The 3DCG Thread: Revenge of the NURBS

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The 3DCG Thread: Revenge of the NURBS

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Grey Hunter posted:

Blender question - I'm trying to render a video with a alpha channel so I can use it as an overlay in vegas pro, but when I put it in, the image itself is either transparent (with add as the blend mode), or the alpha is black (when its on source alpha.).
With a single image png source alpha works, but I'm at a loss with the video.

I rendered it out using the quicktime 7 format following a youtube format - is there an easy fix to get it looking right, or is there a better technique?

The issue is going to be (I'm guessing) that very few video codecs support an alpha channel. Whatever you're rendering is not getting an alpha channel included. Your blend mode isn't going to help you here (except in very specific circumstances).

As far as I know you could use ProRes 4444 or Quicktime with Animation codec. What format are you using?

I have never used blender so I'm not sure on it's video output capabilities. If you're exporting a video format that supports alpha channel, make sure that setting is turned on in Blender's output settings.

The best solution is going to be not to output a video file, but rather an image sequence. That way you can output an image sequence of PNGs with transparency and then import the image sequence into Vegas Pro. When you import an image sequence into a video editing app, for all intents and purposes, it'll treat it as a single file video element. But with the properties of the images (that may not be available to certain video codecs).

Follow the Frame Sequence workflow here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/output/animation.html

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 19:34

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 17:56

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

EoinCannon posted:

I have an old cintiq 21" from when they were 4:3. It must be more than 10 years old
10 years old and still chugging along, I like it

We have two of these but they both ded

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 21:20

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

SubNat posted:

Hm, apparently some of the infinite Fortnite money has gone towards Epic making a character creator.

https://twitter.com/UnrealEngine/status/1359518804150255616

There's a sample project with 2 output files/models.
But considering it's a cloud based platform for them (why?), who knows what it'll cost to use in projects, or when it'll be ready. (Sometime this year.)

The cynic in me assumes that it's web-based purely so that it can be handled under a subscription / tightly controlled license. (Sorry. 'Cloud streamed app'.)
Which is a shame because I imagine having a robust base for character creation could be very useful in any games that would like to use it to expand on for ingame character creation.
If it easily allowed for adding custom morphs, shapes, etc it could be pretty useful for any human-adjacent character.

It doesn't really seem like it does anything that'd warrant cloud-based computing, unless it's using it to speed up some aspects, like re-weighting hair, instantly packing and compiling texture maps etc. I imagine a good chunk of it is just painting and combining normal + disp maps, alongside a ton of morphs that get baked down to a base shape on export.

I mean games are nice, but Epic is really starting to become a massive player in the film world. This could have awesome implications moving forward. Obviously not necessarily hero shots (at first), but this could great speed up crowd workflows, etc. Very cool stuff.

I wonder how long until these big players go past just software as a subscription and move into machines as a subscription. Don't buy a $4k machine! For just $40/month you can Teradici into an always-up-to-date high end workstation!

# ¿ Feb 10, 2021 21:16

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Comfy Fleece Sweater posted:

Getting into this 3d thing right now seems like a really weird, possibly bad time to do so. Because of the AI/Procedurals/MachineLearning explosion.

Seems like the golden age for ez-3D was like 10-20 years ago. Still, I enjoy it.

As a beginner, I wonder if I�m wasting my time with stuff like good topology or learning specific modeling techniques(how to make holes in Hard surface! Etc). I jump on Twitter and see a guy who modeled like 300 sci Fi helmets procedurally, or some dude on Artstation who made a procedural building generator in modo.

Just venting a little... Don�t know if I should continue, feels like I�m learning to use a typewriter and the industry is moving to PCs. How much longer is stuff like topology or optimized poly counts gonna be relevant?

Always always learn the fundamentals. Every good artist knows the fundamentals. Picasso didn't jump just straight to cubism!

And as someone that hires from time to time - those things you mention are a drop in the bucket compared to the things actually requested from clients. Needing to build what a client wants almost always requires levels of custom modeling and that's where your fundamentals will come in.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2021 15:08

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Elukka posted:

Messing with lighting and some simple post processing a bit. This is some reasonably realistic space lighting, assuming there's a planet off frame to the left. I really need better bloom and glare than what Blender can do. Apparently Natron's got me - I'd just have to learn it.

For fun, here's how Hubble should see this ship from 20 000 kilometers away. It turns out Blender's field of view has a hard lower limit way above Hubble's fov, but the same quantity expressed in focal length has no upper limit.

