Update #348602

Yeah, this is getting annoying. A real pain if you will.

Haven't heard back from the licencing yet. So I'm kinda giving up on that for now and look for alternatives. I'm thinking of starting up 3Ds Max again till then, which will be yet another pain to install.

I've clearly taken a way too long break already, mainly working on some game reviews and guides for another blog I share with my girlfriend. So I thought I should just get back here and do some simple tutorials for now and keep hoping for a reply.

Again, sorry for the delay and all. For any questions, either comment or mail. I'll reply as soon as I can.

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Basic maintenance of a laptop/computer

I'm by no means an expert. I actually have a friend who I ask the more serious hardware and software things. But I do know the basics of how to treat a laptop. And so should you.

1) Breaks. 

When using a laptop/computer for heavy-duty things like rendering, gaming or simply have way too many programs open at once, your laptop can and will get problems. Two of these problems, and probably the most important once, are Overheating and Ram breakdown.

To avoid this, simply avoid using too many programs at once and take breaks. Not only you yourself, but let your laptop/computer have a break as well. Shut it off or put it on sleep mode.

2) Battery Life.

For laptops, the charger and battery is a big deal. That's what makes and breaks a laptop. There are many myths to keep a battery at it's full potential, such as charging it full and letting it drain without doing anything with your laptop. Just put it on screensaver and let it drain dead. I've tried it myself, haven't actually noticed any results. The one thing I did notice, batteries heat up. Obviously. Meaning that if they heat up too much, they'll be less effective.

So again, take breaks and keep your laptop cooled. Another thing I noticed that works is to simply unplug your laptop once the battery is full. That way you can actually keep an eye on the battery life and how it's doing, which will notify you when you need to replace it.

3) Overheating.

This is a trickier one as it does happen to every laptop/computer eventually. Even if you barely use it, it will overheat after some time. There can be many things that'll cause this. The main reasons will be dust, aged thermal paste and overusing it.

Easy solutions for dust are to clean it, which may or may not require you to open your laptop/computer up yourself. It's optional, but you can clean bits from the outside as well. However putting a vacuum cleaner against it might be tempting, but not wise. The insides are too fragile for that.
For overuse, simply take breaks as I said before.
Thermal paste however is a tricky one. This most likely will not happen while you have the warranty of the company you got your laptop/computer, so there's no problem in opening it up. If you are not skilled in dealing with hardware and replacing parts, like I am, simply go to your local computer workshop, who will have it fixed for you very quickly. From my experience, they usually clean the insides as well if there is any excessive dust.
Another good way to fight overheating, is to buy a cooling pad or cooling system.

4) Malware.

One important thing my friend told me once is that nobody can put anything bad on your computer without physically touching it. This does not include hacking accounts though... that's a completely different story.

Simply watch what you download and what you click. If you do not trust it or know it, ignore it.

5) Hacking.

Now this is harder. But most of the time, you'll get hacked because you let out some personal info somewhere. And no, leaving your facebook account open and a friend changes stuff is not hacking. Let's not get into detail of how it happens, just how to counter it.

So for starters, do not leave your passwords, mailing addresses and usernames everywhere you go. Not any personal info either. This should be obvious. Change your passwords and addresses every so often. Some say every week, some every month. Whatever you see fit.

Now sometimes, you get hacked without leaving out personal info. I have no idea how though. But as soon as you notice it, look for traces on your account about the hacker. Some like to change the description, some the mail address. I once got lucky that they left a site in the description, where I simply asked for my account back. One nice hacked approached me and said he'd get it back for me, because I was just a kid and it's wrong to hack account. I immediately changed everything as soon as I got it back.

Now when you do get hacked, you can do as I did and seek help from other hackers. Only a small percentage of them are the bad ones who just want to ruin peoples days. Most of them simply dig for information on say games (datamining), help companies out as a job or even to protest by shutting corrupt sites down.
Another solution is to call the company of your account and notify them. They can usually shut it down or change your information so you can get it back.

6) Software.

This is pretty simple. Know what programs your laptop/computer can and cannot handle. Know what you download. Know what you install. If you try to play a game far above your systems specs, it will most of the time be denied. Sometimes it wont though, where you change the settings in-game. This can make your system crash or at the very least, slow it down immensely. Nobody wants that.

7) Hardware.

