Software plugin roundup - slightly impatient edition

C4D, in my opinion, needs a slew of plugins to work efficiently and some I just can't live without. Nitro4D has always ben a great recource for both free and paid workflow enhancements and recently I splurged on a few recently released one - Nitro viens, Nitro SVG and Notro relax. beins lets you draw vines branches and trees quickly and even has a way to make them move subltly as though blown by wind (I have osme project that I will need this for soon), SVG lets you import SVG files eaisilywhich avoids the problems importing AI files, exsprecailly since i stopped using Illustrator any more, and relax will square of your geometry which is super important when making things for animations.

X-particles, is an essential plugin as well and as I paid some pretty good money for a maintence version, I was worried there would be no updates bfofer my current contract ran out. Not to worry, they just has a new feature laden update which has a ton of improvements. I am still waiting for faster and easier smoke and fire. I like Turbulence Fd which integrates reall well with X-particles but i would like to have one plugin set up for those sort of things.

My impatience is the result of the wait fo the 1.7 updates of the Affinity line of software. Publisher has been  on the ocming soon list for so long, years in fact it's getting discouraging and it's release is holding up Designer and Photo it seems as they all use the format. The public beta for Publisher has potential and will beworth the wait miost likely but Photo has tome issues, like a crashing bug when when doing batch exports that won't be fixed until 1.7 and it's become a workflow problem. I am hesitant to use the betas for Designer and Photo for real work.

On the more fun side, I have been replaying the Myst saga since they were all released on Steam. They were not updated with new graphics but they they are still fun, if not frustrating at points. I still love the look of the worlds and thanks goodness for cheat sheet and videos online.

Plugin Odds and ends

Echo remover

http://www.crumplepop.com/fcpx-premiere-audio-plugin-echoremover/

This was on sale as a new plugin from Crumplepop and as I had decided 500$ was too much for the only other noise remover for Final Cut X, 50$ seemed very reasonable. It has only  couple sliders but I found it to be effective and did what it said it does. I am sure the more expensive plugin had tons of features but as I am not a sound pro, this was really perfect for making the sound on the Million Year Picnic doc a little nicer. 

Turbulence FD (with X Particles)

https://www.jawset.com

I have just stared to use this plugin, which produces realistic smoke and fire effects in Cinema 4D, but it has already been useful in the Look Kool, the Tv sow I do effects and animation for. 

http://www.tvokids.com/shows/lookkool

It was far too money for my tastes, but C4D has no way to do smoke,water or fire (unlike pretty much every other 3D program now, including free ones) but it produces great results, quickly. To really get the most out of it, you need to couple it with X particles, bing the total price to almost 1000$ CAD! I already had X Particles so I took the plunge and am hoping to get more effects work as a result. Everyone loves explosions. Besides the high price, another negative is Jawset provides links to tutorials, but doesn’t provide any themselves and many of the tuts listed cost more money. They look great but for the fee Jawset charges, there needs to be at least some basic training included. 

Reelsmart Motion Blur

http://revisionfx.com/products/rsmb/motion/

This is a pretty amazing plugin. It does one thing, which is to put a motion blur on things in After Effects, Motion etc (each program added costs more). Again, not cheap but C4D motion blur can look great but at a HUGE time cost in rendering and this basically adds a almost nothing in terms of render time and has a lot more control. For the TV show this means a clip that would have taken 2 hours to render out can be reduced to 45 minutes and I can play with the amount using keyframes and test blurs without having to re-render in C4D. Plus the site has quite a few video tutorials to take you from knowing nothing to very competent in a  short period of time.