Shrike

Is it possible to split meshes by material? 

In blender geo nodes we do something where the artists models his mesh in a folder, then the nodes will split the meshes by material into seperate other blender folders and name them (Metal, Rubber, Wood...)

so when exporting to unity/unreal they dont have overlapping materials, (since engines have to render a mesh once per material, so 5 materials on one connected mesh = 5x cost)

@Zerosixtwosixtry the "Melt" node

Maybe you can take bounding box, scale it depending on the direction you want, select then melt - in theory

---------------

Idea: 

One thing that seems to be hard to do with Cinema is placing objects on the top facing normals of a mesh

Like place plants on top of a stone.

In a shader you would take the Y normal direction and paint the snow / sand etc.

With a cloner this seems oddly not doable (?) and requires some more advanced expresso, although that is a quite often required thing.

You can do it manually of course right now by many means, but not automatic.

How can you work without it? Oh man

I just got a reproduction

I used fields in the vertex color and dragged in the mesh itself, after this it broke and will not return until the mesh is taken out

Step 1 add vertex color

Step 2 enable fields

Step 3 drag in mesh into field

As mentioned, I am 80% sure this is not the only issue of such kind but this is actually 100% reproducible

For the last years i keep getting bugged with the corrupted selection issue throughout the latest versions

I think this started happening in 20-21 or such versions and happens quite a lot if you keep working on one scene file and still persists up to 2023.2.

Generally at some point while working, the scene selection highlighting breaks and you cannot see any orange highlights anymore, which makes working in the scene basically not viable. This is fixed usually by putting all stuff into a new scene. Saving and loading the scene wont fix it. In the bug today however, the vertex color tag caused it and was not fixed by a new scene.

(Gif: No more highlighting on mouseover)

The variations of this highlighting issue have been my number 1 annoyance in the past years but are very slippery to notice when they exactly appear.

In the case today, it seems that the vertex color tag breaks the highlighting. C4D thinks im still in painting mode while I am not, making selection highlighting never to return. If I delete and reapply the vertex color tag, it fixes itself. 

Reproduction:

Step 1. Add vertex color to mesh, Step 2, use fields mode, Step 3, drag mesh into field. Selection highlighting will never return unless the mesh is removed.

I added the file with the example

I think there are multiple ways where the highlighting can permanently dissapear. I think there is some state where C4D thinks you are still in some special modes which does not have highlighting. I suspect it is if you use some modeling operations in combination with switching model modes or something like that. 

270848058_SelectionHighlightingBug.c4d

On 5/2/2023 at 12:40 PM, 3D-Pangel said:

Very nice.  Thank you.

 

Please note that this generator is also good for making cheese!!!!  

 

 

Dave

Actually the advantage of the edge damage generator is that it mostly affects edges and not everything on the surfaces

If you want to make something which is fully holed, id recommend using a shader field straight into volume builder, this is more effective for making a real holed cheese, making holes into everything is done very well by volume builder baseline

On 5/3/2023 at 6:11 PM, Fritz said:

area weighted normals _ phong lines_fixed.c4danother try. the old version only crashed on load and was unrelated to the node stuff in the scene.

 

If you want to talk further, please contact me on backstage. I am apparently not wanted here and my comments are being deleted without reason.

Hey

It now works nicely and is a really big change on especially volume builder poly reduced meshes.

Examples:

So this is really great. Having the shading not split is also improving performance by reducing polycount, (at least on export).

(anyone can get my edge damage generator in the download section)

---------------------

The spline one also works nicely 

I am uploading this spline edge damage setup here:

Edge Damage based on Phong Edges Spline Generator.c4d

Im not 100% sure yet of the advantages over the boolean based edge damage approach but this could be better in performance in some cases compared to the very slow boolean. Hard to say without testing more.

There is one limitation however, the splines are also on the intersected meshes and go inside the mesh.

Im sure this is somewhat easily fixable however either with some volume/boolean trick or by nodes.

(Also another thing I noticed is that the vertex color field does not recognize it as spline or even geo, and it just dosnt display anything. However if its currentstateToObjected it counts again - The spline points are also not welded but can be easily done with a connect)

Great work!

PM me your paypal then I send as promised.

These should be officially included in the content browser in my opinion.

---

Other topic, there is no Boolean for nodes yet right with proper multi threading? The C4D boolean is very slow on higher meshes.

Im on the 2023.2.0

I put it in a different empty folder now but it still won't work, it just freezes the UI and I have to force quit.

Can you maybe upload it without the groups enabled, then I can check which of the 3 causes it by enabling them separately?

Colleague says it dosnt freeze on 2023.1.3 on his PC. Does it maybe require a lot of memory for a frame?