Also pretty easy to understand. Don't overload your computer with accessories. Most laptop/computers have only two USB slots filled up at all times. For a mouse and a cooling pad. A 3rd would be frequently in use for a stick or harddrive. Only use more if you absolutely need to. I strongly advise against putting toys in it. The only exception is to charge something, which rarely causes any problem.

8) Knowledge.

Know your programs. Know your system. Know your brand. Know your laptop/computer to the best you can. If there ever is a problem with it, it will help out immensely if you can provide that information. Things like CPU, Memory, OS, HDD, and Series of the brand are extremely important. 

There are many ways a laptop/computer can break down. It happens. But avoiding it is much easier and better than dealing with it. And after the first few times, it won't look as bad anymore. It's part of the experience you'll get. Of course, for any questions you can simply comment and I'll reply as soon as I can!

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Another Update

So it's been a while. Not much progress on the entire licence part, but there's a bit of good progress at least.

I've convinced the correspondent to check if they can lengthen my Student trial, whereas I buy the R17 or by then, R18 version next year. I sent in my details and have yet to hear back from him.

That's pretty much all there is to it. I'm still waiting, so still no tutorials so far. Meanwhile, here are some of the sites I used for tutorials.

greyscalegorilla
3dbuzz
thegnomonworkshop

There are many others though, these I just used most frequently. Reliable, mostly free and not that hard either.

Hopefully for the last time, sorry for any inconvenience and if you're edging to follow tutorials, try one of the mentioned sites. Of course, feel free to ask any questions.

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Negotiating, dilemma's and more fun stuff

So in my previous update I said my Cinema licence expired. This was because it was a student version, which I got for a longer time than my school had planned. Which brings me now to the point where I have to buy my own professional version from a Maxon store, the creators of Cinema 4D.

Buying a version of Cinema 4D is not really an easy task for someone who just graduated. Mainly because they do cost a lot. I'm in negotiations right now with a very friendly employee at one of the international Maxon stores, in order to pick the right version and hopefully get a discount on my licence. It's already certain I'll be boosted up to an R17 version for free because I believe they're in the middle of a change of software.

Picking a version for Cinema 4D sounds easier than it is. There are 6 different versions, mostly different. Maxon themselves made a very useful list of the differences, which is updated when a new version is released as well. It's a very useful guide to get what you need without getting things you don't need and saving on the price. The list can be found right Here. And in case the link does not work, let it be phone, web, tablet or whatever else, here's the full link. maxon.net/en/products/general-information/general-information/product-comparison.html

Most would recommend getting the Studio version, as it has everything you do need and will ever need. While this is true, they do not give the price tag. The employee did give me a pricetag of every version and what it'll cost to upgrade from that version to the latest. The version numbers are not yet correct, so R16 should be R17 and R15 should be R16. But the prices, while in Euros, will be unchanged.

As you can see, while Studio has the most features, it also has the highest price tag. Which is reasonable and normal for an all-inclusive package. And this price tag also shows that Cinema is more a company-product than for private use. Or you can buy it together with some friends, all pitch in and save on money that way. 

I've looked and thought it over several times now. For me the Visualise would be the better choice. It would mean I wouldn't be able to do tutorials about physics, which are great fun to play with. But I will be able to make multiple showcases and actually serve the model right by having a good rendering feature. Until I get a good screencapture software, I wouldn't be able to capture physics tutorials in a good way anyway, and that software can rack up a few hundreds or thousands as well. So there won't be a major loss there.

In the meantime, while negotiating, I've noticed that going back in my older Cinema files will be hard to do as well. I cannot save anything, so any changes will be futile. I can't even save a render, which doesn't make things better. So in other words, there won't be any tutorial for a while still. 

Again, sorry for any inconvenience and I hope this post at least informed future buyers of which version to pick. Of course, feel free to ask any questions. 

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Downgrade

This week, week 38, I'll have no tutorials uploaded. Hopefully next week once again, as I'm having some software problems now. And by that I mean, my licence expired and I'll have to downgrade for now. I don't have the €3.000,- to get a new licence right now.

However in my current version, which is now a very restricted demo, I can still import older files. Just not save or export anything. Which luckily means that even if it would be taking longer to get a downgrade or new licence, I can always make tutorials of things I made previously. They'll probably be on the shorter side though.

Either way, I'll be slowed down for a while. My apologies for any inconvenience.

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Tutorial: Textures - Strange Coins

In an earlier Showcase I made, I showed off a model of Strange Coins. A currency used in Bungies latest game, Destiny. While the model was created by a different person than myself, I did all textures on my own. And that's what I'm going to show this time.



