3D-Pangel

I took my oldest daughter to see Monsters Inc 20 years ago when she was only 7. The last scene in the movie when Mike re-assembled Boo's door from splinters so Sully could visit her again left my daughter a little choked up in a bitter sweet way. As we walked silently out to the car and I put he in the back seat and buckled her up, she did not say a word. Before I started the engine, I looked at her through the rear-view mirror, and softly said "Boo" "I don't want to talk about it." was all she said. She was quiet the whole way home. That shows the power of good story telling when a 7-year-old just doesn't gobble up the visuals like candy but is emotionally affected by the story long after the credits role. It would be interesting to see if they continue the relationship of Boo and Sully.

Motion Squared (maker of C4D materials for Redshift, Octane, Vray, Corona, Arnold) has a 50% off sale on their pack bundles and a 30% discount on their individual material packs.

That music was perfect as it came from the equally campy (and just as bad) Flash Gordon. Honestly, that was the stupidest thing I have ever seen on any television show. So little butterflies gather together to form a big wing which then flaps all in unison as a self-contained giant wing? Say what? Plus, to even add more insult to our intelligence, the butterflies land on the person's face and completely cover their face but form their glowing eyes. Say WTF? Plus they fly into each other? Okay, was this meant to be funny? It must have been as one of the actors is laughing back at them. And they run off a cliff but stay suspended in air? Sorry....There are some things that can't be unseen as this was one of them. Fire the producers and screen writers and sell your Paramount stock. As for me, I am going to watch Foundation. Episode 1 was just awesome. Dave

Evermotion 50% off all models until 11/30. Dave

Amazing work. The integration of live action and animation was extremely ambitious and the camera tracking was perfect. I noticed that pretty much the entire Sujono family was involved in a meaningful way in the making of this short: David Sujono (aka Digital Dave) - Director, Writer, overall creative force Paulus Sujono - Original Score John Sujono - Camera Operator Joseph Sujono - Production Designer I half expected to see this credit: David Sujono courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Sujono. 😆 Amazing creative endeavor by a very creative family. This should find its way to the Maxon page. Dave P.S. My only nit has nothing to do with the creative execution of this entire piece. But would the Newton's Cradle on the Aurora still be rocking back and forth (first seen here at the 1:40 mark) on a ship that was abandoned for a couple of years?

Relative to GPU drivers being the source of instability with C4D (instability with Windows is a whole other issue), does this problem exist with gaming cards only or have people had similar issues with Quadro cards? Does anyone use Quadro cards? I am under the impression that more development is done on Quadro cards than gaming cards for two reasons: Professionals dependent on reliability in their CG pipeline probably go graphics workstations fitted with the higher quality Quadro cards Should Maxon find any driver issues with the Quadro cards during development, nVidia is more likely to listen and take action as those cards are meant to be used with professional graphics applications like C4D (though I would imagine they listen to Autodesk or Adobe more than Maxon - but you get the point). Not sure if these are valid assumptions or not, but I think it is fair to assume that as Quadro's are marketed as professional grade GPU's for a number of professional industries (including CGI), then there is more focus on keeping DCC apps stable on Quadro's than say the Geforce family of cards. Whether this actually happens or not can only be determined if there are people who use Quadro's with the same instability issues as everyone else. I don't play computer games (other than solitaire -- games give me motion sickness) so I tend to favor Quadro's and have used a Quadro K5200 for the last 7 years. It is getting a bit old (but still runs like a champ -- proving to me their build quality) so I am looking at the Quadro RTX-A family of cards. Dave

Honestly....I think they are more accommodating than Maxon was back in the day of the MSA's. I don't think you could let your MSA lapse for up to 2 years and then get back into it so easily....and this was back in the day of the "good" Maxon pre-subscriptions. So props to Insydium for being as decent as possible in this harsh era of Software as a Service (SaaS). Dave

