NAB 2017 Interview - Cinema 4D Trainer & Artist 'Noseman' Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

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alright hey everybody its EJ again from
a design calm we're on the nab show
floor at the Maxon booth I'm here with
the Nasus aka nose man and he just got
done doing his presentation can you tell
us a little bit about what it was all
about well I presented some sort of
technique to create an organic
transition from a strand into a sort of
how my synapses look yeah anyway if you
go to my website noise man.org and
search for a little button called blog
and click on that and I've got two
entries which are two videos one of them
is that bulb you can wait for a few days
and check it out on c4d live.com yeah
yeah it was a good presentation as usual
you know I'm not very humble yeah so
you've been you've been doing the
training circuit for quite a while I see
you at Adobe video world a lot you're in
Denver once and you're doing a little
bit of training so how did you get in
the whole teaching and training of
cinema 4d well let me ask you a question
what do you think I started training
give me a year okay that's like how many
years you've been doing it yeah yeah I
would say at least ten okay so we are
2017 and I did my first training in 1988
yeah so it's 29 years in 86 right so the
shirt says established in 1986 yeah so
okay I was waiting for you to pass the
microphone I didn't want to okay so yeah
in 96 cinema4d came for Mac but before
that I've been training illustrator and
programs like a ready-set-go which were
page layout before anything else before
QuarkXPress and all that I had an early
start in training because I'm from
Greece and there was not much knowledge
going on and I was one of those kids
back then that got in kind of involved
in this whole desktop publishing thing
and I was lucky enough because a lot of
the things that happen in my life
because of good fortune and I got
involved with people that sold the
software and all that so I always had a
constant influx of technology and
software so and it was quite quick to
pick it up so I started teaching as far
as cinema4d goes
it was a huge coincidence back in 96 or
97 I happened to go with a friend - it
was called the leaf festival in the UK
at Wembley Stadium London effects an
animation festival and we watched him
lectures and I think they were about the
first mummy film how they made using
Softimage little spiders and all that
and after watching some not so
enlightening presentations so we got
half our money back because I complained
I was there with a friend we went on the
expo floor and it was one company it was
New Tech with what its name
Lightwave and it was kind of struggling
to render some little squares and there
was a group of tall German looking
people three of them and they had a Mac
and there was a scanline going down like
I've never seen before in a render it
was going like and immediately I was
attracted by this and that happened to
be the first version of cinema 4d for
Mac and PC at the same time because
before that it was on Amiga and going
back to Greece again
I'm very lucky I don't know I don't even
remember how I found it I found the
Greek distributor which was a one guy
and I used to write some little
magazines magazine articles about all
sorts of software and I went to him and
I said if you you know give me a copy
I'll write some articles for you and he
gave me an NFR copy and I started
writing things about cinema 4d and it I
mean the nature of the program is such
where it's very easy to pick it up okay
as we all know as we all know and so I
picked it up very easily and even though
back then it
wasn't very powerful it was amazing what
you could do compared to all the other
things I've done I had some exposure to
Silicon Graphics and Thomson digital
image and expensive machines you had to
write C code to make do anything just to
give you an idea so it was a stark
contrast anyway one thing led to another
I started trying to introduce 3d in
advertising because my main job was the
service advertising agency so you know
they were tell me what to do I'll just
do it that's why I am NOT an artist I'm
the hand and the nose yeah I became the
nose a bit later on the first that was
the hand then I was a nurse the hand man
didn't actually sound very well you have
all the body parts of engine we're
working towards that what so it was
interesting because they they had never
used 3d in visualization so I started
adding little things like little props
on images in my Photoshop compositions
are so forth and in 2006 I foresaw the
collapse of the weak economy two years
before anyone else and I told my friends
that things aren't going well and I went
to the UK of course everyone was
laughing for two years and then who's
laughing now huh so I went to the UK and
immediately there was I had a lot of
work offers because I used to work on I
don't know if I can say that but
cigarette packs so huge industry in the
UK for cigarette packs and if you go to
my web site you'll see my still images I
still have quite a few samples of
packages and yeah I started working
mostly to create 3d packages that of
course were better than photographs and
