Fish

Thanks everyone for your patience and help. Your suggestions addressed some of my issues but not others. For toggling the smoothing with Q I had to delete my shortcut prefs as I had made some changes and assigned q to something else. The solution of putting a null under the subD node and then everything else under the null. I guess that's a workaround. thought not very elegant. I mean all you need is two keys, 1 (not smoothed) 2 (smoothed) What you have selected gets smoothed and what you don't doesn't. It's not just different. it's different because It's simple, smart, elegant & efficient. Very different/ As for using spacebar to exit extrusion (or any tool) so it doesn't automatically repeat: its not a practical solution as it changes the attribute manager essentially locking me out of making any changes forever. Apparently I get one chance to execute the tool and after that I have to manually punch in values. And if you accidentally touch a keyboard key you're locked out. It's a completely illogical and ill thought out workflow especially since there's no construction history. I mean if you're not going to have a history stack then it might make sense to make finalization of a tool something very intentional instead automatic. Again not very smart. On a positive note I like their decision to make position and scale xyz to represent 3d space but rotation to represent aeroplane controls. That was smart. The should have made the scale controls HWD for height, width & depth. That way each transform control could have it's own "innovative" terms. XYZ for position. HWD for scale & HPB for roation. Not sure why they didn't do it that way. I also like that by default I have to execute 3 separate operation in order to get a vert (point) to snap to the grid.....and then another three to get them not to. Brilliant. Maya stupidly made it so you just hold the X key when you want to snap...release when your done. Soooo unintuitive. You have to move your index finger all the way from the Alt key to the X key. No wonder Maya is the hardest app to learn. :) Sorry for having infected your forums with whatever this is. Out of curiosity I checked to see what "X" does in C4d. Among other things it deletes your selection. That's smart. The key that deletes stuff is 3mms away from the key you rest your index finger over & press 50 times a minute. Very logical.

The interface/UI isn't the problem. Personally I find the UI's very similar. Sure things have a different names and they're in different places but that can be overcome quickly. I'm talking about workflow. An offhand example say I want symmetry. In Maya I select my mesh in the viewport, shift right click and choose symmetry. Maya is smart enough to know I want symmetry on the selected object. It's still doing the same thing C4d does. It's creating the node and connecting it to the mesh but it does it for me. If I want i can go into the nodes and do much than C4d can do but more often than not I just want symmetry on the selected object...so Maya does it, asks me which plane to cross and I'm good to go. When I'm done with symmetry I shift right click again and turn it off. No need to drop the mesh out of the node then delete the node then re select the mesh . Same thing with smooth preview. Smooth preview is something that gets turned on and off a million times when your modeling. In C4d you have to create a node and drop the Mesh in. Maya is smart enough to know that the object you have selected is the one you want smoothed. To turn it on or off I just hit the 1 or 2 on the keyboard. In C4d I have to create a node, I have to go to the object manager, drop the mesh into it and then click a tiny little radial button every time I want it on or off. And BTW after I turn it on or off I now have to reselect what I was working on. There's tons of other examples. Also once you learn to use mayas marking menus you can pretty much turn the entire UI off. And access every aspect of via marking menues that function off of 3 hotkey combination that give different options depending what you have selected. I could teach you to use it it one hour. Then there's the fact that there's no construction history which is a deal breaker for any serious modeler. I know there's the whole "your first is the one you love" but seriously that's not the case here. Maya is layed out in a more efficient and logical way and i quite certain I can prove it. Mayas whole pro workflow is based around radial menus. C4d has ONE and the things they chose to put in it are ridiculous. Open project? Initialize plugin? A radial menu should have the tools you use most...for the amount of times you open a second project during a work session it makes sense to have to go up to the proper menu to do that. You don;t put that function right at your fingertips and then put the important stuff under bizzarre shorcuts that that all start with U or W. U or W? Who's idea was that? I either have to mave my left hand to the other side of the keyboard or I have to take my left hand off of mouse. Sure I can customize all that but the fact that it's set up that way by default speaks to the design flaws inherit. In maya EVERYTHING is done through a brilliantly logical system using combinations of SHIFT, CTRL, SPACEBAR & Right Click...of course ALT Left Click is navigation so the entire interface is literally right at your fingertips. There's no having to learn 50 differrent two letter combinations that you have mover your entire arm to reach. Maya's interface is WAY more intuitive, intelligent and faster. Maya knows the difference between a key tap and a key hold...another reason why the entire tool set is put under your left hand without ever (hardly) having to move it from the position you navigate from. Basically my experience so far with C4d after watching about 30 or 40 hours of Lynda training through my works group account is that it takes 2 or 3 or even more steps to do what Maya does in one. Maya can be harder to learn because it goes much much deeper than C4D. If you want to get into connecting up nodes in custom ways and deep into the Attribute manager then yah...it goes way deeper than C4D. If all your doing is basic modeling...extruding, inseting, sliding, offsetting, beveling, pushing, pulling, etc...than May slaughters C4D in workflow speed and efficiency. Not to mention it's modeling toolset is unmatched. Sure theres an occasional crash but that still 100x faster than dropping stuff in and out of nodes & nulls all the time. You spend half your time renaming generators & effectors so your Object Manager doesn;t turn into a nightmare. Nobody, in my opinion or that I know, would leave Maya for C4d for any reason other than the price. I'm trying because of the price and because I use the mograph module which is better than Maya's. I figured if can get on board with the modeling module of C4d then I don't need two applications. I'm not sure what your experience is working with other applications which is why I asked in what way you thought C4D was the most intuitive and innovative. I was hoping for some reasons other than you being comfortable with the UI. I was hoping for some real reasons to stick with it. The only reason I can think of sticking with modeling in in C4D would be to stick another feather in my cap, so to speak. Looks good on a resume, you know. But honestly....I'm the kind of guy that if I had an interview with a studio and they told me they use C4D in their modeling department? i don;t know if i would want to work for them. lol. Yah...it has nothing to with the UI.

