Post
by Eugen » 14 Mar 2014, 10:16
Hi noseman,
thanks a lot for the videos! Good jumpstart to the C4D workflow, in fact.
Couple of things:
The box example was meant to expose a specific parametric modeling approach - not an approach to get to any specific shape or form. Of course you could do the same thing with booleans, too, in Softimage.
Btw, most model's 'shell' cannot simply be derived by scaling. Take any U-like shape, for example.
Q: is there a dedicated 'thickness' tool? The 'explode' tool you use in the second video looks a bit like a workaround.
Also, let's count out any deformers in our little examples. Although important, they are on the 'trivial' side anyway, technically, because they basically just push vertices, and do not change the topology of the object (add/delete components).
I do like the C4D way of applying them, though, with that handle (twist, bend, etc.). Softimage does not have any interactive handles for most modeling operators.
I can see that the topic of 'modeling relations' works very well in C4D, meaning combining objects to create a new one - simply d&d them in a 'containter' object (booleans, extrusions,...)
Obviously, the container object becomes the parent (in the sense of normal hierarchies) of the input objects as well, correct? Would makes sense.
Q: what if you transform the 'container' object now? I'd expect the input objects to be transformed accordingly.
This is different in Softimage. Less handy here, actually. What I have do is put the input curves together with the extrusion in a model (= a very powerful and important concept here - a 'scene in the scene', with it's own center, that can as well be an external Ref, and more), so when you transform the whole model, everything stays in place, like you would intuitively expect. Yet you have to take care of this yourself.
3ds max, btw., has a somewhat similar approach to C4D, because it makes internal copies (instances, I assume) of the input objects (when creating compounds or extrusions), so they get automatically parented to the 'main' object, and transform with it. Very practical.
Now the thing I want to nail you down to ;} is that you don't have an operator stack, as I understand it, and any sort of topology chancing tool sequence will force you to 'freeze' the object, thus loosing parameters.
So, to define the term 'parametric modeling' more precisely - it means keeping all parameters accessible, all the time. Could be called non-linear workflow, too.
I understand that inter-object relationships work very good in C4D, but topo changes on an object itself don't, correct?
I'm checking out the boundaries here, as you surely notice, and it's perfectly justified to ask if keeping an operator stack is really necessary for most scenarios, or even a show stopper.
That's a central question for me at this time, because no other application except 3ds max (which I don't want to go back to), or Houdini (which is overkill for me) has this, and I'd like to make an educated decision.
In fact, even in Softimage people tend to freeze the operator stack after the modeling process is finished, because a huge stack can become a performance issue with animation (a character for example). It would work just fine keeping the stack live, though, even with topo changes. That's one of the strenghts of Softimage. Maya can become a nightmare in that regard.
Q: in Softimage, you can select some components (verts, edges, polys), create a cluster from it, and apply any deformer to the cluster. Then you can go back and change the cluster's content by adding or removing components, and the end result will change accordingly. (in 3ds max, too, btw - even a little simpler)
Do you have the concept of clusters? What they basically do is 'rise' components in the rank of scene objects. You can also e.g. assign materials to them (they override the object's material then).
Are you still with me?
Please forgive me if I'm too lazy to create a video... =p
Q: is there a tools to 'attach' an object to another one? What I mean is, that no third object is created, but the attached object becomes part of the first one (polys, curves, nurbs).
Q: can you create/place objects on other objects interactively, aligned to the surface normals? 3ds max can do this, Softimage can't. (wrote a little script that can do this via 'pick component' commands, but it's not interactive. There's another plugin for interactive placing of primitives, too).
Q: can you do extrusions with correct corners? See screenshot. The path and profile curve are white.
Confessedly, I'm using one of my own tools here, because Softimage cannot do this o.o.t.b.
This a detail, I know, but one that buggered me all the time. Clean extrusions are important for many modeling/visualization tasks.
Q: Do you have automatic UVs for primitives, extrusions, etc.? Do they correctly update when you do any topo changes?
Thanks for the infos!
Cheers,
Eugen
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I wont even consider Max.