Cinema 4d / Final render 2

[pauldoherty]

I am wondering whether or not to purchase

Final render 2 for cinema 4d..

 

Is there any benefit in doing this? What can

Final render 2 do that cinema cannot already do?

 

How seamlessly do the 2 work together?

 

Thanks for any input

[STRAT]

there are a few materials to change, but basically the interaction is seamless.

 

render style wise it basically does what the AR does, but with 3 major differences - it's about 4 times faster, you get bucket rendering which allows single images to be rendered over several pc's at the same time, and you get virtually 0 gi artifacts.

 

so basically, it's a must!!!

[pauldoherty]

Thanks v'much Stephen

[Ernest Burden III]

But the Mac version is still a no-show.

 

Also it's not as stable as AR (which is 99.5% stable), but a must-have I would agree. There is another thread about this in the C4D section, look it up.

[skala67]

Does FR2 suppport ies data for lighting?

[Ernest Burden III]

Does FR2 suppport ies data for lighting?

 

Not yet. They claim its short-listed, right after the Mac version. Where is that Mac version, by the way?

 

I want IES lights!

[pauldoherty]

does C4D new sky tool work together with final render 2?

[STRAT]

it does, but i know EB3 had a few issues with it. i'm sure he'll explain all

[Ernest Burden III]

does C4D new sky tool work together with final render 2?

 

No, not at all.

 

FR2 has its own physical sky tool and it works well. It has fewer controls than the C4D one does, but produces great results and a lot faster than the Cnema one. But they both work. Just not together. If you are rendering with C4D-SKY and switch on FR2 you will get an almost black scene. You have to turn off the Cinema SKY. That's is probably because the SKY object reads as solid to FR2 and it is shadowing (suggesting that you could FR2-tag it to not cast shadows). But since they both do the same thing there is no point to making them work together.

 

If your question is about can we setup a sun/sky in Cinema and have FR2 render with those settings, the answer is no. And so far, I can't make sense of either of them, though with trial and error I can get them to do what I want.

[pauldoherty]

Thanks for the info ya'all

[pauldoherty]

Does FR2 have any preset sky's and if not how complex

is it to create dramatic skys. Do you have to use spherical

sky maps? In short....How is the "sky" created in FR2

[Ernest Burden III]

Does FR2 have any preset sky's and if not how complex

is it to create dramatic skys. Do you have to use spherical

sky maps? In short....How is the "sky" created in FR2

 

FR2 does not have the whole 'clouds' engine that C4D does. That is a very special feature of C4D and it produces great results, at least in 9.51 to squash a bad bug in the 9.5 version.

 

You can 'bake' a cloud image and then use that as a background in a FR2 render. But FR2 is just doing lighting and sky colors, and even with that there are a few sub-features that do not seem to be 'connected' right now. I'm puzzled by that, but there are some posts on the FR2/C4D forum going today to explain exactly what is on and what is off in the physical sky function.

[pauldoherty]

No, not at all.

FR2 has its own physical sky tool and it works well. It has fewer controls than the C4D one does, but produces great results and a lot faster than the Cnema one.

 

 

 

 

Ernest... How do you produce a sky in FR2... When you use the physical

sky tool do you use a HDRI in FR2's environment channel... if not

how would you go about it? Im a bit lost with it all!

Regards

Pablo

[Ernest Burden III]

Ernest... How do you produce a sky in FR2... When you use the physical

sky tool do you use a HDRI in FR2's environment channel...

 

No. No reason to, you don't need an image for lighting. So I would create a sky object in C4D, or just a sphere with a map on it, and make it not cast shadows or be seen by GI (both C4D tag and a fr2 tag). Its just an image to render and reflect. Sometimes I do one to be seen by camera, another to be seen by reflection to avoid it being an obvious backdrop.

 

Also, I've used a C4D proceedural shader to make a sky--a color gradient with some 'turbulance' will make sky, ground and cloud shapes on its own. I've also done that within fr2 for a background sky.

[pauldoherty]

And do you use a sky light or physical sky in FR2. If

its a physical sky do you use a cinema omni or spotlight

as the sun for shadowing etc or do you enable FR2

physical sky's sunlight for this or perhaps both?

[Ernest Burden III]

I've tried them all, all work. The file I'm working on now I have a C4D infinite light for a sun, and generate skylight with fr2 using a gradient to produce different colors depending on how something is facing, with the gradient background to make a general sky.

 

You can make a sky with the C4D SKY function and bake it to a sphere.

 

You've got options.

[Ernest Burden III]

edit...

[Ernest Burden III]

I'm testing animation this week and its really becoming a concern. Its not going well.

 

The results, the images, are great. I'm very happy with what fr2 can do, and how quickly it can work. But the lack of stability is making me really worried about using this under a deadline for animation.

 

I cannot keep fr2, especially the slaves, running smoothly. It crashes fairly frequently. I must restart the slave, maybe even restart Cinema, checking the last rendered frame, changing the output numbers. I have not been able to leave it rendering for hours at a time unattended. It stops and sits there. This is on a file that isn't all that complex, and behaves just fine under Cinema's AR.

 

A script to restart slaves would really help, but I was unable to get that to work because of the way the frstation process is used. Better minds might solve that one but I didn't.

 

When I get enough frames rendered I'll post something. I'm away this weekend and do not expect anything to run that long.

[AJLynn]

Anybody (Ernest or otherwise) have suggestions for using HDR skies with fR2? Putting it in the environment and using Consider Environment in the GI settings works but you can't see the sky in the viewport and/or rotate it... I'd like to be able to position the sky and put in a light for sun shadows.

[ZFact]

Andrew;

If you apply your hdr image to a sphere within cinema

then check the force 2 sided tab in FR2's general options

this will allow you to control / rotate and see the image

in the view port... and also achieve your desired effect

in FR2

[AJLynn]

Thanks. Should have thought of that