Hey, thanks. Yah my Maya subscription has about 6 months left on it. I figured that would be enough time to get comfortable with something new. When that ends I might go back to to maya 2013. I mean honestly. There's a reason Maya is still the Industry standard and I can tell you that reason ain't cognitive bias ; )

In what way?

First thanks. That's all really bery helpfull. As well as post to some other dude about how to grab code from the script log. Good stuff there, As for your NOT dumb question: I make my living with After Effects doing motion design and graphics & there's powerful integrations between the two application. Also C4D has very strong & stable MoGraph tools. Maya does too, now, with the MASH module but MASH is not as stable as C4D. Also Maya no longer has perpetual licensing. I think what I'm going to do is I am going to muscle through the model I'm currently working on in C4D but after that I will revert back to My old (owned) copy of Maya 2013 for everything except mograph. Heck...maybe I'll even take running jump at Blender. I hear good things about it and it's only zero dollars a month :)

OK. No rant just a practical question related to previous rant. I just split some faces off of a mesh, extruded them down but forgot to cap the back end of it. Now I can't find a way to re-access that extrude to add the cap. There is no way to do this? What I wound up doing was "fill poly hole", then I had to solo it and use the line cut tool to put back in all the topology. Please forgive my impatience,,,It's like I'm suddenly trying work left handed & blind. :(

