Ever need to copy keyframes from one object to another? What about needing to flip the keyframes for the other foot? and offset them? Well this is the tutorial for you!
Check out this spline animation tutorial for more spline animation goodness: https://ace5studios.com/spline-animation-tutorial-c4d-dont-use-pla/
This is a question that comes up a lot, and recently came up on a FUTUR livestream with Gary Vee.
As always the answer is: “it depends”. Some people think the answer should be a hard no. Others think it’s not such a bad thing.
I think the answer to this is pretty simple. If you want to do free work to get your name out there, pick the client yourself. Offer your services to a charity or any nonprofit organization that you care about. Or even if it’s a for profit organization, do it for them as a gift, but pick the company yourself and make like an homage to them. If someone comes to you and asks for work in exchange for “Exposure” that should definitely be a hard NO! That job is going to be hell, and going to drag on forever, and you are not going to get any exposure for it. So if you do free work, make sure it’s on your terms and you’ve picked something that will give you exposure. Make sure they have a large following on social media, and a large following that’s relevant to your potential clients. If you do character rigging, 13-18 year old fans of knitting won’t really help you.
For example recently I saw a Bee farming non-profit was asking on instagram about getting a character done, so they can educate children on the importance of Bee’s to the environment. I like the cause, i want to make a bee character for my portfolio, win win.
The other option is if you are doing something you have never done before and it’s something you want to figure out. Then perhaps thats a good deal for the both of you. BUT you got to remember the wider picture. If you agree to do free work, that means that company is 100% not going to pay someone to do that work. So you’re potentially either taking money away from your fellow workers, and maybe helping a business that has no business doing what it does ( since it can’t secure funds to pay you for your services).
There is also the option if you are working in an intern capacity, where you are not being paid, but you are actually learning valuable skills that you want to get. In these cases, remember you can always leave, don’t let them exploit you. Make sure you are still benefiting from this experience. If you’re just photo copying stuff and getting people coffee, you aren’t really learning. You might be building relationships for future work, but thats pretty hard to assess, so go with your gut.
So to summarize: Make sure you are benefiting from this free work. If you believe in the cause thats also great. DO NOT work for “exposure”.
Hope this was interesting for you. What do you think? Do you ever do free work?
Cheers,
Aleksey
I have recently been receiving a lot of messages asking for help. And generally i’m a helpful guy, i answer questions, make tutorials etc.
But more and more i’m getting the following messages, and they are all the same. First the person asks me how i am and then asks me to explain something that could be googled. So i decided i need to write a little tutorial on how to ask people for help.
So first Example of how not to ask for help:
The next one is slightly better, because at least he tells me what he wants and doesn’t waste my time with small talk.
But they are both bad, and i don’t really want to answer them. The thing is there are people who message me randomly out of the blue and i answer and help them, and have been over the course of many years. Some even pay me when they can, have a lot of good long term relation ships springing from just people asking me questions. But these people seem to be just lazy and just want me to do their work for them.
So… How should you ask a question that i would want to answer?
Obviously if you’ve purchased one of my products and have a problem with it feel free to reach out, or if you’ve downloaded one of my free rigs and it’s not working correctly, don’t be shy and message me about it 🙂
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Aleksey
People often ask where to start and what to do to become a 3D artist like me.
Im not sure i’m the right person to ask, since i just kinda stumbled into this by accident. But there are some very important things i learnt, which i wish somebody told me earlier, so i will share them here.
1. This is not a stable, predictable or lucrative career. If you need money, if you have to support your family, this is really not the career for you. It’s super unpredictable, skills you need shift yearly. You might spend a year learning something, just to have a piece of software come out that renders all those things you learnt obsolete.
You really got to love what you do, because it’s gonna be hard. It’s like the story of people who go to Hollywood to become actors. It’s kinda like that, but you add global outsourcing to that.
Now if you’re still here i have some useful info for you.
2: EVERYTHING is a remix. Everything you see made is rehashes and reworks of the work made before by other artists, thinkers etc. Current copyright laws kinda throw a spanner in the works, but it just means you have to be more creative in your efforts. This is something that no one ever told me, and i always tried to come up with everything myself. That is a mistake. Copy, transform, combine is the secret to success.
The reason for this is simple: There is nothing truly original you can come up with. All the things you imagine and create are influenced by things you have seen/read/used before. Invention is an iterative process, hitting things with your fist, turned into rocks, turns into hammers, jackhammers etc.. So you might as well take a good analytical look at the things that are inspiring you and figure out what it is that you like about them and implement that into your work.
