Review : 3Dconnexion - SpaceExplorer for mac

Yes, thats my blue glowing knob!After a couple of weeks of demoing, I decided to get a 3Dconnexion SpaceExplorer. 

I went with the SpaceExplorer over the base SpaceNavigator as it has more mappable buttons which would prove useful in my workflow, and the SpacePilot PRO, isn’t well supported on the mac anyway (and its an extra £100) and with my concentration on Cinema 4D, all indications are it would work great.

There’s no getting over the fact that it’s a lovely bit of kit, the main knob, has a lovely feel, and the buttons have a very reassuring click to them. 

It does work great………….. at work, where I use cinema 4D r12.5 studio, but at home on R13 something has broken within the last couple of weeks, maybe its lion, maybe its cinema, maybe it’s the driver. Whatever, for the moment I can’t map buttons in C4D R13, which is extremely frustrating and really highlights my main issue with the 3Dconnexion experience.

Its a premium hardware device and like my trusty wacom, you feel that there’s going to be a good view years of use out of it. The thought of not having access to it as I pondered whether to keep it or not did leave me feeling somewhat bereft. This is because for the first time you get a uniformity across control schemes in your 3d apps, which, when it’s working is worth every penny.

What generates that uniformity is the customisation you can use, both in travel direction of the mouse, but also in consistent mappings of functions to buttons, such as fit object etc, which makes sketchup’s navigation work, just the same as maya, just the same as Cinema 4D - bliss.

When you get the hang of driving your app using the space explorer, its a lovely feeling, being able to move or manipulate your model using a truly intuitive control method, really does ‘engage’ you with your work.

Using the 10.0.4 drivers it’s a doddle to set everything up to your liking, and even though the drivers are in BETA, 3Dconnexion are lightly pushing users towards them.

And its this thats the core of the frustration, software support, both from the 3D app vendor’s and from 3Dconnexion is from a customer’s point of view, (especially on the mac), is at best haphazard. 

Support for modo is a great example, in a nutshell there isn’t any, but using the  BETA 10.0.4 anywhere drivers, you can assign buttons to the space explorer to drive some hotkeys, which does speed you up. 

However, if you want full control of the 3D app, and the developer doesn’t want to add support for the device, even when it’s users are asking for it, does mean that you literally have a useless glowing knob in your hand, and no one wants that now do they.

There are little signs of driver ubiquity across platforms (pc drivers are more up to date, and are updated more frequently, mac drivers haven’t been updated since April 2011 (before lion). 

There do seem do be signs of life on the PC side where the anywhere drivers are at v11, with the ability for users to create their own profiles, with stabs being made in both modo and Zbrush. The PC drivers were last updated in August, and the Mac drivers haven’t been updated since April, and even then the user made app profiles aren’t platform agnostic, so mac users need to roll their own

Despite it all I am happy with my purchase, as I am using the space explorer every day on OLD software in work, and I can navigate in C4dR13 but until the driver issues are fully resolved, for now I would be hesitant to recommend any 3Dconnexion device on OS X until you have had a chance to play with it first, to really see if its compatible with your apps. I would not buy one unless you had a return policy setup with your retailer, just in case…..

Update on Friday, October 28 by Creativebloke

Hussah, managed to fix the Cinema 4D r13 button issue, by binning everything called 3dconnexion in my Library file, rather than my normal trashing of the prefs. This included the cache files, so can now touch buttons as well as my knob when using Cinema - Genius!

review diary - escape studios 'zbrush for 3d artists' part 3

Hard surface modelling in ZBrush 3.5 is doable….Well, its been a long time since the last part of the review. The good news is that I finally finished the third part of the Escape Studios ‘ZBrush for 3D Artists course’. What a ride its been, lows and highs and yet another step closer to getting my head around everything in ZBrush 4.

