|  Cool
surname! - any relation to that other guy? ;)
My grandma traced it back, and the only chance I may be related, is that
some of his illegitimate children were given his surname! It's funny,
everyone always says they like the surname, but I've always felt hugely
shy and embarrassed with it!!
Where are you from and where are
you living today?
Originally from Brisbane QLD, raised by fundamentalist Baptist parents,
escaped to big bad Sydney when I was 24, and currently live in Surry Hills,
Sydney.
How old are you?
Just turned fortythree - hi kids!
What can you see from where you
sit now?
I'm at work at the moment, and we're in the 26th floor of a building in
Sydney city - I can see lots of other big buildings.
Coffee, tea or something stronger?
Lots of coffee for daytime and lots of beer and wine for night time!
What was your first ever interest/experience
in 3D/CG?
I've always loved 3D, and for 15 years I made cartoon sculptures
out of 'Super Sculpy' which is like a plasticine you cook in the oven.
I was becoming bored with it though, quite a tedious process. I know
CG is too, but this was a lot more physically tiring-lots of kneading,
sanding, painting and running around all over the place trying to
find miniature accessories! |
 |
Do you use Cinema 4D as a hobby,
for learning, or for pro work?
I bought it with the aim of replacing my clay sculpture style and thankfully
it's worked and now I get much more 3D CG work at the paper than I ever
did with the sculptures!
When and why did you decide to make Cinema your weapon of creative
choice?
I have a few friends in the illustration/web area, and I got a few good
recommendations about it. I downloaded a demo, and really liked it, joined
Renderosity, found a bit more info and decided to buy it.
What other 3D software have you
used/still use, and why?
I started with Adobe Dimensions and actually gave it a go for a few months
would you believe! Then I got a free CD of Strata Studio from a magazine,
tried that for a while, but it was very frustrating not being able to
do true polygon modelling - needless to say they make lovely beer coasters
now!
Which Cinema 4D version do you
use currently?
8.5 core with Advanced render, Bodypaint2 and Mocca.
Which platform do you use/prefer
- Mac or PC?
I use a Mac, but I'm not pro one or the other - in fact sometimes I wish
I'd got a PC. There's alot more stuff available for them and Mac accessories
are very expensive.
Any particular reason for your
platform choice?
My girlfriend had a Mac when I started learning computers!
CRT or LCD and why?
I've swapped over to LCD now, and I was a bit worried about the colour
translation, for print, because the LCD's are much more vivid (and our
imaging dept use CRT!). I dimmed the brightness a bit to try and compensate,
and it seems OK. Imagine a world with uniform monitor colour - what a
wonderfull world that would be!!
Default scheme and layout or custom?
I've always hated swapping between the modelling and bodypaint layouts.
It's a very neat feature I know, but I wanted to do everything from the
one layout so I modified
a BodyPaint layout heavily so now I can model and paint seamlessly.
I've got a 26" widescreen at home and two 19" at work so I use
a modified version of this one for the double screen setup
 What's
your favourite model/image you have ever created and why?
Probably Mother's
Lost Son would be a personal favourite, mainly because it was
my first car and quite a challenge. Cars are a nightmare to make and
I found it very tedious, but glad I did it. I t was also fun doing
my own version of those old Ed Roth hotrod cartoons - I love making
robots too, although they're a pain to make! |
Besides yourself, do you have a
favourite Cinema 4D artist that you admire or are inspired by?
Awww - I hate picking favourites - I did it on my artist page and I'm
slowly adding to it as I get to know everyone's stuff.
 Your
work has a unique slant in style in that it is very 'cartoon like'
but rendered very realistically! How did you arrive at this style?
The cartoon style is pretty much the same as my 3D clay/drawing style.
I've always liked that 'plastic toy' look so I've tried to achieve
that. I started off originally using 'normal' lights but then I saw
an image in this gallery using HDRI and was fascinated by the realism,
so I had to try it! I probably use it a bit too much - I had to do
a job
recently with HDRI but using several lights as well and I was completely
lost. Something I should practise up on. But there's a certain magic
about HDRI that I just love - I don't love the render times though!! |
Did you work with traditional media/illustration
before 3D?
My main work has been 2D illustration - cartoons caricature and humorous
illustration. It was all pen and ink until 5 years ago, when I decided
to get off my bum and learn how to use a computer. Very scary time, but
the more I did it the more I loved it. I still use pen and ink - I have
to do about fifteen 2D drawings per week, mostly still hand drawn, but
now coloured in photoshop.
Besides your work for the newspaper,
do you do any other freelance work?
I've just started getting a bit of 3D freelance work - had to make the
top half of a skeleton for a medical ad which was fun! The great thing
with 3D CG is you get paid for it, you get the folio piece, and you get
to keep the model!
Your images all appear to be rendered
using HDRI/Radiosity, often with no apparent additional key lights. Since
this adds significantly to render times, do you use any conventional scene
light setups when testing materials etc. or do you just use the default
light?
True, I hardly ever use any other lights, I test everything from
scratch with HDRI/Radiosity turned on, becausethe colours always look
different with 'normal' lighting. I mainly do 'render region' tests for
colours and lighting and then full screen renders along the way. I've
got a fairly fast G5 (they're never fast enough though!) which helps,
but the radiosity settings I use are reasonably quick for test renders,
but still take a looong time for the final. I mainly use Dosch
HDRI now, which I highly recommend, but I've gathered a great free
collection from trawling the web. One of the best I found, which I used
on most of my Robot stuff is Shademaster's 'Apartment High res' (thanks!)
