dasfrodo

Can you give me some of these, but formatted for someone that hasn't done MUCH in Houdini? I've dabbled in it for a bunch of weeks a couple of years ago and I ultimately concluded that the tool is just not for the kind of artwork I want to do and also not for what I do as a job. I just hate waiting for simulations, even particle sims. But I felt like most of the issues weren't really a design issue but more of a "that's just how Houdini works" thing. Not in a negative sense. The only thing I found baffling was their naming conventions for some of the nodes and the way viewport settings / controls / modes are handled, which is stupid confusing as a beginner. Oh and the UI looks antiquated, that could use a light refresh. Gradients in 2025 is kinda... eh. EDIT: I just noticed that my avatar is something I made in Houdini and one of my favorite artworks I've ever done. Oh the irony.

Yeah it's really easy in Blender. You don't even need Geo Nodes, just one Modifier and a selection. And this is honestly such a nice feature that it should be easily accessible.

@Hrvoje Do you think this is possible with Scene Nodes somehow? I'd be happy if I didn't have to convert the SDS.

Found the solution! It's a bit unintuitive to set up, but works so far at least for a relatively simple setup like this. But, as I feared there is NO way to do this with the SDS intact. It just has to be converted. Maybe this is possible with scene nodes, but I don't know how those work so this is my solution for now. Convert your target and source mesh if it's an SDS. Click on the Phong Tag of each of them and press "Create Normal Tag". This will essentially "freeze" your Normals on the mesh in the current state, as the Normal Tag overrides the Phong Tag as long as it exists. Click on the Normal Tag on your target mesh and enable "Fields" in the "Transfer" menu. Switch to the "Fields" tab on the tag. You should see a "Freeze" layer. This layer is basically the current normals on your mesh as the Normal Tag saved it. Do not delete this, or you will lose all your normals and your mesh will appear black. Drag the Normal Tag from your source mesh into the fields list. You should see your normals change. Click on the "Variable Field Tag" layer you just created and switch to the "Layer" tab. Change "Mode" to "Average". This essentially takes your target normals and changes them so they are an average of all the source mesh normals that are within a specified radius. You can adjust how large this radius is with the "Radius" setting. You want this relatively low, so only a couple of points around your "transition area" are involved. You might not want a smooth transition either, depending on your usecase. In that case you can disable "Distance Falloff" This entire setup should look something like this: So what does this do? Essentially we are keeping our original normals (which is the "Freeze" layer) and are then overwriting the parts that we actually want via the "Variable Tag Field" layer. If this is set to anything other than "Average" it will not work as intended for this workflow. Averaging is exactly what we want here for a smooth transition. Now let's assume we only want ONE part of the mesh actually having this transition. For this we need to add a little more to the fields. We can, for example, add a polygon selection as a mask below the "Variable Tag Field" layer. Then a polygon selection like this: ... can mask out the transition to only happen at the base, not at the thin part: You can add another "Freeze" layer after all of this to "save" this setup and delete the source object, so you don't have to keep unnecessary objects in your scene. So yeah, this is a bit more involved than in Blender and unfortunately not at all as convenient and most importantly not as non-destructive as in Blender, but at least it's possible. Maybe something Maxon can work on in the future 😉 I think this should be part of the Normal Editing toolset with a couple of clicks instead of... this.

So in Blender there is this very handy modifier called "Data Transfer" that makes it possible to dynamically transfer normals between different meshes. What would you need this for? Well, for example something like this: Meshes before transfer Meshes after transfer Note that these are EXACTLY the same meshes as before. It is not connected to the main body in any way, it's just the normals that were transferred for the row of points that touches the main body. Now in THEORY this is possible in C4D as well, in multiple ways, but I can't get it quite to work. I also tried exporting the mesh from Blender and importing it again in C4D, but that somehow breaks the shading and it doesn't look nearly as good as in Blender. Technique 1: VAMP Create Normal Tag on source mesh Open VAMP Set up Source and Target mesh, tick "Normals" and set "Space" to "Global" Press "Transfer Maps" This transfers the normals as expected, but I CANNOT decide what is transferred and what isn't. It looks like crap when ALL normals are transferred: And even IF you got that to look right: The Normal Tag breaks completely when you add a subdivision surface, so the only option would be to convert the SDS first, then do the normal transfer. This is significantly harder due to the amount of polygons involved though and kind of defeats the purpose of the parametric workflow in C4D. In Blender I could just put the SDS above the Data Transfer Modifier in the stack. Technique 2: Normal Editor This kind of works, but not really. As far as I can tell I can just adjust the normals of everything I selected in ONE direction. This works for the outer ring that touches the thick part of the model, but not for the part in front that wraps around the cylinder. The thick part just points in one direction, while the cylinder points in different directions. To add to that you have to somehow get the transitions between the normals to look great, which I just could not get to look right. And again, this breaks when SDS is involved, as the normals from the Normal Tag are ignored by the SDS. Technique 3: Transfer Attributes This is I think the best solution. You can transfer the normals between meshes via the attribute transfer function that is relatively new I think. The problem here is that I cannot seem to "mask" the transfer to only some points. It seems like the fields are acting as a value for the normals instead of being a mask for the value transfer. This is what I mean: It works JUST like the VAMP Normals transfer, just that it's "parametric" which is exactly what I want. But I cannot seem to restrict the transfer to only certain parts of the mesh. Also, of course, this breaks again when an SDS is involved, but I could at least have my normal transfer parametric after converting the SDS that way. If somebody could figure out how that works, if it's possible at all, that would be greatly appreciated 🙂 Stripped down Scene File is attached. Transfer.c4d