This section of the course dealt with mechanical sculpting, and was very challenging, the main part was constructing a M61 gas mask directly in ZBrush, as this module progressed, you could see how constructing the base mesh in traditional 3d app such as modo or Maya would be advantageous to a quicker workflow, however, the course showed how, at a push admittedly and to be honest very pleasantly surprisingly, ZBrush could be used as a reasonable 3d modeller.

There were however a good few issues with this section, some were solved, when Pixologic released GoZ for modo 501, which helped me with an understanding of workflow back and forth. However, having said that the workflow into Maya is nicer due to the creasing options that are available as was discussed in the second module of the course.

The main issue is that the gas mask section of the course was created in ZBrush 3.5 and while the major elements of ZBrush 4 haven’t changed,  some of the buttons and brushes have, this meant a couple of things, one was sometimes a wait while the ever helpful and patient tutors at escape came to our rescue to say which button had changed.

 The other was that due to other courses which I had used outside of Escape, and also by remembering some of the elements that had been taught in the previous escape course modules, I couldn’t help but feel that a lot of the gas masks elements were potentially redundant due to workflow enhancements that have occurred in ZBrush 4. 

Not all was a waste, the planar brush segment for example was a great source of useful tips, and one that I would keep coming back to. ZBrush 4 does make things a lot more streamlined, and there were times that some of the Gas mask section was like doing homework within your homework.

What would be especially vexing, is that some of the secondary videos would show how ZBrush 4 could have made the stuff you had just been learning in ZBrush 3.5 irrelevant.

For completeness sake it was good to know the methodology used, but honestly, it would usually lead to more frustration and confusion than was necessary. This spoiled the experience of what had been up to that point a clear and concise course.

I feel that Escape really need to reevaluate this section of the course, as well as address having courses across software versions. This is detrimental to the pupils learning experience, moreover, it makes you feel that your potentially not getting a good deal as lesson’s are obviously not up to date, as it’s now nearly 10 months since the release of ZBrush 4.

This was thrown very much into light, when the second shorter part of the course was accessed.
….but Hard surface modelling is a lot easier in ZBrush 4, and the escape course.
This was a brilliant introduction into both shadowbox, the reason I finally stepped up and bought ZBrush 4, shadowbox blows me away everytime. It also showed some of the new clipping brushes in the latest release as you constructed a lego minifig. This part flew past, due to the well structured and very clear instruction. It really cast the first half of this course in its shadow(box): boom - tish.

Even though this section was hard work, and as I said, part of that was to do with the divergence between ZBrush 3.5 and ZBrush 4. It’s becoming more obvious to me that the benefits of doing a long and intensive online course like this with an app as deep as ZBrush 4 is really worthwhile for a couple of reasons.

First of all you do get a deep, deep understanding of what the software can do and what it can’t do. The interesting thing is that this course is showing me that ZBrush especially in version 4 can almost be considered a truly standalone 3d app, if your primarily into producing 2D concept art, say like me, this is potentially really exciting for someone, again say like me, who just thought ZBrush was just for sculpting.

The second is that while I was in the middle of this module, I had to knock out a very quick test image for a contest I was doing with my primary creative team, the image wasn’t production ready, but it got the point across to the team. It took 15 minutes to create the image in ZBrush, with help from GoZ to get the original mesh in from modo.

No other app I have could have made that image that quickly. In fact no other app I have wouldn’t have made that image.

More importantly I wouldn’t have been able to make the image and realised I COULD make the image, if I hadn’t slogged through this module as it relied on a lot of remeshing and projecting sub-tools.

ZBrush is an awesome app especially in version 4 for 3d and 2d artists, and the Escape course more than does it justice, just let’s leave ZBrush 3.5 behind please.

review diary - escape studios 'zbrush for 3d artists' part 3

The M61 Gasmask, yup hard modelling is a go in Zbrush 3.5Well, its been a long time since the last part of the review. The good news is that I finally finished the third part of the Escape Studios ‘ZBrush for 3D Artists course’. What a ride its been, lows and highs and yet another step closer to getting my head around everything in ZBrush 4.

