Doug’s Blog

I was wrong?

I was wrong: Cinema 4D is actually really good, especially due to it’s interface being so easy to learn. You don’t have to go read the help menu just to figure out what all the buttons do, as they’re clearly labeled as simply as possible. The materials editor is really, really nice though. I don’t know why people don’t do it like this; just put everything in plain english. You want your material to be reflective? Well then just head on over to the reflection tab and change the strength and blurryness. No need to figure out what a fresnel is and how it affects your reflection, just the basics. And really, that’s just great. They also made it really easy to create procedural materials, including bump maps. Just apply a noise filter to whatever aspect of the material you want, change the settings, and you’re good to go. I’m really going to miss that material editor…

Yes, I love it so much but I’m moving to something else. Something else I was terribly, terribly wrong about: Blender. This will be my final destination. Although I was right about the UI having quite a big learning curve, after playing around with it for a while you start to get the hang of it. Plus it’s so easy (and I highly recommend you do) customize the UI to suit your quirks. I for one hated the trackball rotation on the viewport, so I changed it to the traditional ‘turntable’ you find in other programs. I also added a list of objects to the right of my viewport, similar to the one in C4D, and I changed the selection bind to my left mouse click instead of my right–I really don’t have much use for that 3D cursor thing, nor do I really mind what button I use to select stuff, it just annoyed the crap outta me when I accidentally moved it. I could never recenter that thing perfectly. I also made the transform properties window open up by default, as well as changed the colour scheme of things. It looks kinda like a mix between Modo and C4D now, with the blues and dark grays and whatnot. I remember reading somewhere that the colour blue makes you more productive… Ah well, good thing it’s my favourite colour. (Extra “U” for additional Canadianness)

Well then, just another boring ol’ novel of a long overdue blog post, as usual right? Nope, I have pictures! Yeah, you remember those right? I used to post them a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The first one is of my robot made and rendered in C4D. The materials were made in it too, procedurally of course. The second picture is of my remake in Blender, just playing around to see what I can do. I probably won’t completely remodel him, I just wanted to see how things are. I’ll just export him from C4D to Blender, then I’ll be rigging him to animate sometime soon, which is actually the reason why I switched. C4D is really nice for modeling and rendering, which I said above, but when it comes to rigging and animating it just isn’t as polished off as Blender or Maya are. I tried Maya once but I found it quite glitchy when it came to modeling, so really for me it’s Blender or nothing.

C4D’s not lacking anything, it’s just a lot more quirky than Blender. For example: C4D automatically places weight maps. This can be really annoying, as you then have to go around removing it all then adding back just what you want. Then in C4D you have to add all the IK chains yourself–Blender has a neat little “auto IK” button do automatically do all that for you, even without you seeing them. And speaking of clutter, in C4D you have to add controls for all your IK chains and set up their hierarchies to tell it that when you rotate the shoulder you also want the elbow bone to move with it. If you ask me, that should just be assumed. Anyway, C4D is a really nice tool, especially so due to it’s amazing material editor, but I just don’t think it makes the cut for animation. Anyway, back to the images; I know that’s all what you care about. I do know that the C4D one may look a bit more polished, but to be fair I did the remake in Blender in about 5 minutes. Even so, the one in Blender looks happier. However, I’m really going to miss that damn material editor… I’m really feeling the love for Blender, but…. Gahhh, please excuse me while I dry up my eyes here, I have uh… Allergies. Yeah, it’s allergies….. Damn I’m going to miss that editor….

Update: