More Cinema 4d!

So I finally got to rendering with Cinema 4d. One thing forsure is that it was way easier setting up the scene to render then Autodesk Maya. For a very long time, and even still, I have trouble rending stuff with Maya. I guess watching Greyscale Gorilla's tutorials in the past help a lot to getting around how the texturing objects. I played with a couple of effects as well with bending shapes.

I also got a little into thinking particles with reading some in-dept tutorials. It seems like Xpresso is the substitute for scripting for Cinema 4d. That make me feel better due to the fact that I don't know any about scripting, well next to nothing, ha.
Maya is heavily based on scripting to get some jobs done, so making this transition to another 3D application seems to be getting better.

Here are a couple of screen captures.

Cinema 4d!

For awhile now I've been really meaning to get to digging into Cinema 4D & really learning it. I'm pretty familiar with the fundamentals of 3D applications from my experience in Autodesk Maya. The button layout is the main thing that is bugging me so I spent some time fixing up the controls to be similar to Maya, worked out pretty well.

I really like playing with the dynamics system in Maya & the Cinema 4D dynamics setup was pretty easy to get into since it uses the same terminology. Played around till I got to rendering, it seemed to be off & not responding to what I was setting up the material to render as. Called it a day with learning what I could. Hopefully I could figure it out soon.



I made it out during the weekend to shoot some photos of my friend Rachel, attempted to do some head shots but found out quickly it is much harder, ha. The sun seemed to get tucked underneath(or ontop?). Had to work with what I had...

My friend Laura came too, she helped with fixing Rachel's hair. We had some fun after taking the headshots. Hopefully editing the photos will go smoothly since it a bit more serious this time rather then some fun color correcting.

Solution for Automated Tasks.

Automator & Compressor have been two programs on the Mac I've been wondering about for a good while now on to use them properly. Well Automator I did really have clue what it did, Compressor I knew exactly what it did but was just familiar to the interface.

I took the time to figure out what Automator did exactly & it's something that I've probably needed for a good while. Basically a script builder that is made for people that don't know how to write scripts for computers. I've always always been interested in learning scripting for computers but was just overwhelmed by all the confusing characters 'n what not. This program is perfect for me.

I highly suggest people that spend a lot of time filing & organizing there computer to learn this simple program. Take some time to look on YouTube to figure out the basics & in about twenty minutes you'll be making formulating scripts that are fairly simple but very help for with sure automated tasks.

Anybody that is familiar with Final Cut Pro is sure to heard of Compressor, over all a batch exporter for codec for videos. This program is useful when you just had captured a batch of clips & wanted to export the codec to say Apple Prores, H.264, & so on...

Finally got to learning the interface & using it properly. Its definitely a big help in exporting videos. I use to do all exporting work just with Quicktime Pro, it helped with learning the rounds about compressing video with changing the settings manually but not Compressor is a bigger help.

Another Daily Challenge Ahead! & Sunshine Cleaning

Since I've been done with the "A Photo a Day for 50 days Challenge" I decided to do another challenge that is similar. The challenge is for 15 day (possibly 30) & consist of me designing something & animating it for 1 second. I was planning to do this for a while ever since I was inspired by Steffen K's "30 Motion Tests in 30 Seconds". It's a good time to do it for myself since I've been trying to work on portfolio. I'm not sure if I could take the challenge on during weekends but I will see hot it goes the first couple of days. I'm first taking the time to get some inspiration for it following a strict design style so it all weaves in nicely when I'm finished & ready to edit it all together. I plan to use mostly After Effects & Maya all of it. With Maya I'm sure I'll be creating a lot of Dynamic Simulations.

Hopefully I can start in the next couple of days. I'll deff have to concentrate on this one more since it's a lot more time consuming.

You can Peep Steffen K's work:


On another note I got caught up with watching 'Sunshine Cleaning' on Netflix tonight. I've been meaning to watch this movie for sometime & couldn't settle for just watching half of it, so I had to finish it even though I had planned to work on some stuff.

The movie was pretty good. I may want to buy the DVD depending on if it has commentary.
This was my most favorite frame of the movie, wish I had it higher resolution. Maybe I should post a single frame of a movie that I like every time I finish one. Sounds like a good idea?

Birthday boy, Half Life 2 Series Complete, & Last Photo!

So for the last time, for my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I didn't really put a lot of energy into my last photo for this project since it was a lazy day as it was. My friend Laura came over till the strike of midnight to my birthday & she had given me these gift. My computer has a Darth Vader to chill with now & now I can sip some toxic liquids while I work hard on my computer, THANKS LAURA!

I learned a whole lot in this project from the basic use of the camera to set the correct exposer to editing photos in post with the CR2 settings to just plain old photoshop fixes. Definitely will be doing another photo project like this again but probably with an edge to it.


Expect a more intensive daily project to come about that doesn't deal with cameras, well kind of!


Well on another note I finished the series Half Life 2, which includes Episode 1 & 2. If I were to call myself an actual gamer at all this game would definitely be on the check list a long side many great games. So even though it was a small vacation from hacking away on my computer After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Maya, etc. I think of it as a education vacation learning what makes a great game with a real good storyline, which Half-Life 2 definitely has. G-Man is probably the biggest twist of all in this storyline by far. I gotta thank my friend David that I met at Santa Monica College for getting me into Valve's awesomely awesome games. I guess my next little vacation that I will let happen will be for Portal 2. Dog was by far the best character in the game by the way, even though he didn't say a single word. That I think is the key, "Silence is Golden". I dunno if that even made sense, anyways.

As well my birthday just ended a couple of hours ago, I'm now officially 21...
There's not much to say about being 21 & not being a big drinker. I guess I could gamble now? Haha, I'm sure I won't be doing much of that at all too.

Wasn't it Suppose to Rain Today?

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I attend the 'Sausage Fest' at the Vault Skatepark. It was quite a fun day, lots a good friends coming together to ride some bikes & watch people ride. It was suppose to rain this day but which ended in the very opposite weather, a blue sunny sky... On the way to my car I noticed the clouds coming over the hills & I was standing on some rail road tracks & thought of it to be a good shot. In the post I did a bit of tweeking in the CR2 settings in photoshop to make the colors saturated & leveled between every section of the photo, since some of it was exposed more then other parts. I had to go beyond the CR2 settings to achieve the look I was trying to get so I went into photoshop & did a bit of masking & adding contrast in the clouds. Changed the colors a bit too with the overall look of the picture to make it more of an aged photo (I guess?).

Close to the end & Failed Plan.

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" for day 47 I took a photo of what my back yard ends up to be when you go threw the gate. When I moved here about a half year ago I was pretty siked on having a gate to a park & would think I would spend a lot of time there but I never do, ha. Well I've been there a few times, but definitely not enough.

For day 48 I had quite a mission planned out after I got out of work late on Friday to go to a building under construction. The building is still in it's base structure form right not & that was exactly what I wanted. What made it better was there was a parking structure right next to it, which would made it easy to snap a high photo of the under construction building. So I headed there after work & came to find out there was no way into the parking structure since it was being used by the construction workers unless if I jumped some pretty high fences but would probably end up with security catching me. I'll probably make another attempt at snapping a photo there, maybe for the last day for this project. So I ended up taking a photo on the way home that I've always had in mind to take a photo of but wanted to take it while it was raining, which it was :D