3D-Pangel

So the bitmap node will read a pixel value off an image based on its pixel position? That will definitely be useful in the future. Thank you. Dave

So let's back-up a bit. Why not use the Physical Sky object? Well, very long ago, I tried it and did not like the color options based on setting time of day, day of they year, global position, etc. Great tool, but I found myself trying different months and locations to get the look I wanted which was just too much trial and error. Since then I just put it out of my mind and never touched it since. I am trying to create a day-to-night animation and never even consider the Physical Sky Object and tried to approach it with Xpresso. It wasn't until this thread and some of the research I did to determine the color temperature of the sun based on its position in the sky that I remembered the Physical Sky object (like 20 minutes ago). A quick re-acquaintance with the tool and I find out you can over-ride those cumbersome day, location and time settings with your own gradients. Then I came across this calculator which has this gradient This completes what I am after as I can now create and save my own custom gradient for the Physical Sky object. So my sincere thanks. As always, I learn a little bit more about Xpresso with each question so your help is not wasted. Dave

Wow .... I really butchered that name. Yes...my apologies to Per Anders. Dave

Thank you. Amazing at how simple it seems once you see the solution. There are a couple of nodes I need to research to fully grow my knowledge with Xpresso but it is always easier (for me at least) to learn via a practical example that I struggled to solve. So I guess everything else about sequencing the lights that comprise the gun fire only at full extension of the muzzle made sense? It worked, but I just felt that there had to be a more elegant solution. Again...thank you! Dave

Attached is an Xpresso rig I developed to simulate a sci-fi version of an anti-aircraft gun. Two gun barrels that fire in sequence: left gun fires, then retracts while the right gun extends forward until it fires and it retracts...and the process repeats. In the attached file, I built this so that the controls range from -100 (left gun firing) to +100 (right gun firing). At 0 position, both guns are in a neutral position and the gun fire and muzzle flash are off. gun turrett.c4d You simply move the control slider all the way to -100, create a key frame, move a few frames forward to +100, create a key frame. Keep doing this for as long as you want the guns to fire. To see the effect, be sure to render in the -100 and +100 positions. So here is my question....is there a better way to do this with the Xpresso rig I built? I keep thinking that there is an Xpresso command I am missing that would make this a lot easier to develop in the future. My next question is: how could I just set three values: Guns on at frame X, Guns off at frame Y, and frames between left fire and right fire is Z. Thanks, Dave

What I want to create is an Xpresso rig that as you move a light through a 180 degree arc in the sky its color changes as the sun would change color during the day (yellow-gold in the morning to bright white at noon to red at dusk). I know that you can control the RGB values of a light with Xpresso but is it possible to range map the suns arc (from -90 to 90) to a position along a color gradient? I mean I could just define the RGB values along the way but working with a color gradient would allow more control in when the transitions take place by adjusting the knots. Is this possible and what Xpresso commands should I start researching? Thanks, Dave

Some of you may find this article interesting. My biggest take-away is that 4 Oscars are being issued for hair simulation. One each to Pixar's, ILM's, Weta's and Disney Animation's in-house development of their own hair simulation program. Kind of odd. My only take is one of two things: 1) There are a huge number of approaches to developing hair simulation programs such that there is enough uniqueness in each of these companies approaches that warrant each one of them get an Oscar. - or - 2) The Oscar committee could not make up their mind so every nominee get's a participation trophy. Just glad that didn't happen in 2019 when Piers Anthony won for MoGraph in 2019. BTW: Anyone know what he is doing now? Dave

YES! ohhh...I am sorry....was that question directed at me? Dave

Welcome to the Cafe.....IMHO it is the friendliest, most helpful community on the internet. Always a smart choice....use what you have until you outgrow what you have. Now the question is what do you want to do with C4D? If it is modeling, I think Cerbera made an excellent case for sticking with R16. While there have been some very good improvements since then (when was the polygon pen introduced?), R16 should suit you just find. If it is Mograph, then R16 will still be a good choice, but you are missing a whole realm of possibilities with fields introduced in R20. Do you want to sculpt? Not sure if that was introduced in R16 or R18. I think it was R18. Ultimately, your modeling skills will grow to a point where you want to improve your texturing skills. Well...the standard for material controls these days is with nodes and they were introduced in R20. So what do you want to make today? Dave

