3D-Pangel

One of the first magazines on fantastic filmmaking (eg. horror, fantasy and special effects) out there was Cinefantastique. That magazine existed from 1970 to around 2006. I never subscribed as there are some genres that don't interest me (like horror or zombies) but anything relating to science fiction, stop motion animation, and/or Ray Harryhausen ended up on my bookshelf. In fact, it was the double issue on the Making of Star Wars that got me hooked on visual effects at a young age. Well...the loss of Cinefex (the journal of cinematic illusions) earlier this year when they announced that they have gone out of business has left a big hole in my reading list so I started searching the web for something on-line (who does print anymore?). This brought me back to my old favorite Cinefantastique: Cinefantastique Magazine: 1970-2002 : Cinefantastique : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Now, not every issue is found here for free, but 182 of them should keep me busy. I have always felt that knowing the old methods when people actually got their hands dirty to make something look real is a great way to inform your CGI skills on how to make something look real in the computer. Dave

Fair enough....and I did say "on occasion" to point out the fact that you do listen at times. I just encourage you to always listen given your position within Maxon. In some cases (emphasis on "some cases") in the discussion on nodes, you do pivot to defense with statements along the lines of "too late to change now" or "very difficult to implement", etc. Better to just say "I understand and will consider it again". Simple as that. Dave

This post really hit home for me. I think Maxon has a two serious problems: A communication problem and a listening problem. Most companies have a ELT (executive leadership team) position that embraces the concept of "customer listening" but so far, I am not seeing proof that listening is leading to any action. You may in fact be listening, but you could also be just ignoring us. Now, I do give high praise to Rick Barrett. He is an effective communicator and his communications do show that he is listening. He internalize the heart of the issue from a user perspective in all of his responses. Maxon would be in a worse place should he leave and we would be in a worse place should he no longer visit this forum. Srek - sorry but I am going to call you out for your own benefit - you could learn a great deal from Rick Barrett on communication that shows more listening. You tend to (on occasion) launch into defending (which is understandable), but as a Maxon employee please try to ALWAYS internalize the issue from the user perspective first before you give us your perspective. You are dealing with customers after all as a Maxon representative so understand that purely defensive arguments always come across to those customers as not being heard and not being heard always creates customer frustration which in turn leads to more attacks. Try to ask a few questions first -- seek first to really understand and you may find an easier go of it as I do recall the forum got so vicious against you at one time in the past you separated yourself from it. No one wants that to happen again. Customer goodwill is also something that Maxon needs to work on. It is a real asset and should be treated as such. That asset is the positive word of mouth that customer goodwill creates - which is a very powerful marketing tool. Maxon's goodwill bank account is showing a rather serious deficit right now (another symptom of not listening). Had that goodwill been preserved, then it could have arrested the negative trending created by R25. If you don't think there is negative trending on R25, then please ask yourselves why this thread is 55 pages long. Finally, I have to ask: What is the overall development strategy at Maxon with the new core. After 5+ years, I think I see it but then again it is not plainly evident. Now, I am not asking for your development timeline but rather a discussion about strategy. For example, we don't see any improvements to aging modules -- so you have to ask why. We don't see very useful plugins being implemented as fast as they should be. Again, why? This all points to strategy as only adhering to a strategy can these questions be answered. So think it would be more productive if we ALL knew what that strategy was as then we would all be level set and on the same page as to what to expect. For example, it could be either one or all of: Program integration with other applications as opposed to developing those capabilities internally. Don't improve Bodypaint but rather make the integration with Substance Painter tighter. The strategy therefore is: we can't make everything best-of-breed but we can make C4D work with best-of-breed applications. Grow capsules so the user can more easily create their own tools. The strategy there is: user needs are constantly evolving and to just add specific tools that meet those changing needs creates and unwieldy software base that becomes harder to manage over time. Didn't we just clean-up that code base with the new core? Focus on workflow more than new tools. Strategy: If C4D becomes more tightly integrated with other applications, than its value in the pipeline is making it easier and faster to get things done and easier for the user to extend its capabilities. So again, what is the strategy? Every business has an "elevator pitch" strategy statement. That is, a strategy/vision that can be quickly communicated in 90 seconds or less (the average time to ride an elevator). High level, not to detailed, but impactful. Therefore, I would love to hear Maxon's elevator pitch. Dave

Like Mike A, I did issue a support request to gain access to ePortfolio over 6 days ago with no response. The request ticket I issued in reference to ePortfolio goes through the same system as all other support requests. I could issue another support ticket relating purely to R19 permanent SN's...but again, not to confident of getting a response as I suspect that support for old releases is just not a priority for Maxon....otherwise why shut down ePortfolio? Dave

