c4d for modeling

[josephus]

Hi all,

 

Can someone give me feedback (either pos or neg) regarding the modeling capabilities and ease of c4d? I'm an architect (do very high-end traditional custom residential arch) and we recently switched to Archicad. I find the best way to use Archicad is to model walls, roofs, windows and doors in AC, then switch to 2d for the rest....only way I can meet project budgets. Archicad's 3d profiler is very cumbersome to use for "custom" windows, doors, surrounds, etc. I've used FormZ for many years (sold my 2 licenses recently out of frustration...too much crashing and not a good rendering engine, no parametric modeling tools...although that's all been promised), and know that the things that would be cumbersome in Archicad would be simple to to in FZ. Since FZ's rendering engine leaves much to be still desired, I wondered about using c4d to do the detail modeling left undone in the Archicad model and then render out in c4d. Any thoughts?

[edub]

I model almost exclusively in C4D. It's a matter of getting used to the worksflow - actually there are several, depending on your preferred method of modelling. I used to generate geometry mostly w/ primitive/ parametric objects, but lately I've been using extrusions of polygons and extrude nurbs of spline objects. whatever floats your boat, i guess.

 

Sometimes I think I could model certain things in FormZ with more ease, but I prefer not to have to switch apps, so i force myself to use C4D.

 

-erik

[josephus]

I also don't like going between alot of apps, so I'm hoping that particularly the kinds of modeling that Archicad does not do well, that c4d could do more easily. The roof tool in Archicad is incredible, and it does walls, windows and doors a lot easier than Architectural Desktop. So what I need is a modeler that works w/Archicad that will easily do complex door and window surrounds, shaped mouldings that follow arches, etc. Archicad can do those, but it's really cumbersome and time consuming, you have to create a separate object that can not be edited once it's made, so if you change anything, you have to make the object all over.

[bricklyne]

You probably should seriously take a look at MaxonForm if you haven't already.

 

http://www.graphisoft.com/products/archicad/solutions/maxonform.html

 

It's basically C4D's modelling engine pared down to allow biderectional integration directly with ArchiCAD. So it essentially allows you to create new objects ( specifically of the organic, freeform and curvilinear variety that ArchiCAD has never really been able to handle or create natively; prior to v11 anyway) from the live ArchiCAD model while the program is running so that everything fits exactl as it supposed to. It's like simultaneously running another instance of ArchiCAD that communicates directly with the original instance. It's pretty nifty. Plus, it's able to run most of C4D's plugins such as render plugins like Maxwell and the like.

 

The only drawbacks are that you have to learn essentially a whole new program or interface to use it effectively, (although most ArchiCAD users seem to have no problems getting used to C4D's interface) and unfortunately, the models and objects modified from ArchiCAD or created afresh from Maxonform are no longer parametric. This is supposed to be addressed in an upcoming update, possibly (and hopefully) in the AC11 version of Maxonform.

 

You should check it out. As for rendering, as I already mentioned, Maxonform willl run C4D's native plugins which means you can then render your model using C4D's advance renderer or even it's Maxwell plugin (although ArchiCAD's Maxwel plugin is pretty good in and of itself for getting direct renders from AC's 3D window)