Thanks for the update Martin.
Cheetah3D 6.0 is out - What's next?
- Thread starter Martin
- Start date
Caustics
0
Hi folks, I digged this out from nearly one year ago ... And as Christmas is approaching and the Winter days become shorter and colder, I thought it would be nice if somebody could tell the 3D kids here a cozy story ... ;-)
Regards.
Regards.
In what way did 6.1 and 6.2 improve rigging and character animation? 6.1's big feature was retina support, 6.2 added a new unwrapping tool.
(I googled the release notes to check my memory: http://www.cheetah3d.com/news.php?n=41)
C3D hasn't evolved quickly at all since the release of v6. All we've gotten is some very incremental improvements and bug fixes. It's better than (say) two years of radio silence (cough Silo cough) but it's been a lean time for C3D.
(And, yes, I haven't finished Project Weasel. But it's not my day job, and I've done one or two other things in the mean time.)
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6.2 added more than unwrapping. See below.
Added ABF unwrapping
Added support for "Spline IK"
Added "Split joint" tool
Added "3D View - Single/Quad" hotkey
Added "Unwrap UV with ABF" hotkey
Completely rewritten loop selection (now with auto-highlighting, partial edge loops, faster, works in point mode, support for border loops)
Completely rewritten ring selection (now with auto-highlighting, partial rings, faster, works in point mode)
Improved support for Retina displays
Improved numerical accuracy of LSCM unwrapping
Improved Sweep object to maintain the profile shape through hard corners
Good point. Two animation features. (And spline IK is pretty cool.)
And he did say it would be pretty light. Which makes sense for point releases. I mean we did get bullet physics, and a lot of other useful tools in 6.
Spline IK is very nice. I'm working on a complex rig setup at the moment that utilizes it in the rigging of the feet. Similar to some of the functionality seen in a Rhiggit 2 demo I saw.
I really do wish for some sort of volumetric material, and for some sort of key framing enhancements like NLA.
Spline IK is very nice. I'm working on a complex rig setup at the moment that utilizes it in the rigging of the feet. Similar to some of the functionality seen in a Rhiggit 2 demo I saw.
I really do wish for some sort of volumetric material, and for some sort of key framing enhancements like NLA.
I looked over the 5.x releases, and by comparison 6.1 and 6.2 have been pretty lightweight (indeed, 6.0 is quite light compared to a lot of 5.x releases). Maybe we've been spoiled.
Spline IK is nice and all, but really we need some meat and potatoes stuff: volumetrics, motion blur, NLA. And there's a lot of low-hanging fruit (e.g. being able to find tell apart items in the hotkey list).
Though it seems a lot of core components were rewritten and improved. And version 6 was a pretty big update. Of course I would love to see more. Wouldn't we all?
As I said volumetrics, and NLA are at the top of my list as well. And a more interactive renderer (cylces, modo, etc) would also be incredibly useful. Motion blur isn't as important. While we could discuss the accuracies endlessly, I've found adding it in post is effective enough in most cases. And rendering Motion Blur is extremely time consuming.
I can't imagine NLA would be hard to add. We have some of the foundations in Takes, but no way to mix the takes together.
Another somewhat superficial thing I'd like to see improved are the app tool icons, and the organization of tools/tags/etc. I'd even be willing to rework the icons myself into a more modern, and professional look for nothing but credit. They should retain their base appearance, but get rid of that 1990 3D look.
As I said volumetrics, and NLA are at the top of my list as well. And a more interactive renderer (cylces, modo, etc) would also be incredibly useful. Motion blur isn't as important. While we could discuss the accuracies endlessly, I've found adding it in post is effective enough in most cases. And rendering Motion Blur is extremely time consuming.
I can't imagine NLA would be hard to add. We have some of the foundations in Takes, but no way to mix the takes together.
Another somewhat superficial thing I'd like to see improved are the app tool icons, and the organization of tools/tags/etc. I'd even be willing to rework the icons myself into a more modern, and professional look for nothing but credit. They should retain their base appearance, but get rid of that 1990 3D look.
I think motion blur is vital for rendering anything that moves, including particle and dynamics animations. There is a workaround, but it's barely practical for stills and unbearable for animations. So I think it's as big a deal as Volumetrics and NLA.
(I'd love to see SSS, and it has been promised for some time, but it's much less important.)
I said a while back that C3D could give up on trying to differentiate itself with its renderer (and just plug in Cycles, Lux, or whatever) and I'd be perfectly happy with that. I don't know how other people feel, but I think that C3D's renderer has pretty much fallen behind the curve and is never going to catch up. On the other hand, C3D's UI is so far ahead of the competition that this is where it should concentrate, so another option is to support external renderers (and thus get SSS, Volumetrics, motion blur, etc. for "free") and concentrate on things like NLA, rigging, modeling, UV-mapping, and so forth, that C3D can do better (or at least more simply) than any other program.
(I'd love to see SSS, and it has been promised for some time, but it's much less important.)
I said a while back that C3D could give up on trying to differentiate itself with its renderer (and just plug in Cycles, Lux, or whatever) and I'd be perfectly happy with that. I don't know how other people feel, but I think that C3D's renderer has pretty much fallen behind the curve and is never going to catch up. On the other hand, C3D's UI is so far ahead of the competition that this is where it should concentrate, so another option is to support external renderers (and thus get SSS, Volumetrics, motion blur, etc. for "free") and concentrate on things like NLA, rigging, modeling, UV-mapping, and so forth, that C3D can do better (or at least more simply) than any other program.
