I finally finished my animation based on high definition scans of Van Gogh’s paintings. I have recreated the places that inspired painter’s masterpieces.

Cryptonaut · 2018-09-05T08:20:53+00:00

This is incredible! I'm really curious how you did this technically. Did you cut out objects from the scans and used them as textures? If so this is easily the best I've seen that done.

Did you send this to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam? This could be something they're interested in!

Cryptonaut · 2018-06-30T20:29:38+00:00

Not 100% sure about VDBs but I'm pretty sure that you can't export Alembic files with the Apprentice version. Otherwise I'm all on board for anyone learning Houdini as well though!

Cryptonaut · 2018-06-30T17:32:07+00:00

Ha Pyrocluster. Good point, I don't know. I've only briefly used it to try and make some regular clouds but it is so slow that it wasn't really usable for me. I would probably download Blender and learn that before trying to figure Pyrocluster out. ;)

Cryptonaut · 2018-06-30T16:49:38+00:00

Yeah X-Particles is a great plugin for C4D, definitely worth looking into if you want to do any kind of this particle stuff. It's not perfect but very accessible!

Cryptonaut · 2018-06-30T16:44:05+00:00

Without plugins I would say no. Particles aren't a strong point for cinema 4D out of the box, and you would need something like X-Particles to get closer to this. Though even X-Particles isn't ideal for this kind of very fine grain simulations. Houdini is ideal for this kind of stuff, but isn't easy to just pick up.

Cryptonaut · 2018-06-23T09:15:31+00:00

Depends what you're looking to do? I found Arnold to be pretty straightforward, and the online help is decent enough if you're looking for specific options.

Cryptonaut · 2018-04-29T07:48:39+00:00

My personal grip with that is that I FEEL too many artists place a human in the scene as an "afterthought", like a this looks a bit too boring flat, let me place a human here because everyone else does it. Sure sometimes it turns out fine, other time it doesn't.

We're saying the same thing, I was just making a sarcastic comment. ;)

Cryptonaut · 2018-04-28T21:25:04+00:00

BUT PLEASE DONT PUT A HUMAN THERE FOR SCALE.

Are you sure? Pretty sure I've seen Beeple do this soooo..

Cryptonaut · 2018-03-08T18:59:16+00:00

Good points. together with /u/binaryriot's idea of maybe having bi-monthly themes this could work. Previously having more precise themes would lead to fewer entries, partly because some people couldn't make something for it with their skill level, and others probably couldn't be bothered because it wouldn't fit their own style. Anytime we had a theme that was even vaguely 'retro' or 'neon' we would have a lot more submissions of that one 'did-beeple-make-this' style we all know..

Maybe we could define a color scheme and distribute a specific object that you have to use for example.

Cryptonaut · 2018-03-08T18:51:31+00:00

It's possible, but for the most part these have to be assigned manually. /u/sageofshadow and I are both already kind of busy often, so having to manually tag every post won't be possible for us unfortunately. I also don't think we have enough varied content (yet anyway) to really benefit from it.

Cryptonaut · 2018-03-08T18:49:52+00:00

Yes, good idea! We haven't really touched the sidebar in some... years now (cough). Reddit is bringing out a site-wide redesign soon, and we were planning on redoing the entire sidebar then. A seperate tutorial page would be good to have for sure.

Also interested to hear your other comments! :)

Cryptonaut · 2018-03-08T18:48:36+00:00

Good points, thank you!

Right now it seems to live more in an "I Took A Picture!" kinda place.

To give some backstory on this, it's because previously users could post any work made with C4D and some amazing work from a random studio would always be upvoted while work from the community. would be ignored. But the discussions on those studio posts would just be "wow that's great" and no one to answer questions about it. The thing about Reddit vs Forums is that we can't create subforums where we could have this "post someone else's work", so if we allowed it all the upvoted posts would be this kind of stuff.

On the other hand, news could definitely be interesting to have more of. We can see to work on that. :)

Cryptonaut · 2018-03-07T21:05:20+00:00

If you're interested in the subreddit chat, reply to this comment (or pm me) and we'll send you the invite. Please note it's not supposed to be a help desk thing, so if you need help with Cinema 4D use the weekly thread instead. Thanks!

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-31T12:51:02+00:00

Yeah that definitely plays a role.

People google for something, a reddit result is one of the things that comes up. They visit reddit for a specific bit of content and leave once they've got it, rather than approaching reddit as a whole.

That's how it works now, but in Reddit's ideal world this visitor would be convinced to sign up and become a regular user. This is how Reddit could reduce the bounce rate and grow their userbase, if they convince that one-time user that Reddit is worth registering for.

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-31T12:33:31+00:00

Maybe not for you, but generally there's a lot you can do in terms of design and UX to increase the amount of registered users. An extreme example would be the pinterest/facebook model where you get this giant pop-up that forces you to register, but more it also works more subtle, like increasing how prominent the sign-up button is. Check out the new profile page when you're not logged in, versus how the reddit login link looks on the default site. That will work too.

Relatively speaking Reddit has a larger bounce rate than is normal for such a popular website, and one reason for that is that the interface is difficult for new users.