This section of the course dealt with mechanical sculpting, and was very challenging, the main part was constructing a M61 gas mask directly in ZBrush, as this module progressed, you could see how constructing the base mesh in traditional 3d app such as modo or Maya would be advantageous to a quicker workflow, however, the course showed how, at a push admittedly and to be honest very pleasantly surprisingly, ZBrush could be used as a reasonable 3d modeller.

There were however a good few issues with this section, some were solved, when Pixologic released GoZ for modo 501, which helped me with an understanding of workflow back and forth. However, having said that the workflow into Maya is nicer due to the creasing options that are available as was discussed in the second module of the course. 

The main issue is that the gas mask section of the course was created in ZBrush 3.5 and while the major elements of ZBrush 4 haven’t changed,  some of the buttons and brushes have, this meant a couple of things, one was sometimes a wait while the ever helpful and patient tutors at escape came to our rescue to say which button had changed.

The other was that due to other courses which I had used outside of Escape, and also by remembering some of the elements that had been taught in the previous escape course modules, I couldn’t help but feel that a lot of the gas masks elements were potentially redundant due to workflow enhancements that have occurred in ZBrush 4.

Not all was a waste, the planar brush segment for example was a great source of useful tips, and one that I would keep coming back to. ZBrush 4 does make things a lot more streamlined, and there were times that some of the Gas mask section was like doing homework within your homework.

What would be especially vexing, is that some of the secondary videos would show how ZBrush 4 could have made the stuff you had just been learning in ZBrush 3.5 irrelevant.

For completeness sake it was good to know the methodology used, but honestly, it would usually lead to more frustration and confusion than was necessary. This spoiled the experience of what had been up to that point a clear and concise course.

I feel that Escape really need to reevaluate this section of the course, as well as address having courses across software versions. This is detrimental to the pupils learning experience, moreover, it makes you feel that your potentially not getting a good deal as lesson’s are obviously not up to date, as it’s now nearly 10 months since the release of ZBrush 4.

This was thrown very much into light, when the second shorter part of the course was accessed.
But hard surface modelling is a lot easier in ZBrush 4. Thanks to Shadowbox and the new clipping tools
This was a brilliant introduction into both shadowbox, the reason I finally stepped up and bought ZBrush 4, shadowbox blows me away everytime. It also showed some of the new clipping brushes in the latest release as you constructed a lego minifig. This part flew past, due to the well structured and very clear instruction. It really cast the first half of this course in its shadow(box): boom - tish.

Even though this section was hard work, and as I said, part of that was to do with the divergence between ZBrush 3.5 and ZBrush 4. It’s becoming more obvious to me that the benefits of doing a long and intensive online course like this with an app as deep as ZBrush 4 is really worthwhile for a couple of reasons.

First of all you do get a deep, deep understanding of what the software can do and what it can’t do. The interesting thing is that this course is showing me that ZBrush especially in version 4 can almost be considered a truly standalone 3d app, if your primarily into producing 2D concept art, say like me, this is potentially really exciting for someone, again say like me, who just thought ZBrush was just for sculpting.

The second is that while I was in the middle of this module, I had to knock out a very quick test image for a contest I was doing with my primary creative team, the image wasn’t production ready, but it got the point across to the team. It took 15 minutes to create the image in ZBrush, with help from GoZ to get the original mesh in from modo.

No other app I have could have made that image that quickly. In fact no other app I have wouldn’t have made that image.

More importantly I wouldn’t have been able to make the image and realised I COULD make the image, if I hadn’t slogged through this module as it relied on a lot of remeshing and projecting sub-tools.

ZBrush is an awesome app especially in version 4 for 3d and 2d artists, and the Escape course more than does it justice, just let’s leave ZBrush 3.5 behind please.

review diary - escape studios "zbrush for 3d artists' part 2

 

L_O, after a lot of Transposing (not going to show you his left too foot, alright!)

