One of the tools I use as part of my day to day monitoring is called Logwatch; this extremely useful tool can be compiled to run on almost any Linux system and I have myself had it running on Debian, Gentoo and Ubuntu to name but a few distributions which include it within their software repository.

Installing Logwatch.

Assuming you have already su as root, are logged into as root, have correct administrative privilages or are simply using sudo at the beggining of every command; do the following to install logwatch:

apt-get install logwatch

Depending on your distribution of linux, apt-get might be replaced with aptitude, dkpg, Yum, up2date, etc. Once this has been done, logwatch should now be setup and the daily cronjob setup, however by default logwatch wont send emails and will instead output its daily reports to the root users local mail account. If you need to change this do the following:

nano /usr/share/logwatch/default.conf/logwatch.conf

Then find and change the following information within logwatch.conf:

Output = mail Format = html MailTo = test@email.com

Once you have done that, save and exit the file (Ctrl + O for save and Ctrl + X for exit). Next you need to update the cronjob and tell it to email the daily report to your email address by doing the following: first open the daily cron00logwatch:

nano /etc/cron.daily/00logwatch

Then find the line begining with /usr/sbin/logwatch it should be below the line saying #execute. By default it will mailto root so you need to change it to your email address so it looks something like:

/usr/sbin/logwatch --mailto test@email.com

Once you have done all the above you will have logwatch installed and setup to email daily reports. The default reports include httpd (apache), users logging in through sshd, PAM errors and disk space alerts. Logwatch is incredibly configurable and you can find or write additional functionality to your requirements. Certain other packages such as fail2ban are also monitored by logwatch so you are able to monitor the number of failed and banned logins.

Firstly open up cinema 4D and hit the F5 key so as to bring up the multi angle view then create a new primitive cube and make it editable by pressing C. Next select the choose polygons button and select the top face of the now editable cube, right click and select extrude after which then press and hold the left mouse button anywhere within the selection and drag the mouse right (shown step by step above). Alternatively you can just enter a number into the offset value in the tools browser (shown in image below). For this tutorial I extruded each of the faces of the cube however to give a smooth transition for each bend you have to extrude a short way and then a longer way as shown in the image below.

Once you have a model looking something like the above image, create a new hyperNURBS object (step one in figure below) and place the modified cube as a child of it (step two in figure below). This will result in a smoother version of the model before.

Now what we need to do is place a weighting on the ends of the pipes so as to flatten them. Weighting as a way of telling the hyperNURBS where to apply its modifications. To apply this weighting you need to select the edges of the modified cube using the edge selection tool (numbered one in the below image), then to enable the hyperNURBS attribute you need to select the pointer tool (numbered two in the below image). When selecting the edges of the face you might find it easier to press shift while selecting and then if you select the wrong edge press CTRL and select the wrongly selected edge to deselect it (method numbered three below).

Once you have selected all four edges of the face, you should be able to see the hyperNURBS preferences in the pointers preference panel (shown below) set the strength to 100% and press set, then repeat for all the other faces so that you have four pipes extruding out from a central point.

Now we have half finished the model as well as learnt in detail how to use the hyperNURBS function. As the second half of this tutorial focuses on creating a translucent glassy texture we need to now hollow out our model so that the texture will work. To do so copy and paste the hyperNURBS object and rename the two inside and outside respectively ready for using a Boole for the hollowing. The material I am going to later show you how to make works best when the walls of the container are 1m thick or less so the inside object will need to be precisely resized so that it is within this parameter.

Before we begin with resizing the inside object we need to first extrude its pipes so that when resized and booled they extend out of the outside object thus carving out the pipes inside completely. So as shown in the above image extrude each of the faces of the inside object. Once done select the inside cube object in the object browser then the polygon select tool and press CTRL + A to select all polygons in the inside cube (as shown below as step 3), then right click and select Normal Scale (step 4 below) and enter 99% into its preferences and press enter (step 5 below).

This will result in the shell being 99% the width of the model which is just what we want, next place the inside and outside objects into a Boole in the correct order so that you have a hollow pipe structure as shown below.

Before I begin with showing you how to create this texture, I must first begin with explaining a little how it works. This texture uses Cinema4D’s subsurface scattering shader which takes a light input from a light within the scene and uses it to manipulate the luminescence of the material absorbing the light. This makes it a most excellent shader for producing glass materials which respond realistically when lit from the inside such as a glass lighting fixture. So the first thing to do before creating the new material is to create the light source which its going to reacting to. When you create the new light object it should automatically be placed in the centre of your model, unless you have moved the model around from its original position, just make sure its near enough centre if you have. Next go to the materials browser and create a new material and apply it to the Boole containing our model.

Within the new material deselect the colour and specular attributes and select the luminance one, within the luminance preferences click the arrow button for the texture preference and select Subsurface scattering (as shown step by step in the above image). When rendered your model will now look like the below image, as you can see the material is reacting to the light, absorbing it and emitting it again, while luminescence depends upon the thickness of the walls.

We now need to customise the material to the needs of our model as its default settings wont take into consideration our models maximum thickness amongst other things. Therefore, click on the button now labled Subsurface scattering and enter the below settings, you can choose any colour here (step one in below image) however if you like the orange shown here then its RBG values are R255 G182 B0.

