|  Where
are you from and where are you living today?
I live in Upper Hutt, a city of about 40,000, 30 minutes drive north of
Wellington New Zealand. Born in Upper Hutt but I've moved around a bit
throughout the North Island in my career as a Department Store Manager.
I grew up in a small town called Pukerua Bay. One of my friends on and
off through school was LOTR director Peter Jackson. With him as teenagers
I developed an interest in special f/x and movies. Unfortunately we went
our own separate ways following high school.
How old are you?
43
What can you see from where you sit now?
I've got a small office with my computer set up. Out of the window I can
see my back yard and my childrens trampoline. On the wall I have a replica
Wyatt Earp revolver and a raised relief map of the Grand Canyon area.
Coffee, tea or something stronger?
Powered by black coffee while I'm on the computer. I enjoy a good lager
with my dinner. I gave up on spirits after a negative experience with
a big bottle of rum when I was about 20.
What was your first ever interest/experience in 3D/CG?
I first got interested in 3D shortly after getting on the Internet in
1998 and seeing images made with Bryce around the place. At the time Bryce
was beyond my pocket so I opted for a 3D program called Simply 3D 3 which
was pretty hopeless although was great at making animated gifs that I
used on my home page. Fortunately Computer Arts gave away Bryce 2 on the
October 1998 magazine and I started doing a few Bryce tutorials and making
still images. However at the time I was running a Pentium 166 so rendering
was an overnight affair just for one frame. I tinkered occasionally with
Bryce and upgraded to Bryce 4 but didn't really do much or progress very
far. Things changed in 2001 when the company that I had worked for 13
years went bust and I was made redundant. I chose to have a sabbatical
of 8 months off work while I decided what I want to do with myself and
in this time I decided I wanted to really get into 3D. First thing I did
was build a new computer with an Athlon 1200 CPU which at the time made
a huge difference in rendering speed. Secondly I bought an outstanding
book "Real World Bryce 4" by Susan Kitchens and worked my way
through it. I found that I really enjoyed the animation section and ended
up doing lots of fun little animated gifs, some of which are still in
my Renderosity
gallery. In 2002 it became apparent that Bryce was very limited with
it's animating and modeling tools so I upgraded to trueSpace 5 . I was
fortunate to win a few animation contests at the Caligari site and score
myself a whole heap of software and eventually I ended up on the Beta
testing team.
Do you use Cinema 4D as a hobby, for learning, or for pro work?
I'm just a hobbyist and still feel I have a long way to go. I'm just sorry
that 3D wasn't around when I was leaving high school as I would have opted
for a career in that or programming.
When and why did you decide to make Cinema your weapon of creative
choice?
December 2003 I got CE6 on a computer magazine and couldn't believe how
good an older version program was compared to my current 3D program. Below
as I explain, I entered a trueSpace animation into a contest and won a
copy of Bodypaint 2. I was so impressed with CE6 I asked Maxon if I could
swap Bodypaint for the core version of 8.5 and they kindly agreed. A few
months later I took the plunge and bought an XL bundle.
What other 3D software have you used/still use, and why?
I dabbled with Bryce 2 for a couple of years and upgraded to Bryce 4 in
about 2001. I still use this occasionally to make a sky or background
for my C4D scenes.
trueSpace 5, 6 and 6.6. I bought
trueSpace 5 in 2002 and won ver 6 shortly after receiving it. I had a
ball with trueSpace and eventually ended up on the beta test team. However
I got to the point where what I wanted to do in trueSpace it just couldn't
do or handle the scene size without falling over.
I'm running Animation Master 11.
I bought this out of curiosity since no demo is available. Some of my
favourite animations are made with Animation Master and I have Jeff Lew's
(Killer Bean) Character
Animation DVD which is just superb. However I've only played with
it a couple of times. I'm having too much fun with the new toys in R9.
