Is this possible in Cinema?...probably not :(

[DELTAadmin]

If u thought on muscle bulging and flexing, I can not see any special in the linked animation. Cinema has a built in algorihm for this effect, and if it would not satisfy your needs, u can easily create an expresso expression which would do it with perfect control.

As to the displacement mapping, Cinema can also handle this type of effect. Sure, its displacement is not so powerfull as in Maya, but in cases like this it is perfect.

[dmthurman]

thanks for the info...I'm just now going through the mocca tutorials so I've got a ways to go....LOL...
D.T.

[Creature]

Just curious: Why do you assume that something is not possible if you don't even know the tools and how they work?

[mister_r]

i think too many people still believe that cinema is inferior to the other "big" softwares...i got no idea why...:hmm:

[LucentDreams]

such a simple thing though is odd to assume an app can't do it, I mean XL 6 could do this really, would need an expression to make it automatic when the bones moved, but it doesn't have to be automatic to work. PLA never failed me before.

[pit]

As to the displacement mapping, Cinema can also handle this type of effect. Sure, its displacement is not so powerfull as in Maya, but in cases like this it is perfect.


I assume he uses normal maps here - madm_sadie has devolped a method for this - unfortunately I have not had the time to play with it as of yet.

[LucentDreams]

yes the rendering is fully capable with C4D once peranders makes his normal map available. oyur mesh will have to be fairly high subD to get displacements to work nicely, but nothing special nowadays.

For an example of normal mapping in C4D check out this link:
http://cgi.third-era.com/~kaiskai/misc/normbully.mov

the model was model in mirai by cgtalk's own Ambient Whisper, which he then UV mapped. I then took the mesh and using SIMPLEMAKER, lowered the mesh to just under 2000 polies. Meanwhile AW was painting extra details onto the mesh at a very high resolution in Zbrush, adding veins and such. Once finished he sent me that highres model which I imported into C4D. I then Used Peranders normal map plugin in the luminance channel, and rendered through baker to generate an absolute normal map. then in another material I applied the normal map plugin in the bump channel, loaded the normal map I produced into that channel shader applied that to the mesh and viola, low poly mesh with the same shading as the highres mesh.

[geoffb]

i think the reason that people misjudge Cinema is because they just dont know. For instance, if you try to tell a PC user that a Mac is better, a Mac my be better, or even stand up against the rest of the competiton and hold its own, but you still wouldn;t be able to make them grasp it. Maybe the people who think C4D is not a high-end program think you have to have a bulky; hard-to-understand interface to function properly? I think its just because everyone else uses Maya, and 3DS Max so they assume that Cinema would be used more if it could do these things. What we need are more artists that will stick with Cinema and become not only great artists, but also great artist that use C4D. They are out there, but they seem to get really great and then a company that uses Maya hooks them and they are lost. :annoyed: I love Cinema, and want to learn the rest of the software to be more vaulable as a future employee, but I want my main program to be Cinema 4D XL! :D: :thumbsup:

Geoff

[Creature]

amen

[miketche]

A lot of people don't even know Cinema 4D exsists. When I was going to school I had a teacher once who was into 3D. He did motion capture stuff for XBox. He asked what program I use for my 3D stuff and when I told him I used Cinema 4D he didn't seem very impressed, and said that's not a very good program for serious 3D. I showed him some of my work and he could not believe the quality. ( Not that I'm that good, but still ).
Finally, I found out the whole time he thought I was talking about Bryce. (I don't know how he got that mixed up, but that is what he was thinking).

Anyway, we just need to build awarness more of this great program.:applause:

[dmthurman]

geez a bit defensive aren't we all.....:D.... My only comment was in regards to the normal mapping aspects. i didn't know Per's had worked on this, (should have known), I'm very excited about that...As far as the muscle flexing I assumed that Cinema could easily handle that aspect.... I couldn't get the link to work Kai, so I'll try later....

D.T.

P.S. "IT"S JUST SOFTWARE DON"T TAKE IT PERSONAL." :D..

[bobzilla]

DELTAadmin: What's the "built in mechenism" for muscle bulging? I've tried Xpresso and bones, but that's a little unpredictable no matter how I set it up.

How does everyone else in Cinema do that??