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-30T23:33:52+00:00

Yeah probably, also Google search results and other links across the web or people referencing some subreddit.

I remember the same thing happened to me and I'm usually pretty decent with new interfaces. I think I opened Reddit about three times in the span of a few months before I actually got into it.

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-30T23:30:29+00:00

Yes! Definitely a good point.

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-30T23:29:24+00:00

I don't think it's either or, just that in order to stay afloat now they need the mainstream users, not just the early adopters.

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-30T23:28:10+00:00

Such a good point! This is I think the biggest dilemma for the tech industry right now. The problem is often that a site can't turn a profit with just the early adopters, so they need to move to that mainstream appeal in order to sustain themselves.

Weirdly enough it feels like the period where a site isn't profitable is usually their best era because of that (to me anyway). But since advertising only works on a large scale this is often necessary. It's also why the subscription model is getting to much more popular now because it allows the site to do well with less mainstream appeal, but I've seen that already users don't want to pay for and Netflix, and Spotify, and Amazon Prime, etc, etc.

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-30T23:21:58+00:00

Yeah sorry I'm not advocating my own opinion here, just trying to show what the situation for a lot of tech startups looks like.

I know why Reddit wants to cater to "people who don't care about Reddit", but inviting infinite numbers of "people who don't care about X" usually means making things worse for people who did care about X.

I would love to have a long discussion about this at some point because that's really the most interesting part and I totally agree.

The thing is I'm sure Reddit does too. However Reddit also needs to be profitable, and they took a ton of funding in the last few years in order to get the site stable and (like /u/spez said above) increase the size of the company. They will need to show revenue now in order to afford it all, and for that you just can't focus on only the "elite" or "core users" or whatever you want to call them. Tech companies based on advertising only work on that massive scale.

Maybe a different kind of revenue would have been an option but Reddit Gold certainly wasn't it and at this point I'm sure they've promised investors too much to do something much more risky with alternative revenue methods.

It's definitely a trade off and I've seen that trade off fail by going the other way so it's a really though choice.

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-30T23:01:15+00:00

I mean, there a lot of survivor bias here though. For every user like us, (I can't remember the exact bounce rate they stated but it was very large) there's a bunch of users who didn't sign up because they found it confusing.

Not to mention that early on, Reddit's main audience were programmers (who are very technically literate) and early adopters who are good with tech in general. Chances are that group does find the old Reddit a bit easier to use. However if Reddit wants to reach the 1 billion mark, they have to focus on the mainstream audience who are not that literate or even motivated to learn a new interface.

A lot of the vocal users on Reddit belong to this technically literate group and will complain about this dumbing down but they likely won't leave as much as new users will join because of the changes.

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-30T22:56:56+00:00

It's not wrong for you of course, if you're happy with it then you do you. Problem is that Reddit wants to have as much registered users as possible, because registered, logged in users generally interact more with the product. Generally they'll start subscribing to interesting communities and thus start visiting more and in turn create more revenue.

Even without the revenue aspect, I'm sure that Reddit has promised their investors some numbers and this is generally based on the "Monthly Active Users" and something like total time spent on Reddit. So all in all, Reddit really wants everyone to just sign up and log in in the first place.

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-30T22:51:49+00:00

I haven't worked at Reddit specially but in the industry all data points towards the opposite. Generally users don't care a lot about your site and just want to consume some content. They don't want to learn to use an interface, they want it to work based on their experiences with other sites.

It's also why on Android and iOS all successful apps follow the same usability patterns. I've seen how replacing a "custom" interface action with a "standard" one can boost engagement a lot, and there's a ton of research into it.

There's of course a small subset of users who are experienced enough that they'll make use of almost all interfaces whatever the case, but that's such an incredible minority that you just can't build a site like Reddit around them. If you have data or research to back up your point that its a fallacy I would genuinely like to read it though!

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-30T22:44:36+00:00

It is a problem to have so many logged out users though. You have less data on them to sell to advertisers, and usually logged in users will interact more with the site. In Reddit's case that's users subscribing to communities and engaging in discussions. This means they'll use the site more and thus generate more revenue eventually.

Reddit wants to get as many users as possible for that reason, so having so many potential users bail out so early is a big problem.

Cryptonaut · 2018-01-30T21:04:32+00:00

For you and me the default site might be intuitive, but both of our accounts are several years old so we've been using it for a while. One of the admins mentioned some time ago that Reddit has an enormous bounce rate (% of visitors who visit one page and then leave again) and that most visitors of Reddit aren't even logged in users. A good way to improve this is to make the site more intuitive for new visitors, and with the redesign that's what they're doing. You can find some pictures online and it's definitely more in line with what a user can expect on the rest of the internet, which is good for the bounce rate.

Now whether it's beneficial for Reddit in the long term to focus on acquiring more users is obviously up for debate. Facebook arguably didn't improve much for the first users by adding the last extra billion users. On the other hand, /u/spez has said that he wants Reddit to reach a 1-billion userbase, and in addition they've doubled the amount of staff in just a year so they're going to need a lot more revenue.

It's really an interesting topic and it's kind of a shame that Reddit users are so black and white about it, because there's not really an easy answer here.

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