The truth is, Animation Master is quite well regarded for its character
animation tool set as it is more mature than Mocca, so I thought playing
around with it may help me with my Mocca rigging and give me some ideas
on the way rigs for humans and animals should be constructed.
Which Cinema 4D version do you
use currently?
9.1 Studio Bundle.
Which platform do you use/prefer - Mac or PC?
PC.
Any particular reason for your platform choice?
About 13 years ago I was running an Amiga 500 and had to get a PC so that
I could do some accounting and computer papers for a Business studies
degree that I began doing by correspondence. Windows 3 had just been released
but I was having to use Lotus 1-2-3 and Letter Perfect for dos. It's been
a PC ever since. I've built my own since about 1998. I've also been known
to play a few games. Before getting more into 3D I was hooked on the Wing
Commander games and Transport Tycoon. Don't think I've seen many games
for the Mac platform?
CRT or LCD and why?
CRT. Mainly because at the time I couldn't afford an LCD. I'm also a professional
photographer so colour is important. However with recent big price reductions
and image quality enhancements the next one will be an LCD. I'm running
a Philips 19" at 1280 x 1024 and an old 14" at 800 x 600 to
display pdf's / manuals ect. Occasionally I put the C4D timeline on the
2nd monitor. I use a HP laptop when I'm away from home in my job as a
School and Sports team photographer.
Default scheme and layout or custom?
I run a number of slightly customized layouts. One each for modeling,
animating, Mocca, Bodypaint 3D painting and lastly Bodypaint UV editing.
For the tutorials I try and keep things to a standard layout so as not
to confuse people and at a lower resolution. Occasionally I put the C4D
timeline on the 2nd monitor.
What's your favourite model/image/animation you have ever created
and why?
I hate to admit it but my favourite one was made with trueSpace however
it won me a copy of Bodypaint 2 in December 2003. Maxon USA very kindly
agreed to swap it for the core version of 8.5. The rest they say is history!!
 Anyway,
there was an animation contest at the 3DCommune site. First prize was
an XL bundle and second and third were Bodypaint 2 stand alone. I'd been
working on a plugin for trueSpace that generated animation from midi music
data and had only just finished it when the contest began. I had 4 weeks
to get the animation done from start to finish. I spent months of banging
my head against a wall trying to follow the trueSpace SDK but after some
help from a guy that did VC++ programming I came up with a rudimentary
plugin. The theme for the contest was "Turkey shoot". Something
to do with Thanks Giving it seems. You were provided with a turkey model
to use in the scene. The rest was entirely up to entrants so long as the
turkey was in there. I came up with an idea of "The Barn Comes Alive"
where everything within a barn was animated and driven by a midi file.
This was quite straight forward in practice although I had cut back on
some things as trueSpace couldn't handle the file sizes I was coming up
with of around 200mb. I'd never done character rigging or animation before
so took a couple of day crash course and animated the turkey from about
20 poses in time to the music. For me this animation is my favourite so
far. It proved my plugin worked and was to turn out to be a turning point
for me with the decision to get Cinema 4D R8.5. I'd been playing with
CE6 for a few weeks and was very impressed. Anyway here it is:
BCA.avi
(14.5mb, divx)
Besides yourself, do you have
a favourite Cinema 4D artist that you admire or are inspired by?
My main interest is in animation and while there are few very good C4D
animations out there the ones that I really admire and have gained inspiration
from are:
Wayne Lytle of Animusic
fame - The first time I saw these
midi driven animations I was just blown away. These have greatly inspired
me and I've said to myself. That's what I want to do. I've got a long
way to go to get anywhere near the level of Wayne but I did get a nice
email from him once about one of my animations.
And Jeff
Lew of Killer Bean fame - I just love what he did with a
$299 3D program!
What made you decide to start your own forum driven website?