Lookn' good. And yeah while I like imagers in 3D programs for fun, most serious compositing work is going to be done in an external compositor (After Effects, Nuke). I hadn't heard of Natron. Sounds interesting. However if you're serious about making it in the industry learn these three compositors (listed in order of preference):

1.) Nuke
2.) Nuke
3.) AE just kidding Nuke

# ¿ Feb 26, 2021 13:31

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Taffer posted:

Crypto-art is extremely lovely and nobody should be supporting this. I'm glad Beeple is making some money (he deserves it), but crypto art is not the way to go about it.

https://joanielemercier.com/the-problem-of-cryptoart/

Yeah the energy thing is bad.

Surely there is a way to do this without cryptocurrency right? I mean, as far as I can tell, the only reason to use it is because of the blockchain aspect and how it acts as the public ledger.

Surely somebody can create a digital art variant of that that doesn't rely on a cryptocurrency? Purchase with real money but you're added to a digital-art-specific blockchain (or variant)?

# ¿ Mar 2, 2021 22:55

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Taffer posted:

I don't know enough about it to know of specific alternatives, partially because I think artificially scarcity is a really gross manipulation to raise prices on things, and digital goods can only be scarce artificially. Artists and creators deserve to make money off of their work and should be able to sell it, but doing so by ensuring there's only 1 or 100 at all available is exclusionary at best, and by using crypto to do it it's actively destructive.

For example, the sale of this single Beeple piece produced co2 emissions equivalent to 5.5 years of an EU citizens total energy consumption. https://niftygateway.com/itemdetail/primary/0x12f28e2106ce8fd8464885b80ea865e98b465149/1
http://cryptoart.wtf/#address=0x12f28e2106ce8fd8464885b80ea865e98b465149

And that's tame compared to some others. Many consume DECADES worth of a single person's normal energy use for a single piece of art. It's really, really bad and every artist should be really loud in opposing it. https://memoakten.medium.com/the-unreasonable-ecological-cost-of-cryptoart-2221d3eb2053

Yeah I don't think any alternatives even exist. Somebody could make a non-climate destroying mint by creating one I assume.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2021 23:25

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Beeple's "The First 5000 Days" closed at nearly $70 million.

https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/beeple-first-5000-days/lots/2020

# ¿ Mar 11, 2021 16:10

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

So of course the buyer of Beeple's work was just an NFT insider. They're basically just megainflating their own poo poo.

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/beeple-first-nft-artwork-at-auction-sale-buyer-intl-scli/index.html

# ¿ Mar 14, 2021 02:42

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

cubicle gangster posted:

Anyone here been responsible for leading/managing someone they hired this past year - going from a previous in-studio environment to introducing someone new to a full work from home setup?
And on the other side - has anyone joined a new studio in a fully work from home setup after having previously been used to working in studios?

we're going to have to do it soon and I'm curious if there's any insight people could share. From the person hiring/managing it would be good to know the kinds of hiccups you faced, and from anyone who started work in that kind of environment, what you felt could have been done better during the onboarding and how your workload was managed.

My natural instinct is that it's going to be much more difficult to introduce people who have a freelance/solo heavy background - we have hired people in the past who exclusively work in-camera, dont use xrefs or layers, and do very little collaboration. organization for collaboration is always the biggest learning curve for someone who hasn't done it before and requires the most hands on in-person time, so that part kind of terrifies me.

I'm kind of in the middle of this. I was hiring an extra animator here when I got an offer from another company. I took the offer (I'm in MS and the company is in NC) and will be working remote for 3 months before moving. At the same time, hiring a support animator for my current job (ending on Apr 2) has turned into hiring my replacement. And some of those options are possibly remote.

So - while I don't have any expertise in it this second. In the next few weeks I should probably have some good frying pan into the fire experience to share.

edit; On a semi related note... goddamn Parsec is a great app. I had to go pick up my sick kid from school yesterday... took her home and just logged into my work machine and completed an edit. Like, actually did the edit not just "scraped by enough in Google Remote Desktop to export a file). Super loving impressed.

BonoMan fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Mar 24, 2021

# ¿ Mar 24, 2021 18:15

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

KinkyJohn posted:

I'm planning on using Octane because the glass and caustics I've seen in galleries look pretty good. I might also look into Luxcore. Using Modo and Blender at the moment for modeling

Thanks, that looks pretty useful

If you're using Octane or Arnold (I fuckin love Arnold) then check our GreyScaleGorilla.com

Their $50/month plus sub is amazing. All their training and all their plugins/materials/etc.