Watch this video it goes into more details with a stunning amount of examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc
Also this is fun to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjmaOj3_sKk
And you can see this pattern not only in Disney movies, you can see it throughout Hollywood. And throughout human history in architecture, art, stories, books, myths etc.. It’s all an iterative “small steps” process.
3: Getting good takes time. Developing your own style takes lots of work. Just keep doing it. If you can tell your work sucks that is the most important thing. Because if you can see it sucks, it means you will be able to see when it stops sucking. The biggest problem is people who think their work is awesome. Because they can’t improve. They can’t take criticism. So if you think your work sucks, congratulations! You might become a worthy artist.
Ira glass the gap, is a great speech to listen to, nice and short too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfA9OH6dAQ8
The missing chapter is a great video which talks about all the work that great artists made that no one has ever heard about: https://vimeo.com/87448006
4: Find people who inspire you and copy them, and try to get your work to be like their work. It’s the fastest way to grow. Don’t pass it off as your work, be clear that you are just recreating work that you find inspirational. This is very important, the internet has made everything very small and searchable. You will be exposed and no one will work with you. But while you copy you will learn and start to understand what it is exactly that makes the work you admire great.
This is something more specific to mograph and tv commercials, but nevertheless this guy makes amazing videos explaining concept development and the thinking that goes into creating cool stuff: http://www.division05.com/#episodes
5: Color theory is a topic which can hugely affect your work. Once again, grab color combinations from other places, photos, works of art, nature etc, and use them. Then slightly adjust them as you need. This is the best way to start out while picking colors. But also try to figure out why certain color combinations work and others don’t pay attention to what you associate certain colors with and then try and figure out why. It’s all about observation.
Great color theory video right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj1FK8n7WgY
Bonus tips:
I’ve found a great way to judge your own work, or try to figure out what’s missing. Is put it up side by side with the gallery of an artist you admire and see if your work looks like it belongs there.
Use pinterest to collect work that inspired you, you can sort it into boards and turn to it when you need references. Also its a great place to put your own work and see how to feels on a board full of works that inspire you.
Some good pinners to follow:
https://www.pinterest.com/bixorama/
https://pinterest.com/em404p/boards/
https://www.pinterest.com/characterdesigh/boards/
https://www.pinterest.es/raoul1983/
So there you have it, a quick list of stuff i wish i knew when i was starting out. If you have any stuff you think would be helpful to beginners and professionals alike post it in the comments. Im sure there are lots of things i wish i knew that i do not know yet 🙂
Use spline IK to rig your character spines, and much more! SPINE SPLINES!
Lets learn about making character spines using the Splike IK tag in Cinema4D. help your character dance and wiggle its hips better than ever!
Check out this spline animation tutorial for more spline animation goodness: https://ace5studios.com/spline-animation-tutorial-c4d-dont-use-pla/
Cinema 4D’s cloth sim system isn’t the most advanced in the world, but i did find a way to simulate a nice top with it. So here is a tutorial about it. I also cover how to modify cloth objects and then keep simulating them.
View this post on Instagram
A good way to stick clothes to a character if you don’t want to simulate them after you made them can be found here : https://ace5studios.com/surface-deformer/
Ever wanted to change the icons or the colors? Well this is how you get into it.
Download the file below, navigate into your c4d install directory, and then navigate to “resource\modules\c4dplugin\icons” and paste it there. ( make a backup of your original).
If you found this interesting, also check out this tutorial about UI customization: https://ace5studios.com/ui-customization-in-maxon-cinema4d/
Looking for version icons?
Ever wanted buttons for stuff like Protection tag, cloth or other stuff, well now you can. If you need any other buttons, just let me know and Maria will whip em up for you. ( also show her some support on her instagram page)
Kevin made some redshift buttons for you all, just throw them into the same folder 🙂
If you found this interesting, also check out this tutorial about UI customization: https://ace5studios.com/ui-customization-in-maxon-cinema4d/
In this tutorial i go over how to more effectively use the FFD tutorial in Cinema 4D. Use a pose morph tag to store states, you can also use the same tag to transfer info between FFD objects
If you found this interesting, also check out this tutorial about UI customization: https://ace5studios.com/ui-customization-in-maxon-cinema4d/
Ever Wonder what the difference between FK and IK is, when rigging this is a pretty common term. I go over the differences here and when you should use which one.
If you found this interesting, also check out this tutorial about UI customization: https://ace5studios.com/ui-customization-in-maxon-cinema4d/