why not cinema 4d?

[Hirazi Blue]

They should hurry, because my Autodesk subscription is up for renewal and a good offer from Maxon is the one thing that could possibly sway me ATM...

[MauricioPC]

They should hurry, because my Autodesk subscription is up for renewal and a good offer from Maxon is the one thing that could possibly sway me ATM...

Hirazi, talk to Maxon. They're usually very flexible on the pricing. I was able to purchase an student version which allows me for a good discount when I decide to buy the full version of C4D.

And the community is really great. I think I'll switch entirely to C4D. If you want, send me a PM and I'll pass you the e-mail and name of the Maxon representative that sold me my student license.

Cheers.

[MauricioPC]

Hey guys, just received this offer from Toolfarm in my e-mail. Maxon C4D (all versions) with discount.

http://www.toolfarm.com/products/vendor ... n+Products

It appears that sales are just to US and Canada, but maybe if you are interested, you can contact Maxon or even Toolfarm and try to work something out.

In the offer, C4D Studio R15 for $2,965.00. The sale is until 03/31/2014 so it gives plenty of time to talk to Maxon/Toolfarm and try to work something out.


Cheers.

[Rork]

What I keep missing in these discussions is the ability to expand, to work with a lot of other. AKA pipeline workflows.
Renderfarms, emdl's, external renderers, standin's, workgroups etc. Stuff like that.

Something very important when you're running into slightly bigger teams. So far, Cinema4D, Modo, Blender etc. haven't shown this to be available.
Unless I'm wrong and happily being corrected.....

rob

[noseman]

What I keep missing in these discussions is the ability to expand, to work with a lot of other. AKA pipeline workflows.
Renderfarms, emdl's, external renderers, standin's, workgroups etc. Stuff like that.
Something very important when you're running into slightly bigger teams. So far, Cinema4D, Modo, Blender etc. haven't shown this to be available.
Unless I'm wrong and happily being corrected.....
rob

Hi Rob,
addressing some of the questions:
External renderers available for C4D are:
Vray, Maxwellrender, iRay(Mental Ray), Thearender, indigo, Arnold (limited beta, in development), Octane, Renderman (via Cineman), Krakatoa (beta)…
some are not feature complete yet, but Vray and Maxwellrender are for sure. BTW, Krakatoa is coming along wonderfully
As for Renderfarms, Cinema 4D has an inbuilt Renderfarm solution caller "Team Render". You can render Stills and animations using distributed rendering on any number of available Mac's or PC's.
As for stand ins, I guess you're referring to what we call "XRefs" (external references).
What exactly are Workgroups in Softimage?
If you have a description of your ideal group workflow, please post it and I will try and post the equivalent workflow in C4D.
T

[noseman]

One more thing to consider, is that Cinema 4D's inbuilt renderer is a modern, very capable and super fast ray tracer, that can handle large amounts of data. The GI is extremely high quality and includes, Irradiance Cache, QMC for Primary bounces and QMC, Irradiance Cache, Light Mapping and Radiosity maps for secondary bounces.
We also have a beyond-super-fast scan line renderer, probably one of the fastest on the market.

[Rork]

OK, lot's of renderers, but no Arnold. Sorry, that's my/our workhorse atm.

Renderfarms. Do external renderfarms support C4D? How easy is it to move projects over to something like that? Is C4D natively supported by Royal Render?

Workgroups: a central place for shaders, scripts, plugins etc. Very easy installing by .xsiaddons.
http://download.autodesk.com/global/doc ... kgroup.htm

What about a renderpass system like in Softimage? Or something very close. Rendering all to one .exr doesn't count.. ;-)
http://download.autodesk.com/global/doc ... erPass.htm

Also the whole (external) model paradigm. If that's not in a 3D app, I will have a hard time adjusting.
http://download.autodesk.com/global/doc ... Models.htm

Basically basic data management from within SI.

cheers,

rob

[mattmos]

These are the things I rely on day to day:

referenced models - being able to set up a basic rig, pass it on to animators, then add additional controls/textures which update the master rig file and automatically get read into animation scenes. Being able to choose which parts of the rig get updated, and replacing with higher resolution rigs as necessary.

ICE - for skin deformations, and auto face rigs. For any kind of particle behaviour, with extremely low level control and ability to connect it all together visually.

non-linear workflow - once face shapes are set up, being able to go back in and add topology if needed, without breaking the envelope and shapes is a god send. Being able to transfer shapes from one character to another with different topology via gator.

Passes, partitions and overrides - setting up a lighting scene once and not having to redo any work if models are swapped out, as long as naming conventions are solid. Having very granular control over applying shaders to parts of a scene, set up different lighting scenarios, all in one master scene.

If c4d can do any of this I'd be interested to know more.