- really good all round image - and it's on our
free page!
Any disasters with deadline timing
using 3D/HDRI?
You bet! When i first started using radiosity, I had a cover illlo to
render (with my old 800 mhz G4), and it was due on a Tuesday. I started
rendering on the Monday morning thinking it would be fine, by Monday night,
12 hours later, it looked half done on the render bar. At this stage I
was getting a little concerned! I decided to leave it overnight, but to
my horror the next morning it was still only showing 3/4 done and it was
due in 5 hours. I realised it wasn't going to make it, and luckily I had
a low res rough at hand which I decided to botch up in Photoshop the best
I could. I felt terrible, but it taught me to allow a few days before
deadline in case something goes wrong. I've now managed to get the renders
to a managable time (3-10 hours) but each scene is different, and often
hard to predict - I've learnt to do a test render overnight at half the
final image size to give me some idea.
Any favourite trick?
One of my favourites, and almost essential when doing big long renders,
is Cartesius's 'render
region' trick. If you want to make changes after your final render-
simply rerender only the section you want changed then cut/paste in Photoshop.
Brilliant!
List your 10 favourite C4D tools
you couldn't do without and give a brief explanation why on each please.
- Edge Ring and
Edge Cut - use them all the time - so handy for those tricky
poly row cuts
- Polygon
Axis plugin - if you select a group of points it gives
them their own axis
- Edit surface > disconnect
- great for setting up nice cutouts on objects
- The good ol' Cube with
a HyperNURBS - almost nothing you can't make with it!
- The Snapping Tool in
BodyPaint - tedious job, but I love that 'snap' when
the points join!
- The Magnet in modelling
- once you get the hang of using it in perspective, it's so quick
- Just the way you can 'paint'
selections with the Live Selection Tool
- Bridge - top fun!
- Weld - again top fun!
- Extrude/Inner Extrude
- easy modeling and fun
What features would you like to
see added to future versions of Cinema 4D?
I hate the Bezier splines in Cinema - I avoid them at all costs! After
Illustrator they're total rubbish!
Still on Bezier handles - I dearly wish
BodyPaint had them. Would save alot of time swapping between that and
Illustrator.
I'd like filleting tools in poly modeling
- like extruding a perfect cylinder from a sphere etc. Does R9 have that?
[No, but the bevel tool is enhanced now to help with that effect -
kromekat-Ed]
I find it annoying that a lot of the important
top menu commands disappear when you change to a different layout!
A faster renderer or a plugin like the
one you can get for lightwave (don't know name) that multiplies the speed
[FPrime? - kromekat-Ed]
BodyPaint is too confusing - seems like
there's about 6 things you need to have checked at one time for painting
to work. I do love it though!!
All the UV tools - move, magnet, snap etc
are still way too jerky. Better than BP1 but still slow.
Given the time, what aspect of
Cinema (and related modules) do you feel you'd like to learn/perfect next?
Gosh where do I start? My learning curve has plateaued big time! I work
about 60-80 hours a week to fit the 3D work in and I find I'm only learning
in increments now. I know absolutely Zero about shaders - I only use Photoshop
maps, my lighting knowledge is very embarrassing. Mocca I bought ages
ago but haven't looked at yet - sad, eh?
What Cinema 4D related forums/communities
do you frequent/recommend?
Mainly here at Renderosity and a bit at CG
Talk. I surf both all throughout the day - it's like checking the
news, isn't it? I don't have time to chat much, but I love watching the
gallery waiting for new stuff to come in. I love this site the best -
CG Talk is very in depth which is great, but here is quite relaxed, friendly
(so is CG Talk), and it's unique that you can run your own gallery page.
And the free
stuff section is brilliant.
What advice would you give to someone
thinking of learning/buying high end 3D software and the choices they
could make?
I think if you just want to do stills, Cinema is a brilliant choice -
the renderer is very good, the programme is fairly easy to come to grips
with, and I find it very quick to work with. If you want to work for a
3D production company you'd be wiser to go for Maya or Max at this stage...
until Cinema takes over the world!! As for learning, there's an immense
amount to learn and if you want to progress with 3D you have to put large
blocks of time in. If you practise a few hours a week, it will take forever
to move ahead. I was in a mad rush to learn, so when I got Cinema I took
2 weeks off work and just sat at the computer 8 hours a day and hammered
myself with tutorials. By the end, I still didn't know heaps, but it was
a fantastic headstart and sped up the learning process bigtime. Then I
realised when I got back to work that I didn't have enough time to do
everything, so I decided to get up 2 hours earlier at 6am and practise
before work. That was 2 years ago and I'm still getting up at 6am! - It
is an illness!
Also these forums are brilliant for learning.
I use the search engine too in the forum - I've discovered dozens of tips
just by doing a search on a topic and reading old posts. And all you lot
are really helpful! One more good trick is to download models from the
freestuff section here, and look at how these models were put together
- can help a lot to see how deformers, materials and object hierarchies
etc. work.
Tell us something cool/interesting
that you have done with Cinema!?
The chrome skeleton I just made for a print ad was top fun - I'll post
it soon. Big challenge but fun!
Tell us something funny!?
I never use cameras, only the perspective view - is that funny or stupid?!!
Any closing thoughts, comments
or tips!?
One of my favourite phrases - "hang the expense! - give the cat another
goldfish!"
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! |