They cover RedShift too but I don't like RedShift nearly as much (neither do they).

# ¿ May 1, 2021 12:44

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Handiklap posted:

Long time no post, so here's an art test I did recently for a position I don't want.

Hopefully bringing this entirely-too-long-stretch of unemployment to an end here in the next few weeks. There's a place that does some automation work that really dovetails nicely with stuff I was doing earlier in my career, and I'm about to schedule Interview IV: Leadership�. I'm trying to be patient and comfortable with the idea of interview processes lasting multiple weeks stretching into months, because apparently that's just how it is now, but ffs this is just such a lovely experience on the whole. I keep telling myself that there's a ton of people out there vying for these positions, and that I should be proud I've gotten past interview 1, let alone a second or third, but it's getting harder and harder to chalk it all up to 'pandemic factors'. Multiple potential employers, usually nearly a month after applying, all with the most achingly slow scheduling practices that stretch an interview process into weekly installments of 'next steps' to eventually vanish without a trace.

That's my wasteland job hunting story, let's hear yours!

Don't sell yourself short, this is incredible progress and I'm super excited for you. It's amazing how accessible all of this stuff is nowadays. Stuff like gamejams help to provide a lot of organic/practical problem-solving you wouldn't run into just going through tutorials, so kudos for diving into it.

Looks great for what I'm assuming is a Wayfair position, ha.

My only critiques are very minor and are art direction - not technical. On the right side:

The stacked frames is odd. Someone with a space that nice is not going to stack two frames and then an A on top.
The small stack of books on the right side looks a little odd too. I'd put maybe one or two, but not a whole stack.
No mouse?

# ¿ May 16, 2021 14:48

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Skilbs posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34nxDSx_l6k

Looks like weta is going to be packaging up a bunch of their Maya tools and releasing them as a subscription type thing. I am curious if any of the other big studios will make use of this. I remember a couple of us at Framestore being very jealous of the Apes breakdowns while I was there. https://weta-m.com/

While I hope they make this available cheap if not free for training, I wonder how much you can get out of this without large asset libraries or suitable infrastructure. This seems like it will include their AI facial anim tech but I wonder how many people will actually be in a position to implement it properly.

Really cool (and forward thinking) business model for Weta. And those tools are awesome and very powerful but... yeah like you mention this is most likely for mid to larger studios. I can't imagine these things are very freelancer accessible (price nor learning curve).

# ¿ Jun 17, 2021 17:29

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

KinkyJohn posted:

God drat there a lot of nice renderers supporting C4D. It's really difficult to choose, and I just had a look at Corona's gallery and now I want to use that instead of Octane.

Well the good thing is they usually all have trials!

I haven't used Octane yet, but my new company does so I'll have to switch regardless. But I realllllly loved Arnold's workflow. It just instantly clicked and I "got it" quicker than other renderers. It just seemed to be more intuitive. I really didn't like Redshift.

Ultimately you can achieve most looks you want across all renderers - so don't be swayed by a gallery. Install the trial and see how it feels!

# ¿ Jun 22, 2021 14:27

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Adobe has released their Substance 3D Package.

Painter
Designer
Sampler (Alchemist)
Stager (Dimension)
Modeler (currently in private beta - looks to be a ZBrush type sculptor with standard and VR workflows).

$40/month package for 12 months (introductory pricing) individuals. $50/month afterwards
$20/month for just Painter, Sampler, Designer
$80/month for Teams license

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/3d-augmented-reality.html

# ¿ Jun 23, 2021 20:54

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

cubicle gangster posted:

Where's the best place to put an ad out to hire someone/a team proficient in UE - blueprints, frontend, interactivity?
From a games experience point of view, is this considered UI?
I took a look on Gamasutra, they have a contractor list 1700 strong but it's a bit of a random crapshoot to click through and try and figure out if they offer the services we want.

We'd like to find someone (or a team) that we can potentially rely on for more of this - someone excited about the possibilities and experienced enough to suggest new approaches and ideas that we might not have considered.
We'd supply scenes organized however required, and we'd be able to handle design elements of the UI if needed too - it's largely the programming and interactive component we need help with.

e: here's a quick reel of some of the past experience spaces that we've designed & built - we get healthy budgets to do it properly. https://vimeo.com/341597152

Are you looking to hire for an in-house team or partner with a vendor?

