Cerbera

Well, I can only tell you what my problems with it are. I want to own my software, not have my software owning me. I want to buy something and have it work forever, and pay for updates to it when I can afford to, and when I need to - IF the new product can justify the expense. And if it doesn't I don't see any reason at all that my old software should ever stop working on the OS for which it was intended. All the work on it has been done and paid for. An MSA seems like the fairest way of paying for the latest work. There is nothing like the security of knowing your software will still work even if the internet is down for 3 months. So like Autodesk and Adobe before them, Arnold has just ruled itself out of renderers I will consider. A great shame. CBR

Public beta hey ? Who'd have thought... Nice to see some further evidence that MAXON ARE listening. We've been asking, and this is another improvement in their communication / interaction with the userbase that is very welcome with me... CBR

If you're talking about 18.48, nothing is the answer - that's only a Ryzen hotfix update as far as I know...

Oh that's excellent - both of them, but I really like the architecture in the second one. Really lovely stuff, and awesome lighting too... CBR

As right as C4D avenger @SIgor usually is, I must disagree with him on this occasion ! :) There's no doubt that HDRI on a sky is quick and involves no effort, but I don't think that's what's going on here. For me, this looks like a typical studio setup, some well placed softboxes*, and fairly standard 3 point lighting, 1 orangey light, 1 bluer, and another white top light. The attractively soft shadows are easy to get if you light this way. You can still use an HDRI for reflections, and use proper lights, but there is no good case for GI here. CBR *Softboxes, if you don't know, are area lights, carefully positioned and aimed, made visible to reflection, and use area shadows for most realism.

EDIT: Actually, don't do it with a flip solver or proper smoke sim - I forgot it's in an enclosed sphere with nowhere to go, so will just fill the sphere in the first second, and then look like a rubbish grey blob ! :) Do it with your original plan; proper particles and curl turbulence, which you can make disappear more effectively, and control more precisely.

You don't need a tutorial for that ! ;) It's as simple as setting the noise type to curl in your turbulence modifier, and playing with the settings ! But even so, there is a tutorial in the XP video manual, predictably under 'Turbulence', but also in the XP3.5 special tutorials section. May I also suggest that while you are there, you also watch the videos on the flip solver, the XP gaseous shader, and the XP constraints, which will show you how to do proper decent smoke. CBR

Nope - that's totally the way to go. Hollow glass sphere from geometry, with a nice XP curl noise smoke sim in the center. It'll have to be quite a thin glass sphere if you want to see the smoke properly. Don't forget the sphere needs physical thickness (select all polys, extrude, caps on), or you'll be trying to move particles inside a solid ball which will work, but will look wrong. CBR

Sketch n Toon can render isoparms... Add sketch and toon from render settings, change mode to advanced and enable isoparms render. CBR

You should ask @INSYDIUM directly, but I can't possibly imagine the answer is yes. CBR

Mostly nice modelling, except for that one boole ;). You should use the Levr layer mode in combination with vertex map based noise to get your dirt in the channels... that should come up very nicely in the render. CBR

Do what the box tells you and refer to the installation instructions you got when you bought the pack. You can't just add folders wherever you like inside its structure or that will return an error. CBR

We should at least get his name right ! That's Nick Campbell there, folks ;)

No, no - hair dynamics - ie the dynamics tab of the hair object... turn it on there - no need to add gravity - in fact you might need to take some of that off, or down, and you do that there also. You can test if it's working by pressing play and then moving the object about in the scene - if the hair moves and bounces as you do, it's working. For your pom pom, the best advice I can give you is to use very few segments in your guides so they don't flop down too badly. You may even want to tick the 'rigid' checkbox which will make them behave more like bristles, which might be more suitable for a pom pom because it makes them much stiffer and only react to to dynamics nearer the ends.