Yup exactly! That was the idea.

Thanks Hrvoje, but that's unfortunately not what I'd like to have exactly. I know this kind of setup, with nested nulls. The problem is that one of the nulls does not "stick" with the mesh, and that is exactly what I want. Basically have nulls I can rotate / move the main mesh around with that always stay where they were in the beginning. After playing around a lot I don't think that is something that is really possible in a software like C4D with "tree" based scene management.

I'm sure Autodesk will get no bad press at all for integrating AI character animation tools in their software that is known for having amazing character animation tools. This will surely go over well with the animators using this software. lol, I knew it:

Won't be of use, since this is a limitation that depends on the network setup. A file that doesn't work for me will work for you if you never have this problem. Years ago in another job we worked on network storage with C4D and it worked as well. Here, it doesn't, and according to support this is perfectly normal. I have never used this feature, but I'll have a look. I fear that I will not be able to use this due to IT guidelines etc. though 😛 Too much data, not to mention I have a library that needs to be synced all the time as well. Cloud storage is just not feasible with the amount of data and the internet speeds here.

This might be a really dumb question, but bear with me, please. Animation isn't something I have done a lot so far 🙂 Unfortunately I cannot seem to find a solution to this. Following scenario: I have an object that I want to animate. I want to animate this object via multiple helper nulls. Let's just assume I want to move and rotate this object around multiple axis, like in this image: Just to be clear, I do not want to rotate around both at the same time. I want it more like rotating around this axis at different times. This of course involves moving the null WITH the object while the other null is being animated. And this is where I hit a brick wall. Because this setup obviously leads to an infinite loops / circular dependency: This doesn't work at all, even if I turn down the "Weight" for Rotation Axis 2 while I animate 1, it just won't move with it. But it kinda makes sense. How can I solve this? Thanks!

It's funny you ask this, as I was under the same impression because years ago when I worked with C4D in an office environment it was no problem at all, but according to Maxon Support working on network drives was never and is not officially supported and not recommended! I opened a ticket with them because every single one of my scenes just 404ed every single texture I connected to the scene when pressing render, even though I could clearly see the previews on the nodes (so it found the files). This is what I got from them: I was caught off guard by this and basically asked them if they're fucking kidding me, to which they replied: So not only does it not work at my company, there is not even some kind of workaround they can give me a side from "change some settings on your NAS and hope it works lol". Because I'm a scatterbrain and I don't trust myself overwriting stuff with older stuff that I cannot recover because I have no backups, which already happened. Due to it being on the NAS though, IT could recover an older file from a week ago. Hehe, I'm good with IT, that's not the problem. They are just ridiculously overworked and don't have time to invest hours into something that would make ONE guys workflow easier in a company with 200+ employees. It's a medical company, so the amount of stuff that has to be tested / verified with new software is frankly absolutely ridiculous and takes a crazy amount of time. I do not like the thought of not having at least one separate backup of my data that is updated every day one bit. Data that is not backed up might as well not exist. I have learned this the hard way in the past.

Hi everyone! I have a bit of an issue to solve. I've started my new job in a company with no 3D experience. Basically I am responsible for visualizing all the products and creating animations. As a consequence I had the difficult task ahead to create a pipeline and an environment within the restrictions given by IT to work in. This needs to work on my office workstation and my office notebook that I can take home to work remotely. At first I though hey, that's going to be easy, I'll just leave all the files and my asset library on a network drive, link that in the files and we're golden... but then I learned that C4D still doesn't support network drives. I have some VERY strong words for how ridiculous it is that a software like C4D doesn't support a simple network drive in 2025, but I will keep them to myself. Apparently they are working on it, but still. Currently I have the following setup: I have two folders on the network drive, called: active_projects This is where the projects I'm currently working on are libraries This is where my C4D settings / materials / etc. library is located. It also contains another subfolder with non-C4D-specific files like HDRIs and textures These two folders also exist on my workstation desktop on my C drive and this what I'm ACTUALLY working with, so I don't have the network drive issue and faster workflow, due to the C drive being an NVME drive an not a NAS. I have a script running on my workstation desktop (using Robocopy) that periodically copies changed files from these folders on my local C drive to the "mirror copies" of these folders on the NAS / network drive. This is basically just a backup and the only way to make these files available on my notebook. To make sure I am not overwriting new files on the NAS with old files from my notebook (since I don't use it very often) this script does NOT exist on my notebook. So what I have to do when I want to work at home is: Turn on the notebook Connect to the company network via VPN Copy all new files from the NAS (libraries AND active_projects) onto my notebook When done, copy all the changed files from my notebook back onto the NAS I am REALLY unhappy with this setup since its prone to mistakes and really unwieldy. Does anyone here have experience with a setup like this and can give me a pointer? Remoting into the workstation in the office is sadly not an option right now, as the only IT approved remote desktop software is WAY to low quality for 3D work and doesn't work with C4D at all really. If only C4D supported goddamn basic network drives...

