tell it by making an additional manual cut with the knife tool in Line Cut Mode first. Sometimes Loop Cut is just not the right tool for the job... I'll redo your topo to show you what would be preferable if you like ? CBR

There we go ! That's the winner :) Gold star from me CBR

No I don't think that's going to work. Whereas you can nail down the current camera mapping as UVs by selecting the material tag in question, r-clicking and choosing the Generate UV coords command that doesn't help you much. You won't be able to do anything with that resulting map without breaking it (like relaxing it flat for example, which will fail because it doesn't have proper UV borders or seams), and if you don't do anything with it you might as well be painting over the original photo in PS ! CBR

We actually have a 'DNA master' already in our midst, don't we @teknow? Have a search of his previous posts, and you'll find some very helpful links... CBR

A link to the tutorial you are following would help ! Otherwise we can't see what you are talking about / aiming for... But at the moment, your mesh doesn't have quite the right edge flow / poly structure for an animatable mouth. You can watch those tutorials you mentioned about 'proper' mouths because the edge flow in a cartoony one will still be largely the same in terms of overall poly flow around the mouth area. That ideal edge flow looks like this... note in particular the green loop around the mouth, and how the adjacent sections join to it... CBR

That is not bad a for a first attempt, but you might do a lot better on the second go round. There should be zero triangles in this model - not only because it is generally bad modelling form, but because on curved organic surfaces like this it will actually result in deformation and unsightly lumps in your SDS model. If you are not using subdivision, or surfaces are flat then we can chill out if the odd tri remains, but on this sort of model you actually do need the all-quads, and if you are aiming to become a decent modeller overall the main skill involved in that is being able to solve any mesh to 100% quads, so it's important you keep trying until you can. We also have to remember that what SDS likes most of all is even distribution of polygons, and there are several areas on your model so far that are much more dense than others, which may also lead to problems later down the line... Once you have established half your new model, hide the original scan, then just select (what will be) the centreline edge loop of your retopo mesh and make sure it is zero-scaled on the symmetry axis. Do this via the coordinates manager. Then go to Object Mode, and get the Axis Centre toolbox. Use that to place the axis at the right side of your model along what will be the symmetry line. Now move the whole model (and the scanned original) to 0,0,0 (World Centre) and pop your mesh under regular Symmetry, and that should all work... Other things to note: 1. Make sure your polygons have their normals correct across the model. Check in Poly mode by selecting all of them, and going round checking all polys are orange on the outside. If there are any blue ones facing outwards then you need to Align normals across the whole mesh. 2. Once you have finished with retopo stuff don't forget to re-apply a phong tag to your mesh so that it goes back to its smoothed, non-faceted appearance... (The HB retopo stage removes this tag so you can see faceting while you build, which is helpful) Hope that helps CBR

To make that work you're going to have to cache the Jiggle tag I think... CBR

...and there needs to be a lot more of them. CBR

Nothing in Cinema can do that that I am aware of... people tend to use filmed elements when they want this effect... CBR

I'd say your initial poly density should be something in the region of this sort of thing... CBR

Yep - what he said. You need an edge flow that includes those forms. What you have now may be all quads and regular, so some points for that, but that is not the topology or edge flow you need to describe this surface because it doesn't take into account any of the secondary forms, upon which the whole mesh should be based, from the ground up ideally... To be honest, if the only thing you have modelled before is a fork (which might be considered a month 1 project, a trainer like this is sort of a Year 2 project, so you have made a massive leap in ambition and skill level required. With some effort sculpting could save this, but if you are trying to improve your poly modelling skills, I'd forget booles, sculpting, cloth, or splines, and just do your retopo again so that you incorporate those forms and still keep everything regular quads at the lowest resolution you can get away with, which isn't very low, given the complexity of the pattern... Poly Pen will do this fastest for you. Also make sure you are using symmetry if that is an option - no need to be doing more work than you have to... Top Tip: Once you have laid out some polys, the sculpt tools (which work on regular poly objects too) can be very helpful, specially the Grab Tool, if you use FX Modifiers to add a little smoothing into the tool, which will help keep you regular as you shift things about in a way that no other tool in Cinema can... Lastly, the HB modelling bundle would make this easier still, with its dedicated retopo setup and reprojection options... CBR

Viewport Settings / Display... CBR

This one can probably help you out if you're going with method 2... CBR

Not if you dump them all in a single null (per colour) and assign both materials to the groups rather than the individual objects... CBR

Re scratches and whatnot, yes, you should be able to use a totally separate material for your scratches and whatnot, which means it can be assigned over the top of other materials (and whole groups of objects), and have its own independent mapping. Obviously that is contingent on you using an alpha mask so you can still see the texture underneath. CBR