jbatista

10 hours ago, Smolak said:

Artists want freedom which models, nodes, plugins, renderer they use and they don't want to pay for things which they will never use ! This is why Autodesk 3D Max is still on the 1st place from years, without real built-in renderer.
 

 That is not entirely accurate. 3ds max is the worst example you can bring for the 3d app table to discuss, and i know that for a fact, since i used to work with it and my company still uses it to render unfortunatelly.
In short, 3ds max is one of the most overpriced apps in the world for studios (big or small) that cannot use indie licenses such as mine. its around 2.5 k almost per year and that is only the software. Then you must start filling it with other plugins to make it usefull, starting with its most popular renderer vray or corona wich is paid separately. Almost no one uses arnold in 3ds max wich is the actuall inbuilt renderer (although its a good one).  But it doesnt end here. In studios like mine we also pay for Forest tools (plugin), Tyflow (plugin) and a bunch of other plugins to solve basic stuff like take system and such. In the end the money you spend in 3ds max is a small fortune and c4d is still better for charater animation, motion, and a lot of other stuff.

I believe 3ds max is still popular because of its legacy, a large user base and the connection with the arch viz business.

But i agree with you when it comes to Maxon policies of making us pay for stuff we dont use. I really dont need nothing else but the c4d app. Heck, i eaven dont need RS altought i like to use it. So the best they can do is to give users the power of choice. In studios like mine c4d is used to as part of a pipeline along with houdini and 3ds max. I dont need an extremely expensive software with things i'll never use.

cheers

Hi

I think it might not be possible to stack time tags. However, its possible to bake the smooth effect into the objects and then appy the posterisation tag. You might need to duplicate the objects to create a backup.

Hi there

That's an unusual problem but here are some sugestions:

1- check the c4d versions on c4ds (host and clients) if it is the same.

2- re-check all render parameters like frame range , frame rate etc

3- check some options in the xref. You can change the x-ref from relative path to absolute path. Usually its relative but i sugest you to disable it and put in on absolute.

4- in the same x-ref options box check some parameters such as animation and parameters.

in the end if everything fail, you can always create an alembic file from your character animation, transfer the materials, and put it t render. it usually works well, unless you have some kind of changing topology and then you might end without motionblur in your render.

cheers

On 12/4/2023 at 4:00 PM, Havealot said:

@jbatista Can you elaborate on "Thigs like the spline editor separate window when you are working with fields"? I am not aware of any issues there. 

Sure.

This bug is around for 3 or 4 previous releases and basicly when we are using fields, and for example we select a spline object as field, and if we use one of the curve/spline editors in a separate window, it show as blank. 

I'm putting some screenshots here to illustrate this issue.

This issue however happens only with certain objects. perhaps that's why is hard to spot. Anyway it has already been reported.

Hi

Since the release of R2024 i've already placed at least 7 bug requests/reports. After the 1.0 version 3 were fixed and 4 are still to be fixed. I agree that due to the complexity of software upgrade, things will take some time to fix, even if some bugs such as solo layer that  are a real pain...

These remaining 4 errors bugs (probably way more) are not what really bothers me. What really bothers me are bugs with years, that persists from various releases and dont get fixed. Thigs like the spline editor separate window when you are working with fields, the edge slide tool when while doing pose morphs, the viewport crashes, things like that.

Those bugs are becoming permanent and i feel that more are in the way to get permanent too, even with constant reports.

Still, i've been using R2024 for my work and find it better and faster so i really hope next upgrade will get these bugs fixed soon.

cheers

oh sry.

my mistake. but, some of that intel still valid.

cheers

Going from r2023 to R2024 will work fine in most cases. However here are some situations that might cause diferences:

There was some changes in the sdk that result in some plugins ceasing to work.

Some tools like mirror selection, polygon mirror etc, exist but are considered legacy so they are slowly being romeved from their menus.

Task manager changed a bit (logo missing)

there are also a few bugs that are anoying but i think it will be fixed soon:

   solo layer is messed up and doesnt hide fields or nulls

   the input values in effectors change some animations if you put values like -1 instead of -0.999

carefull with xrefs or other kind referenced stuff. might cause bugs.

besides  these i'm working fine with both.

cheers

I think its an annoying bug reggarding c4d. in the mospline, if the offset is set to 99.999 that problem disapears. such problem i think its related to c4d system itself.