I would keep an eye on Rocket Lasso (Chris Schmidt) on YouTube. His "What's new in R23" video spends a lot of time on the animation improvements and he does state that he will be developing more rigging tutorials in the future. He did create this subscription only training series for Greyscale Gorilla found here Not sure if he is still with Greyscale Gorilla as he is developing his own plugins now (Recall) so maybe there will some animation/rigging content in the future at the Rocket Lasso site. Just a thought. Dave

Insydium does have its own YouTube channel: (1) INSYDIUM LTD - YouTube Based on the 1 second video you provided, I am not sure if you are after a fluid simulation or a grain simulation: I ask because in that video, the water appears more like a spray of water particles than a solid sheen of water. The difference between fluids and grains is that in a fluid simulation the particles are skinned to create a solid which is then shaded to be clear. In a grain simulation, the particles flow as a fluid but each is particle is still visible. With varying levels of particle adhesion you can create a look between fine water spray to snow to sand and even concrete breaking apart. In any case, using the grain solver with a very low self-adhesion level may be something you want to learn more about. You could start here Dave

Awesome. Personally, I am a dog person but I like the description of their personalities. So how come there is no model of Cookie yet? When you have young children, you have to address the pet issue. I was not a pet person...pretty much dead set against living with any animal. So as a compromise, I wanted any animal that came into our house to live in a cage. So we started with fish...then gerbils....then guinea pigs. Well....14 years ago we ultimately got a dog for my oldest daughter who was having a rough time in the 7th grade. She needed a goal to focus on to get through school that year so it was my wife's idea to promise her a dog at the end of the school year provided she get good grades, etc. I was not happy with that promise, but realized it was the best thing for my daughter so I accepted it. Well, 10 years later as she is moving out of the house to start her career after college, she says she is taking the dog with her. I said no. I told her that the dog is no longer her dog. The dog has become my dog now. So I bought her another dog. Dogs have personalities, there is thinking going on and pretty soon you understand them and they understand you. It is really amazing. This probably explains why they ultimately become a member of the family....even for an anti-pet person like myself. Dave

Is it just me or does it seem that C4D is quickly loosing the perception that it is not a good tool for character animation. Really impressed not only by some of the character work that is being created recently but also the improvements made to pose morphing with R23 (as well as a number of other improvements to the general animation system). A really amazing example of all that C4D can do is shown here: Honestly, this animation by Günter Nikodim should put to rest FOREVER anyone's concerns about C4D not be a serious character modeling, shading, rigging, and animation tool. Be sure to also check his rigging reel. Was it Horgavinski who was our resident C4D/Maya master animator? Not sure if it was or not but I do remember that being an expert on character animation in both programs, he had tremendous insights into what capabilities were lacking in C4D. If he is still a member of this forum or if I am confusing him with someone else who is still a member, I would love to hear their insights into how far C4D has come with character animation over the past few releases. Dave

The only discounts I know of are educational discounts for students and teachers. The day they offer a senior discount for the retired hobbyist is the day I send a beer gift basket to the MAXON offices. Dave Hmmm....my wife is a high school math teacher. She does teach advanced placement geometry, algebra and calculus classes. I wonder if she could use MoGraph to explain the area under a curve with C4D? 😉

Here is an old tutorial (2018) but in depth on water simulation using X-Particles....specifically on making a water fall. He uses XP 3.5 though. (1) Cinema 4D Seattle - Fluid Simulation in X Particles w/ Marvin Sanders - YouTube My biggest take-away was that his cache files were huge -- around 4 to 5 Gb. Here is a screen shot of the finished piece from his tutorial: I think that is the same look that you are trying to achieve. May I ask a simple question: A "free" copy of the latest X-Particles? How did you come by that? Dave

Okay....people should not be doing look development work for the next Avatar sequel from an internet cafe in the middle of Wellington. That is just common sense and you senior people trusted with that level of IP know that. But I think those lines were probably already crossed long before the pandemic as well. I mean, how many people do work on airplanes? That is why they have those polarized privacy screens you can put on your laptop to minimize the potential for on-lookers. You can't see anything unless you are the user looking straight on at the screen. Even when I am in an airport lounge, I keep my back to the wall when I open my laptop so no one can glance at my screen from behind. Standardizing a work-from-home policy is not going to increase or decrease that behavior as I would submit it has probably been going on all along. It comes with the territory once you give the employee a laptop. If you really want to keep something secure, the work is kept only a private network and the only access is through a workstation at the office....but they are the corner cases. Dave