After moving up to C4D I was starting to miss the monthly animation contests
that the Caligari site runs. I'd looked around the various C4D sites and
forums and no where had anywhere much where you could post an animation
or talk animation. My pal Crew Reynolds who also scored a copy of Bodypaint
in the same contest as me had upgraded to C4D as well. He was missing
the animation contests as well. The contests usually involved a bit of
light hearted banter as well. Anyway we'd been discussing the lack of
anywhere to post our animations when I jokingly said. "I've had this
silly idea. You know, we should start our own site". A few emails
back and forth and C4D Cafe was born
One of the wonderful things that
makes me (and many others) a visitor to C4Dcafe.com, are your video tutorials,
which are extremely useful to beginners and more advanced users alike
- how do you see those progressing and evolving over time?
Mmmmm, I think a time will come when we've pretty much covered
most of the basics that new tutorials will focus mainly on more advanced
techniques. At the moment I'm trying to mix things up and cover things
where I feel there is a need or what I'm currently interested in. However
all it will take is Maxon to bring out a new version and I'll have to
replace quite a few tutorials. Some of my first tutorials even after 11
months are looking a bit dated as they were recorded with 8.5, I've had
to start updating or replacing them recently.
How do you get ideas for new tutorials?
Do you just play around and say "Hey, this would make a great tutorial!"?
It's a mixture. Some come as a direct result of members asking for them.
We survive by the generous donations of members. Where some of the members
who have donated, have asked about something I've just put together one
or I might regularly see questions about something in the forums. I travel
away from home a lot and have a bit of down time in Motels without much
to do so I get the laptop and manual out and often just pick a tool and
swat up on it and play around modeling or animating. Often when I do this,
something flashes in my head and I scrawl down notes for a tutorial for
when I get back home. Once I got up to speed with R9 I decided to go
through some of the new and enhanced tools. At the same time we were working
on a review on R9 and wanted to tie in the review to some tool specific
videos.
You know, I never set out to make many
tutorials. Crew and I just thought we needed some way to attract a bit
of traffic to our site. After doing a few I found this was a great way
for me to learn the program as well as I really had to swat up on things.
You generously provide the current
tutorials for free, do you think you will ever decide to charge for them
or others in the future?
Hopefully not. However I'm working on a CD of Bodypaint tutorials "Discovering
Bodypaint 3D R2 with 3DKiwi". Around 5 - 6 hours worth and targeted
at those new to Bodypaint and those finding it hard going. I'll be selling
these from my on-line shop.
We're fortunate that enough generous members
have contributed to our donation scheme that we can continue to have tutorials
available for free for the foreseeable future. We ceratainly chew through
a massive amount of bandwidth.
Where do you see C4DCafe.com in
say 3 years, what is the future holding for the site?
Good question. I never in my wildest dreams expected us to have around
7000 signed up members in the 12 months since we opened our doors on 1
May 2004. I think what I would like to see is a continuation of the free
tutorials along with some more affordable video tutorials on CD. I'm keen
to do a Mocca rigging series of video tutorials. I'm very conscious of
the pricing of tutorials and not pricing them beyond the means of most
people. At the moment we're having some T-shirts printed. If that goes
well, we'll look at other merchandise.
We're adding a still image gallery soon
and we'll be hosting the images. I'd like to get to the point where the
site has more paid advertising that we can offer some reasonable prizes
and have regular contests for stills and animations.
List your 10 favourite C4D tools you couldn't do without and give
a brief explanation why on each please.
Boy that's a tough question!!
- XPresso - I take my
hat off to the persons responsible for XPresso. So damn useful and dare
I say it, easy to use.
- BodyPaint - I'm using
this more and more and had a lot of fun painting displacement maps and
using sub polygon displacement to generate real height.
- Simbiont plugin and
shaders - some beautiful textures.
- Mocca - I use the Posemixer
a lot in my animations.
- I like the 1-9 hotkeys.
Really good when you have a tool selected and just want move something
without deselecting the tool. I also use the space bar a lot to toggle
the last selected tool with the current.