[noseman]

Arnold took a bit of time to be released as a commercial product. I believe that sooner, rather than later, it will be available to C4D users.
For now, and if you are registered with CGSociety (CGTalk) here's link that shows the progress:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread. ... ght=arnold

Workgroups:
C4D's scene management system is open and extremely simple. No project folders and such.
For your texture bitmaps, you can easily link you C4D installation with up to 10 directories (with unlimited subdirectories inside them) with two clicks. They can be on a drive, network drive e.t.c.
Plugins don't have a central repository, but can be linked using OS specific methods (for example, you can use Dropbox and Symbolic links on OS X)… you don't need a TD to do that
Link to video: https://vimeo.com/68022275

C4D has a good render pass system, that includes the following passes:
Ambient, Diffuse, Specular, Shadow, Reflection, Refraction, AO, GI, Caustics, Atmosphere, Motion Vector, illumination, Depth, Material UVW, Specular Colour.
Also, it has ID based Object Buffers and 3D data Export for use in Compositing applications.
All of the above are specific to the inbuilt renderer (it's called Advanced Render, AR). All renderers have their own render pass system, so I guess Arnold will have pretty much what you have now…

The external model is very similar to our XRefs. You can reference anything.

[noseman]

Passes, partitions and overrides - setting up a lighting scene once and not having to redo any work if models are swapped out, as long as naming conventions are solid. Having very granular control over applying shaders to parts of a scene, set up different lighting scenarios, all in one master scene.

Would you be kind enough as to elaborate on this?
Is this equivalent to render Layers?

[Rork]

Hi,

The Maya system isn't the same thing, although the basics are the same.

I already mentioned this in my previous post:
http://download.autodesk.com/global/doc ... erPass.htm

The renderpass system can split up your scene by creating multiple renderpasses. These passes can than be set to render the AOV's you need, or just the main beauty AOV for that pass.
Also, each pass can be split up into partitions (think groups), and each partition can get its own override, being a different shader, visibility parameter etc.
That way you can have granular control over what you want to render, or what you want to be different without getting into complex scenes with dozens of objects having different shading etc.

Maya and Houdini have something similar afaik, I haven't seen this in C4D so far. Or Modo for that matter.

rob

p.s. Have a look here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AceMastermi ... =0&sort=da

It's an extensive set of softimage training videos. Scroll down to you come across the "Introduction to Render passes" and watch the next few videos on passes, partitions and overrides. This will give you a good idea of what this rendersystem in SI is.

[noseman]

I have just uploaded a video on my Vimeo channel.
Please feel free to ask any questions.
https://vimeo.com/88764899

[luchifer]

Passes, partitions and overrides - setting up a lighting scene once and not having to redo any work if models are swapped out, as long as naming conventions are solid. Having very granular control over applying shaders to parts of a scene, set up different lighting scenarios, all in one master scene.

Would you be kind enough as to elaborate on this?
Is this equivalent to render Layers?

Hi, this is tricky for me in C4D... In softimage you have passes, like C4D passes but.. and this is a big BUT, you can control everything in your passes, for example, you can have separate ambient oclussion settings for different objects in your AO pass, and you can have more than one beauty pass, with totally different lights in each beauty pass.. (I guess something similar can be done in C4D and the stage manager). This is possible because each pass is called a partition, and you can have as many partitions as you want, and you can mix object, lights and materials to different partitions. for example with two simple cubes, you can render one cube green, another render with one transparent, in another render one cube is metallic with a spot light on top, etc. And of course, two AO passes, one for solids and one for the transparent objects.

What I didnt found in softimage was the buffer composition (wich rocks in C4D), and also C4D renders just once for all the passes, in XSI if I want several passes, each pass render separatedly (thus increasing render time). What I would like to know in C4D is if I can render "just ambient oclussion pass", without rendering everything again. Also, for me the render queue in C4D is very useful because is as simple as After Effects queue.

I hope I didnt cause more confusion.

[noseman]

So, I did another video that shows a "partition" like workflow, but using XRefs. Please emphasis on the quotes around "partitions"

https://vimeo.com/88814065

[MauricioPC]

So, I did another video that shows a "partition" like workflow, but using XRefs. Please emphasis on the quotes around "partitions"

https://vimeo.com/88814065

I must say you've converted me. Not that I never used C4D, but I was off and now I'm back. Started watching Nick Campbell GSG tutorial intro to C4D. Very very nice.

I'll just keep Maya as my go to FX solution (as I'm in the middle of a dense FX workshop). And the others two workshop on modeling and rendering with 3ds Max I can easily translate to Cinema 4D or Maya.

[NNois]

@noseman I must say you have to try at least once in your life the pass/partition/override Softimage system in your life.

And then, you'll say "what the fuck !" ( like every max/maya and as i see C4D users generally says when they saw )