For the past several months I have focused on learning Cinema 4D. It's fun to learn and use and I find it more user-friendly than Lightwave, which I have been using for the past 11 years. As usual, I'm contextualizing my learning around a project: a science fiction action sequence of alen ships attacking a city and being counter-attacked by a defending force. What else? This will compel me to learn C4D for modeling, texturing, lighting, camera movement, and effects creation and animation.

So far I have built he attack ship, pictured above, about a dozen hero building destined to be blown up, the city layout, and have started building the defender ships of various designs. For this project, I've chosen Raygun Gothic style, from the futuristic designs of the 1920s-1940s. This is my first foray into art deco scifi and it's been a learning process. When I was younger I didn't really care for this visual style and lately I've been warming up to it.

The attack ship, rendered above, is based on a concept drawing for a Russian space ship, circa 1949. I discovered the images here.This image (I think) shows two ships being built in space and the small sphere in the tubes is to carry work crews from one ship to another, and the whole assembly rotates end-over-end. The ship I've modeled is one ship and rotates end over end, and the small sphere will slide in the tubes between the larger spheres as it rotates. For this ship, the small sliding sphere is an energy pod and when it makes contact with either end od the ship, it fires a death ray from the pipe at the end of the top. Thus, the barbell shaped ships spins, the energy sphere slides from end to end, firing death rays as the ship revolves.

This is about the fifth model I've built in C4D, the first being Marconi and Edison light bulbs, which will also find their way into this action sequence.