 On the left side you can see the top and perspective viewpoints of both sides of the coin, as textured by me. An old, golden coin with a darker bronze on the inside and a green, glowing gem in the middle. On the right side you can see the original sides of the coin, without any textures in the same perspectives. As you can see, I didn't change anything about the model. Yet the feel of the coin is entirely different. This is what textures can do. What would a game be like if it was all a light-gray colour?

But let's start with how I textured it.



 Of course, we'll start with the plain, gray model. You'd only need one, but I use two as an example for now. We'll immediately start by making 3 Texture Materials. These materials will be as followed:




A browish colour, gold and green. The values don't have to be the exact same though. It's just what I thought to be the closest to the original colours.




In these pictures I focus mainly on the right coin, as I need to apply all 3 colours to it. I simply start with applying the gold colour to the entire coin. Next I'll select the inner circle only and apply the green colour on it. This already gives it a nice little shape. The last colour, the brown, will be the hardest. First off, select the lower ring, above the green like I did. This might take some zooming in and out and some manoeuvring of the camera to get everything selected. Remember to hold Shift when you let go of the mouse, this'll keep the selection going.





When rendered, the coin will look as above. True, I already put a light with some external effects on it like Ambient, which gives a slight reflection and brings the shadow out nicely. However for our next steps, we'll be doing some detail work with the textures. Starting up with the gemstone in the middle. Green.




First off, make sure the following boxes are marked: Colour, Luminance, Reflection, Bump, Specular and Glow. The colour stays the same as before though.




As for Luminance, quite easy. Simply set it to 25% brightness and make it green. Try to match the initial colour but go slightly darker. If the luminance is darker, it'll be less visible. And in this case, we do want a slight, but clear luminance.




Reflection is easily done as well. We'll add a simple Fresnel texture, put the Brightness to 25% and put the mixmode to Multiply. The latter is most important actually. If left on Normal, the reflection will be way off and much brighter.




Bump takes a bit more, even though you'll barely see it in action on the render. However all you'll do is select the Wavy Turbulence and change the settings slightly. You can make this as strong and clear as you want though, I'm planning to redo the bump to make the gem look cracked.




Specular will just need a little adjusting. Set it to Metal and change the numbers as I did. In the end, there will be no clear reflection, which is the point as it is a glowing material.




Finally it's the glow, which will brighten the entire colour slightly. Increase the Inner Strength and decrease the Outer Strength, using the Material Colour. Now we'll apply it.






It's a big difference as you can see. It already gives a better feel to the rest of the coin as well. But we're not there yet, still two other textures to complete.




Now for the bronze, it's a bit harder work. We'll select Colour, Diffusion, Reflection, Bump and Specular. Colour immediately starts off rougher, as we'll need a noise. The biggest thing here is to blow up the scale a lot. 1500% for me. You'll see the outcome of that in the end, when we're finished with the reflection and specular.



Next stop is the Diffusion, where we go in a layer. Putting a Distort and Noise on it first, we'll give the Distort an electric Noise with 20% strength. The regular Noise will be a Luka, nearly unchanged.




Now the reflection. The main colour is a brownish one. Not too light, not too dark. As texture we'll put in simple Fresnel, with the black part tuned to a lighter gray and the Mix Mode goes to Multiply. Blur is optional, I used it for the effect. See? We're already seeing some form in it!




Here comes the harder part. We'll put the Strength to 30% now and go into a Layer. Inside the Layer we'll create two Noises. One becomes an Overlay type, the other stays Normal. We'll start off with the Overlay, which I've marked with a blue 1 and is on the bottom right side. A Turbulence slightly boosted to 200%. The Normal Noise, which is marked with a red 2 and is on the bottom left side, is a Voronoi 1 with a high boost to 1500%. This'll give it the old, bumpy, rusty feel to it.




Finally the Specular. Nothing much luckily. We change the mode to Metal and change the width and length slightly, that's all.





I've placed the previous coin, where we did the green gem in the middle, on the left side. You can see some changes, but not much. This isn't a big deal as the yellow takes most attention. We'll work on the yellow next, which will change the entire coin.




We'll start off with selecting the Colour, Diffusion, Luminance, Reflection, Bump and Specular options. This'll be the longest and hardest of the three. For colour we'll immediately start off strong by putting in a Noise. This Noise will be boosted 1500% with am FBM texture to it.