Let me update graphics drivers maybe. Edit: No didn't help. Ill see if there are windows updates pending, im on W11.

On 5/1/2023 at 3:22 PM, Fritz said:

area weighted normals _ phong lines.c4d 418.38 kB · 3 downloads

 

Ah nice,

Oddly every time I open it, my cinema freezes

I see the hierarchy but c4d is complete stuck somehow. Never have this with any other scene files, and I still got memory left. Any ideas? (2023.2.0)

C4d Task manager says nothing special as well if I open it before opening.

(This watch folder "tex" is this maybe something I don't have locally?)

Given the task manager dosnt say anything, is it maybe an endless loop in a node?

I have some suggestions or requests or questions:

1. Does no boolean exist right now?

2.  Face Weighted Normals might be possible but is beyond my skillset, that would be very useful

More Info

Faked example using solidchamfer and bevel on left, right side expected geometry

3. Phong break selection as node would be really great. Basically a selection by curvature / angle (then outputting into a spline)

This would open the way of making splin es based on curvature and then also doing damage effects like this:

Right now you can do this with phong break selection by angle, then edge to spline.

Im contributing 100$ for the face weighting and 50$ for the phong break selection over paypal.

(My latest contribution is in the download section, the edge damage creator but its not node based,

id like to optimize it once a boolean is available through nodes tho, and a rock creator which needs better displacer performance also..)

I am finding a good bunch of issues with the Bevel and solid chamfer components, both new nodes and the classic bevel modifier

Attached are testcases (some have animation to show better)

The boolean also does some strange things if you unhide the lines.

What is odd is that the solid chamfer is much less stable and breaks in way more cases than the bevel on the same size, which does not make a lot of sense since it occupies the same area, just does a different indent.

Adding a lot of subdivisions to stabilize the boolean does not help, there are some general issues here.

2023.2 (These are not version or computer related surely)

Bevel_SolidChamfer_Issues_Testcase.c4d

This uses the Boolean Intersection technique ive described on youtube but combined with Volume builder twice to finally create 1 click edge damage concrete the proper way. This of course also works for other materials.

It took me a long time to get on the right track to get the concrete technique right to not make it look wrong. The key is to try keep sharp edges and a flat surface mostly, but options for holes and grunge are there.

How to use: 

Just drag any mesh there, thats it.

Make sure the mesh is closed, otherwise you will need to go to the volume builder and enable the "optimize and close holes" which makes it much slower however.

Tips:

You can tweak the top volume builder Dilate and erode settings for surface details or sharper softer outcome.

You can tweak the bottom volume builder to change the edge damage. Also try increase Iterations in dilates and erodes.

Total calculation time is a couple seconds only on my 12900k but the boolean is the bottleneck and can get laggy, however I do a mesher reduction and polygon reduction to optimize. I think this could be further optimized by using the boolean from the Nodes system which I strongly assume is multi threaded (Edit: there is no geo boolean in nodes yet?), but I haven't gotten to that yet. If that were the case, you could feed this much more powerful things. You can also try high quality boolean.

You can also drag multiple meshes at a time. Test settings on a small mesh for performance always.

The polygon reduction on top does a good job in making game ready meshes as well, also applies vertex colors for AO and edges ready for shaders to be used within engines such as unity or unreal.

Recommended process is:

- Drag in, wait

- Create instance

- Collapse instance

- Drag instance into poly reduction (tweak if wanted)

- Create instance of poly reduction

- Collapse poly reduction

- Export mesh with the vertex colors / Use in production

But do as you like, the mesh is there. Edit: I should also upload this to downloads

Download below.

Shrikes Damage Generator.c4d

Thats really nice

My mistake about the feedback form. I was really sure around some R20 years it was completely removed for a time (?)

Still nobody could answer what is official and what is not?

Core 4D is now an unofficial forum and Cineversity is affiliated but not owned by maxon?

Still this entire situation is highly unsatisfactory.

The goalpost has moved hard since the discussion from last year. Blender is going really viral due to their extreme community power and easy entry point and honestly as a company owner I simply cannot say "we use C4D" because I cant put them on tasks where there is essentially no other resources or users on the web doing the same things. I can not recommend any 3D beginner to use C4D because who can recommend starting with a thousands of euro software which has a minor fraction of the tutorials, resources and plugins around and mostly ignored traditional 3D workflows (Baking, UV, Texturing). Realtime has been coming up for years now and its now here bigger than ever with Unreal 5 and it feels like we are the only ones doing traditional realtime workflows in C4D. Nodes also have really vanished from the surface. It pains me but with these circumstances its just not recommendable like this.

Blender is really janky but the community fills in the gaps so that you are never really stuck.

Here we have a setup where we actively prevent any sort of coming together.