[LucentDreams]

well you can understand the defensiveness when someone makes a dumb assumption like "probably not." You challenge them and they jump on the challenge how would you expect them to react to a comment like that. I mean when someone says you can't touch your toes whats the first thing you do (assuming you can) You touch your toes.

As for the link should work no problem as long as you have quicktime, might take a few seconds to show the film loading, if that doesn't work rightclick and save as.

And if you were just concerned with normal mapping you shoudl have said so, would have saved the four people who replied before normal mapping was mentioned the time and effort of jumping on the defensive bandwagon.

As for the whole normal mapping, I got PA on the band wagon as soon as the thread at spiraloid got going, we had a solution at the same time as the one for LW became available. Ours has a distinct advantage over the max one I"ve seen in that t supports the two different types of normal maps, and can also import the Red/green nonclamped displacement maps into C4D's displacement or bump channel too. Most apps currently don't support this type of Displacement map at the moment.

Now if only we had micro poly or per pixel displacement to go along with this support.

[LucentDreams]

morph targets and FFD's.

[bobzilla]

That seems like the most straight forward and accurate, eh?

Thanks, Kai.

[Mentat7]

Kai...the normal mapping procedure you were describing in C4D...is that something you all are currently working on or is it a procedure/toolkit that is available now??

[Per-Anders]

Just a note, i'll be releasing a whole cluster of plugins shortly, however they will be for sale (once i've set up the shop). I've not yet fixed the prices, but the following plugins will be available (maybe as a couple of plugin packs):

Normal Mapper - Shader, as talked about here in this thread

Tinge - Shader that allows you control over the color balance of HDRI images (it's all unclamped) through Levels (yup a levels shader) and Hue Saturation. Pretty much indespensible if you're working with HDRI, or even if you want to fake HDRI using normal photographs (you can use it's levels section to "enhance" the gamut of a normal photo to HDRI sorts of levels.

Matrix - Shader, same as the photoshop matrix filter.

Deep Pass - depth falloff post effect, allows falloff of contrast, brightness, saturation (on seperate red, green and blue falloff), as well as color falloff over distance and height (good for groundfog style effects). This is great for accurately describing atmospheric effects.

Distender - Bevel as an object, complete with groups etc (all the tools), so good for making objects thicker, cloth etc. The nice thing is being an object you can apply deformers to a single poly thickness plane, then apply Distender and you need never worry about one side going through the other side because of the deformations.

Up-Vector - Rigid IK upvector tag, as well as Pole Constrain tag (possibly will be combined into the next plugin)

Constraint - Will allow blending of multiple positions/rotations/possibly upvectors through a single tag.

Well, that's all at the moment, and i need to get back to doing this little job i've got on right now, before i get back to writing manuals and making examples... and writing more plugins still.

[bobtronic]

Hi,

I don't understand fully what normal-mapping means.
Is it simply a texture made from a hires model and then
attached to a lowres model to fake a high resolution ?

Could someone please explain it for dummys like me :)

Bob

[Per-Anders]

sort of.

normal mapping is really just the remapping of the surface normals of an object based on a texture map. think of it like a bump map on steroids. as you can change the surface normals a full 180 (bump maps go to 90, you can in fact use normal maps for some very interesting effects, light coming from teh opposite side of the object style stuff, even basic sss style effects if you know how.

my normal mapping plugin not just generates, but also interprets normal maps in cinema, giving you full normal mapping and rendering ability.

commonly normal maps are used to generate a difference map or surface normal map of a high resolution mesh, which is baked onto a texturemap using the objects uv's. you can then apply this to a much lower resolution object and because you're re-mapping an objects normals it will appear like the high resolution mesh, all the detail etc retained, and because it's just affecting the surface normals it's fully reactive to light (i.e. it's not merely baked texture on the object).

maybe i should show a more extreme example here to demonstrate....