This however generates a small gap that i believe it can be solved with a optimize node as deformer.

cheers

Hey! Another possibility is using a mospline loading the circle (or another shape).

Then in the mospline effector pool load a plain to control the thickness of the circles. then use fields. With this system you only need one setup.

mograph_thickness_with_mospline.c4d

upgraded version

cheers

counter.c4d

hey

something like this?

since the integer input fields has a limit , i set it up to 999.999.999

cheers

counter.c4d

Hi

There's a new patch release. version 0.1 is out.
https://support.maxon.net/hc/en-us/articles/8658038724124-Cinema-4D-2024-0-1-September-20-2023

Some fixes are very welcome. Let's keep them comming.

Thanks

cheers

On 9/18/2023 at 9:12 PM, srek said:

As a personal side project to provide more information on Scene Nodes to everyone interested i started a small page.

https://nodebase.info

Feel free to request topics that should be covered

Amazing initiative. It's really a great help in order to master scene nodes.

Thank you

cheers

8 hours ago, Smolak said:

Anyone noticed that Asset Browser stopped to refresh watch folders ? No previews and even it doesn't update folders structure. C4D 2024

I just want to add one more issue to the watch folders.
If you have create a Pose Library with some character poses, and then you create a watch folder, the whole Pose Library Browser ceases to work. This problem was already present in previous versions when the watch folders were added, and it was never fixed.

I've added some screenshots with the browser working and after i connect a watch folder. Even the icons are gone. weird as hell

By the way, this problem was already reported via support  ticket but there was no solution found.

1 hour ago, srek said:

Small correction, TP originally came from Cebas and received quite a few updates and improvements over time that were done by Maxon. S&T however is directly from Maxon, like Hair it is heavily integrated into the old render engine, so a port to Redshift would mean a complete new development.

Thanks for the correction. I was prety sure that besides TP, S&T was also from cebas, because of the similarities with final toon.

As for the hair, that also confirms that the hair is way to embeded in the old renderer. wich is a pitty because i really like c4d's native hair system. 

Its a modelling issue since its a hardsurface object with subdiv. Try this:

by the way, you forgot the tex file.

cheers

01.c4d

That problem seems a bit odd. However you can always try to go on preferences, and try turning on/off these:

Well, from your screenshot, looks like its the pivot from the point selection, edit mode, wich means it might not be the best option for object rotation. But even that pivot/axis can be changed if you select the position/transform icon and go on the axis transformation options. There you can select to adopt the object's own pivot or anything else. If you leave edit mode and your pivot stays all messed up , you can still go on axis center and re-position it. 

cheers

2 hours ago, HappyPolygon said:

 

Nothing is small potatoes when dealing with old code.

This is the main reason for having so few updates for old features. It's easier to re-write a tool (not fast) or expand on it than revisit it to add things in it. Too many dependencies with other features.

Yep. Motion System is part of the  "old c4d code" along with some other features that aren't upgraded for ages. We have a lot of stuff like this, powerfull but not updated. 

C4d hair system, for example. Its great but i lacks more modern stuff , mainly connections to other render engines.
Xpresso (also TP), wich is vital to rigging and tool creation needs more love too, althoug it can still connect to recent features.
Bodypaint, same.
Physical and Standard render engines.

etc

Many of this stuff was compiled into c4d years ago. TP, Sketch and Toon, Pyro and i believe the render engine, were even outsourced from a different soft company called Cebas that still does TP and other plugins for max. So stuff like this will never receive updates again unfortunatelly.

As for motion system, i've recently worked with it for a mocap project and i really enjoyed it. but i used it along my own mocap/mixamo rig system since i really dont like the one that is provided with c4d. As for the info i've read the entire help section and tried, and i found out it was actually pretty easy to work with. and the great part is that the animation layers can be easily controlled by xpresso .

cheers

1 hour ago, Cerbera said:

 

Sorry dude - not quite understanding what you mean there - could you elaborate ?