Next select specular colour and give it a slightly lighter colour than the one you chose before and then select Specular and enter the settings shown below.

Once rendered you should have something which looks like the below figure as you can see the walls where all the pipes connect are a little too thin this can be remidied by simply resizing the inside object to say 95% of it original size. Also as this is a low polygon model the render will look a little blocky, you can play around and experiment with things to change this.

I hope that this tutorial has helped you in some way, if you have any questions or comments then feel free to post them using the form below.

Original German Tutorial of which this is a partial translation of viewable here.

So without much further ado I bring you the first in my series of Cinema 4D tutorials, you might find the titles or subjects quite odd but then again they are subjects which I have searched google for and come up with nothing so I thought I would share how I went about doing what I had hoped to be shown how to do.

First things first, open up Cinema 4D and press F5. This brings up the following four viewpoints in the main screen (in Clockwise order) Perspective, Top, Right and Front. This is most useful for getting things aligned right and knowing how they will look along all three axis. If you then press the middle mouse button on any of these views then it will enlarge to take up the entire view upon which pressing the middle mouse button again returns to the four view, view.

Next select a new cube and select its attributes, as you can see (above) I have made it 100m tall and a width and breadth of 250m. I also changed its vertical position to 50m so that it is flush to where the X and Y planes meet. This cube will be the outside walls of our room therefore rename it to “outside” by double clicking on its name within the objects browser. The next step is to produce the shell of the room and the inside wall, we shall be using a Boole element for this.

Duplicate the outside wall and then create a Boole element. You can duplicate an object simply by selecting it and then pressing Ctrl + C followed by Ctrl + V, well it’s the only way I know of. Rename this duplicate outside cube, inside. Then change its size so that you have a 10m thick wall and that its height is 10m taller (that is X=240, Y=110 & Z=240 if your too lazy to think). Next place both cubes within the Boole using the objects browser the outside wall being on top of the inside wall as shown above, when quickly rendered you should result in something looking like the image below.

Now you have the basic walls of your model, you need to give it a floor. For this you could simply raise up the inside cube by 10 meters and then later on paint a texture on the floor face for the carpet, wood veneer, etc. Or if your lazy just produce another cube resize it to the dimensions of the inside wall and have it so its height is 10m and place it on the floor. I choose the first option for this tutorial as it allows me to fit in showing how to do selective texturing as well as being the most efficient so far as render times go.

Now the room has a floor and four walls, it needs a door and some windows to finish it off before we texture it. These can be done much in the same way as the room was created. Therefore rename the Boole element “Walls” and place it within another Boole element, then create another cube and resize it to the dimensions you want your window to be at and place it on top of the walls Boole in this new Boole. Sounds complex but it really isn’t the above image shows you what mine looks like and the below image is the rendered result.

Now I’m sure you are able to make some more windows and a door without my guidance, so I shall leave you to that and continue with the tutorial. To texture our room we need to first make it editable, so the first thing to do is select the inside and outside objects and press C to make them editable (as shown in the below image).

Next select the button marked number 2 in the above image so you can begin to select the faces of your model to be textured. You might have to spin the perspective view to underside the room to be able to select the boxes floor rather than its top – or at least I had to. Now you should have the bottom face of the inside cube selected the perimeter of which will be shown as red. Now from the Selection drop down choose set selection (see #1 in image below).

Now you have the floor selected within your object browser double click upon it and rename it to floor. Now create or load a texture and drag it onto the inside object within the object browser and double click on its icon once it appears there. Then within the selection text space enter “floor” or what ever you named the face selection. Now when rendered you should get something similar to what you see in the below image, just the floor texture being rendered.

You can use the above technique to texture the rest of the room, having different textures for different walls, etc. A rug can also be placed in a similar fashion, but I shall cover that in a separate tutorial i’m going to write tomorrow.

As a bonus I shall now continue with some radiosity rendering to make the scene look ultra cool. First off you need a floor and sky element in the3D world. Now as this is a mock up you don’t need to use any form of detailed sky texture for the sky, as they take ages to render and when your just mocking up anything longer than 60 seconds is an age so save all the detailed texturing until you have finished the room and filled it with what ever you think of filling it with. Create a new material and give it the same settings as shown in the image above, the brightness is set to 170% because it provides the final image with a lot more dynamic range, for more information see this tutorial here. Next go to render settings and select Radiosity, the following settings are best chosen to give the highest quality render with the largest dynamic range and least amount of incorrect visible artefacts.

Just incase you cant make out the settings shown in the above image they are as follows: Strength:100%, Accuracy: 90%, Prepass Size: 1/1, Diffuse Depth: 1, Stochastic Samples: 300, Min. Resolution: 20 and Max. Resolution: 150. You will also need to go into the Options within the render settings (four down from the Radiosity in the above image) and turn off Auto Light. Now your ready to render, this will take a while and Radiosity has to make a lot of calculations but the end result it worth it. My version took 4 minutes to render, that is with just one texture and at 640×480 but the quality of the render is ultra high and well worth the wait. The time to render will increase the more object you include into the scene and the more complex the textures you use, but overall the wait is really worth it in the end. Below you can see my final render and the end of this tutorial.

I hope this has helped someone, if you have followed this tutorial then please leave a comment. Also if you have any questions or ideas for tutorials that you cant find anywhere then please leave them below in the comments section and I shall have a go