I just got hired on as a Creative Director as a production company that has been doing a lot of VR lately. They're physically just down the street from Epic and have lots of Epic/nVidia partnerships going. Some talented programmers and artists that spend their days in UE/VR world. I was brought on to help elevate their output and I've always thought of architecture as a great avenue for that (also coincidentally, as I'm moving there in two weeks, I got put in touch with George Smart the president of the US Modernist organization - and I'm hoping we can develop some VR experiences for the modernist world).

# ¿ Jul 20, 2021 20:17

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

cubicle gangster posted:

I am pushing hard for a vendor we can partner with - I think long term it will make more a more collaborative process and both sides can benefit.
It sounds like we should have a chat....!

Yeah for sure! We're still small but they're making leaps and bounds and our main focus is building up that particular side of the team.
I'm currently home with both kids through today b/c of a COVID exposure in my kid's daycare room (we leave in 10 days. I cannot wait to be out of this state) so things are nuts, but I'll DM with a bit more of a detailed response tomorrow or Friday!

edit: Speaking of Epic - they just bought Sketchfab. They're on a tear.

BonoMan fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Jul 21, 2021

# ¿ Jul 21, 2021 14:45

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

KinkyJohn posted:

Are there any good CG discords out there?

The GreyScaleGorilla slack is great. Not sure if you have to have Plus to use it though.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2021 12:57

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

echinopsis posted:

Is there anyone who could guide me into the first steps of making a simple addon for blender?

In this particular one, I just want to add an auto-off for a tickbox in blender.

One of the most useful tools in blender is being able to move your viewport as the camera to change camera angles.

for some reason you can't undo this, and so if you have a viewport lined up and you move to look around it, if you've left that tickbox on, you move your view port and you can't undo back to the previous one.

and this fucks me right off. and I've done it loads of times. my own drat fault of course but still... it seems like making an addon or script could handle that easily

You've probably exhaustively looked into this, but have you checked to see if there's a different undo queue for viewpoint movements?

I know Maya used to use the bracket keys to undo/redo viewport movements instead of the ctrl-Z queue.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2021 13:07

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Slothful Bong posted:

AFAIK, the camera moves do not count as part of the undo system when done in first person mode or lock camera to view, so it’s way too easy to be navigating in first person and forget to hit escape to cancel it.
I did see someone mention selecting the camera in the outliner and undoing there, but I’m not at a PC so can’t test if it works.

If that does, this may be doable with some code, if not, a workaround would be needed.

I’m definitely not a good programmer so I don’t fully know wtf I’m doing, but in my head it goes something like this (not-code to follow):
- assign camera undo keybind
- Identify when user enters active camera
- when user presses camera undo, select active camera in outliner
- run undo step
- possibly unselect camera?

Code-wise, there’s always some weirdness when it comes to how active objects are handled. There’s all sorts of context based nonsense, and in a massive script we’ve done at work for simulation generation for ML purposes, we’ve had to use pretty much every context workaround there is.
Cameras might be okay, this stackexchange post seems to reference scene.camera as a way to call active cameras: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/8245/find-active-camera-from-python

If the outliner trick doesn’t work, it might kinda work jankily like so:
- assign undo keybind
- select active camera
- add keyframe
- if undo is pressed, revert to keyframe (not sure best method, maybe by jumping back and forwards a frame?)
- if enter is pressed, add another keyframe with new data, then delete keyframe

I think you could also keyframe in negative frames, and reference those as more permanent fixed angles, but I have a feeling you might not be able to easily reference what keyframe goes with what camera.

In the end, it’ll be about breaking the action (undo camera) into a bunch of discrete steps, and hunting for the right code for each of the steps. Luckily there’s lots of good resources so bad coders like me can still make things that good coders can fix, but if you don’t have a ton of python experience its going to be a bit of trial and error.

E: I definitely went overboard on this, rereading original post, if it’s literally just unticking “lock camera to view”, I think you can make a keyboard shortcut for that: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/68996/assign-shortcut-to-lock-camera-to-view

Or just make a basic script using the code here, that runs when Blender starts: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/107029/how-do-i-lock-camera-to-view-using-python

Yeah this video shows the outlined tip working

https://youtu.be/tFVukCHJW1A

# ¿ Sep 25, 2021 16:07

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

the_lion posted:

I'm a motion designer, but I'm a bit stumped on ways to go right now. Most designers worth their salt know 3D and I'm finding it a bit daunting.