Honestly, Discovery was interesting to watch but not as thought-provoking as the original slate of TV shows that Paramount aired on public TV up until they launched their subscription service. Interestingly enough, when Netflix aired Discovery outside the US, it started with "A Netflix Presentation" -- which led me to believe they were funding it. I had to spend 2 months in Malaysia for work and streamed seasons 1 and 2. I tried the VPN trick to stream Season three back in the US but Netflix plugged that hole. I can see why Paramount pushed for Netflix to stop showing any season of Discovery as I would imagine it is probably the top show on Paramount Plus for ST fans given that Picard has been largely panned. Discovery, while good, is not perfect. Sorry, I just can't go along with mushrooms being the backbone of a new interstellar mode of travel. Interesting concept for a single episode, but begins to become laughable as a major plot driver for an entire season. The best part of Discovery is Michelle Yeoh --- what a great villian! Plus I have always been a fan. Relative to EFX --- yes, very good. But great effects can keep your eyeballs engaged but not your heart. IMHO: Something was missing from Season 1 and 2. Not sure what, but obviously had the show really captured my heart I would have signed up to Paramount Plus for Seasons 3 and 4. Speaking of EFX, not a real fan of this topology:

Are you into the subscription plan or are you referring to perpetual licenses? This is what makes any poll concerning even numbered releases (S22, S24, S26) so confusing as you get those releases automatically if you are already in an annual subscription plan at the time the new even number version is released. People who opt for perpetual licenses can ONLY get a perpetual license with the odd numbered versions. Now, your question on going from R21 to R25 concerns odd-numbered versions. Therefore, you have to state whether those were perpetual licenses or a subscription license. You can get any current version at any time for the same price with a subscription license. So to answer your question, if you had an R21 perpetual license, then you could go to an R25 subscription license for the same annual subscription price available with any previous release. The key point being that should you stop renewing that annual subscription you will lose all access to R25. I would imagine that if you wanted to keep using R25 under a perpetual license, you would pretty much have to pay the full amount for an R25 perpetual license at that point (around $3500 USD)

The first question is a little mis-leading as you ask if you would BUY S26? If you are already in the subscription program, you will get S26. No purchase necessary. Not sure who that question applies to relative to "buying". You could reword it and put in all these caveats around perpetual license holders and R25/R7 but I think it would best to bypass all the word salad and ask: 1) Were you happy with the combined new features in R24 and R25? (Yes/No) 2) Do you currently trust Maxon to always provide meaningful value with each release of C4D? (Yes/No) 3) If no, did R25 damage that trust? (yes/no) 4) Should Maxon have released R25 when they did or taken more time to improve that releases features? (Released 25 when then did/Delayed R25 Release to make it better) 5) Do you trust Maxon to have S26 be an outstanding release? (Yes/No/Not Sure) Just a thought. Dave

I tripped over a Black Friday deal at Lenovo at through their "Perks at Work" program. These programs are available though most US employers, insurance programs, and/or car associations like AAA. This program was not advertised nor were any notifications sent that it was going on. I just went to the site on a lark in the final 4 hours before it expired. It expired at midnight last night. Here is what it entailed: 1) Up to a 61% savings on all PC's 2) On top of that a coupon code netting you an additional 9% savings 3) On top of all that, you get back 20X points (spend $100 and you get 2,000 points. Each point is worth 1 penny USD toward a future purchase). In short 20% off. So for kicks and giggles, I configured a P620 workstation: 1) Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3945WX (4 GHz, 12 cores) 2) 128 Gb of DDR4 3200 MHz ECC DRAM 3) Nvidia Quadro RTX-A6000 GPU (48Gb) 4) 2 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 Boot drive 5) Two 4 TB 7200 HDD (RAID 1) 6) DVD - RW Drive 7) Intel 9260 802.11AC with Blue Tooth Lenovo cost: $16,194 Works at Perks Cost after all discounts: $5300 Still a lot of money --- but what a machine it would have been. For many, many, many, many reasons I had to walk away from it. I did not sleep well last night. Dave

IMHO --- Thanassis is the Ben Kingsley of the C4D tutorial world! Great delivery - concise, meaningful and with lots of heart! Dave Actually, I wonder if they are in fact both the same person?