Here are some issues that Maxon needs to fix:

Community:

- No official Forum at all

- Unclear affiliation of websites and services

- No links even on C4D site to any forum

Knowledge:

- Videos randomly mixed between cineversity and youtube? and

- Youtube videos obfuscated by non saying naming scheme

Third Parties:

- No shared marketplace making barrier of entry way higher for plugin developers

- No incentives for third party plugin creators to even update their plugins

Onboarding:

- No Lite model making any new 3D user automatically go to blender by default. 

- Too expensive for developers to get the new version just to update their plugins for users

4 hours ago, BoganTW said:

 

If you're subscribing to C4D you have access to Cineversity, and Dr Sassi there has responded to all the various queries I've posted there usually within an hour or so of me posting them. So calm down a bit.

Also I'm also confused about the relationship about cineversity.

Firstly, Cineversity forum is called "Cineversity Q&A" - that is not a Cinema 4D forum for me. Also There is only one category. With one Subforum for a Software which is used by many fields and with infinite complexity, this simply can not be the place to be as that is nowhere near acceptable.

Also, Cinema 4D does not link to the Cineversity forum, while linking to minor things like the Redshift forum under the C4D Community.

Cineversity is official from maxon? Its a plugin but also a learning site? Its somehow integrated but also not? The branding is different?

What is the relationship here? Is that my goto place? Why is the graphic design different? Why is it a separate plugin?

Just to clarify again as this thread hits out a bit hard on Core 4D - I don't want to hit on Cafe/Core4D but still even after reading these responses I am unclear about the relationship of this site and maxon. Is Core 4D now officially the C4D Forum or not?

Either way this is all very confusing and unclear and surely one big root element why this is all so fragmented.

I am very confused atm, so the C4D user feedback/request form on the Webpage was removed.

We have no official C4D forum or bridge between the already struggling sense of community and sharing of knowledge.

The old C4D user feedback form was removed or obfuscated. Reddit is unusable for anything serious and just for posting images.

After 10+ years of using C4D, I noticed that there are some developers here which do listen a bit here and there about suggestions and also help with issues - but unofficially, casually? The relationship is very unclear. Core4D is also not listed on the Maxon page.

I am now reading in one random UV bug report that seemingly a developer writes "This is exactly the feedback and reports we need"

and I am thinking "Wait what? Feedback, here? How should I know? This is all there is? I could have written so many things all these years? Wait this really is the official place? Wait, Bug reports really also belong into this single main C4D forum?"

So, now Core4D has a paid viewing mode. I'm not here to complain about a private? forum being paid, but let me get this straight:

The only C4D forum where you can contribute/suggest or report anything about C4D on the entire internet is a private paid viewership forum, which has one single subforum for C4D where people have to throw in anything in one single tiny tiny list which only shows 6 threads on the main page? 

Maxon please, are you merely suggesting the community is dead or are you trying to bury it?

No offense but I am shocked. Not at what Core4D does, but about the lack of actions taken to get it that far.

Maxon needs to open an official and easily accessible forum, open an official marketplace for the third party developers, open a knowledge hub, and name the youtube videos about what they are containing so this major source of knowledge is not obfuscated. Someone needs to have a vision here for Maxon or let me give you one suggested plan. (Also btw the Core4D forum page does hide the subforums)

People were talking about the community issues the last years but this declined so fast now and this paid thing can't be the last nail on the coffin for the C4D community, something needs to happen. I love the software and people are nice here but this is a really really bad look. 

The entire serious C4D community can't be and can't be looking like 6 bullet points hidden behind a paywall.

Since 2023 or 2023.1 (not 100% sure) the packed UV unwrap is broken and keeps creating strange triangles

This can be observed on all sorts of varied meshes, from characters, to rocks, to vehicles, so its not a mesh issue

On this very lowpoly geometry its especially bad

I attached a file with my test meshes, im doing a default packed Unwrap as I generally do

This right now makes UV unwrapping completely unusable for me as the old methods are not even half as good and since packed I generally don't unwrap manually anymore

Also is there really no official C4D forum or anything?

BrokenUV.c4d

Export with hierarchy if that works and use some unity plugin to optimize it later if you really need it. Chances are that you don't need to optimize it and can just keep the objects

Not sure why your character is only splines, I think unity needs a mesh to attach to but im not versed with bone animation

You dont, such a concept does not really exist

You make one shader/material which has both styles and you make the second visible by the vertex mask

You can however make a polygon selection by a vertex mask, but you will not get a smooth transistion.

Or you make a transparent material that is put on top of the other, but this only works on certain renderers, or you need to have 2 meshes which are overlayed but transparency is very expensive. The normal approach is 1 material.