Hi, (maybe you should just skip to the final sentence) I'm sorry I'm getting really frustrated this software. I have a bunch of questions. 1) I thought I'd be clever and drop 4 meshes into one SubD node because my object manager is getting filled with Subdivision nodes, but it only recognizes the top mesh. Is this really the modeling workflow for C4D? If I have a model with 100 meshes I have to have 100 subD nodes cluttering up the object manager? There's no global smooth preview? 2) Also is there a shortcut to drop meshes out of their hierarchy? Like in maya it's shift+p (un-parent) ? It's really distracting always having to go the object manger to drag things in and out of each other. 3) Is there a setting to stop tools from repeating themselves when I let go of the mouse button? For example I do an extrude and then if I accidentally click again in the viewport it does a second extrude? I would much prefer to have a hotkey to repeat last tool. Or have the tools be intelligent enough to know which one Should auto repeat (like insert edge loops) and which onses shouldn;t (like extrude). If I extrude and then drag immediatly drag a second time it should continue to tweak the current extrude, not start a new one. I f I don't get it right the first time I have to go into the attribute manager and start doing it there? OK, now I'm just compaining. SOrry. Which brings me to this....Is there a history stack? Where i can go back to tool actions and adjust them after later? Or I could go and find that accidental extrude and delete it? Finally...and I don't mean to sound petulant or anything...but in Maya I can work endlessly without ever taking my left hand away from the SHIFT CTRL ALT SPACEBAR keys and without ever moving my mouse away from the model. In C4d I spend more time out of the display viewport than I do in it. Even the shortcuts..."U"? It's all the way on the other side of the keyboard? Ultimately I would like to be able to model with only the viewport visible...in maya it's called "pro mode" Every function is available with combinations of the SHIFT CTRL ALT SPACEBAR & RIGHT Click. I (pretty much) never have to move left hand . So does anyone know of a pro-mode or workflow tutorial WHere I'm not constantly having to clcik through menus or UI buttons tutorial . Please someone explain to me why I should work this way? Has anyone here had significant experience in Maya? How did you adjust to these disruptive workflows? Two button shortcuts? UB & UL? For such commonly used functions? Meanwhile the ability to jump back and forth between different project they put in the radial menu? How often do you use that? Then MT for extrude, which get's used constantly I have to move my hand all the way to the other side of the leyboard?@@ Grrrr. WHat the heck!! Who made these decisions? !! END//////////////////////// OK...I'm sorry, and obviously frustrated. Just for now can someone please tell me how to get all of these Subdivision nodes OUT of my object manager? Please?

Cool. I'm gonna look at how to set those up. Thanks

You could just use the 'loop/path cut' tool to keep adding in one loop at a time next to the edges you want to tighten up, but if you want perfect symmetry the best method I know is to use the' loop/path cut tool' and then the 'bevel tool'. You can start with the loop/path cut tool to add a loop (hold shift to snap to 50%). Once you've added the loop hit U~L to switch to loop selection mode, select it and use the bevel tool to split the loop into two and drag the two new loopes out toward the other respective edges. There may be a better way. I'm pretty new to C4D myself

Hello Again, My learning is coming along nicely interrupt by waves of "C4D is different than Maya, go back to Maya. Screw This". But I keep coming back to it and liking it more and more as come to understand it. Here's my new question: Fooling around with rigid body dynamics I realized the the Rigid Body tag and the Collision tag are the same tag. One with dynamics turned on and the other with dynamics turned off. I investigated and found that in fact all of the simulation tags are essentially the same tag with different default settings. 'Presets', if you will. So now I'm wondering if this is the case with all tag "categories"? When I hover an item in the tag menu & the sub menu flyout pops up with all the 'tags' in that category, are they also all the same tag with different default settings like the sim tags are? I admit I could do tests to find this out but it would take a little longer than this post. I think understanding more of what's going "under the hood" will help me get past the superficial differences and see the similarities. Thanks, Paul

Great. That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

It does seem to not be the best for modeling, huh? I'm trying to keep an open mind like "I'm just not used to it yet" and "we all think our first 3D app is the most intuitive" but certain things just seem complicated in C4D. I just had to mirror some geometry twice and there were quite few steps involved until I had a clean, welded, editable mesh that wasn't under a null. I bought ZBrush a couple of years ago. I should really start using it. :)

Hi Dan, I started using Maya around 2008. The switch to C4d (or the decision to try it) is based on a few things. First my day to day work has fleshed out in motion graphics and design which C4D is stronger at than Maya and it's powerful integration with After Effects. Also Maya no longer provides perpetual licencing & the final nail in the coffin was their latest decision to omit any production quality fully functioning render engine. To be honest I love Maya & I don;t want to abandon it. I don't want to get into a "which is better" thing here but I'll just say I'm not leaving Maya happily. I'm leaving her bitter and upset that I have to leave. :)

OK Here's what I mean:

Hi, So I'm seeking the equivalent to important tools I used in Maya in C4D. I'm slowly making a conversion chart but I'm stuck on a tool I need/want very much at the moment. In Maya, when using the move tool I could switch to "Along Normals Mode" (or something like that) where I could essentially "slide verts" along a model's surface, tweaking the topology while respecting the overall curvature of the mesh. Maybe you have to be or have been a Maya user to understand what I mean? Anyway, is there an equivalent tool or workflow for C4D? Thanks, Fish