Remember in the first part of my review I said that there wasn’t enough practical elements in the course, that there wasn’t enough actual ZBrushing. The second module of the course obviously had read that and slapped me about my complaining face with a vengeance. 

The first few lessons of this module dealt with sub tools by using a pre-existing figure called L_O that was provided as a download by escape in one the early lessons. This well made simple little .OBJ stayed through the lessons which dealt with polygroups, how to mask them, unmask them, hide, deal with various ways of handling sub-divisions including creasing and how to disperse sub-tools properly in the sub-tool menu.

Then we went onto transpose, again the tutor, the excellent James Rumball, dealt methodically, (I don’t know why I would say this as I can pause the video whenever I want) and patiently with the major features of transpose.

It took me two nights to properly grasp transpose, and the thoroughness that the subject was dealt with helped, but there was almost information overload.  

The culmination of this was the task of reposing the model and all its various sub groups. This if I am honest was a bit too much, and I was floundering for a while, as I had forgotten (no excuses here sunshine!) from the previous lesson the shortcuts and methods to hide polygroups, as I hadn’t made the connect to go back to edit mode, before switching back to the ranspose mode of Scale, Move or Translate. Once I got that though I was chugging away. 

I hit another problem. The course had outlined best practise, before any major work, of setting a morph target for any sub tool that’s being used, so that you can always go back to your base mesh in case you need to start over. I kept finding that the way that I saved projects incrementally would mean that sometimes I would lose my morph targets. I experienced the same with the Transpose Master Plugin which had been a major part of this sequence of lessons, by incrementally saving with a mesh which had been created from a variety of sub-tools, I lost the ability to disperse this mesh back into its sub-tools once it been transposed. 

So this is where I started to use the inbuilt question system  to ask what the problem was. I asked the question at approximately, 9pm, next morning I had an answer from James the tutor, explaining what had happened, and why the transpose master meshes won’t keep their bindings to the original sub-tools when you save in ZBrush projects. So don’t use transpose master if your in a rush or an unstable system. 

Again there was a lot to do, but I got somewhere. My one criticism of the L_0 model section on transpose, was that it was a but full on, although you learned a hell of a lot, mainly by brute force, I think that the finesse required to handle this model correctly was potentially too advanced for so early in the course. But then this is a premium training series and therefore I guess handholding should be at a minimum.

However, I did find that once you got cracking in terms of shortcuts for transpose on the keyboard you were away, so effectively transpose was learned - woot!

The next part of the module dealt with Subtool management and integration With other 3d apps. Now the more observant visitors to my site know that I love me some modo, as my primary app. Apparently there is other app called Maya, people reckon it may catch on, so do Escape and if you don’t like Maya, then the rest of this module would cause issues. One of these apps isn’t Zbrush!

This is primarily due to the way that Pixologic develop Goz, don’t get me wrong, its great that Pixologic make Goz, because if they didn’t getting stuff in and out of zbrush is……convoluted. 

The main issue I have is that of time of writing Goz for modo 501 still isn’t out yet, its been promised since xmas, and apparently is due literally any day, but it ain’t here. You can use modo 401 with it’s version of Goz but you really don’t want to, especially if your on a mac.

Looking back on the L_O start of the course, you could argue that the way the course dealt with basic mesh importing is redundant because of Goz, it’s not, Goz works great, but you need to understand the basics of file I/O in ZBrush to get round hurdles, which a reliance on Goz can bring. 

I also discovered with help from James and the team at escape again using the rather spiffy q&a tool that all not versions of Goz are made equal, a chunk of the second half of this module concentrates on using creasing in Maya to enable hard edges in ZBrush, rather than using the native tools in ZBrush. 