Same here...so as the deadline is today and I hold no hope for any action after over a week of inactivity, I guess we are both left out. A little disappointed with Maxon....but that has become the norm I guess. Dave

The one thing that I picked up on immediately was also the one thing you were most disappointed about - the shadows. But there is an issue with the ship passing behind the leaves of the first tree. That is a tough one to fix. You could drop the ship lower so there is less to roto. What makes the issue pop out is that there is one whole branch at the front that disappears when it goes behind the ship and then pops back as the ship passes. That "pop" is what draws my eye to it.....but to be fair I had to view it frame by frame to really understand what was going on. I do have a suggestion shown below: Maybe do layers of different masks generated from frames where things are easier to isolate then parent them all together and track them to the shot Just a thought. Nevertheless, really outstanding as always. The dog is tracked really well (I did not know it was from another shot). This is a real "backyard adventure" in the making. I keep expected James Horner music in the background and a Steven Spielberg voice over. Dave

One other house design tip: find out what are the standard lengths of the most common building materials: sheathing, lumber, etc. For example, in America all plywood and dry wall comes in 4 ft x 8 ft sizes. All lumber (2x4's, 2x12's, etc) come in increments of 2 foot lengths (6 ft, 8ft, 12 ft). So if you design a 27 ft by 37 ft home, you are buying material for a 28 ft by 40 ft home but they are just cutting the excess and throwing it away. I designed my home in even 4ft increments and the builder actually commented that he doesn't need to cut a thing. Yeah...they may need to add a few feet to the foundation but that means nothing compared to all the other costs. In this example, you are actually picking up another 121 square feet of living space for almost free. Dave

I would strongly recommend LWCAD for C4D. It started out as modeling plugin for Lightwave with CAD capability and has since been ported to C4D. Watch this video here and then decide if it can support your house design needs. Now, it has neat features for laying out floors, inserting windows and doors, adding floors and putting on roofs (tiles and all) but it is NOT an architectural program. It will not generate blueprints but it will help you figure out what you want in your layout. For example, it has no architectural symbols for toilets, outlets, kitchen appliances, vents, etc. Nor will it enforce building codes or even common sense building guidelines like minimum spacing between outlets, etc. (for example, did you know that there is a good design rule in kitchen design that the total round trip distance between the sink, the oven and the refrigerator should not exceed 20 feet or fatigue will set in). There are books for all that which are pretty easy to follow. Over 20 years ago, I designed our house using a 2D program called EasyCAD. It is still out there. I actually used it to generate actual blueprints and structural cross sections (staircases, foundation details, roof trusses), etc. I will admit it was a lot of fun especially as my wife was sitting next to me and we could discuss all the details. I even gave it to a builder who reviewed and certified the prints and we purchased a lot. We then sold our house, put our stuff in storage and the three of us (my wife and 4 year old daughter) moved into my fathers two bedroom apartment. We slept on a sleep sofa and my daughter slept on a mattress next to us. Oh, and my wife was pregnant with my youngest daughter at the time. So we did all that....and then the builder turned out to be a crook. We fired him immediately and got all our money back (a pretty amazing story all-in-all about how everything turned out). Morale of the story: The builder is more important than the house plans. Dave

Welcome Victor. So what do you want to accomplish in the world of VFX? Fluids? Fracturing? Camera Tracking? Environment creation? It is a wide open field because it is now so mainstream. Be sure to check out the work of Macmangan in this forum and his progress videos on a UFO VFX short (found here). His work combines CG but with the aesthetics and ingenuity of the old VFX movies from the 1980's when they did everything with models and motion control camera systems. IMHO --- it is a real master class of VFX techniques from the past and present. Dave

Holger Biebrach has just released an update for his HB Modeling Bundle. The latest version is V2.34 which includes both S24 and R25 compatibility fixes and incorporation of his libraries into the R25 asset browser. The changelog for V2.34 is shown below: v2.34 10/2021 [Fixed] S24 Compatibility Fixes [Fixed] R25 Compatibility Fixes [New] R25 Asset Browser integration (Content Browser is Obsolete with R25) [Improved] HB_OverwriteMaterial now with Asset Browser support [New] Shortcut Delete without Children : (shift + BS) [Fixed] HB_PipeIt: Caps option works again (Shift-Modifier) [Removed] ColorSchemes (obsolete) In a rare move these days, it appears that this update is free to all current license holders. This places Holger right up there with Jascha Wetzel (Turbulence FD) as one of the most customer-centric developers out there. The 3D world needs more people like Holger. For those who have not purchased the HB Modeling Bundle, then find out more here Dave

Well...the right thing to do given that it appears ePortfolio is not up-to-date with its users (given how many people cannot log in) is to extend the 11/1 deadline until every last support case for a new password has been addressed. As their Help team is backlogged, this is the only fair thing to do. I used to always think Maxon would do the right thing for all its customers...but that confidence has been shaken as of late. Dave