[LucentDreams]

Sadie got pretty much most of it, there are two groowing uses for this newer concept, in Games for extremely detailed meshes and such that also behave to lighting realistically (best example will be the new doom when it comes out) SO games are just starting to dive into it, but also in extremely highres work for features and scuh, as its a perfect companion to go along withDisplacement maps. Basically renderers like Renderman and Mental ray have displacement features that are very flexible called either Micro poly (mental rays) or per pixel (rendermans) that displace the mesh at render time and add extra geomettry or detail to areas that need it when being displaced, this allows for very fast and extremely flexible displacement mapsm but especially when getting into extreme dislpacement artifacts, ors faceting and scuh often can show up, using a normal map generated from the detailed version used to make the displacement maps allows them to smooth out any mesh deformations and such not existing in the originl higheres version, so for final animation they use a medium resolutions mesh but stilll get those awesome bumbs on the arms and back of the cave troll.

[JIII]

hmm kai I can't get the link to work and I know I have quicktime. Heck even r click and DL did not work.

[bobtronic]

Thanks Kai and Sadie.

I think I have to re-read your posts to get a full
understanding but you brought definitely some
light in this normal-mapping thing for me. Its really
hard reading.

And Kai, are you refering to the cave troll in LOTR ?
That beast was awesome. Its one of my favourite
CG being.

regards, Bob

[chris_b]

great, that is exciting news!

Where are you guys talking about this stuff, is there a secret forum or IRC channel somewhere that I missed?

I have been following the thread over at Spiraloid too and played around for a while with the NLinShader, but then gave up after realizing that there was no way (natively) to make Cinema use the normal maps or convert them do greyscale displacement maps.

Kai : You mention that Per's plug can use
2 different kinds of normal map as input. What are these two kinds and what are the differences between them?

From the sound of it, Per's plug allows you to use all three channels of the normal map to produce displacements in X,Y and Z... similar to Renderman style 3 axis displacement:

http://www.rhythm.com/~ivan/dispMap.html

http://cmpa.ca.scad.edu/faculty/kesson/Ca301/wip/best_spring2002/ca301.1/matthew_lafary/cobble.html

http://cmpa.ca.scad.edu/faculty/kesson/Ca301/wip/best_fall2001/ca301.3/xin_wang/cobblestone00.htm

Micropoly displacement would be a superb addition to Advanced Render... Does Pixar own a patent on the technology? It is such a powerful feature, but you hardly ever see it around. Imagine rendering out real geometric detail with the memory and processor requirments of a standard bump map! Check out the tech previews of Brazil's implementation? :

http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/gallery_view.php?photo_id=216&screen=1&cat_id=4&action=images

more good links:

http://www.drone.org/tutorials/rayDisplace_userGallery.html

http://www.crytek.de/screenshots/index.php?sx=polybump&px=poly_04.jpg

[dmthurman]

First, "P-A GET THE DAMN STUFF READY TO SELL!!!!". I'm first in line, gotta kick you some money for all the help you've been to everyone, particularly with texturing and lighting..... Second, Kai Not long ago people were talking about a plug-in that would translate Cinema into Rib file format. Did that happen? Lastly, everyone says it's so easy to rig for muscles and skin flexing in Cinema, any tutorials out and about on this topic i'm just now learning mocca......
D.T.

P.S. I still don't think Cinema can match that animation, for both muscle and skin movement as well as texturing.....I'm still waiting to see something that proves me wrong....:D....

[LucentDreams]

well pixar might own a patent on per pixel displacement, as I still don't know of anothers, though PDI's proprietary render can do that same thing. Micro poly is a little different, and not sure who developed it, but its showing up in brazil and Final render (they cal theirs micro triangle, which isn't any different since the micropolies are all tri's) But I dont' know legal stuff on this, all I know is I've been pestering maxon about it since the discussion got going on spiraloid.

Anyways, were aren't sure of the actual names of the two maps, since no one refers to them, but the ones ATI normal mapper (which is still neeeded to generate displacement maps ATM) Come out very blue pink and purple, very different from the ones that Sadies plugin and the LW and Max ones produce which are bright yellow green and red. The Redg green and yellow ones Sadie called absolute, since al three valuse are absolute, the other one is called Additive, because of the way the colours are calculated on it. From my tests on martins model using both my own generated maps from AW's model, and the ones in LW by MikeRB, Sadie, Martin and I all agree that the absolute ones (which normal mapper doesnt' do) tend to look a little better on the mesh. As for the technical reason for them I still don't know.


