5 Types of Symmetry in Cinema 4D

How do you make thing symmetrical in Cinema 4D? Actually there are a surprising amount of different ways to do.

There is the symmetry object, duh.. Then there are inverted instances, symmetrical sculpt brushes, symmetrical selections and flipping pose morphs 🙂

Grab The fantastic HB modelling toolset here: https://gumroad.com/a/607908979

Cheers!

https://ace5studios.com/products – check out the free rigs first !

 
 
Check out my other reviews in my tutorial page! Or click on the image below to see review of terraform4D
 
terrain generation generator c4d cinema 4d plugin terraform4d terra

Looking for free rigs to practice animation? Be sure to check out the Shop page!

CentiLeo a Free GPU renderer for Cinema 4D

Cinema 4d GPU renderer, for free? hell yeah! I go over what it supports, what it doesn’t support. Haven’t really done any serious stress tests, but i think it’s a great tool to get your feet wet. And also check out what gpu rendering can do for your projects.

Go grab it at: https://centileo.com/

Cheers!

https://ace5studios.com/products – check out the free rigs first !

 
 
Check out my other reviews in my tutorial page! Or click on the image below to see review of terraform4D
 
terrain generation generator c4d cinema 4d plugin terraform4d terra

Looking for free rigs to practice animation? Be sure to check out the Shop page!

Pose Library Cinema 4D – how to make your own poses.

The new pose library feature makes it real convenient to store poses for your characters, but also facial expressions. There are some nuances to know, and methods to be more effective, I go over them here.

Cheers!

https://ace5studios.com/products – check out the free rigs first !

 
 
Check out my other Animation tutorials in my tutorial page! Or click on the image below to see intro to animation.
 
introduction to character animation in cinema 4d

Looking for free rigs to practice animation? Be sure to check out the Shop page!

terrain generation generator c4d cinema 4d plugin terraform4d terra

Terraform 4D – make awesome terrains in C4D! Plugin review

Do you find the terrain object limiting? Terraform4D is a new plugin to simply the process of making terrains in Cinema4D.

You can grab it here: https://www.terraform4d.com

Cheers!

https://ace5studios.com/products – check out the free rigs first !

Check out my other Animation tutorials in my tutorial page! Or click on the image below to see intro to animation.
introduction to character animation in cinema 4d

Looking for free rigs to practice animation? Be sure to check out the Shop page!

What is Crypto Art?

So you heard about Beeple making 3.5million in a weekend with it?


Crypto art is an umbrella term for a system used to verify ownership of a digital piece of art. Image, video or gif.

The basic concept is: if you have extra money, you can now buy digital art ownership and brag to your friend that you are the owner. You can also re-sell it. with the bonus that the original artist gets a % of the sale if the art work rises in price when you sell.
There are 2 basic people who buy crypto art.

  • collectors/patrons. Who want to support the artist. Hang a plasma on the wall which shows off what art they own. Think digital picture frame. Friends come over, the owner can brag that they just bought this for $5.5k. Same as with physical art. Obviously no one is stopping you from just playing the images and telling your friends you own them. I’m sure they will. But it’s possible to log on to the websites that deal in crypto art and check who the owner is and how much it costs. Or you can directly check the block chain, which has a record of the whole life of the token. Who created it, who bought it, who big on it, who the last owner is.
  • Speculators. People who buy it in the hopes of selling it for more later.

There is a bunch of stuff like drops, basically “releases” some images have one edition, some have a run of 20. it’s up to the artist to decide. But you got to remember that the more you have, the cheaper they will be.

But so what?
The original problem is that all digital art is not distinguishable from the original, as you can have an unlimited number of identical copies.
This method, watermarks each digital file using blockchain, and “tokenizes” them, giving the same value as a signed artwork. In the past, you could own a limited reproduction of an artwork, for example in silkscreen, but only the ones with the original artist’s signature had any real value. Essentially, you are getting a digital signature embedded in your artwork.

The artist can chose to make more copies, but can’t duplicate that particular signature, just like with real art, where you can get a “perfect” fake that looks like the original, but isn’t.

This thing is verified by a public block chain. Which is basically like a public book that records all transactions. And it’s authenticity is verified by a large network of nodes, compromising the users of the network. Think of it like a wikipedia page, where when you make a change everyone else who has used it has to go: “yup all good” and then an offline copy is updated and stored on everyone’s computer.


Popular crypto art marketplaces:

Nifty Gateway

https://superrare.co

https://www.rareart.io/


Now remember that this is isn’t for everyone. Much of the crypto art is sold for a couple of dollars. But the concept has shown to appear viable. The main thing you need to know: This is a method to monetize art you make through collectors and sponsors. Think of this like making your own digital baseball cards. Where you can verify who the owner is and track sales of them.


