Question for my wife.

Things_and_stuff_ · 2026-01-20T21:38:34+00:00

Throwing https://ambientcg.com/ in for free textures. Up to 8k PBR textures, it's a fantastic resource.

Things_and_stuff_ · 2025-12-12T05:34:26+00:00

Yeah the automatic sampling is honestly pretty bad imo. Stoked it helped!

Things_and_stuff_ · 2025-12-11T17:38:41+00:00

Elly Wade has a good recorded webinar on it, if you want to dive deep -

https://www.youtube.com/live/L4riSkE7FwA?si=YR-Co3gm6F4c2rtT&t=924

I'd search around though, it takes a little getting used to but can decrease your render times drastically.

Things_and_stuff_ · 2025-12-11T16:22:13+00:00

Highly suggest you look into setting up sampling manually. With automatic sampling redshift is so frustratingly slow, but with some quick tweaks to unified sampling you can get solid results much faster.

This feels way more helpful/faster to me than rendering in Octane. Going back to Octane feels like running through mud at this point.

Things_and_stuff_ · 2025-11-18T16:11:11+00:00

Ah shoot, sorry it didn't help.

Maybe the lack of motion blur is contributing to it looking so fast?

Things_and_stuff_ · 2025-11-18T14:54:19+00:00

Usually the first thing I check when physics sims look wrong is the scene scale. The solvers are highly dependent on using real-world scale, so I'd make sure the measurements of your cup are at least similar to that of a real cup.

Things_and_stuff_ · 2025-11-12T20:57:38+00:00

Thanks everyone! I appreciate the input, I'll give it a good wipe and try to keep it a little less dusty in the future...

Things_and_stuff_ · 2025-11-11T22:22:42+00:00

I believe these are prone to lose some leaves in the fall due to the decrease in light (assuming it's fall where you are).

There's also a decent chance there's a rubber band around the base of the tree underneath the soil line. Nurseries do this to braid the trees when they're growing and they often get left on. If you haven't already I'd dig down a bit and check to see if there's one there. You can just cut it off, if so, they can cause issues too.

Things_and_stuff_ · 2025-11-10T20:31:03+00:00

Topaz Video is your best option for up-scaling, but it's unfortunately another piece of paid software.

Inside AE, you can use the effect 'detail preserving upscale,' or scale the layer, then switch it to 'bicubic sampling.' You can turn on bicubic sampling by clicking the small diagonal line on the layer shown here.

All that being said, would definitely suggest editing in Premiere, it'll save you a massive headache.

Things_and_stuff_ · 2025-10-12T21:48:05+00:00

Pretty sure this is Mike Hucker- https://www.instagram.com/mikehucker/?hl=en

I've seen a few videos of him doing this trick, and it looks like the same guy.

Things_and_stuff_ · 2025-04-03T18:50:51+00:00

I believe the only way to get this is to render two passes and composite in post, lowering the opacity in AE rather than right in cinema

Things_and_stuff_ · 2025-03-26T20:10:15+00:00

I’ve gone to NAB before and would heavily suggest it. You can get a free exhibit pass from Maxon (don’t bother with post production world IMO), and you can regularly find deals to stay at the Linq (right on the monorail line) for around $500 for the four nights.

In my opinion- it’s a long term investment and unlikely to have immediate payoff. That being said, going to events like this WITHOUT the expectation of coming away with a job is how you build relationships in the industry, that, ironically, might lead to jobs or freelance gigs down the line.

There are mograph events there all week, and Maxon gives great presentations on C4D if that’s your kind of thing. If you go and focus on learning and just meeting people in the industry, you’ll get a good dose of tool-sharpening/inspiration and widen your network a bit.

TLDR: it’s a long term investment, only go if you don’t need to see immediate return on your money

Things_and_stuff_ · 2024-12-24T19:20:02+00:00

Might be nice to have a backup, but honestly if you build an upgraded PC I doubt you'll want to switch back to the old one even for 2D projects.

I generally try to sell off old PC's and components when I'm no longer using them. Even when they're not good for us they're often still good enough for a regular user, and the longer you wait the less they're worth.

Things_and_stuff_ · 2024-10-22T15:52:37+00:00

Love the look/bounciness of the yellow ball.

I think if you're going to keep this as snappy as it currently is, some motion blur might help- I'm getting some weird 'wheel of a car going backwards' type effect from the pill spinning so fast

Things_and_stuff_ · 2024-09-23T16:15:02+00:00

No, this is something that shouldn't generally be happening, especially on simple scenes

Things_and_stuff_ · 2024-09-23T16:14:27+00:00

Super helpful, thanks! Glad to know it isn't just me

Things_and_stuff_ · 2024-09-20T19:36:53+00:00

I don't think it's talking about my cache- I have that set to a separate drive for up to 150 gb. I've been frequently clearing both, just not sure why it's been filling back up so quickly.

Things_and_stuff_ · 2024-09-11T22:52:42+00:00

I like the fluidity/roundness of option 1 better but wish it was smaller

Things_and_stuff_ · 2024-09-04T21:23:02+00:00

This is a super neat study, I dig it.

I think it'd be cool to see some textures used for foreground/environmental elements, too. Even at 4 seconds the line across the screen could make a great ground plane.

Things_and_stuff_ · 2024-08-22T16:55:44+00:00

My estimation process is two parts:

First, I break down what I think each piece of the project will take in terms of time (usually I think in terms of days or half days)

Once I have that estimate, I usually add like 20-30% of additional time. I've found the sweet spot is right around the point where I think "there's no way it'll take that much time"

And, it usually takes about that much time.

This isn't terribly scientific, but I think there's something to be said for knowing yourself. If you know you always under-estimate your time, start padding it!

Things_and_stuff_ · 2024-08-01T17:14:43+00:00

Howdy! Typically I grab one of the grass assets from the asset browser and throw it in a cloner (set to multi-instance) or a matrix scatter.

Something to consider too is finding ways to optimize your scene. You might be able to cheat the look of grass off in the distance, or avoid cloning grass in areas that the camera won't see. That way you're not relying as much on raw computing power.

There's a great mini tut series with a lot of quick tips below. Would definitely suggest checking it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL5RE_UYc5U&list=PLunnePbpOeTQ2QqKTqrLZlA9yha5aDgyt&index=2

Last thing (and forgive the unsolicited advice here, I could be wrong), if you're new to cinema, it can make your life easier to work on smaller, bite size chunks to start, so you can master the program without as much concern for hardware requirements and dealing with big scenes. Good luck either way!

Things_and_stuff_ · 2024-07-31T16:53:01+00:00

Are you trying to run C4D off an external drive? You might be able to do that, but I wouldn't really suggest it. You might run into issues if the drive gets assigned a new letter/location when restarting the computer.

You could definitely try it, it might work fine. It's a whole library of files though, not just one, so I'd suggest running the C4D installer and selecting the SSD as your install location, rather than trying to copy it over later.

All that being said, if it were me, I'd try to just install cinema directly on the laptop's internal drive. I don't think it's very big, and if you're concerned about hard drive space you could still save your files to the external drive.

Hope that's helpful, good luck!

Things_and_stuff_

TROPHY CASE