the this I am then I started working
through the introduction of Matthew
O'Neill mesh 3d fluff yeah yeah he
introduced me to a school that it's one
of those companies that did professional
training and I started training cinema4d
there and then I did some training for
Academy Class another great school and
yeah then I got involved with Maxon
personally in 2006 and it's everything
worked that's why I say a lot of things
are luck sometimes we think that we
actually you know achieve things by
ourselves but it's a I believe
opportunities that you don't miss that's
life you know I could be run over by a
bus tomorrow although you don't have
buses in this country that's another
story I can be run over by something
attractive you know that's the public
transportation podcast that we'll do
okay like a pickup truck with horns yeah
and there's nothing you can do about it
but when a good opportunity presents
itself you do have a choice and one of
the piece of advice I want to give new
artists is first of all you know develop
a style okay the best example is this
guy okay he developed a style that was a
picked up by some people and they loved
it and he worked on it and it's a
fantastic style and you will under fied
that in so many different artists any
person that's been successful in any
form of art is because their style was
unique and fantastic
and again this the best example okay so
let's change the interview so EJ how did
you start so is the world code anyway so
maximum is the best company I've ever
worked with
and both the Germans and the Americans
and they work in very different ways the
the masters of the craft of creating
engineering like you know the software
the Germans are second to none then the
Americans are the best two to sell it
and to give ideas and to you know show
how the market goes and is a great
collaboration and I sit right there in
the middle and yeah I know personally
most of the people that work for Germany
and some of them are some very good
friends of mine and with with the
Americans and Paul and Matthias and Rick
and Patrick and everyone else we have a
fantastic relationship and you know I've
just been lucky you know at the end of
the day I think that my
only talent was a problem solving and
I'm not really good at that
but I can pretend I am so it kind of
caters towards teaching making think
making people believe that you know what
you're talking about it that's it comes
down to and yeah and cinema 4d is easy
enough so I don't have to struggle with
many things which brings me to your next
question which is Houdini let's talk
Houdini integration that's fairly new
right yeah so it started I think two
years ago or three years ago when
project management from from Maxon
Oliver he announced that FMX that Maxim
was working on integration which was a
great surprise because the Houdini
engine had just been announced and it
was a fantastic piece of technology the
idea was Houdini's very procedural and
inside the program you can create a tool
by creating and capsule a ting a bunch
of nodes that give you an output
just like expresso you can create a next
group so you create some friction
allottee you put it in a in a group you
group it up and then you can reuse that
in any case well Houdini works
fundamentally in that way and they
thought well what if we got Houdini
seven and a half thousand dollar program
to become a plug-in for other DCC apps
and so they can use our tools and I can
I think this was a brainchild of Ken Zhu
for side effects and they they started
working with max on and although I
didn't know nothing about Houdini back
then I got involved because side effects
is in Toronto and I happened to be in
Toronto yeah I moved there in 2013 so I
was the closest let's say max on
Affiliate to Toronto and Oliver's a very
good friend and of course you know they
would do me the favor of sending me and
I started working with between maximum
and side-effects to help build the
bridge I didn't do anything technical it
was just that I was learning Houdini and
as I was learning it I would test
several things I want to try to create
this connection
and although its toll is still not
full-featured because it's a very
complex project it's extremely capable
because you can transfer any type of
Houdini attribute as a vertex map or
vectors color inside cinema4d
and it works fantastic with third-party
renderers it works fantastically with
all our other tools you can take you can
actually do that this is a hack I did so
that you can use any third-party
renderer that renders VDP sequences I
created a very simple setup in Houdini
that you can you take any object any
object input a mesh object it creates a
cloud out of that object a proper cloud
and saves a VDB sequence and then and
this was done as a cinema 4d Houdini
asset for cinema 4d so you would create
any number of objects anything you want
it could be cloners it could be anything
you want in cinema 4d put them under a
now make that null an input for the
asset and that would create a VDD file
save it to disk and you could render
that using Arnold in cinema 4d so with
this sort of triangular kind of
relationship we managed to extend to
bring more power from Houdini to cinema
4d and although Houdini is a very