Hrvoje, Chris Schmidt, Noseman (Athanasios Pozantzis) Contrafibularities (or Wolf 4D on YouTube) --- I love his C4D modeling tutorials...and the growing list of Blender tutorials as well. and while not strictly C4D but rather Insydium - Bob Walmsley.

OMG! I had the exact same history with modo....both how I was encouraged to get into it and my buyers remorse afterward. Interestingly enough, wasn't there a post from that person who said he really is no longer using modo? His artistic interests were always with modeling Leggo objects (and they were very well done) but finally decided that if his interests were with Leggo's, just build real Leggo models. Makes sense. Modo is a great modeler but I just could not get my head wrapped around an object manager that classified ALL scene objects as Meshes. Create three cubes...get one "mesh" listing in the OM. That an a host of other usability issues with understanding their OM was what kept me from fully embracing the program. Now that was back in the 401 days so maybe that has changed but modo's OM was a real barrier to my ability to efficiently navigate through the program. Now, the gold standard in OM's is undoubtedly C4D's OM. So even Blender's OM falls a little short there. But it does point out the importance of the OM as that is the primary method for "driving" the software. I was told that the modo OM was quite effective but you needed to understand the reasons and benefits behind its design. Okay...granted I needed to adopt a new paradigm and eagerly tried to both understand it and internalize it. Sorry....didn't happen. It was like learning the old HP calculators where instead of just typing "5 x 5 =" you typed "5, 5, x, =". Some paradigm shifts are just too counter to how our brains are wired to think, read and express information. Therefore, I just could not work both C4D and modo at the same time without tripping over that paradigm shift. Sometimes being different for whatever reason or intent is not always smart.

Agreed. I mean who would have thought that back prior to Blender 2.8 that some day in the future C4D would be copying their UI. R25 was illuminating...for all the wrong reasons. At least Blender has all their icons.

Honestly, I think the problem is Maxon's decision to push out updates every 6 months. That decision of course was made to entice people into subscriptions: "look you get new toys more frequently". But really what it creates is twice as many software tracks to maintain over time. To curtail all that effort, Maxon made another decision to stop support on previous releases after 3 months as they did not have the resources to maintain all those tracks. This worked for them as it allowed the sales pitch towards subscriptions "The best way to stay current with bug fixes and new features is with a subscription". Now, all that would have some appeal provided that Maxon was still holding on to their major claim to fame in the market with each release: stability. Honestly, that is (or was) the big draw to C4D: it was robust. Users put up with the amount of time it took to get new features because with that time came the implicit promise that what was released was 100% rock solid. But look what has happened since R21. Reports of software instability (be they real, inflicted by the user, their GPU drivers, or plugins) have increased. Well, regardless of the cause, it is a fact that good software comes from good testing. Regardless of the development time, beta testers now have less time to test each new release. Plus with all the acquisitions, the testing is not just limited to C4D but to Redshift, Forger, Red Giant integration as well. Less time for testing is not a recipe to improve quality. So I submit that these complaints are a function of Maxon's new business model. Unfortunately, what we have seen over the last few months are two key elements of C4D's reputation in the marketplace come under fire: Stability and ease of use as people grapple with the new interface. Now, C4D acolytes will cling to the belief that all is well and we are all knuckle dragging luddites for complaining. But there is one glaring issue that totally supports just how C4D's controls on quality and UI are under pressure: Missing Icons in R25 What does a missing icon tell you about quality control? Missing icons definitely do not help ease of use so why have those icons not been immediately replaced after 3 months? Does anyone care at Maxon? If you were a customer who just paid over $3000 for a new TV and the remote control had numbers and icons missing, then would you feel comfortable about the quality of your purchase or would you think "Hell, if they missed that, what else is missing with the actual TV?" . There would be immediate buyer's remorse as trust in the product has been lost. It is missing the little things that damage a product's quality reputation. Maxon spent decades building up that reputation and their new business model has set up a system whereby quality can no longer be the top priority that it was in the past. If you disagree with that statement, then please produce some icons. Dave