 

 

 

If I drag Point indexes to VP, then it does change colour for me to show it is on...

 

 

here moving from white (off) to purple (on)

 

CBR

its a minor bug. the option is active in one menu but in the viewport menu doesnt show as active

1 hour ago, HappyPolygon said:

 

???? @Cerbera

Its a minor bug. But each time i activate the point vertex in the viewport the icon doesnt change its state to on. So it looks like its always off.

29 minutes ago, Günter Nikodim said:

 

These are the kind of comments that I honestly don't understand. Have you even tried the release for a minute?

The performance gain is something the whole community has been asking for for the last 10 years and now almost every use case benefits from it. Finally the new core shines through... and your conclusion is "nothing groundbreaking"?

 

I also don't know how one could come to the conclusion that Maxon concentrates more on ZBrush than Cinema.

C4D just got a massive update in this fall release, ZBrush didn't. 

I think that depends of each one point of view. For example, im a rigger and an animator. I use xpresso a lot, skin deformers and character features. I welcome a lot the new vamp features and the viewport performance but i feel c4d needs a lot more for this area, like a more advanced xpresso,  animation layers, vertex weight layers, dual quartenion algorythms and much more. Other artists will require different features. 

In the end , i feel a little frustrated with this version because it lacks the tools i need. However its still the software i like the most, the one i work with everyday and i hope it gets better by the time.  Thats why i like to point out the issues and the good features.

Cheers

2024 First Impressions

Well i ran a few performance tests wich includes a cloner with a 100x100 grid geometric cubes (no instancing) and plus a few deformers over it and a subdiv. 

Also a modelling performance test with a cube inside the sculpting mode, and over 6 000 000 polys.

The performance results were mixed:

In the first test, the cloner performed well even with the deformers inlfuence but it fell with the sub div. It was like 1fps in the end. However it was more than twice as fast of the 2023 version that ran at 0.3fps.  good job Maxon!

The second test was an Alembic file of the merged geometry of the same cloner. Then the deformers and in the end the subdiv. The performance was a bit faster due to the ABC cache but in the end it was only 2fps. However there was no diference to the 2023 version wich means the abc stream was not affected by this update. no news here!

The third test was a modelling one with a heavy geometry and the sculpt tool. The subject was a cube subdivided to more than 6000000 polys wich isa good round number for a detailed sculpt. Now this test was TERRIBLE. The viewport performance in orbiting is ok but as as soon as you interact with a brush to sculpt, the performance is extremely bad. You can't use the brush smoothly and it becomes unpractical to use. The 2023 version is way smoother and even at 25 000 000 polys is better than the 2024 version. i hope this is some problem fixed with a new release.  bad job Maxon!!!

I didnt test anything else yet so i really dont know how powerfull are the other  upgrades.

Besides the simulation tools plus the nodes (wich i really don't use often) this version is been a real disapointment. The linear displacement seems kinda pointless, the align to spline extra features are almost useless and the normal extra tools are ok but there were was already an old plugin called Vertex Normal tool, that could do that job.

The viewport index features are a good tool, however i noticied a little bug in the point index.

I'll try the modelling features later and i really hope they change my mind.

i was rooting for some animation/rigging features but i guess i'll have to wait.

cheers

Hey

Joints are like any other object in the the 3d scene, you can transform it (position.scale,rotation)and you can delete it, move in hierarchy or duplicate it. However if your rigged character dependends on those joints, that might result in changes in your skin weights. moving those skinned joints will result in the character deformation as expected, and deleting those joints will cause you skin vertex weights to loose information.

So, you can do all of what i mentioned above, but you have consequences for the rigged character.

If you want to change your rig by joint repositioning i sugest to go to your skin weight tag:

1- put the weight to 0%,

2- reposition your joints

3 - and then set bind pose again.

4 - then put the weight back to 100%

if you want to delete joints, just press delete, but that vertex weight data will be lost and you'll have to replace that joint.

Hi

Did you tried the track modifier tag? I think that might help since it can create a cache for animated objects or objects that are being driven.

cheers