You don't wanna use hair then ? Cos that's where I'd be going first, for its dynamic movement for free, and parametric setup ;) Could be as simple as 'get sphere, add hair, tweak material, turn on dynamics, and animate pom pom' ! Bet that produces a better, or at least fluffier result than even the mighty XP could manage... CBR

I reckon someone just didn't notice it was 2 years old, and replied as if it were current, and that started everyone off again :) We could probably just close it, but in the meantime, here's some positivity; I still really really like C4D, and remain, for the most part, very happy with it.

Once you have made changes to tool defaults you need to save the layout, which saves some things about the scene, AND the scene itself as new.c4d in the folder MAXON installs to. However there are some settings that are not preserved even doing this (IPR settings for example). CBR

3D has always been a hobby for me (15 years+), and I was a web designer for a living, so already had the 2D sh*t down, but when I realised I enjoyed 3D more than web design I began working doubly hard to fill the gaps in my 3D knowledge, and to specialise in at least one field (modelling in my case). I waited 5 years before I went part-time commercial, and 7 years to go full -time, mainly to ensure that I was at least approaching expert is most areas of the program, and could solve 98% of problems on my own. Some people say I waited too long, but I disagree. Rather too often on this forum we get people who are patently unqualified to be doing commercial work, and yet still they try, before coming on here and pleading for deadline-based help when they come unstuck at the first client hurdle ! :) But we're all different, and learn at different rates - I have also seen people who are producing astonishing work within 6 months to a year, but they are few and far between, and tend to be able to spend all day every day learning their toolset, so are putting in the same huge amount of effort, but getting through it faster. CBR

Yep, that's... not bad - you've obviously got a decent grasp of the software :) But to be fair and honest, and in the spirit of constructive criticism I would have to let you know that it is a little 'generic', ie the sort of thing everyone does when they first learn the software. And if it's just a little test for your own amusement that is totally fine. But if it's a serious bit of art for potential inclusion in a showreel for example, then you probably need to do something a bit more unique and impressive that hasn't already been done 1000 times before. Honestly I can't tell you how many pulsing blobs I have seen from C4D over the years - but it's in the thousands ! You need to show how you apply these sort of techniques in your own unique and original way. Hope that helps, and is encouraging rather than the opposite... CBR

Yeah, you can't change the point count afterwards...

Yeah it's a nice little technique that, if I'm not much mistaken, first demoed by Chris Schmidt in Season 2 of Ask GSG when he used it on an ocean diorama... CBR

You mean the Correction Deformer ? That's what I use for primitive selections... CBR

All tutorials from Daniel Danielsson on Youtube are excellent, useful to even the most advanced of us, and amongst the most well-made of any I have ever seen, but this one is particularly clever and rewarding, so thought I'd share it here for those of you who haven't seen it yet. We're using Xpresso as a shader network to mask some puddles onto asphalt, and not letting the kittens get wet, so it's all good. Enjoy. CBR

Yep, that's not too bad. Lighting is most successful of the elements so far. Still, some areas could stand some improvement, if you don't mind some constructive criticism ? There is not enough randomness in this scene so far. Especially with the curtains, which never look uniform like that in real life, and we can tell that bar is passing through them wrongly. We're also missing some bevelled edges around the scene - nothing in life has a dead straight edge, so you should be eliminating those wherever they occur. Not convinced about the sofa/ chair texture either - looks too large scale; not detailed enough, unpleasant colour (I'd go darker personally). Some blurring on the table edge texture - that could do with better mapping / better texture. Cables going into walls can't just be left like that - you need to model the attachment into the wall as well if you are going for realism. There is some issue with room design as well - it is quite odd to have that splat-artwork thing on the floor under the table where nobody can see it, for example.... Lastly, you seem to be lacking contact shadows, which suggests you are not using Ambient Occlusion in this scene? If not, you should be ! :) Hope that helps CBR

I have no idea how you'd control that with a script. I'm not sure you can. But if you add your edges with edge cut and use the modifier keys, then pinch and slide works exactly like Max's Connect tool - ie they ALWAYS go in opposite directions unless your modifiers tell them not to. Perhaps you could exploit that to your advantage... CBR