For background, I have used Cinema 4D (particularly the lite version) for a while but no external render engines and nothing complex. Mostly just 3d text and simple animations. In the background, I started learning a bit of blender and was surprised what you get for free. Fluids seem a bit buggy though.

The angles I have been considering are:

C4d and octane (paid)
C4d and redshift (paid)
Blender (free)
Blender and octane (free)

(I hear octane is free for blender, you can only use one GPU which is fine for me)

I'm sure using Blender will lock me out of studio work (at least the bigger ones). Blender is good, but I have to keep notes of all the shortcuts, how to use nodes and stuff. Cinema4d, I never forget the workflow.

Anyone made the jump to Blender from another app? Just curious if it's actually sensible to do so. I'm sure in the end the client doesn't care what you use but given the amount of time you have to put into learning it I'd love to hear people's opinions.

I went to school for 3D animation, then got a job in Mograph (where I used Maya as 3D supplementation) for about 10 years. Now I�m a creative director and still do mograph but have tried to move myself to being more 3D centric.

The best advice I�d give someone in your position is to use C4D with either Arnold or Octane and then subscribe to GreyScaleGorilla Plus ($50/month) to help you elevate your game immediately.

Blender is great, a couple of folks use it here in our studio (That I�m new to, just joined in April), but it really shines when you have lots of free time to invest or are in an environment that has completely embraced it. And honestly it�s not *better* than C4D� it�s just free.

So to have the best compatibility with other people, I�d say use C4D. The 25 release is frickin� great and it just keeps getting better.

And, I promise I�m not a paid sponsor of GSG Plus, but holy poo poo it just gets you to 2nd base immediately. Just amazing mograph centric training (and tons of it) and amazing plugins and materials/hdri packs etc. It�s worth way more than it costs.

Also their training focuses on Redshift, Arnold and Octane so you can find out which one is best for you.

All of those renderers can produce great results, but when I look at artist friendly renderers with UIs and workflows that just make sense, I feel like Arnold and Octane are the best.

Arnold was the #1 for me (I started on v6 though so I never had any of the earlier issues with it). It�s fantastic.

My new place uses Octane so I took the opportunity to get in on that and I loved it immediately too (Arnold still takes the edge for me).

And at the end of the day, Blender and C4D are getting very similar so I think switching between those two shouldn�t be an issue.

Okay TLDR edition:

If you need to get up and running quickly, C4D will allow you to plugin to more workflows easier than any other programs in the mograph world. It�s design is almost entirely mograph centric now. GreyScaleGorilla + will get you instant access to tons of rock solid training centered around MoGraph and paired with some amazing plugins that will get you far along *very* quickly.

Hit me up with any questions or whatever! I�m not an expert, but part of my everyday existentialism is figuring out how to update my 3D/C4D game in the mograph field. And I�ve been doing it for almost 15 years now lol.

Edit: also in the new r25 release of C4D, the node capsules are amazing. I think the node based workflow was cool (but never saw how I could use that as my primary workflow in a 3D environment), but the capsules I think is going to take a huge hold in the mograph world.

It basically takes the non-destructiveness that Nodes gives you and packages them up into little modular� capsules� that you can plugin to your animation and do really cool non-destructive poo poo.

Also do you have a reel or anything? And where are you located? We�re looking for a 3D/2D person!

BonoMan fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Oct 2, 2021

# ¿ Oct 2, 2021 17:38

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

500 posted:

I'd personally recommend trying Octane if you've never used a third party render engine before. I think you might be surprised how easy it is to use. In my experience it's the engine that looks the nicest out of the box without you really having to do much at all.

I can remember the first time I started using it. Up until that point all I really knew was C4D's standard/physical renderers. Using Octane felt like someone just handed me cheat codes.

It's pretty drat awesome. I had already started on Redshift (didn't love it), then moved over to Arnold 6 (loved it) so it wasn't the hugest jump but it's still great. It's very easy to use!

# ¿ Oct 2, 2021 21:56

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

the_lion posted:

Great advice guys on Blender vs C4d guys, thanks heaps! GSG plus is not something I'd even though about, nor had I considered Arnold. Octane was at the top of the list because people said it was often the fastest which might be best for me given short deadlines.

