Please help a new guy find his way

[AdamT]

Hi Finalcut,

Welcome to the wonderful world of Cinema, and to the forum. I think you'll find the answer to your question here: http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58987

[Finalcut]

Hey thanks. That's a great link : )
Tons of great plugs, almost to many. Man, I can see that I've got a lot to learn!!!

What would you guys say that the top 5 plugs are. The 5 that you would bet the vast majority of advanced C4D users would most likely have - if you where a bettin man - or woman.....

[pit]

Maybe you should advance before thinking about being advanced, grashopper. ;)
Your question can not be answered without knowing where your main focus is - animation, modeling, fx etc.

[Finalcut]

Very good advice. I'm sure that I will lean more towards animation, but I would like to be well versed in every area.

Like I said. I am looking to get in to the advanced tools, because I know that I will learn faster with them.
It's not that I want to try to bypass the basics, I know that it doesn't work like that, and I wouldn't skip the basics even if I could. But using advanced tools / special plugs... will make me aware of possibilities that I may not have otherwise found out.

When I say that I'm new to C4D, what I mean is that I'm new compared to a lot of the power users here. I have used C4d off and on for the last couple of years for logo stuff and have taken it a little further here and there.... Now I'm at the point where I am ready to go for broke and become an expert.
My bread and butter stuff is done in AE & in my market I am one of the leading authorities in AE - I want to go to an entirely different level and really get a grip on C4D....

Right now I'm working on rigging an alien that I made. I'm going through the mocca tutorial and it has been quite the trial. I quickly learned that there is no generic way to rig a character. My guy is kind of stubby and fat as opposed to the character in the mocca tutorial, so when I tried to pattern my set-up after that one it became a real chore - but that's how we learn... When I;m finished I would like to have him hosting a 30 second spot, so lots of character animation will be next.

This forum so far has been a great place to collect information. I have been reading it off and on now for a few months.

Thanks for the in put : )

[MJV]

To paraphrase a wise professor of mine, you don't need anything until you need it. It would be a waste of time and money to go around collecting plugins until you recognize a specific need for something that isn't already in the package. Good luck and welcome.

[JIII]

Study young grass hopper study.

This basicly means go into the tutorials section and look at all the rigging things you can dig up.

Also there have been several good rigs posted here in the past couple of months in fact bob posted one like yesterday or something. Examine these check out the tuts and then get busy.

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