Trust issues with the employee center around "are they doing the work" and those are quite easy to figure out. In fact, most managers should already have a pretty good idea if their direct reports are to be trusted or not with remote work. You will know pretty quickly if they are not getting the work done. Just look out for: late with completing assignments, too many excuses, you can't reach them during normal working hours, they take too long to return phone calls or text messages, and my personal favorite, when you do call them they sound like they are outside rather than in an office. Now if a direct report is always asking for more to do, if they step up, if you hear about them helping others....then trust is established. I would tell my direct reports that trust is given automatically, but you will rule the day that it is lost because the last place you want to be is "on my radar". Not hearing from me every day is a good thing because that means you have earned my trust. Just because you work from home does not mean that you can hide from everyone the fact that you are not getting work done. Everyone, both peers and managers, figure out who is working and who is not. Slackers cannot hide forever and ultimately they get managed either up or out. So should companies move to a WFH model, I believe trusting the employees will sort itself out over time. But honestly, those who can not be trusted is really no more than 5% of the workforce as most people want to work and value their job. Now if you are concerned about them stealing IP, well....everything can be tracked. When you connect to the companies servers, the data you download is tracked. When your laptop connects to a non-company server....every transaction is tracked. Downloading restricted material to a USB drive will be flagged. Email and text attachments are tracked. Uploads are tracked. Screen captures are flagged (what was the active app at the time of the screen capture). Even if you do it off line, that transaction is still logged on your machine. That log can either be uploaded the next time you connect to the companies server or stored for forensic analysis later. And companies can scan those transactions at will and without you knowing it at any time. And even if you are an IT wiz who thinks they can cover their tracks, there are better wizards who can figure out what you did (as a manager of a bunch of engineers who built and tested the servers we sell, I have seen it all). Big companies have these experts. AWS has these experts for those companies using their network because the last thing they want is bad press about the loss of IP on their network. So over time, ALL trust issues will be resolved. Honestly, I think WFH may become standard for everyone. My heart goes out to all those working in the commercial real estate market. Dave

Okay....TOO MUCH INFORMATION! That just shredded my image of you. Honestly, prior to that comment, given my high esteem for your talents, this is how I imagine just a simple thing like your desk chair! Well...at least you said you were wearing pants! Dave

Igor, Very sorry to hear about that storm in your life. I hope that you are now doing better both work wise and health wise. I actually have been a remote employee for Cisco for about 10 years. At that time, Cisco didn't even like having people outside of San Jose - let alone working from home in New England. But the situation was such that, as a manager, all my direct reports were in other parts of the world, I was always traveling (I just spent 50 days working a crises at one of our factories) and they need the office space at their campus in Massachusetts. So they actually asked me if I could work from home in New Hampshire. Hmmm....the Mass offices were a 50 minute commute and if I worked from home I wouldn't have to pay Mass state income tax (5.9%) as NH has no state income tax. I made my decision in 0.09 milliseconds. But, being a "remote employee", put a target on my back. I constantly had to prove my worth every day all the way up to the VP's and above. Every phone call was answered no matter when the call was made (remember that San Jose is 3 hours behind the East coast. Call me at 10PM -- I answer). When you did call me, you did not hear birds chirping, ocean waves, the wind blowing, or car sounds in the background. I was in my office. Nothing was ever late and the lines of communication were never clearer. But still, with all the frequency of an un-loved season, I would have to defend why I was a remote employee to the Senior VP (remember, they asked me to be remote). Finally, there was a big crises in Malaysia. My VP asked me to go over there and figure it out and then stay to fix it. It was a 3 month stint. After that, I was told that I was no longer on the radar. Then Covid hit and we all became remote employees (and that won't end until next June). Guess what? The company did NOT fall into ruin. Things were getting done. Cisco has "campuses" through-out the US. San Jose building are being sold. The 3 buildings in Massachusetts are being sold and only 1 is being leased back to house Cisco employees (well...actually the product development labs more than the people). You can only do that if you formalize a work-from-home strategy. So management does evolve when they finally accept that people are working. If you are a professional, you don't take anything for granted. You are an "at-will" employee which simply means your job is NOT guaranteed. You always need to show your worth whether in an office or at home. Once management sees that, if they are smart, they will trust you in that arrangement as they have much to gain too. Dave, P.S. Work from home does NOT work for new hires. They need to meet people, put names with faces and learn the culture. So I don't think 100% remote is a good idea. But 3 days a week! Hey...that works!