I'm not sure that I'm what you'll be looking for, but I'm in Australia and my reel is at https://www.ryanbarlin.com/motion

Octane will be the fastest to get you too a good luck, but Redshift is considered the fastest overall for production-ready rendering. But I just am not a fan and wouldn't switch over to it.

Arnold 6 has live preview and GPU rendering like Octane plus it just has a bit more finesse in it's design and a steady/stable Autodesk backing, but overall I'm loving Octane and it feels the most artist-friendly out of the three (but Arnold was definitely a close second for me... it's improved a lot over the past two years).

And thanks for the reel - Australia is too far for us unfortunately but some strong work (although you could probably shorten it by 30 or so seconds and the music is a little much!)

# ¿ Oct 3, 2021 02:40

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

KinkyJohn posted:

I'm also deciding between Octane and Arnold. Isn't arnold really slow? And their GPU version is almost there but not quite?

Their GPU rendering is definitely relatively new but it was good when I tried it. No idea about speeds on non realtime renders as I only used GPU, but I never felt like speed was a bottleneck. Obviously project type and hardware will decide that

Honestly at this point as much as I actually really do like arnold, if you are an individual and not in a production environment then I would probably just get octane for sure. It's really good.

BonoMan fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Oct 3, 2021

# ¿ Oct 3, 2021 20:36

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Slothful Bong posted:

Oh that’s cool! MaterialX is like USD for shaders, from what I understand. A platform agnostic way of defining everything shading related, so it can be used in whatever DCC is necessary.

Right now it’s renderer limited, as not everyone’s incorporated MaterialX into their engines, but I’m hoping someday it’s everywhere so I don’t have to spend a million hours recreating node graphs from Maya to Houdini.

A cool thing about it would be working with shading in whatever DCC is fastest for your use (in my case blender), then being able to bring everything over to Maya or Houdini without hours of googling “what is x equivalent node in redshift” or whatever.

That'd be awesome. Just yesterday I opened up a Maya file that I needed to port to C4D. I noticed they were using Octane shaders in Maya and I'm using Octane in C4D. But you can't transfer of course so I get to spend two days completely reshading a very complex tech product.

Yay

# ¿ Oct 15, 2021 14:03

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Yeah both the renders and the facility itself. drat.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2021 01:43

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Also semi related.. but I was surprised to find that windows preview pane supports obj. Nuts!

# ¿ Dec 10, 2021 14:30

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

I'm pretty sure EoinCannon was joking. But you never know. Maxxon isn't quite Autodesk. Here's hoping.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2022 17:03

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

autojive posted:

Not quite Autodesk... more like Adobe. They hired a former Adobe executive as their new CEO and ousted the company founders. It wasn't soon after that they started moving toward a full subscription model and considering what Adobe's done so far with Substance, I don't have any high hopes at all for a fair pricing model for us. Subscription prices for ZBrush will go up, perpetual licenses will go up and I'm betting at least 25-35% of the full price as a yearly maintenance cost.

Yeah I was speaking more to the abandoning of things. They'll definitely have to squeeze whatever dollars they can. But I'm at least hoping they do actively keep advancing it. It seems like Adobe is actually taking substance somewhat seriously.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2022 21:17

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Alterian posted:

My only hesitation to move off Maya is I can unwrap so incredibly fast in it.

Speaking of unwrapping - I'm all in on Rizom UV. Holy crap I love it so much. I'm in C4D and have the bridge installed and it's just so freakin' easy.

# ¿ May 31, 2022 15:55

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

cubicle gangster posted:

A while ago someone in here recommended a remote desktop solution that was designed / positioned for the video game industry - ultra low latency so you could play games through it was it's big feature. Anyone remember what it was called?
We've got someone having a bad time on splashtop & windows remote desktop and this would be good to try.

Parsec.app

It's what I use to remote into my work machine. I primarily do AE motion work (and some editing in Premiere) and C4D work.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2022 19:48

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

500 posted:

In Blender it's called the subdivision surface modifier. I have mine set up so I can turn it on/off by pressing tab, but apparently that's not standard. Maya got it right by providing shortcuts by default (nice car model by the way!)

What he means is that Maya has a way to view an object as smoothed without applying any sort of modifier - even a subd one.

It's not the same as applying subd modifiers in other programs. It's literally a "hey if you were to happen to smooth this mesh... it'd look like this." But if you hit render you'd see your low poly mesh.

It's pretty nifty.