Yes there was arguing, especially the creator thinking its a rip off

You sound more like the biased here, I just did an objective statement on the state of these tools

I also use HB and these new ones are simple not the same and go way beyond, as such there is really no copy here to be found

Im also in a similar situation for our game.

People want back a class, the "Gunner" per example, like 4 people made a Gunner mod which can be downloaded, some better some worse.
Its something they have been missing, similar to the "selection to circle"
Now will or should I contact all these people which made a mod for the gunner class? I think no, it has always been on our plan to do it, just because someone does it before does not mean its stolen or a copy. If I go and copy the the design of some of these, then yes sure. I can understand that from a limited view of not seeing all the details and just seeing "oh gunner class" that this might seem backstabby in a way even though it is not, but then on the other hand you can't just not do things just because someone did it before.

I like the HB bundle but no offense, these new C4D tools are way beyond the bundle tools

And just because finally a circle or better close hole function is offered dosnt mean thats "stolen"

Its a logical conclusion of what is missing

The plugins and community are overwhelmingly the main plus point for blender

On 4/2/2022 at 1:35 PM, Icecaveman said:

 

First I want to note that I did enjoy your post. Some truth and tons of colorful texture.

 

As for copying features? Hmmm...

-Blender had a GPU renderer years before Autodesk or Maxon. After buying the technology,  Maxon still doesn't have one unless you want to pay extra.

-Blender has Grease Pencil, which has no equal in any competing DCC software

-Blender has Eevee, which again has no real match

-Blender is ahead of Maxon and others in GLTf support and other interchange options

-UDIMs, anyone?

-Blender's X-Cyclces is suitable for mixed-platform-GCC Hydra-Renderer, while Redshift isn't

 

As for software standards...You do know that many of Blender's top coders have worked for Autodesk, Arnold, Otoy (developer of Octane) and other top firms. We would all be well informed if you could articulate specifics about these "non-standard software standards"....or else we might be tempted to expose you as a naked abuser of FUD tactics (Fear, Uncertainty, Dread campaigns that the elites of the world perpetually deploy, starting with Bill Gates who invented the practice.)

Yeah then on the other hand...

- Blender is conceptually a mess at the core. Blender dosnt have a real concept of a hierarchy. Like "folders" dont really exist.

- Modifiers are on mesh level as there is no real hierarchy, modeling means constantly merging things

- Working accurately is hard, snapping, connected polygons at small scale, ive seen our people struggle making anything to measurements

- Absolute mess of exports and imports with unapplied transforms, crazy scales, non existing folder chaos and whatnot.

- You cant even drag and drop something to open it, you gotta open things through an explorer like its 1995

- Opening a new file means opening an entire new Blender application

- If you create a primitive and edit it, its no longer parametric.

Blender is like a fancy house with a pool, whirlpool, 80" TV but there is no such concept as "rooms" and and every wall is just a little wrong if you look closely.

The extra features are cool and C4D is lacking way behind in some essential features, but the fundamentals C4D Is worlds ahead and way more "professional" in a very german kind of way, versus the "Guy in a garage" style how blender was conceptually designed.

Im sure on average both are very solid choices with different shortcomings but this is definitely not a clear "grass is greener" case.

Issue 1: Saving is extremely long

I thought at first its my SSD, which is slightly underperforming but on S25 it saves as usual within 0.5s

In S26 the saving can take 20-30 seconds or such very annoying on auto save, even on simply lowpoly scene with just one model worth 1 mb

Issue 2: Heavy mouse stuttering in UI panels

Im getting pretty heavy lags in the 26 UI

Before the latest patch I got heavy stutters in the entire UI, now only in the panel area, no longer in viewport

Im on updated drivers, chipset drivers, although windows 11. These issues are not on 25.

Edit: Aha

I closed it down to be related to entering the button areas of the UI

Starting to hover over any UI palette backgrounds causes the mouse to go to 5 fps

It is slightly inconsistent however, If the C4D window dosnt have priority, it look normal 

Its hard to see in the video, but if you enter the panel area, the cursor goes to 5 fps or such. It feels much worse than it looks in the video and it looks also much worse.

But only for like 1-2 seconds, as if it were to load something, then after its smooth again.

If this needs to be really dynamic you should check out info about methods like they did for Metal Gear Rising Revengeance 

Slicing an object and dynamically texturing the slices is quite a complex task

Maybe you could also do a grid of cubes or voxels and color these instead, this does not seem to be such an extreme resolution

Im checking the nodes now again

This drop down menu is essentially telling you that there is no documentation

This is exactly the style of drop down which otherwise always has "show help"

I've been taught for over a decade that documentation of a feature is in the right click drop down at the bottom

If its not here, I must assume it dosn't exist

The entire node editor window with all its tabs also dosnt have a single link to an apparently existing entire section in the documentation about nodes.