Have you heard back yet on your support case? I issued mine for the same reason 3 days ago but have not heard back yet. Usually Maxon is pretty good about returning a response within 24 hours. ...maybe I am being blacklisted by the powers-that-be!! 😱 Dave

My thoughts: I looked at the selection of metals and I was not that impressed. Everything there could be easily replicated by playing with diffusion and reflection colors to get the same variety of metals in their collections. Also interesting that they only had three sets: Clean, Jewelry (just increase the reflection values to clean) or "Special Finish" which really did not have that much a special finish at all. I was looking for corrosion of some sort. The only benefit to a maintenance plan for material is if they are added a significant amount of new content within your maintenance period. There really is no other advantage unless Redshift significantly changes their software such that it is no longer backward compatible to old shaders. Now while I did not look at every material (really only looking at metals), if shader variety in their collections is achieved by varying a few sliders only then I think your money would be better well spent on a good tutorial on Redshift shaders. But with that said, I would look at The Pixel Lab - in particular their Mutating Materials Packs for Redshift. Each is $79 USD, they are 4K in resolution, and each pack is 250+ materials. The packs are Metals, Wood, Terrain, Stone, and Bricks. They also sell collections (all types) and have a 4 pack collection for $244 which has 630 materials. Price wise, Siger is a bit cheaper but I do like the Pixel lab materials better as each shader is not just based on varying settings I hope that helps. Dave

Thank you for that clarification. I just initiated a case as well. Dave

Okay I think I am all set because I do have full installers and permanent SN's for R20. I just opened up an old R13 file in R20 and it worked fine. I then saved it in R20 and opened it up again in R23 with no issues. I guess R20 and not R19 is when then they made the move to no longer support old file formats. So I have a path for my old WIPs to the new versions. Dave

Okay....after going through my office, I did find my R19 installer on a back-up disc. But I only have the temporary SN that comes with the download. Does ePortfolio provide the permanent serial numbers as well? Dave

My understanding is that the entire orange box is the flow field and the arrows that you do see are a viewport setting. Now, with that said there are a number of settings which impact how a spline can influence the flow field vectors. Without seeing the scene file, all I can recommend is this help file from Insydium found here: Flow Field Object (x-particles.net) Dave

Is ePortfolio a regional service? I ask because the site will not accept my current Maxon logins nor recognize my email address for a password reset. That email address has not changed for as long as I have used C4D. So I am left to wonder if ePortfolio is restricted to certain regions and not something for US based users. I would very much like to have an installer of R19 as that is the easiest way to get old files into the new core (eg. Load an R10 file into R19, save as R19 and then load that saved file into R25). Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Dave

Fair enough. Again, as pointed out in the post, I am not an Octane user and my examples were more focused on the upsides and downsides of biased vs. unbiased renders more so than the differences between Octane and Redshfit actual render times. Now, I personally have found that optimization is not a day long event as you stated. Rather, at most one hour for average scenes. You could optimize Redshift for each texture which can be a bit of overkill for the hobbyists like myself (though required for SSS). I tend to work at the scene level which will not produce 100% optimization that a professional would do who is trying to trick out their production pipeline for a big job, but it is good enough for me. Now what I do like about Octane is that they are partnering with plugin developers like World Creator and Embergen. Fluids and environments are definitely two areas that can tax a render engine. Now Redshift actually promotes integration with Autodesk plugins more so than C4D plugins - which is kind of odd after being owned two years by Maxon. While there are some settings for importing VDB files from X-Particles (which is appreciated) more could be done on the integrations side. Dave