Not sure if your request has been met via a private PM or not, but I think what would help is if you posted two screen shots: one of the existing C4D model (showing the mesh in C4D) and the other of the actual survey data (again showing the mesh) as well as the data format for that survey data (STL, FBX, etc.). At face value, it is hard to judge the size and scope of the task your are requesting without that information. Just a thought. Dave

Interesting post and thank you for the links. Correct me if I am wrong, but would it be unfair to draw the conclusion that you are saying that because Maxon cannot compete on key features, then they should not even pursue a solution? If you extended this same logic to everything else then modeling should go (how can you compete with modo), UV and 3D paint should go (how can you compete with Substance Painter) and 3D sculpting should go (how can you compete with Z-Brush). But...you are placing great promise in A.I solutions and yes that would be impressive. But wouldn't developing the base capability AND the A.I. framework be a doubly huge undertaking taking twice as long? Machine learning is not easy. It takes thousands of iterations to fine tune the algorithms. If I was a financial controller in the company, I would question that approach as its payback period (time from making the investment in the development to seeing that feature have a positive impact on revenue) seems too long. Better to shorten the development cycle by dropping the A.I. and implement a half-way decent set of tools and capabilities. They may not be best of breed but they could generate a pretty good response from users in terms of new licenses. Just a thought.

XP is a solution, but as the whole world moves to GPU acceleration, XP has a great deal on its plate as well as it does not have a GPU solution. With that said, Jawset's Reactions (currently in beta) is a GPU/CPU solution and is starting to embrace a particles. As such, it could ultimately be a strong competitor to XP as particles brings with it liquids, grains, volume breaking (implied in the Reactions logo), cloth, and pretty much everything that XP does now. Reactions is also nodal. Not sure though if Reactions works with Redshift though....that is where XP has an advantage. Honestly, all of this work takes time and as we are seeing established players working through all this you over the "years" (yes years! not months but years), you begin to realize just how much work Maxon has to do if they were to generate this same capability from ground zero in house. Our best hope for getting fluids natively in C4D in as short a time as possible is that they decide to purchase a company already doing it. I think purchasing Jawset would probably be the smarter/cheaper move than purchasing XP (IMHO). Apart from that, do not hold your breath. Dave One other observation about developing new capability in C4D: For years we waited for the new core. It was billed as an architecture for the future and with that the potential for new features being deployed faster and more stable. But now that we have the new core, all new features are required to exist in the Object manager as a standard tool and as a capsule in the nodes work flow. So does the new core make development easier and more robust (and faster) as originally advertised or place more overhead on it from the additional development of a capsule workflow as well? Remember, since we first heard about the new core (2015 was it?), it has been almost seven years.

Where are the double shadows? I only see one shadow under the car. Or do you mean that the density of the CG shadows is a tad off from those in the scene so that when the overlap, you see both? Honestly, it is not that bad --- you are very close. The shadows which do exist in the scene (like the lamp post at the 6 second mark and the tree at the 9 second mark) track perfectly on the car. I would imagine you just set those up with 3D assets in the scene and only rendered out their shadows and reflections as I also noticed a nice reflection from those elements on the car's windshield as well. Very well done. The track of the car is a bit off in that the car has a slightly "floating" feeling to it. There are some really good tracking points in that scene (fences. street signs, lamp posts) so pretty confident you have enough to get a good track. I would pay attention to the tracking points on the parked cars as the auto-tracking capability could be picking up a highlight which does shift with the moving camera. That could be throwing off the track a bit. The shading on the car is perfect! Honestly, you should add a mask on that dirt layer that looks like someone wrote "Wash Me" on it with their finger. I mean that little bit of detail would up the verisimilitude level to the max. Great work...as always. Dave

That video gives me a tremendous appreciation for the people who not only can internalize all those functions but actually thought them up in the first place! Honestly, their brains are functioning at a different level. Dave