And of course it has actual subd and smoothing operations for actual modeling. But that's not the same as smooth poly preview, and as far as I know no other program has it.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/supp...03838E-htm.html

BonoMan fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Jun 22, 2022

# ¿ Jun 22, 2022 02:50

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Sailor Dave posted:

It sounds like blender's subdivision modifier also does that, though? You can turn off the render option in the modifier and it sounds like it would work exactly the same way, except you press Ctrl+1,2,3, etc. instead. It even has the "Optimal Display" option for showing the smoothed wireframe the same way.

I mean yes a lot of dcc that use modifiers that have toggle-able options. I use C4D which has a similar stack system and lots of things to toggle.

It's just that the Maya thing we're talking about exists at a system level. You don't add anything to the model. No modifiers or whatever.. Every poly object has the function from the moment you make it.

It's not going to save you days or time or anything, but it's just convenient.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2022 13:12

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

500 posted:

Yep, I first learned subd modelling in Maya. I'm always looking for ways to emulate that workflow in other programs.

I guess what I was trying to say is that the way I currently have Blender set up feels roughly the same as using Maya. I press 'tab', and if there's no subdivision modifier it adds one and enables it. If there's already a subdivision modifier present, it toggles it on or off. As long as there are no other modifiers present, I don't even have to look at the modifier stack, so I can kind of pretend it doesn't exist. This is not a default shortcut, but it's nice that it's possible to set up custom behavior like this in Blender.

Does Cinema4D still require you to drag objects inside of a subdivision object? How do you make that less annoying?

When you have your object selected, you hold alt when selecting subd and it automatically makes the object a child of the modifier.

If you hold shift when selecting it it'll do the reverse and make the modifier the child of the object.

It's pretty nice - and the ability to add modifiers that don't alter anything by default is cool too.

I really like C4D's stack system - especially with the release of the new capsule system.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2022 18:08

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Yeah, no CA. Less on the crease (it's super distracting. Maybe one more towards the corners, etc but don't cut right across your work!). Soften it up (too sharp) and desat a little bit (colors popping too much for an older photo.)

# ¿ Jun 23, 2022 15:45

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

At least for us C4D users we get zremesher in Cinema now!

# ¿ Jul 23, 2022 20:23

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

cubicle gangster posted:

This little project has consumed me entirely for the last 4 weeks, but now it's done.

https://vimeo.com/748129523/fa84008a3e

I shot all the footage on an inspire 2 with a coworker last year, we've been sat on it since. 4 weeks ago we had a shortlist of 30 ungraded shots and an absolute mess of revit models with no details. I was in charge of the footage, tracking, lighting & integration, and 4 people on my team worked on the model - cleaning it up, adding details, getting the trees, roads and paths in etc. It's been a pretty heavy lift!

This is insane. Excellent work.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2022 17:49

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

This is pretty niche, but if you know who JangaFX is (makers of the amazing EmberGEN, upcoming LiquiGEN and then further upcoming SceneryGEN) and have been following them you know:

a.) it's a labor of love for Nick Seavert and his team and
b.) you know it's an insanely powerful tool and have been wondering why they haven't gotten purchased yet.

Well on his livecast today he devoted the second half (about 45 minutes) to the origins of/future of JangaFX and I highly recommend watching it. It's very raw and emotional and he's super transparent about everything. I highly recommend watching it - especially if you ever get down about the state of things. It's pretty amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTLtwub7GoU&t=1784s

# ¿ Oct 21, 2022 21:51

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

ImplicitAssembler posted:

The speed is impressive, but quality of some of the examples was poor. Some production quality examples would go a very long way.

Production quality examples of what? Embergen? Lots of people use it in production already. It's pretty drat high quality for what it does. I mean here's a little tease for just their .75 release. They aren't even at v1 yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GeRdRsa-6w

If you're talking about liquigen or scenery gen... Those are in pre alpha development and these livecasts are just generally little teases because people in the discord clamor for it. The main point of my post was his talk about the journey of Janga to what it is now. It's pretty impressive.

BonoMan fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Oct 22, 2022

# ¿ Oct 22, 2022 00:20

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 17:56

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

ImplicitAssembler posted:

Yeah, I still don't see it being good enough for movie/(high production value) tv VFX.

Ok well thanks for your valuable input and completely ignoring why I even posted the link in the first place.

What a weird thing to post.

edit: nm I looked at your post history

BonoMan fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Oct 22, 2022

# ¿ Oct 22, 2022 05:10

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The 3DCG Thread: Revenge of the NURBS

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