Best products from r/Cinema4D

I've got a Logitech Performance MX that I really like a lot. One thing it does that's cool is that the scroll wheel has detents so you can "click" up or down like you're used to, but you can unlock it so it spins freely, which can be handy in drawing. It's durable - I've had it for many years, cleaned it with antiseptic wipes many times, still working like a champ, and the rubber hasn't gone bad (gotten tacky) like on a lot of mice.

However

If you're looking for the best mouse just for Cinema4d, the Connexion3d is freaking amazing! Absolute total 3d control that feels very natural. I can't work in Cinema4d without it any more.

(One caveat if you get one and just leave it active - if you're working on something else and your mouse just goes haywire, make sure you didn't set anything on top of the 3d mouse...)

I'll just preface this by saying I spent a lot of time browsing the Octane Render forums when I was trying to figure out my build. I don't have links to any threads but there are plenty there discussing system requirements for the renderer.

These are just some of the glaring mistakes. I would recommend you spend way more time researching parts as it is clear that you have spent very little time doing so. It took me around a week of extensive researching to put my build together. Expect to spend the same time doing so.

Get a Noctua cooler. Look at the Amazon review breakdown of this one. 92% 5-star reviews our of 409 reviews. I'm not sure if this one will fit for you though.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00L7UZMAK/

You're wasting money on that memory. Your motherboard only supports up to 3200 MHz memory. Your CPU only supports up to 2133 MHz.

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/X99DELUXE/specifications/

http://ark.intel.com/products/82931/Intel-Core-i7-5930K-Processor-15M-Cache-up-to-3_70-GHz

Get this memory instead.

http://gskill.com/en/finder?cat=31&series=0&prop_3=2133MHz&prop_4=0&prop_1=0&prop_14=DDR4&prop_2=64GB+%288GBx8%29

ASUS has a new version of your motherboard anyway. I wouldn't buy the old one.

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/X99-DELUXE-II/specifications/

Do you need the Deluxe? Look at the non-Deluxe version below.

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/X99-A-II/specifications/

If you're using Octane you could use up to 4 video cards with a different motherboard.

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/X99E_WS/

Although, if you went that route you would have to do liquid cooling and it would probably only fit in the biggest CaseLabs case. A system like that would run you over $10,000. Such a system would only be necessary if you were working and rendering by yourself on a single system. If that is not the case, 2 cards will suit you just fine.

Western Drives are more reliable. Read the Amazon reviews of this one.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011LVAVEQ/

The choice of power supply is great.

If I was going to do an air cooled system, I would go with this case. I'm not sure if you need it though.

https://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-HAF-Computer-RC-942-KKN1/dp/B003S68Q0Y

EDIT:

With all that money you're saving on memory you could get a better CPU.

http://pcpartpicker.com/product/NXyxFT/intel-cpu-bx80671i76900k

This CPU supports up to 2400 MHz memory, meaning you could also upgrade your memory.

http://pcpartpicker.com/product/YK8H99/gskill-memory-f42400c15q264grk

I'm not sure about the case or how you're cooling the GPUs. I know from researching on the Octane forums that anything above 2 cards needs to be water cooled otherwise your cards will overheat and you will lose performance. Look into the founders edition because of its blower-style cooler.

EDIT:

I forgot to mention that when I was looking into this for myself I was trying to build a system for animation. If you're only using Octane for stills 2 cards will be great.

I didnt forget this btw. I just got busy with work and the R18 announcement and siggraph.

Basically - card selection is a a bit of a crapshoot when you get into 3 and 4 cards. Nothing is really perfect. Well - no. there's one almost perfect solution, but its expensive and requires a fair bit of knowhow.

also - preface:

When I talk about "GPU's" I mean the actual processing unit on the card itself. But I might use "board" and "card" interchangeably, and I might mean the actual PCB (printed circuit board) or the overall product with the processing unit and cooler and everything. If its confusing just ask me to clarify :)

To your questions! -

> what the heck is the difference between these two cards?

The actual cards TBH are more or less the same. I mean... they'd both have different board layouts and they obviously have different coolers but the actual Graphics Processing Unit is identical. The Superclocked one is overclocked from the factory... but so is the hybrid. Basically - the "better" coolers (and sometimes better power delivery) than the reference design from nvidia allows them to clock the GPUs higher, so they boost higher and run faster.

The thing is - if you truely plan on going to more than 2 cards, you shouldnt buy either of these. The ACX cooler is an 'open-air" cooler that will dump all the hot air from the GPU and board back into your case. most of the time, people are only running one or two cards, so its not a huge issue, especially if your case has alot of airflow.

but as soon as you go to 3, and especially 4 cards, the problem becomes twofold.... one - the top 3 cards in the stack are going to be starved for air, because the 4 16x pcie slots are spaced apart so that the cards are almost touching on a standard motherboard. Open air coolers like the ACX require you to have alot of airflow around the card to get optimal cooling, and only the bottom GPU in a 4 way stack is totally free to get fresh air. and then, the second is obviously heat. You'll raise the temp in the case alot with 4 open-air GPU coolers like the ACX.

The Hybrid is better in that it takes the heat to the rad and you can exhaust the heat from the case.... but again, that only makes sense again in a single or dual config. but as soon as you go up to 3 and 4, where do you put all the rads? and if youre exhausting 4 cards, youre going to need some beefy intakes to maintain positive air pressure in your case.... positive pressure is where your case is drawing in more air than its exhausting - which is important to keep dust out. I suppose you could do two exhaust and 2 intake. but you'd still have the rad problem.