Oh, does anyone have a physically elaborate tree model? lots of branches and foliage that I can bring into C4D, I want to try the normal mapped sprite plane of a tree. still, but alas no tree.

[Per-Anders]

actually my plugin does generate those purplish ones, it can generate and interpret both absolute and additive ones.

[LucentDreams]

Regarding the rib exporter,
http://savards.fuzehost.com/RibExporter.htm

As for doing an example, well won't be able to for a while doing the CD (here is a teaser http://cgi.third-era.com/~kaiskai/misc/IKFK.mov ) and testing a lot lately on the C4D and plugin front :) I"m still waiting to here more details about whatscovered in that german DVD witht he english voice over, since I want to cover different areas, so maybe I coudl drop something for bone driving morph expressions. I think this will be covered in Adam watkin's book when available as well, along with dynamic parenting.

what browser are you guys using, they play just fine on my PC, sorenson 3.

yes sadie I should have said what yours generates by default. myself I"ll only use the additive ones when using ATI normal mapper I think.

[chris_b]

Kai,

There are a few hi-res trees here at the X-Frog 4 beta examples site:

http://www.xfrogdownloads.com/greenwebNew/news/xfrog4Start.htm

click on examples...

[dmthurman]

Thanks for the tease Kai. I reread the thread, and reloaded the image that you show of A.W.S model....THAT"S IT!!!!!!!!!:D I got all excited about this very topic after hanging out in the Zbrush forum and these guys showing off detailed images their attempts to create normal maps.....So it appears that if it works in Cinema now, then micro poly displacement isn't required?....
For those who may be confused by this thread , there is a wonderful discussion about this topic in the Spiraloid forum...

http://cube.phlatt.net/forums/spiraloid/viewtopic.php?TopicID=581

sort of on this topic, the next installment of Zbrush promises to handle models with at least a million polys in real time, currently 150,000 to 200,000 is the limit. Also once the model is created it can be posed for morph targets and tested in Zbrush to see if everything is working right by using zspheres.

http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=011231

[LucentDreams]

normal mapping and micro poly are two seperate things, they jsut work better together. We still need a good displacement, if oyu look at the silhoutte of the model its flat and jagged still, most of that details is just visible inside the silhouete.

I should add, the IK/FK switch is not entirley mine, I"ve added some extra things and re sorted it and such, but the original expression was developed by Sven Hauth.

[JoelOtron]

Originally posted by mdme_sadie
maybe i should show a more extreme example here to demonstrate....


Please do---fascinating. Goes to show how much some of us (namely ME) have to learn about whats possible with 3d.

Thanks!

[JoelOtron]

Originally posted by Kaiskai
so for final animation they use a medium resolutions mesh but stilll get those awesome bumbs on the arms and back of the cave troll.

I remember reading the article in a computer/film fx magazine a few years ago showing how they achieved the look of the cave troll using a low(er) poly mesh for LOTR. It was over my head at the time--just beginning to understand.

[Per-Anders]

ok, here's a more extreme example using martins model once again (hope he doesn't mind all this abuse of his model). this model has i think less than a thousand polys (actually i think considerably less, but i can't remember off the top of my head).

both of these are the same mesh, the second one doesn't even have a smoothing/phong tag on it, just the normal map. pay particular attention to the face, eye's, and abdomen.

http://www.peranders.com/c4d8/samples/jpg/martin01.jpg

and here's a little movie showing the model rotating, and fading in and out, it's the same mesh, fading between viewport, and render, so not a high res/low res thing.

http://www.peranders.com/c4d8/samples/mov/martinrotate02.mov

[JIII]

holy crud this thing must really help animation. Does the render time get any better though? If the materials or what ever the normal map consists of it would tax your render times almost as much as a high poly model wouldn't it?

just a few questions if you have time to answer them.

[dmthurman]

Very nice demo P.A.. Ok Ok so hurry it up with the plug-in already...:D

[Per-Anders]

there's no render hit for a normal map (or very little). at least in cinema. remember this is something used in games too for realtime mapping, so it's fast.

i think you can see that a scene that would take a minute without any textures would take maybe a few seconds more with a normal map applied, same as with any other texture i guess.

[michaeli]

Wow, cool plugins!

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