Good Luck in this cyber world we are entering!
-Aleksey

Should you charge for project files?

In short? 

  1. If you are working with some other form of production company. For example a studio, agency, production house, then most definitely plan to hand them over. If you didn’t discuss this up front, take the hit this time. Next time include it in your rate. 

OR

2. If you are working with an End client. Like a shop, or festival or a band or something. Then no need to hand over stuff.  It can be charged separately, because you are charging them for the final product. 

In Long?

Biggest issue here in my opinion, is from a personal growth perspective. You should always try to move away from stuff that someone else can do in house or hire someone cheaper. Just charge to compensate for potential lost work from the start.

If you keep trying to do everything yourself, eventually you will be still beaten by someone who does it cheaper, and perhaps can re-make the project for less than what you are charging for the project files.

It’s not just for freelancers, every businesses ability to survive depends on it doing something that others can’t do or don’t want to do. So it’s in your best interest to avoid doing work that can be done by others for less. Use that time to learn a new skill, or experiment and gain experience so that only you can be hired for that job. Over time this all adds up.

Obviously everyone has different situations and often you really need that easy money from doing corrections, no problem with that. But i think from a mind set point of view thats detrimental to your personal growth in the long run.

If you are considering not handing over the files, just put yourself into the same position, if you are running a project and suddenly someone refuses to give you the files you need and is holding you ransom . Will you ever work with this person again? Or will you do everything in your power to avoid working with someone who took advantage of you when you had no other choice?

In the end i mean everyone knows about the project files discussion. Either factor it in by default or discuss it upfront. If you don’t know about it. Just decide if you want to work with this client in the future. If you do, don’t charge them, and take the loss this time. If you don’t want to work with them ever again, then it doesn’t matter, charge them as much as you think you can get away with.

But remember this industry is small, and everyone knows each other. 

Do you have anything to add? Let me know in the comments, let others benefit from your experience.

Bonus tip: If you factor it in by default, then you can offer discounts if they don’t have the budget but want to save some money!

Bonus tip No.2: Charge more, i wrote an article on how and why to do it: https://ace5studios.com/how-much/

Cheers,
Aleksey

Secret Symmetry tools that Maxon doesn’t want you to know about!

Maxon has been hiding this from you all along. There is an amazing symmetry tool built right into the core of C4D, but it has been hidden from ordinary folk. Today i finally reveal the dark truth about it.

But if you don’t want to watch the dramatic video, it basically just involves making a pose morph tag, then making adjustments, then copying the pose morph, then right clicking and pressing flip X. Activate both pose morphs and then delete the tag 🙂

Cheers!

https://ace5studios.com/products – check out the free rigs first !

Check out my other Animation tutorials in my tutorial page! Or click on the image below to see intro to animation.
introduction to character animation in cinema 4d

Looking for free rigs to practice animation? Be sure to check out the Shop page!

IK – FK transition during animation

Do you need to switch between IK and FK during an animation in Cinema 4d?

My suggestion is: Don’t. But if you really want to i made a tutorial for you. 🙂

https://ace5studios.com/products – check out the free rigs first !

Check out my other Animation tutorials in my tutorial page! Or click on the image below to see intro to animation.
introduction to character animation in cinema 4d

Looking for free rigs to practice animation? Be sure to check out the Shop page!

Keyframes 101 – Introduction

Don’t know how to handle keyframes? Check out this handy video with the basics, and some useful tips!

Videos like this should help you learn the basics of animation and keyframes. So that later you can follow any tutorials, not just C4D ones. But maya and blender, and whatever software the animator is using.

https://ace5studios.com/products – check out the free rigs first !

Check out my other Animation tutorials in my tutorial page! Or click on the image below to see intro to animation.
introduction to character animation in cinema 4d

Looking for free rigs to practice animation? Be sure to check out the Shop page!

use your own rig with mixamo animation in cinema 4d with rigged characters

Use your own rig with Mixamo

Do you have an existing rig? Do you want to use it with Mixamo animations? and then adjust them to your liking? This is the tutorial for you then!

The Basic concepts is you upload your mesh and joints to mixamo and download an animation, then you merge it back in, and hide the mesh that came from mixamo ( you need to keep it). Then you parent the controllers of your mesh to the joints and now you can use your existing rig to adjust the mixamo animation!

https://ace5studios.com/products – check out the free rigs first !

If you are looking for an alternative method to animate the 5j characters without messing about with all the controller parenting, have a look at this video:

Check out my other spline tutorials in my tutorial page!

Looking for free rigs to practice animation? Be sure to check out the Shop page!