I just don't agree. It's so easy to get beautiful motion blur effects in After Effects that it's just not worth the added render time it would take. I recommend taking a look at what AE offers. The Pixel Motion Blur is quite accurate.
And volumetrics and SSS often go hand in hand since both are materials with actual depth. SSS is very important to simulate a great deal of materials accurately (marble, skin, fruit, etc)
I'd prefer an integrated solution, and for Martin to develop the current Rendering engine further. But develop some sort of Javascript render api where we can shoot out information to an external rendering engine which would allow community involvement to expand the rendering options.
filip c
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I'm no rendering expert but it would be nice to keep everythin included in Cheetah.
I'm sure Martin is very aware of our wishes and most of them will make it in furure versions...( I bet he has a list above his computer, like a sword of Damocles) It only takes time and our patience...
It's up to him which feature gets the highest priority...
Long waiting times for updates seem to announce bigger improvements or big new features... (Hopefully)
So far I've never been dissapointed. (Have been impatient, tough
now more than ever)
My wishlist: volumetrics/sss, audio ( very important!, preferably multiple tracks with visible waveform), NLA editor, multi-bones, deformation mesh/lattice, drivers, motion blur, set spline colour, nested particles, hair, ...
... Christmas is comming, let's hope for the best :smile:
I'm sure Martin is very aware of our wishes and most of them will make it in furure versions...( I bet he has a list above his computer, like a sword of Damocles) It only takes time and our patience...
It's up to him which feature gets the highest priority...
Long waiting times for updates seem to announce bigger improvements or big new features... (Hopefully)
So far I've never been dissapointed. (Have been impatient, tough
now more than ever)My wishlist: volumetrics/sss, audio ( very important!, preferably multiple tracks with visible waveform), NLA editor, multi-bones, deformation mesh/lattice, drivers, motion blur, set spline colour, nested particles, hair, ...
... Christmas is comming, let's hope for the best :smile:
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I've just stumbled on Cheetah 3D (again) after a long time, so I don;t know much about its development. Is there only one person working on it?
I know Cinema 4D had a small team, but more than one!
What I noticed with them, is they sort of worked on one major area on upgrades with some little gems thrown in and then one or two teasers.
One release introduced a muscle system (yippee!!), but it was VERY basic and later junked for a more robust system. So, adding features can be tricky.
Personally, I would like to see character animation improvements (rigging, auto rigging, jiggle effect, basic muscle, dope sheet, etc.) But, things like set driven keys would be awesome and I know nothing about programming, but it looks easy enough to add.
Anyway, still playing in demo mode. Not sure there's enough of what I need to buy it yet.
Bob
I know Cinema 4D had a small team, but more than one!
What I noticed with them, is they sort of worked on one major area on upgrades with some little gems thrown in and then one or two teasers.
One release introduced a muscle system (yippee!!), but it was VERY basic and later junked for a more robust system. So, adding features can be tricky.
Personally, I would like to see character animation improvements (rigging, auto rigging, jiggle effect, basic muscle, dope sheet, etc.) But, things like set driven keys would be awesome and I know nothing about programming, but it looks easy enough to add.
Anyway, still playing in demo mode. Not sure there's enough of what I need to buy it yet.
Bob
- Typically, vector motion blur is a near zero overhead on rendering time. (All it involves is making fairly simple calculations that are largely needed just to assemble the scene and storing the results in a buffer.)
- Pixel Motion Blur requires you to render extra frames, so the increased rendering time is far greater for Pixel Motion Blur.
- I am free of Adobe and trying to stay that way.
Hey I'd love both, but if I can only have one I'd pick volumetrics. While they might be spiritually similar, the implementations seem to be quite different (e.g. 3D Studio Max had decent volumetrics long before it got SSS support; OTOH Cycles has SSS support and no volumetrics).
Actually it´s 17 just in the dev-section. And 65 all in all. Don´t forget localization/tech-support/doc-writer etc/pp.
Cheers
Frank
Martin
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Hi,
yes, my original plans for the v6.x development changed quite a bit. Sorry for that. I should better not comment about future plans anymore. So I can't disappoint anyone.:wink:
The feature set of v7 was highly motivated by the wish list forum. So I'm sure that many of you will get at least some wishes fulfilled.
Since the v7 feature set was pretty ambitious I'm behind my original timetable although I already started very early with the v7 development this time. So v7 will still take quite some months. But it's definitely worth the wait.
v6.3 which will be released pretty soon and will offer approx. 30 bug fixes and minor improvements.
Kind regards
Martin
yes, my original plans for the v6.x development changed quite a bit. Sorry for that. I should better not comment about future plans anymore. So I can't disappoint anyone.:wink:
The feature set of v7 was highly motivated by the wish list forum. So I'm sure that many of you will get at least some wishes fulfilled.
Since the v7 feature set was pretty ambitious I'm behind my original timetable although I already started very early with the v7 development this time. So v7 will still take quite some months. But it's definitely worth the wait.
v6.3 which will be released pretty soon and will offer approx. 30 bug fixes and minor improvements.
Kind regards
Martin