Cinema for product design?

[kiwi]

Bummer about your hand gvsculptor.


The Cinema manuals are pretty good.There are also tutes that come with C4D that slowly take you through the process of learning modelling,to texturing and materials,then to animation,and they are pretty helpful.After that there are a number of books out on C4D,and Maxons tutes and links,and the books they just keep on increasing as C4D becomes more popular.But the best thing about C4D is that it is user friendly and there is not that much which is confusing,or not for that long as you usually find an answer in the manual or somewhere and away you go again,or thats my experience.Theres also this gold mine of C4D knowledge {CG Talk}.Now if I could only REMEMBER everything I have read I would be set...hahahahaa :scream:


Stu.

[verti]

well... ive started learning LW and im long time c4d user. what can i tell. LW is a great app if you know exactly what you are doing. but if you need to remodel something after time... c4d non-linear modelling system is... much better than LW. even if LW has more modelling tools.

go with it!... ive read manual do version 5,6 and 7... and it's really good app. ive created many tv spots with c4d... and many 3d visualisations - from cad to product.

if you learn it... you will see that you fall in love...

verti.

[AdamT]

I think the manuals for Cinema are excellent. You know you can download them in .pdf format from Maxon's site? There are also several dozen tutorials there....

[gvsculptor]

:thumbsup: Hey, guys, thanks for the replies; I'm pretty new to forums, so it's pretty damn cool to get immediate feedback on things I'm interested in. I'm going to try the tutorials on Maxon's site. I am encouraged by the replies because it sounds like the manuals are good, and along with the "tutes" I might actually be able to learn this cool app. Thanks: be talking to ya!

[AdamT]

Cool. I look forward to seeing what a real sculptor can do in the virtual world.

[dmthurman]

Well i'll throw my two cents into this. GV if you actually going to do industrial design type of stuff, there are better modeling programs than Cinema. The reason being that the modeling set up is not what I consider very accurate. I.E. Modeling to real world dimensions and then sending out for manufacturing say STL. or CNC....Rhino is much better for this. As a sculpture you also might want to consider Zbrush as a real time sculpting tool. Ken Brilliant who is a Hollywood Sculptor feels that Zbrush fits his Sculpting sensibilities the best. With that said, The rendering, Material handling, scene set up is Awesome in Cinema and is a must have tool. And Yes get version 8.0 it's worth every penny and then some.
D.T.

[AdamT]

I agree that Rhino will produce more accurate models, but if you only need them to *look* real, then I think it's quicker and more fun to model in Cinema.

[dAfTiE]

A hot tip for freeform modeling/digital sculpting is wings3d.
I use it all the time as a supplement to C4D.
It's a really fantastic combo,with the incredibly fast modeling workflow of wings combined with the SLA shaders,
animation and rendering engine of C4D...can't get much better'n that :)
Oh,and wings is freakin FREE! :)

I saw someone mentioned Ken Brilliant up there,he posted this one on the wings3d forums a while back:
http://www.brilliant-creations.com/ghoulconstruct.htm
It's a *bit* fast,but it works nicely if you load it into quicktime and go frame by frame.
Really nice that the pro's are willing to share stuff like this,
as this timelapse and others by Bay Raitt and the likes have helped me immensely.
So,to sum it up,for digital sculpting,wings and C4D are great stuff.
For product design, you'd probably be better off with Rhino or Studio Tools or something like that.
Like adamT said tho, if you want to have fun C4D is about as much fun as anything I can think of.

[Cheers]

There are really only three applications worth serious consideration when thinking about product design:
"dmthurman" mentioned one, which was Rhino. The other two are PTC's (http://www.ptc.com/) ProEngineer/CDRS and SolidWorks Corporation's (http://www.solidworks.com/) SolidWorks.
Cinema 4Ddoes make a great visulisation package for the projects that you would create in the other apps though ;)

Cheers

[brammelo]

Hi Cheers,

I think you are forgetting Studio Tools.

Cheers,
BaRa

[Cheers]

Good call brammelo, I did in deed forget Studio Tools. Thanks for the reminder :thumbsup:

Cheers

[LucentDreams]

most of what I knw I learned from the manual for XL 5, and from forum users. I'd say the documentation is the best I have ever seen for software myself, I know of others who would disagree, there is a lot missing in certain areas in the XL 6 and 7 manuals like bonnes and such, but a lot of that has been corrected for the R8 manuals and tutorials, (the mocca rigging tutorial is huge and very in depth.)

[gvsculptor]

In spite of this feeling of slowly being overwhelmed, I really appreciate all the feedback. At this point I don't know how many of these programs are avail. on the Mac. I was intrigued by a flyer I got on Rhino, only to find out it's not avail. for Mac.
I talked with a friend of mine who's a sculptor and is familiar with and uses a number of 3D modelling programs: He recommended that I look into solid modelers like Ashlar Vellum, form Z, etc., because their capacity for dimensioning and numerical-based operations. I should add that I'm interested in doing visualizations for large scale outdoor sculpture which is often geometry-based, and the ability to disect and scale-up parts numerically is a real asset. This also holds true for product design, my other passion. His recommendation is to download demo versions of solid modelers and see which interface is compatable with the way I work.
Looks like I have got a lot of research to do! I'm not ruling out cinema 4D or anything else at this point. I am enjoying all the viewpoints: Keep 'em comin'. And thanks again!:airguitar

[pit]

You can run Rhino on a mac under VirtualPC - it runs a tad slower, but it works!

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