This approach makes perfect sense, and I had learned the hard way with my initial dinosaur sculpting, that having a decent polygon traditional modeller (in my case modo) is essential to doing any kind of professional work with ZBrush, as development of the base mesh is the key to a decent sculpting workflow.

The problem is, that creasing as demonstrated in the tutorials only works in Maya, so if you don’t have access to Maya, this module may be difficult to complete. Remember I’m on a mac, for the life of me I can’t get Goz to work with Cinema 4D, but it’s poly modelling tools are pants compared to modo and as I’m starting to find out Maya as well. 

Once I had got over my Maya aversion, (took me two weeks of stubbornly sitting on my hands to progress), I blasted through to the end of the module. The brilliant thing about the way the course developed through this module, is that you found yourself using transpose, and append and insert subtool with help from Goz as if it was second nature.

There were issues with some parts of this module. The entire series is split across versions 3.5 and 4 of ZBrush. Most of the fundamentals haven’t changed, but I’m starting to notice a habit of being shown a workflow in a tutorial which specifically dealt with ZBrush 3.5 which were made redundant by following lessons, a good case in point being taught elements of the plugin, Subtool master, to be told in a subsequent video that a lot of features in this plugin had been rendered effectively redundant due to improvements in ZBrush 4.

Previous lessons I have taken with other vendors are always version specific with Zbrush, and while it is good that Escape recognise this with the additional videos, I feel that considering the cost the course should cover a specific version. ZBrush 4 has been around since last summer, I think its time training for version 3.5 was put out to pasture.

You may have noticed, that I haven’t done much sculpting yet, it looks like this is coming in the third module, so that’s exciting. But the grounding that Escape are giving in ZBrush does mean, that although you may not be getting to the fun stuff straight away, at least you know how to drive without stabilisers when it comes to integrating ZBrush into your workflow, and for that this training is worth it’s weight in gold. (I realise that the course is virtual and therefore has no weight as such). 

I will try to make the interval to the third module review quicker than the month that has passed since the first module review  and with the quick look I have just taken at module 3 it looks like it will be a blast!

Creativebloke Book Review : In the Trenches with modo by wes McDermott

Luxology’s modo is my weapon of choice in the 3d world, it’s speedy interface, exceptional modelling tools and out of the box renderer do more to make me look good than any other of my software tools and I love it and the community of modonauts quite a bit.

Now 3d isn’t easy, and one of the issues I have with modo is that some of it’s tools are fairly impenetrable, also as it’s a newish app, tutorials are only now reaching saturation and can suffer from over complication which can be hard to decipher for your own needs.

Oh also the documentation for modo isn’t great the reference which comes as a searchable local website is really useful, but the PDF of the manual isn’t intuitively ‘diggable’.

Thankfully Wes McDermott a artist with UPS (which actually looks like a killer job) seems to have suffered with these issues as well and has written this book to answer a lot of the ‘how do I do that’ questions.

It uncovers a lot of the new tools in modo 401 which you (me) don’t allow ourselves time to fiddle with, (Item snap who knew), it also brought home to me how important the middle button is.

All the major topics are covered by going through the basics of modelling, lighting, rendering, etc but tend to focus on the elements you new to know to get something out in a hurry.

Wes’s job needs his workflow to allow his models to be exportable to other apps, and to be fair why not. If i had had this book a couple of months ago it would have taken away a lot of worry I had working on a FBX export project, the downside to this approach is that a lot of modo’s unique qualities are left undiscussed especially with regard to procedural textures, but since most models need to go somewhere it’s an understandable rational.

This has instantly become my quick reference for modo and will probably live in my pack, thankfully it’s not too heavy, and McDermott’s writing style is clear, friendly and quick to read. There is also a ton of content to go along with the book which is available online, for the price this book is a steal and if you use this link you help fund creativebloke.com.

While it may not be in depth enough on every topic, uv’s for example only look at the unwrap mode it’s by a margin the best modo book out there if you want to get up and running.