natevplas

This is so cool! Makes me proud(er) to be a C4D guy!

I fear that there may NEVER be drivers for Mojave. I read an article suggesting that relations between Apple and Nvidia were so bitter that there were no plans for it. Apple has to approve any drivers Nvidia creates, so they are at Apple's mercy. One can only put off upgrading the OS for so long... I moved to PC over a year ago mostly because Apple had pretty much abandoned it's pro users. Remember when they released a "new" Mac Pro with no room to upgrade anything internally - over 5 years ago?!? Yes, they say they are launching a new Mac Pro this year, but I'm not holding my breath. I love the OS - switching to Windows was painful- but I just didn't see a future in 3D with Apple.

Fantastic work!!

Nice model! I can see why you might not love the metal material, though. It looks like wrought iron rather than steel, which is what that type of wrench would be made of. It could be a simple fix, but I have no idea what your node structure looks like. Start by removing most of the color from the diffuse channel (or turning off diffuse completely). Then you could pipe what I assume is an inverted AO into your Reflection roughness. You could also use it as a matte for a scratch texture that could be connected to roughness and bump/displacement. You'll probably want some micro scratches on the surfaces of your wrench too, to make it look like it's been machined. Quite often the handle or at least the recessed part of the handle is bumpier metal. You'd probably have to go in and paint that matte on your UVs.

AMEN!

It's certainly a confusing move on Adobe's part. They don't even have a proper 3D animation app, but they're going to sell professional UV and texturing tools??

If you were creating this in Unity and had 6 DOF movement around your scene in the headset, then yes, scaling would play a big role. But since you are just rendering a 2D spherical image, it doesn't do much. Think of your camera less as a camera and more like a reflective sphere. This sphere is infinitely small- a point. Then imagine somehow you can still see this sphere and it's reflections. Take everything it's reflecting and unwrap it into a rectangle and that is what your "camera" is capturing. Go into front/top/back view and measure the angles from the camera point to various objects. The angles will not change as you scale the scene (assuming your scale origin is the camera), so the point where they hit the sphere will not change, therefore the image will not change. Caveat: I don't know how the CV VR camera actually calculates an image, but it's possible that it internally creates 6 cameras- one for each side of a cube, then stitches these images into one (similar to how cheap GoPro 360 rigs work for footage). If this is the case, then there will be a tiny bit of variance as you scale the scene since the 6 cameras must have a specific FOV/mm. For the most part, though, you'll still see the effect I'm talking about and that you seem to be experiencing.

Ok, I think I follow you. That is an interesting challenge, as far as constraining it to just one axis. I tried my hand at it for a bit, but couldn't quite get it. I tried using a Hinge connector, but couldn't figure out how to the the Target to respect that. Here's my project file in case it's helpful. Polygons Hinge Target v01.c4d

Hmmm... I'm not sure I get exactly what you're going for. The Channel 4 thing is basically just randomly rotating triangles. But you want your triangles to point at an object (facing or perpendicular)? Or do you mean form the shape of an object? What is it about the Target effector that isn't cutting it? Too controlling?

I haven't played much with the CV VR camera, but I am familiar with 360 video in general. My guess is the reason you don't see any/much change is because, with 360 images, the size of objects in the frame is almost solely dependent on where your camera is placed. If you want something to appear smaller in frame, about the only way is to move the camera away from that object. I actually do see a subtle perspective shift between your two images, which is all I would expect to see. If you were rendering this in stereo 3D, you would probably notice in headset that when you scaled your scene up, your purple-shirted person would look like a giant who was kind of far away and you were in a helicopter high above the ground. And when you scaled your scene down, the person would look like a tiny figure right up in your face and your chin would feel like it was touching the ground. But in both instances, he would be taking up about the same amount of the your view. In 2D you lose most of that, so you probably don't notice much.

Interesting! You should make an automaton in C4D!

This is normal. Basically, if you have perfectly overlapping polygons, Cinema doesn't know which one to show. There basically is no "front" poly if they are technically in the exact same position. C4D can't read your mind ;)

Wow, nice job! That flower one is particularly beautiful!

Upload your .c4d. It's probably some hidden overlapping poly or reversed normal. Just FYI, looks like you have a few triangles in your model. That could come back to bite you later...

Looking really good! I think I'd have to see them in a full scene or in a higher res still to tell you if they're for sure working, but they're really looking nice so far. Are you using any SSS? The reflections look just a tad to glossy- maybe roughen them up a bit.

I don't know, but maybe there's something in the Cactus Dan plugins for this? They're free now, as mentioned in another post on here:

Many ways! I'd start with a sphere in hexahedron mode. Then sculpt the basic shape and throw a material on it with a displacement map (some layered noise should work). The key will be in your material's SSS and Translucency settings to get that translucent cranberry look.

I'm out of my league with rigging here, but would it work for your character designs to have the limbs be a separate mesh from the body? I'm guessing that would be the only way to keep all the weighting, etc. @everfresh could probably tell you :D

Ah, gotcha! You should update your profile to show your C4D version then. To get some particles to bounce off and some to pass through, you'd have to have at least 2 particle groups: one that's affected by a collision object and one that's not. You could probably get away with a very simple squashed sphere for you collision object. Then, when your Attractor turns on to draw the particles in, just scale your sphere collider down to zero so it doesn't do anything anymore. Maybe instead of a Attractor, have the particles transform into a shape like in this tutorial:

I don't think XP is necessary, but you could certainly achieve what you're trying to do that way. Looks like you don't even have C4D yet? Does that mean you have AE and C4D Lite? I'm not sure which features Lite has and doesn't, but I know it doesn't have MoGraph or particles. Does it have Fields? If you're thinking of purchasing C4D just for this effect, I think you would be wise to look for a cheaper solution. Don't get me wrong, C4D is great, but the effect you're going for should be relatively easy to do in AE. Stardust is a pretty great-looking particle plugin for AE. I haven't used it myself, but I would think it could do this. Either that or Trapcode Particular 4 seems to be pretty powerful.

Try this:

Not sure I understand. I watched the video, but still not sure. Is "Smart IK Foot Roll" something that we should know of, or just something you created? Could you attach a stripped-down project file? That would be easier for me or someone to diagnose.

You know you have an interesting project when The Noseman comments!

I'm not familiar with pySerial, but you should check out GripTools: https://www.griptools.io/ Seems like it's exactly what you're looking for. Since you don't need precise movement, i.e. grabbing an object, I think FK should do just fine for you once you get the hang of animating. Let me know how it goes!

By the way, I forgot to mention how geeked I am about your project! This is something I've been dreaming about trying for a while (not the elephant trunk specifically, but controlling real life motors with C4D).