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little project no1: objet volant non identifié

hellowwww dear followership -

it’s done. That means it’s rendered and uploaded. I guess I could spend several weeks with this animation BUT - as I mentioned before it’s just a short learning project.

So here is a short breakdown what I did especially on this one: (of course I did some more stuff, but nothing funky)

I used sub polygon displacement to create the rough surface of the planet. I used multiple layers which I blended together (using layers in the cinema material) to control it. I use a noise layer for general roughness and I also had 2 special maps for the high mountain and the lake which I painted (I think blotted is a better term) myself. I really loved the blending of the different layers, because you get a good general roughness, but you’re also able to control every bit of your planet.

the lake is actually a sphere underneath the planet, which comes through because of the caldera in the planets surface. I used an animated sub poly displacement map with a noise on it to simulate water. The water looks quite oily - but I was totally fine with that look for that project.

the gras is generated with Hair. In the length channel of the Hair material I used a vertex map to control where I want gras to appear and where I don’t. That’s the coolest way to do it for me - because you can paint directly on the sphere where you want gras to be. Easy. After this hairy business I have to admit that I still not completely understand how hair works - because if you have seen my fail hair render (should be a few posts before) I still don’t know how it happened there. Weird.

The objects I used are from my library and/or some mograph presets. The city is made with GSG city kit. The trees are models dispensed with mograph, using the planet as object and surface as the method. Nothing too exciting.

so that was a quick one.

here you go: (as always pleeease: watch it HD and fullscreen ?)

ah - and watch this one as well (click me)

Finish your projects!

Dear Followership,

as you may or may not know, I am working on a small animation to learn some new Cinema 4D stuff. It’s kinda hard to learn something if you haven’t a goal to reach, so I am trying to get an quick idea for a mini project which I can work on between some everyday stuff, or even in the after work hours. It looks like that these small projects are the most enjoyable ones, because you can spent a lot of time on details and play around a lot, things you usually can’t do in costumer projects - because you have fixed deadline and mostly you have to deliver a relatively tight specified product.

but that’s also the dangerous part about these mini, learning projects - it’s easy to loose yourself in details and perfection and you will never come up with some stuff to show somebody, or at least to have a finished little thingy for yourself to say: “okay dude, i figured that out, let’s go on with the next thing.”

To make it clear - I have already lost myself in details at this one I am doing right know, I have started to throw things away again. I have put way to much stuff in there which hasn’t to do anything with my project. Just because it is fun to add step after step, to use it as a playground. Don’t do that - finish your stuff! And now I am trying to finish mine.

My small project is mainly about sub polygon displacement combined with hair. I am using vertex maps to tell the hair where to grow with a certain length.

I am looking forward to my finished little animation which I can show you by the end of next week, hopefully.

and also here is a fail render of last night which cost me about 4-5 hours, and a lot of my own hair. At the end I wasn’ able to figure out the mistake and I just did the whole setup again to fix this massive hair mess. I think it has something to do with scaling object that contains the hair. But I am not sure.

hair mess

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