Am I allowed to mention hardware? [Yes,
you are.]
2 things really help with Cinema 4D and
Bodypaint and thats my Microsoft
office keyboard. It has a big wheel on the left hand side and this
much easier to use for zooming than using the mouse wheel. The other is
my Wacom Intuos 3 tablet.
Only just got it but it makes a huge difference to painting in Bodypaint
- That's 7. Some of the new or enhanced
tools in R9 work damn well. The Matrix extrude tool
was good before but now that that we have real time updating it's so
good to use.
- I think instances are
great. Say you have tank treads. Just use the duplicate tool in R9 to make duplicates / instances around a spline. The duplicate tool
like Matrix extrude is so much better now in R9.
- And lastly the IK tool plugin.
Allows you to easily set up angle constraints for IK tags. A pain to
do manually.
What features would you like to
see added to future versions of Cinema 4D?
The timeline needs a bit of work. I'd like to see the
ability or option to collapse the 3 axes back down to 1 like it was in
version 7. Copying and pasting keyframes and sequences would be greatly
enhanced if you could input a whole list of frame numbers in a comma separated
list in one go.
Mocca - Maxon have
made great strides with bones and rigging but some tools like Claude Bonet
and the bone mirror tool are clunky to use. Some form of preliminary vertex
weighting would be a big help. I believe there's a commercial plugin for
the weighting but this should be built in. Motion blending. While it's
great that we've got it now in R9, it's still not a patch on blending
that Motion Builder has. Selecting controllers needs to be more visual.
Again Motion Builder does this a lot better.
Dynamics needs a
major overhaul. I almost think there needs to be 2 levels. A basic drag
and drop range of tools and then the more advanced stuff. You should be
able to drag a preset of rubber on to a sphere and a collider tag on to
a plane and then press play and the ball bounces like a real rubber ball.
Things are too complex for beginners at the moment.
Given the time, what aspect of Cinema (and related modules) do
you feel you'd like to learn/perfect next?
I've still to get down and dirty with Mocca rigging. I know the basics
but there's lots of advanced stuff I've yet to explore. I wouldn't mind
playing around with dynamics more as I used to have lots of fun in trueSpace
with it.
What Cinema 4D related forums/communities do you frequent/recommend?
Renderosity naturally plus of course my own C4D Cafe. The still gallery
at Renderosity is the one I recommend to people who are contemplating
buying C4D and want to see some samples. I pop into CG
Talk now and again but here and C4D Cafe are my 2 main haunts. Not
enough hours in the day for any more!!
What advice would you give to someone thinking of learning/buying
high end 3D software and the choices they could make?
Download the demos and manuals and give each a go for a few days. Try
a few tutorials and see which you prefer. Another important one is hang
out in the various forums and see what sort of support and comments people
are making. Look out for free tutorials as well. Watch any video ones.
If everyone is complaining about bugs and crashing you know you're going
to be in for a rough ride. Thirdly check out the galleries, stills and
animation.
Tell us something cool/interesting that you have done with Cinema!?
Well I'm just a keen hobbyist and still learning the ropes. However I've
modeled a clock from some plans for a real working wooden clock in a number
of applications. I've got a CNC milling machine and are slowly using the
exported object meshes to make the real thing. Here's the C4D version
and an link to animation showing the whole process:
3DKiwiClock.wmv
(5.5mb, wmv format - right-click and "Save target as...")
Tell us something funny!?
I'm told that I do a very good "Mr Bean" voice!!
Any closing thoughts, comments or tips!?
I guess you're never too old to have fun learning and doing 3D. For me,
half the enjoyment of modeling and animating is being involved with on-line
communites like Renderosity and C4d Cafe and interacting with other people
who share my enthusiasm for 3D.
On behalf of the Renderosity
Cinema 4D community, we'd like to thank you for answering these questions,
and sharing your thoughts with us!
Thank you!
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