Honestly, I think you need to be a long time modo user to appreciate what those upgrades are all about. It took almost as long to read the title of the feature than it did to watch the demonstration. The video went by them too fast to fully appreciate what they were about. But the titles were cool. I half-expected to see "Subliminal Poly Melting" or "Cognitive Mesh Dissonance" pop up. 🙂 I do get the sense thought that modo really is pushing boolean modeling as a key technique. What I don't fully appreciate is how that technique supports quads, polygonal flow or proper UV's. Dave

Don't forget that for GPU render engines, the clock speed of the CPU and the number of PCIe lanes between the CPU, GPU and the drives are all equally important (eg. you want a fast and wide highway to move data to and from the GPU). I am not that familiar with what is possible with graphics laptops as power consumption and heat dissipation work against fast processing power for the GPU and CPU -- so I would imagine that there are some careful tradeoffs that need to be made. Dave

Cinemagic magazine was stuffed with cheap ideas to get neat shots on a shoe string budget. Or how about using a beam splitter and a chalk board to create volumetric light rays in your miniature shots! Or building a miniature camera dolly system using model railroad tracks - which was a better idea than mounting the camera platform to a wooden U-shaped channel built by two 2x4's and a 2x8 which then fit over a 4x4 beam --- all greased by Vaseline so it would slide --- though I think that method was used by Sam Raimi when making The Evil Dead. I even purchased rear screen projection material to do stop motion animation and a two-way glass beam splitter for any in-camera tricks -- all using my 8mm camera that had single frame capability. Edmunds Scientific Catalogue was a treasured resource at the time - though I could not afford any of it. I wished for linear or angular translation slides to precisely animate a camera dolly or camera pan the way CG artists wish for nVidia GPU's today. Playing with all that stuff with little to no money also juiced your innovative thinking skills -- if only because that is all you had. For example, one innovation involved a Christmas bulb. It was a nice flat, big white Christmas bulb. It never made the Christmas decorations that year because I grabbed it, hung it against black velvet and then set up a slide projector off to the side and projected nature slides onto it (or anything that had greens and blues). Instant planet complete with terminator. I then made a scrim out of see-through dark pantyhose stretched over black coat-hangers, placed that in front of the Christmas bulb and shined a bit of blue light on that scrim to wash out the planet a bit. I then double exposed that image into an outdoor day time photo and you have a planet appearing in your daytime sky. You really need to play with these real world techniques as they do help inform you of what looks right real time in a very physical way. All of which (I believe IMHO) makes you a better CG artist. Case in point: Dennis Muren. 9 time VFX Oscar winner (the 4th highest of all time) came from the school of in-camera old time effects. You can even read about him re-making the effects of Rocket Ship X-M in Cinemagic Issue #1. Now he ushered in the CG revolution in filmmaking with both Young Sherlock Holmes, The Abyss and Jurassic Park but what got him the Oscar's for those films was understanding how to make CG look real and I am sure that only came from his experience shooting and lighting real miniatures. Other films with CG at the time (like Lawnmower Man or Johnny Mnemonic) look exactly like a computer made them. Dave

Awesome! Thank you for those links! We share a common history. Cinemagic was a great magazine. I think I have the majority of their issues and remember articles on how to capture computer generated images off the PC monitor that was in this issue. For those who never lived in an age without desktop CGI, it was a really painful process --- involving three separate red, blue and green exposure passes because color monitors did not exist back then (just your old "Matrix" green monitors). Not sure how that worked on a non pin registered 8mm camera. There were also articles on the works of some of today's VFX professionals back when they were teens. One of those films (also found in the same issue as scanning images off of a monitor) was by Mark Sullivan called "Highrise". Be sure to watch it on YouTube. When you think of the talent and ingenuity required for a teenager to pull off that short film with 1980 film technology, you can only be impressed. Mark went on to work at ILM as a matte painter. Did you get the spinoff books on Stop Motion Animation? I still have a ball-and-socket armature I built more than 30 years ago sitting on my desk....great to play with during boring conference calls and better than a fidget spinner! 🙂 Dave Speaking of matte painters....here is another great resource on their work over the years