Anyway - Most computers that have 3 or 4 GPUs use Blower style coolers, Basically the reference cooler. They're designed to exhaust the air out the back of the card, so its not adding heat to your system.... and it gets around the cards being so close together - they dont need a tonne of airflow to perform as designed. But the reference coolers arent perfect either - the GPUs themselves will generally run hotter than on the open air coolers. which again - isnt really a problem where you're playing games on them, since games wont tax the GPU to 100% all the time.... but that is a concern with octane, where youre basically blasting the GPU to 100% consistently. Because the blowers will run the GPUs hotter and you're running them at 100% for hours and hours and hours consistently, the lifespan of the GPU is going to drop. You're alot more likely to burnout a GPU using a blower cooler on octane.

but as a side - it wont burnout in like 6 months. we're still talking years... like in 3 years instead of 5 years or somthing. and by then you may want to upgrade anyway. so it might not be a huge concern, but i just thought i'd inform you so you can be aware.

>Also, when you get up to a 4 GPU machine, are there things I need to worry about

Well the PCPartpicker link you sent me, directs me to my current PC part picker list XD

for a second I was like: This build looks incredibly familiar....

but i'll try to answer your questions anyway -

You wont get diminishing returns on rendering performance, octane scales almost linearly. so 4 cards will be basically 4 times faster than 1 card.

I dunno what PSU you selected, or what your expansion plans are, but if you want to just be able to buy and run 4 980ti's and a high end CPU and stuff, youre looking at a 1300+ Watt PSU. probably 1500 is better. if you buy anything lower, you'll have to buy a new PSU as you expand to 4 cards.

and since I cant see your CPU coolers, I dunno what to tell ya.

Hopefully that was helpful. sorry about the wall of text (as usual)

I’d suggest you look at some life drawing books and find some break-downs of the structures and volumes of the foot. Michael Hampton’s Figure Drawing: Design and Invention is a great reference for this. There are some distinctive features I would expect to see on the foot that I’m not seeing here.

Keep in mind that as you’re only showing a foot, the implication here is that this a “foot study”, so even though there are many people whose feet IRL may have smoothed-over features, for a model and render exercise such as this I would suggest depicting a foot that is more of what you’d see on a skinny or emaciated person (think thin skin wrapped over bone and ligaments with very little fat or connective tissue obscuring the details).

Off the top of my head: the tibial tuberosity on the medial aspect of the ankle is barely visible on the medial view of your model, but this is usually a prominent feature. You would also want to see some indication of the tendons attached to it. Put some indication of the extensor tendons on the instep. Both distal and proximal ends of the 5th metatarsal bone on many people are somewhat visible.

Lastly, the toes and toenails look a bit “boxy” to me, so those areas could benefit from some more geometry and tweaking to make them look more natural. Also, why only the medial view of the foot with a red toenail?

If you haven’t tried sculpting yet, give it a go. If this is a sculpt, more surface detail of features like the tendons, and eventually some veins (but only add those at the very end) on the instep, and more wrinkles on the bottom and arch of the foot. Add a crease down the middle of the balls of the foot on the inferior view.

The more details you add in terms of tendon and vessel indication, the more topology you’ll give for a rim light to catch (which you should definitely add for a dark BG render like this) and the SSS to show through and you’ll get a better render for sure.

Hope that helps

Thanks, the help manual is a life saver, however I'm really looking for something that I can carry with me, just so I can read up about stuff, more along the lines of why a certain approach might be better than another. The only way I can think to describe the type of thing I'm thinking about is the books about film studies, etc. (doing a quick look on Amazon, something like this, something that helps tie why professionals, may do certain things to connotate another.

In short, a book similar to what a University/College student may have if they were studying 3D.

Study lighting a bit, I still have very shitty lighting myself but this book helped: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Visual-Artists-Understanding-Design/dp/185669660X


As for Arnold courses, the best in-depth tutorial that helped me understand it was : https://inlifethrill.com/mastering-arnold-cinema-4d-bundle/

Depends, on what you want to do. Render interiors? products? Mograph? I did them all and I still suck at pretty much all of them :)

Thats probably a great place to start. There's probably plenty of resources online. I recommend this book. Its only 11 bucks and worth it if you're interested in learning.

http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Typography-Ambrose-published-Publishing/dp/B00E6TJHKA/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1417409853&sr=8-8&keywords=typography+fundamentals

Thank you for your response, I appreciate it.

My budget starts at 1000$ and ends somewhere near 2000$

Here are some of the pieces I was hoping to acquire because I know they will work well together and are compatible with a Hackintosh computer.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KPRWAX8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tonymacx86com-20 ..... http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KK8MEU6/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tonymacx86com-20 ..... http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ID2GPR4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tonymacx86com-20

I think that's beyond a list of common subjects clients ask for, and I'd recommend someone who is interested in "making it pop" to learn these:

• Cinematography
  
• Digital Light and Rendering
  
• Universal Principles of Design
  
• Vision Science: study of how our eyes and brain process visual info

If you want to learn Local Illumination (the opposite of Global Illumination ;) ) you should check out this book by Jeremy Birn.


http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Lighting-Rendering-Edition-Voices/dp/0321928989/ref=dp_ob_title_bk


There is more to it than just placing some lights. E.g. making an Occlusion Sandwich, where you render a key-pass with only the light highlights, a fill pass with only the basic coloring and an Ambient Occlusion pass with AO only. You then put it back together in AfterEffects.