difficult program as I say it doesn't
have a learning curve it has learning
step so you learn a brick wall you have
to struggle then you learn again the
it's a TD tool that's becoming easier
with each iteration but it's
technology's fantastic it's so so like
I'm very I don't know much about but for
people who who are out there that may
have heard of it but don't know exactly
what it is can you like explain what it
is for people who maybe have heard of it
but not quite sure what it does well
it's a strictly no-till based program so
there is the the concept of building
things the same way in cinema 4d you use
hierarchies so if you want to apply the
form to an object you put it as a child
or as a sibling that's what we call the
flow of data okay and in terms of how
Houdini works it's everything is like
expresser
so it's only nodes
exactly new anything that has nodes and
that gives it extreme procedural power
the problem is that because it's so open
and you can do so many things it's much
more difficult to master it side-effects
doing a great job trying to make it
easier but the benefit for similar for
the users even if you don't want to
touch Houdini there are some assets on
the orbit store which is their official
asset store but at the same time I
invite everyone that has an idea of
something they want to do to reach out
to me
you know you tweet me become a follower
on Twitter
getting a 1000 not yet I did pick over
50 today and hopefully yeah yeah I would
say cut the interview here and anyone
that wants to see the rest has to sign
up with my - ok yeah so anyway any ideas
this is this is something which is very
general but both instructors like me and
even EJ and everyone else and the bro
graph dudes they want ideas that they
want we we come to a point where we have
our own solutions and we work on them
but the most important thing is for
people to communicate to us their needs
and that actually gives us a lot of
material and insight to what people want
and I guess we all agree that we are
more than happy to use that feedback to
create new fantastic content for users
for education and assets and so forth so
anyway what I suggest is that you can
get a learning version of Houdini which
is called The Apprentice and it's for
free it has all the bells and whistles
everything but it has some restrictions
you can't create assets for example it
would make sense but you can learn
Houdini that way on the other hand you
can get a Houdini in the engine for free
so you can actually open Houdini assets
in cinema 4d without paying a penny you
don't have to pay for that privilege and
just go to the side-effects forum and
read about it you know or if you don't
know what the side-effects forum is why
don't you google Houdini software ok and
after going through five pages of
Harry Houdini yeah the way I do is you
write Houdini space - Harry and it will
give you all the results without Harry
Houdini yeah although it's interesting
to read about how did you know that
Harry Houdini died from internal I think
what was it his appendix burst because
he asked someone a kid to punch him and
he wasn't expecting it what people weird
he lives through all this stuff and get
killed by a five-year-old I think a 16
year old or something like that but
anyway I may be saying couldn't escape
the the 16 year old punch apparently
yeah yeah he wasn't prepared anyway so
that's what you learn when you're
searching for Houdini tutorials you
learn the life with him anyway but
having said that having said that I'm a
huge fan of cinema 4d and although I
used Wadena quite a lot up to this point
I haven't found a use case for me
because others have where I actually had
to to fall do something form with
Houdini and this is now just to give you
an idea
just to get the things together if you
learn Python good enough you can do 10
times more things in cinema 4d so if
you're in if you're going to invest in
some sort of knowledge before you decide
to go Houdini or learn something else in
cinema 4d just make sure you know what
you want to do and which of the solution
is going to provide you with the best
tools in your hope to have to move
forward because a lot of people just
take it on a whim start doing things and
it doesn't work out for them so do your
research and yet try it Houdini
definitely and reach out for ideas and
and whatnot it's awesome so that's a lot
of great advice where can people find
you on the interweb so you can get more
followers on Twitter and then your
website all that's at nose man gr nose
when the Greeks at nose mangia someone
got the at nose man if you're out there
release it so at nose man gr or if you
google nose man I come up first so how
many people can say that and you'll find
all my information just that don't call
me I live in Toronto don't call me when
I'm asleep okay so that's the only thing
I ask from you
all right well thank you so much for
taking the time out to hang out and talk
it's gonna have some beer down
yeah it's beer time thanks for tuning in
I think we're signing off from NAB so
thank you guys so much for tuning in
we'll see you some other time maybe next
year
NAB come on out here it's tons of fun hi
everybody
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