So the main difference between the two is that Redshift is a "biased" renderer while Octane is "unbiased" I for one prefer bias in my render engines. Now, before we careen into the SJW discussions, let's first understand the difference between the two. Biased renders allow you to set the number of ray bounces that can occur within the scene. As such, there are many ways to do that as there are your camera rays (those coming from the camera), light rays, reflection rays, refraction rays, etc. etc. etc. For each you can determine the number of rays being generated to render refractions, reflections, etc. and the error threshold that the program uses to consolidate all that information. For example, a camera ray will hit a highly reflective surface. From that point of contact you can determine how many "reflection rays" emanate from that point to capture the surroundings. Now in reality the information flow on that ray is NOT from the surface to the surroundings but rather from the surroundings back to the surface and ultimately back into the camera. That is important to understand as all that ray sampling is compared and Redshift looks to see that the values being calculated for each of the reflection rays when all compared together is below the error threshold you set before the reflection amount for that ray is calculated. If you still see some issues with how the reflection is being rendered (eg. too noisy) you increase the rays by a multiple of 2. You play with each setting in the main menu and watch how the scene improves (shadows get crisper, noise is removed, etc). Honestly, I have set ray values to 1024 and the render time actually improves while the scene looks better!!! So what is the advantage of all this complexity? Speed as you are directly controlling how and what the render engine needs to be concerned about. For example, if there is a lot of motion blur, you may want to increase the camera rays (to remove noise from the blur) but drop the reflection rays as you really are not going to see it all that well anyway. Now this sounds a little over-whelming but it is not (IMHO). It also explains why people say it is hard to harness Redshift's capabilities. Unbiased renders do not offer as much control. They are unbiased because they use real world physics to set the number of ray bounces, etc. The unbiased render engine will allow the number of bounces to continue until the energy in that photon is fully expended. Not sure if that is how Octane works, but that is essentially the core difference between biased and unbiased render engines. So the fact that unbiased render engines really simulate the physicality of light, is why they say you can get great results right out of the box. The downside of unbiased render engines is that you do lose some control and the scene may not render as fast as what you can get from an optimized biased render engine. Going back to my original example, if you don't care about reflection quality in a fast moving scene with motion blur and you may find yourself with less options to manage that in Octane than you would in Redshift. Again, I am not an Octane user but I just wanted to make the point between how you can optimize render times in biased vs unbiased render engines. Honestly, I think the best way to approach this is to ask yourself if you will be doing stills or animations. For stills, you may want to get great results with minimal fuss and the extra render time to get that is not a big deal. If you are doing animations, optimizing the render time per frame with a biased render engine could be a huge benefit. If you can cut render time by 30 seconds per frame on a 10 second (300 frame) animation - that is 2.5 hours you just saved. Hopefully that makes sense. Dave

I have nothing but praise for TFD and Jascha (if only all developers were like him...sigh) but from a feature perspective it was getting over-shadowed by XP so I started to use XP. This brings me back to Jawset -- especially the improvements on volume shading and the ability to directly control the glows and the "crusty" nature of an explosion. That was always the toughest part of TFD (for me at least). Now, what I find interesting is that while particles are being used, there is no mention of fluids? Nor could I discern any fluid "looking" icons in that screen shot of the interface. Is fluids part of "Reactions"? Finally, can "Reactions" work with fields? Very happy to see this development work. It was "hinted" about in the distant pass so eager to give it a download. Dave

Okay....30 seconds into the launch reveal and here is one outstanding conclusion. It is professionally done. It is in crisp focus and with clear sound. It is NOT a zoom call with the camera staring up the CEO's nose at some bizarre angle with muddled sound and frame rates that drop out. It is shot on a professional stage that is professionally lit and NOT shot in someone's garage, kitchen or hotel room. Amazing that Side Effects can afford this from the revenue of really only one core product and with Indie licensing to boot. Glad to see that SideFX takes pride in their software and treats their users with respect by taking the time prepare a clear and enticing launch video. When I watch a video such as this, one thing is clear: They are working to "earn" your business. You just don't get that same vibe from poorly produced and unprofessional launch videos as those we have seen in the recent past. Dave ....do I need to be more clear about the contrast of this launch video and those we have seen in the past from "other" programs ? If you haven't made the connection yet....think back to September.

Does R25 still support Houdini Engine. C4D is no longer listed on the Houdini Engine plugin page. Was support for Houdini engine removed as the implementation of nodes and capsules takes shape? If so, that is short sighted (IMHO) as I think inter-operability between two platforms only increases user acceptance of both platforms. I also don't think R25 is going to be a "go to" application for those who want the benefits that a procedural workflow gives you. Learning Houdini while keeping C4D could have been a good strategy had Houdini engine for C4D still existed. Removing it does NOT change my desire to learn Houdini but it does change my desire to keep C4D. Just another case where Maxon takes something away. Dave

Amazing talent...just amazing. Please tell me that Mr. Bubalo is actively employed as his work history ends in 2018. If his talent does not keep him employed doing what he loves, then I will be seriously depressed. Dave

I subscribed to your YouTube channel and activated the notifications button. I love the logo...it has spunk! It also rocks a really strong Marvel's vibe (as intended) without bringing itself to the attention of the Disney IP protection police. It flirts with it, but does not cross the line (they may have an issue with the outline of Thor's hammer, but honestly I don't think they would bother). Kudo's to the artist who created it! So do we call the hero "Houdini Man"? And is he launching lightening at the primitive or the other way around? Maybe he is in a battle with the primitive because it is only made up of triangles. When Houdini Man defeats it that primitive becomes all Quad's --- at which point the Eternals (Cerbera, Vector, Contrafibulatories) appear in a blaze of glory and invite you to the alternate universe in which only quads exist. ...yeah....I could go on but that is enough for today. Dave