U-he REs release date

[ahs]

@urs

what are so difficult with the 3D. i guess you are using LW.

[Urs]

@urs

what are so difficult with the 3D. i guess you are using LW.

Well, my 3D skills have become amateur level over the years - I used to be fluent in Alias Studio and Maya, but now I can barely touch the depths of Cinema4D.

I don't know how much is public about Rack Extensions development, but I think it isn't a secret that part of GUI consists of materials and stuff stemming from 3D modeling technologies.

My initial thought was "Oh well, then we simply slap a texture made in Photoshop onto the panel". We tried that, and it wasn't nice enough. So I consulted with a friend who's a 3D guru. Over the course of two weeks or so we (um, mainly him) developed a workflow that took the elements from the Photoshop layouts and recreated them in the 3D world that REs live in.

So now we have a user interface that looks good and that takes not a single shortcut. There's no diffuse map or anything, everything is placed geometry, ultra-sharp text, multi-Level-of-Detail and so on.

In other words: It's future proof, and that's what RE is all about

[ahs]

why is c4d used ?
alias and maya are nurbs modeler and c4d are on the polygon side is that the reason ?
i am using c4d over years and know what you mean. the texturing is not easy but looks, if you are using procedurale textures, very realistic.

good luck !

[Crossinger]

why is c4d used ?

My guess: Propellerheads are shipping templates for c4d with their SDK.

[ahs]

templates ?
each layout has the own design of the developer

maybe realtime rendering !?
so you don't have to render each state of the knobs and the design is scaleable for bigger screens

[kmonkey]

templates ?
each layout has the own design of the developer

maybe realtime rendering !?
so you don't have to render each state of the knobs and the design is scaleable for bigger screens

Why are you making things complicated? Why is it important for you is it C4D or not? It could just be 3Ds Max or anything in between. As long as you can export (and you can) to 3ds format it doesn't matter anyway..

[Urs]

why is c4d used ?

Because that's what we have.

[Urs]

templates ?
each layout has the own design of the developer

Nope, the SDK comes with an extensive library of pre-manufactured items. Many REs I have seen use these.

We however build our own knobs and stuff. and we don't do "flat" front panels.

[ahs]

so you have pre defined 3d set's of objects made in c4d and have to render them ?
but if you are very good in maya and alias why do use c4d ?
you must not answer this question but i love to work with 3d programs and i am curious

[kmonkey]

so you have pre defined 3d set's of objects made in c4d and have to render them ?
but if you are very good in maya and alias why do use c4d ?
you must not answer this question but i love to work with 3d programs and i am curious

I am not urs but then again these questions are funny. You could easily grasp them by yourself. Example:

For start he said he have friend which is seasoned 3D artist. Maybe he prefer C4D and that's why Urs use it. Because his friend learned him everything inside C4d.

You said that you love working with 3D plugins and i assume it's pure amateur hobby. Because in the least time frame anyone working seriously with it will decide to study one program.

You seriously can not produce commercial pro products if you learn every possible program out there. You need to focus on one and just one and then use it and exploit it. A lot of people use and decide to use what is best for their workflow. That is about the same situation as in audio world. You have several leading applications and people use everything but if you look in commercial artist you'll find that often they use just one and they use it extensively.

In 3D software (again comparison to audio software) You can even export in various 3D formats and use in other software apps or collaborate in the same way one can export from audio application and send files to another person/application.

The only difference that i can see between this analogy is that 3D artist are not that much religiously blindfolded in defending their platform of usage - unlike people which use audio software and defend it and even claiming that one application is sounding different over another despite the scientific fact which is providing opposite answer (they are all same sounding)

Now let's clear that i am not questioning anything by you and your 3D artist quality. Your questions seems a bit funny but i decided to reply in the spirit off helping you to decide which application will you use (assuming that this is the reason for these funny question). So in my honest opinion if you are seeking for best 3D app to make GUI for audio plugin answer is - there is none. You just demo everything possible and decide what is best for you.

I started in visual architecture so now i use 3dStudio max and vray. I can render photorealistic GUI for plugins (i even created them) but you can't use them in RE (i see quite a few 3D obligations when doing RE's...such as same lighting sources for everything, specific texture usage (the look cartoonish), specific shadows etc.)

[Urs]

so you have pre defined 3d set's of objects made in c4d and have to render them ?
but if you are very good in maya and alias why do use c4d ?
you must not answer this question but i love to work with 3d programs and i am curious

The premade 3D objects were provided by Propellerhead. I have no idea what they were made with.

I use Cinema4D because it's affordable and relatively easy to use. My contact with Maya/Alias/3DSMax was during my studies, more than 10 years ago.

All I do in 3D is literally design and render a few knobs. As I said, I do that once or twice a year. It would be way over the top to do this with any of e.g. Autodesk' offerings which require mindboggling copy protection methods.

[kmonkey]

It would be way over the top to do this with any of e.g. Autodesk' offerings which require mindboggling copy protection methods.

Hahaha that is so true..

[Urs]

It would be way over the top to do this with any of e.g. Autodesk' offerings which require mindboggling copy protection methods.

Hahaha that is so true..

Seriosuly, I would have loved to invest in Maya. But there wasn't even a shop to buy it from. At that time one had to send a letter (a letter, not email!) to Autodesk to receive information about the purchase procedure. That turned me off, and Maxon got business (ordered online and got it the next day).

Urs

[ThomasHelzle]

For the curious:
I used a mixture of different softwares for the interface elements I was working on for the RE:
"Moment of Inspiration" is my go-to tool for NURBs, Softimage "XSI" is my favourite polygon modeller and Luxology "modo" had some features that helped a lot with other areas.
"Thea" Render was used to do parts of the backpanel, as was AfterEffects and of course Photoshop.

Like with audio, different tools are best in different areas, so over the years I got more and more into a multi-tool approach since I work in very different areas of 3D.

And believe me - 3D artists fight just as vigorously over their choice of software as musicians

Cheers!

Tom

[ahs]

@tom

thankyou for your inside look !