The Diffuse uses a Layer first off. No changes to the original part. Inside the Layer it uses a Distort and Noise. Basically the same as the Bronze colour had. The Noise is a Luka with a slight bump to 200%.




Now Luminance is a weirder one. Start it off with colouring it slightly darker than the gold we used for the Colour. Make the Mix Mode and Multiply and add a Lumas texture. The Lumas Texture has several parts to it. Just change the ones I've done.




Reflection is easy. A simple Fresnel, colour change and Mix Mode Multiply. The blur again, is optional.




Bump will be like the Bronze as well. Overlay is on the right side, Noise is on the left side. Pretty much exactly the same settings as well.




Specular is easy as well. Mode to Metal and a few numeral changes. That's it for the textures! And this is how it should look:




The previous one on the left, the final one on the right. As you can see, the bronze does come out more now the gold is less bright. Of course, you can mess with the lighting, camera and reflection for yourself. If you want, you can try it for yourself with different textures! This is how I textured my coin, and I do like how it turned out. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If there are any questions, feel free to comment.

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Health problems & Delayed tutorial

I haven't addressed this on my blog before and I wasn't planning to initially, as it's a tutorial-only blog. But getting a bit personal won't be a big deal I suppose.

Anyway the point is, my health isn't in great shape right now. I've got a chronic disease called Cystic Fibrosis. In the very basics, this causes the mucus in my entire body to be thicker than syrup. This alone brings a ton of health problems, like a bad liver and barely working intestines. The most damage is done in the lungs however, where mucus is produced constantly. In my case, at a faster and thicker rate. Obviously not fun at all. For more info This Link has most details accurately on it.

Now the last years my lungs have been deteriorating at a faster pace, mainly from the years of punishment it had from the coughing I do. This caused veins in my lungs to pop. In other words, me coughing up blood. It's obviously a very scary thought, let alone for a 13 year old kid. I'm in therapy for it with a psychologist to process it step by step, which is going pretty well after 9 psychologists tried. Basically I'm a big mess.

In the case of this week, I had another bleeding. A minor one mind you. It's just a hit on my mental and physical stability. That's why there has not been another tutorial this entire week. I've nearly finished one, but didn't have the capability to finish it yet. So my apologies for that. I'll be sure to post it up early next week if everything goes right. This'll most likely happen again in the future and I'll post an update on it at those times.

Of course, for any questions you can simply comment and I'll reply as soon as I can!

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Showcase: Destiny Strange Coins

For the gamers out there who follow this blog, there's a good chance you know what I'm talking about. For those who don't, here's an explanation. In the latest videogame by the game company Bungie, called Destiny, there's a currency called Strange Coins. Used to buy certain rare weapons and armour. They're quite rare, but also very liked among the community.

 Today on the official Destiny Forums over at Bungie.net I found someone who made a very accurate 3D model of these coins. I don't dare to say they're 100% accurate to the game, but accurate nonetheless. This nice person, going with the name of Adkos, made this model free to download, which I'll link to later on. It's set into a printable file, as he intended to make a complete, accurate physical model of the coin.

This file can be read by most, if not all, 3D printers and almost every 3D designing software. If you have access to either, I do encourage you to take a look and have fun with it. Just be warned, it is modelled after an object in a game. There might be copyright on it by Bungie or Activision. So I strongly advise to not try to distribute it. And while it's not needed, give credit where credit is due.


 

 Above are two of the official coins, front and back. Which I believe Bungie made themselves. Below is the original Adkos created, printed and painted. It looks very accurate to me.

 

And below that, the 3D model. A clean version and the one I textured. I don't own a 3D printer myself so I can't print a physical version sadly.

 
  


I plan to make a tutorial how I textured it early next week, to give everyone a look at how I texture empty models.

The model can be downloaded right here:
https://www.myminifactory.com/object/destiny-xur-s-strange-coin-two-sided-high-resolution-12964

You just need to make a free account on the Myminifactory site and download it. All files will be downloaded as a .stl file, which might look strange. But like I said, that file can be read by 3D printers and 3D design software.

I might do more showcases if I find more interesting models I'd like to texture. For now, this is it. I hope you enjoyed this new type of post! If there are any questions, feel free to comment.

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Tutorial: Looping animation

Animations is used a lot in Design. Usually with a simple turn, but through paths as well. I'll do paths later though, as for this one I just want to make a simple looping animation. Which I'll turn into a GIF file. These kind of loops are usually only for models to show a 360 degree view, which you sometimes see in games. Here's an example.

