Decade

True cryptomatte isn't. You can get an Object ID pass where all the objects are different colours from Standard/ Physical as follows: - Make a new render setting - Enable Material Over-ride - Make a material with only luminance enabled - Add the 'Variation' shader to the luminance channel - In the variation shader, change 'random colour mode' to 'replace' - Use this material for the Over-ride material This is still a seperate render, because it's a modified beauty pass, but it's very quikc to render & you can batch it using takes, to render with your main

No one ever answered this, but I'm going to drop it here for posterity, as I came across it searching for something else. The answer is to export the weights for each mesh via the weights manager, then gather all your meshes in 1 file & re-import the weights onto each of the meshes, after adding a weight tag with the relevant joints to each mesh. When importing the weights, it simply checks the weight tag for a joint of the corresponding name & applies the weighting, so as long as you've dragged all the joints into the weight tag prior to import, you're all good. Exporting & importing weights can also be used to fix skinning issues in situ - for example, you noticed a problem with the weight painting but animators have already used the character in lots of files - you can simply correct the weighting in the original file & import it into the animaton scenes. Of course, xref chracters is another alternative solution for this, as it let's you have te character auto-update.

I'd agree with the general consensus that I prefer how Octane looks out of the box & I think it's faster overall. The software & content bundle Octane comes with is pretty fantastic, in my opinion. You get a lot for your money especially if you work in a company where there are animators that would use Cascadeur, Environment Artists that would use Kitbash etc There are some advantages to Redshift though, that are more 'Pipeline' or 'Team' advantages Redshift is more Neutral/ Plain in it's output, which can be an advantage for some types of work, especially where a lot of the look is done in comp. The Viewport display of the materials is much better than Octane, which if you do a lot of previs/ playblasts is handy. Everyone with a Cinema 4D licence can open the scenes & see all the materials correctly, they show up in the viewport etc. If you use a 3rd party engine, they get nothing. Exporters see the Redshift materials & their textures, so if you go to Unreal or other packages a lot, it's much more convenient with Redshift. Basically the advantages of being native material system. I've written a python Octane->Cinema 4D material convertor, but it's rudimentary & still needs Octane to be installed, so it's a lot less ocnvenient than just using 1 material system for everything.

You can export the character via FBX to Unreal as a Skeletal Mesh Unreal is very particular about what it will accept - anything except joints & meshes that are either skinned onto or parented under those joints will be ignored So if you hierarchy you are trying to export is peppered with nulls & has the controllers parented in etc, then you'll get problems. The missing objects will result in incorrect orientations for their children. The best way by far is to have a separate Bind Rig, which has only joints & meshes & is constrained to an animation rig that contains all controllers IK etc. You then bake the Bind Rig to PSR keyframes & export only that

In 2024 this is resolved, the FBX import had been re-jigged & you can now choose -Z on the import to have stuff come in the right way up. HOWEVER, there is a new bug where skeletal mesh exports via fbx won't open in Unreal, so the exports the other way need to go from Cinema 2023.2.2. I've reported the bug so hopefully there will be a fix soon. Otherwise, I haven't had any need to change from the default when exporting from Cinema to Unreal. One caveat is that in the case of skeletal meshes, Unreal will ignore any objects other than joints & meshes in the hierarchy & therefore mess up rotations if they are present. You can use the 'replace with ...' command from the tools menu to substitute nulls & splines etc with joints while retaining animation. This lets you get those animated hierarchies into Unreal ocrrectly Although the ideal is to design your rigs with a seperate bind rig of just joints & meshes.

I actually have that exact Omen with a 3090 as my main machine at work. It was a pandemic buy, when HP were the only people in the UK that had 3090's to buy at a semi-reasonable price. They decided that a single fan watercooler was appropriate for the 10900k, with the result that it sounds like a harrier jump-jet taking off when doing an Unreal project build or a heavy CPU render. I managed to partially tame it with Intel XTU by enforcing a 125w power limit, at the cost of some performance. The 3090 is also towards the noiser end. That aside, it's been a solid system & it gets rinsed every day. But there's no reason at all to be building with one now - I agree with Mash - you want an i9 13900k or Ryzen 7950x system, for the vastly improved single-core performance as much as anything. I ilke the Ryzen's a bit better, as the 13900k is is such a power hungry beast it needs a lot of cooling. But they are both good for perormance really. You're starting to get 96GB configurations of DDR5 now too, with 2x48GB sticks. Could be a nice option for a little more RAM.

Have you tried 'Set Driver' & 'Set Driven' by right-clicking the channels ? It just creates an XPresso with Range mapper & links it up for you, but it is a bit quicker than doing it fully manual

When Cinema went subscription only, I just stopped having my own licence. Now my boss pays the subscription instead.

Everyone is using multiple apps nowadays across most of film, TV & commercials. Z-Brush, Substance, Unreal etc, etc. All of the programs you mention are also going to need supplementing with other software too. That's just how things are now., doesn't matter what program you're using.

That's nice for hobbyists or certain freelancers in certain industries. But I'll never work on a project that qualifies for the indie licence, nor will anyone else at the company where I work. It's just not a like-for like comparison. Even then, the Cinema 4D full commercial is only about 50% more on this offer than Maya's Indie, which seems pretty good value.

Tools -> 'Replace with' is one of the most powerful functions. Change any part of your rig to a different object type, while preserving all connections, substitute a bunch of copies from an imported scene for render instances etc etc. Other one is 'Set Parent' & 'Unparent' instead of dragging & dropping in the hierarchy - move your animated objects to different places in your hierarchy with no hassle.

A year's Cinema 4D commercial is less than 1/3 the cost of a year's Maya full commercial, even before the discount. I that so terrible ? £462 for a year with the discount seems pretty decent to me.

I had one instance where the solo wasn't working, but I didn't have time to investigate, I worked round it. This is something that I use so habitually that I'll be pretty displeased if it's bugged. Thanks. I really wanted them in the right-click menu, but couldn't find how to customise that one, so I did as you suggested, For the icon-less commands, I create a new pallette set to show text only. Did the same with Set Parent & Unparent (Hilariously, I think they did an icon for one & not the otheR)

Thanks. I would prefer to edit the commands back into the right click menu, but couldn't find how to do it on a 5min investigation. So I did as you suggest. For these icon-less commands, I creat a new plaette & display only text, no icon, then dock that in where I need it. Had to do the same for 'Set Parent' & 'Unparent' (hilariously, I think they did an icon for one & not the other.

Pretty solid update all round. But why for goodness sake why have they removed 'fold all' & 'unfold all' from the object manager's right-click menu ? Absolutely critical command for any scene of even moderate complexity. Gone, because someone decided it was untidy or something. I wish they would stop p***ing about with the interface, especially for a point release.