Oh wow these Redshift OSL Shaders are going to be REALLY handy, especially that Blur one. Thanks for posting.

Made it! Also I just noticed...

You're absolutely right, I hate it 😄 Imagine just for once just doing something and not having to work destructively because of running into tool limitations... couldn't happen to me. But that definitely solves my problem still. Thanks a lot! The only bright side is that technically I wasn't even doing it wrong, I just happened to find another edge case. So I wasn't too dumb 🙂

What the heck, I thought I checked for that. Apparently I didn't. Thanks for that, I'll see if I can fix that 🙂

But this HAS to be possible with SDS based modeling somehow, right? I can't imagine this is just not possible. Shader based approach is unfortunately not possible since I will be very, very close to that mesh at points. I'd use the Volume Builder approach but I thought I could finally use this opportunity to get a bit better at modeling 😕

This is probably going to be very embarrassing, but I'm just really bad at modeling unfortunately 🫠 How do these shading problems even manifest? The model is all quads, everything is completely flat on the horizontal axis. I don't understand where these errors come from 😕 C4D file attached. shading_error.c4d

Yup, that's my finding so far as well. I just resorted to grouping the entire material node tree and having that group in a material as the only node. It's a bit more tedious to edit but at least I don't have to open the Node Editor and then click the node to get to the attributes. Now it's visible in the "Surface" category of the material.

I mean it's doesn't really matter 😛 just wasn't sure where exactly to put it but I think it's fine.

Wanted to post this in the "Nodes" section but there is no "Material" Tag there, so I thought I'd fit better here 😉 I'm trying to create a universal material that I can use for multiple metals with controllable parameters like the strength of the anisotropy effect, etc. This works really well so far, except I can't get the parameters to expose well in the Attribute Manager. This is how I can edit the material in the Node Editor: Everything there is working as expected. I can change the settings and the material changes accordingly. I would like to avoid going INTO tha material an clicking on the inputs though. This is what I get when I group ALL the nodes in the material, set it as "Start Node" and select the material: So, so close, and yet so far... it seems like the material lists ALL input attributes... for every single input attribute, again and again. Is this intended behaviour or what am I doing wrong?

That sounds like you DO NOT like ACES. If so, can you elaborate a bit? Currently experimenting with it in my pipeline and honestly I can't see the benefit yet. I don't work with any real photography, just CGI.

I hope you realize how valuable this is, thank you SO much for taking the time to explain this over and over! It's really problematic to research a topic like this if you're not sure what sources you can even trust. As you said many times, there's just so much conflicting information on the internet it's not even funny. Yes, I did type that out in a wrong way. Apologies 🙂 I have understood this part at this point, although it was really tough to wrap my head around this principle after almost 20 years of thinking that 100% transparent = no color information. I feared that this would be the answer... sadly I do not have the skill in these other softwares and neither do I have the time or budget to switch over right or the near future. This will be a "maybe in a year or two" thing. How AE is still so prevalent in the CGI space with all that bullshit going on is beyond me. I'm building my pipeline right now and I'm having NOTHING but issues with AE. Color Management is an opaque and a needlessly complex pain in the ass, Alphas are handled incorrectly, performance is bad. Man I wish I would have learned Nuke instead of this crap. At this point I don't even know what to trust anymore, my intuition and experience or some piece of Adobe software that should work but isn't exactly likely to work correctly, considering all the crap happening around their software.

I have a feeling you have a LOT of experience that comes with the confusion on this topic, lol. Because I am still confused. I tried downloading the test image you posted and setting it up in AE. Either AE's Alpha handling is bad or I didn't set it up correctly. This is how it looks right now, on the right I opened the "CCSkull_06_d-sRGB_t-ACES-sRGB.jpg" from the Repo as reference. Some of the colors look really close, some look totally off. Of course, the entire candle flame AND the glow is missing. But with color management "close" is not good enough, so what am I doing wrong?

As far as I know the best way to comp your glow from renders is just don't. Getting the glow to correctly export from render engines is always a major pain in the butt for exactly this reason and at this point I just do it in post via AE or some playing around in PS. As said above Red Giant has some really good Glow plugins for AE, and they're part of Maxon One now.