I watched the Pixar movie "Soul" and noticed this at the very end of the movie. So interesting that Pixar was able to make a mainstream, full length animated movie while under a pandemic lock-down that touched on some very complex themes while still being highly entertaining. Essentially, something this challenging is a highly collaborative exercise but it was accomplished with everyone still working from home. So...it begs a question: If Pixar can do it (and do it well), does that mean it can be done again? Is this tag line at the very end of the movie credits (where most people from home are no longer watching) added for humor only or was it a declaration of things to come for only those people who would watch the entire credits: namely people already in the industry? I mean, most companies are seriously thinking about the savings on commercial real estate/utilities/taxes by having their employees stay home permanently. Why would Pixar be any different? Let's assume the answer is that it is a declaration of things to come. What does this mean to the industry? Well, it means that talent can be accessible from ANYWHERE. It means that freelance VFX and animation artists do not need to lead nomadic existences relocating to various studios across the world in the search of work. High speed VPN internet connection and Zoom is all you need. You don't need to move which is a plus for the artist. It is also a plus for the companies because it is a lot easier and cheaper to recruit talent if you don't have to offer enough compensation to convince people to relocate to high cost of living areas like California or New York. Humorous tag line or a hint of things to come? Time will tell. Dave

Forgetting your birthday is not a sign of age....more of a blessing actually. Forgetting the birthday of your spouse or children is when age becomes a problem. My first contact with C4D was R9. I thought the matrix extrude tool was the coolest thing. Relative to age, I posted this when MAXON hit 30: Kind of looks like Srek? Don't you think? 😉 Yes...I can picture him in a C4D onesie at that age....his hands and fingers at the ready to type Shift-C to bring up the next command he needs quality check! Dave

Interesting concerns....but I do think that growing a YouTube channel is an extremely difficult endeavor and favors those who got into it early enough before YouTube got saturated with content. There is a huge amount of modeling content on YouTube on all programs so it is very hard to standout. That is a crying shame as your work is really good. Also, YouTube changed how content providers make money which probably explains why some are moving to private subscription training for new content like GSG and even Insydium. This makes sense when you consider lots of competing training product generating very little revenue for those who created it. So you are right to say that there is a dwindling audience for C4D but I don't think that has anything to do with C4D's modeling tools. Just that there is a lot of content out there. Unfortunately, I have no insights in how to create/grow a YouTube channel....all I can do is promise you that I will be a frequent visitor! Dave

A big thanks to you Wolfgang. Really enjoying your tutorials as they all hit the sweet spot of modeling tutorials for me: hard surface modeling, quad modeling technics, dealing with curved surfaces and sci-fi. As for me: "Wolf 3D is must-see TV" Should you wish to have T-shirts made with that slogan, I expect $0.05 per shirt. 😉 I do agree with you about the probability on a Cerbera modeling channel on YouTube. That would take him away from time at the Cafe so I am pretty certain we would all lose in the long run. Thanks again! Dave

I had heard that there were some initial instability issues with Redshift on AMD processors and wondered how old that problem really was and whether or not it had been resolved. While Threadrippers obviously are faster, I need to compare the number of PCIe lanes that they provide over Intel's chips as that is also important. The cost of Threadrippers is much less than Intels so it is good to know that Threadrippers are stable with Redshift. Overall though...with Redshift you need a fast processor and a wide highway to the GPU (or PCIe lanes) to get truly fast rendering results. Cores are not as important but good to have in case you want to run other applications while rendering (like streaming music, etc). Dave

Igor...you beat me to it. I was going to update my list with Wolf3D tutorials. I did not include Contrafibbularities tutorials initially as they were already part of the tutorial set listed at the Cafe. It wasn't until I opened up a few and clicked on the "View on YouTube" link that I realized he was also Wolf 3D (which....I have to admit....is much easier to type). So I actually was going to update my list today with a link to Wolf3D on YouTube but you beat me to it. I love his modeling techniques and thought process as he works though some of his more involved tutorials on sci-fi type subjects - in particular replicating the work of Vitaly Bulgarov in C4D with perfect quads! Sci-fi is my favorite 3D subject so his tutorials are a "must see" for me. I strongly recommend everyone follow him (as well as everyone else on my list) on YouTube as there is something for everyone. I do have to admit something: As you can now stream YouTube to your TV, I do sometimes just watch tutorials without following them in C4D as a means of relaxing at night after my day. Better than watching the mind numbing on broadcast or cable TV. I find that helps me absorb the technique and approach without worrying about the commands or key strokes...which is more important, especially if you have some proficiency with C4D's tools. Is that too geeky? So the next big questions is this: Will Cerbera ever have a YouTube channel? Imagine what we could learn! Dave