So we'll start with making one cube, sphere or other object you want. It won't matter per se, as it's just a visual guide. I'd suggest either cubes or spheres though. I'm going to use Cubes, as they're slightly harder to work with and I've seen a slight example of what I want it to become.

1) My Cube will be thinner than how it is now though. I won't shrink it because I want to use a camera anyway. Might as well place one already. I'll just slide the X-size to 50.

2) Next I'm going into top view, making the next steps easier. I follow this up by dragging the Cube up the Z-axis by 250cm.

3) Now I'll make a circle of Cubes, which can be done really fast. Simple make a duplicate of the Cube by holding CTRL and dragging the cube. This new Cube will be at -250cm.

4) Making it easier and faster, I'll just select both Cubes, go to my Rotation tool and hold CTRL again to duplicate both. And I'll repeat this until I have the amount I want. With Shift you can get a clean 90 degree turn, and 30 degrees afterwards. I'll go on till I have 12 Cubes in total, positioned as below.

5) Next up are the textures. I want to go for a rainbow circle animation, so I'll make 12 different colours. The only changes I make on these materials are the colour and selecting the Glow. Inside the Glow all I'm doing is selecting the "Use Material Color" option.

6) I'll join all Cubes in a Null object, which will make the animation easier to make. I'll place the camera in front of the cubes now, and I'll add the [link]white background as well. With a Sky object for the background.

7) The upcoming steps are Good as equal for everyone, no matter what objects or textures you're using. I prefer to use PAL settings, which is 25 fps. So we'll go to Project Settings to change that.

8) Now we have 3 seconds on the timeline, which will be enough, but not enough. We'll want some time before and after, which we'll need to make the animation smooth. So right above the Material bar, we'll make the 0 a -15 just in case, and the 75 a 90. Every 15 seconds on the timeline I'll rotate the Null 90 degrees, lock it with the Key symbol and move on to the next 15 seconds.

Now that that's done, we'll be going in the Render Settings.

9) The Frame Range will be the only thing to change here, as I won't meddle with the ratio. That's fine for now and won't matter at all. The ratio I will set will be 15 to 74. The first and last frames tend to slow down automatically and there is a fix for that, however I'll leave that for a differnt tutorial. The 75th frame is the exact same as frame 15 and We don't want to slow the animation down even 1 frame, which is why we cut it down one frame.

Anti-Alias will be set to Best just in case. And we'll be adding a Global Illumination, which will bring the colours in a better contrast this time.

10) Now we'll just render it! Pick a location to save it. I prefer to save it as a TIFF Format, as those easily load into After Effects.

11) The rendering might take a while, depending on what you made and how heavy it is on your computer. While it's rendering you could take a break or read on ahead. Once that finishes we'll have several separate frames, we just need to put them together. That's why I'll open After Effects and import the files.

12) Drag them in to load them in the scene of course.

13) Now when you play it, you can see it runs just how it did in Cinema. However to make the movement smoother, I'll add a blur. A directional blur. This'll make the entire animation a bit prettier in my eye.

14) You'll notice the sides are slightly faded black now from the blur. Which might ruin the image, depending what background you're using. In this case, it does. The most simple fix is to just put a Solid under the frames

15) In the solid settings you can select the pipette and pick any colour on-screen. In this case, the background. Fun fact, After Effects will automatically name the colour as well to what it is. Apparently the background I'm using is a Pale Royal Blue.

16) Drag the Solid below the frames and you're done. Now all you need is Export the file to an AVI clip and we'll open up Photoshop to turn it into a .gif.

17) Import the videofile, which you can find under File > Import > Video File to Layers. Photoshop won't let me printscreen this part, so I'll have to guide it this way. Just select the video, let it load and load in the entire thing.

18) As a final step we want to Save for Web. Thanks to the size, it'll look worse when I zoom out to get the entire picture in screen. That's not a big deal in the end, just a zoom thing so don't worry if that happens. The quality will obviously be lower than the original of course. But the settings should already be for the best possible settings, or close to that. If not, try to match the ones I've got. Simply save it as Images Only and you're done! This is what it turned out to be for me.

As you can see, I got the result I wanted. The loop is infinite and smooth. You can do this for anything you'd like, as long as you make sure the loop is closed. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If there are any questions, feel free to comment.

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