flythroughs

[adri]

hi

 

what's the best option for creating flythroughs in C4D?

 

TIA

 

Adri

[jrizzo]

Every time I've had to do a flythrough, I just create a spline in Cinema and have the camera follow it. I usually have to do a bit of keyframe tweaking (going around corners tends to end up significantly faster than it should be for me), but it works out pretty well.

[t0ffer]

check the free editon of this plugin.simple to use,nice results...

 

http://homepage.mac.com/tcastudios/steadycampro.html

[adri]

Thanks for the replies.

 

I'll try out the steadycam. What's the difference between the free and the paid for?

 

Also, my question mainly concerned rendering options. I'm trying to get my company to look at C4D instead of 3DS Max because we work on Macs. For stills I have seen that C4D will do the trick fine. However, the combination of 3DS and V-Ray can produce some excellent flythroughs and I'd like to be able to say that C4D with xyz rendering engine will produce just as good a flythrough.

 

Final Render isn't available for Macs yet. VRayforC4D isn't out yet either.

 

What can you recommend?

 

Can Advanced Render do the trick?

 

Or better to wait for VRayforC4D?

 

TIA

 

Adri

[STRAT]

 

Can Advanced Render do the trick?

 

 

Yes it can, only due to bad programming (i call it bad programming as Maxon say it's not a bug but intentionally part of the program) it has a nasty habit of render slowdown, which, particulaly if your scene is fairly modest, is unacceptable. You can also render in stoch mode, but not even God uses that.

 

however, if you're clever you can cheat and work-around whilst in both these modes. cinema also has a great AO and fake GI capability.

 

 

 

Or better to wait for VRayforC4D?

 

yup. thats where the smart money is

[t0ffer]

depending on the complexity of your scene,it might be a good option to bake the gi on your objects.it´s somewhat of a pain,but once it´s done u are able to render flickerfree animation.using only raytracing wich is quite fast in c4d.rendering an gi animation requires alot of tweaking and the results often times turn out to be just not what u wanted(flicker,blotchieness etc).the only option to do so would be fr2,but as u mentioned not yet on the mac.

 

i guess the free version does everything the regular version except support.they are about to change policy soon there will only be a paid version(about 50 US) but it´s an ok investment since it is just so much more intuitive to use compared to keyframe and spline tweaking.

[adri]

Anyone have any idea when VRayForC4D is likely to be out?

 

TIA

 

Adri

[STRAT]

nobody knows. there is no official release date yet, but it's meant to be very close to completion. although, this could take months yet. who knows.

 

keep an eye on this thread -

 

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=176&t=349805

[ZFact]

Anyone have any idea when VRayForC4D is likely to be out?

 

TIA

 

Adri

 

I was speaking to Stefan yesterday and the release of VrayforC4D

is very soon. It is likely to be weeks rather than months.

 

They have also abandoned the bridge link with vray standalone and

decided to run with a fully integrated render solution working from

within cinema... which i think is great news...

 

im looking forward to its release, it also worth while registering your

interest now at this stage as i think you will save a few quid.

[adri]

already preordered!

 

will it have the light cache as 3DS has?

[ZFact]

already preordered!

 

will it have the light cache as 3DS has?

 

VRay is the ultimate Render engine for Architectural Visualization, Product design, as well as for other

tasks that need fast, physical correct GI Solutions with high Quality shading it works in the same

Quality and Speed for Stills as for Animation.

A) Vray offers several GI methods for choice, you can also combine them in any way:

some of them are:

::: irradiance map

::: photon map (the closest to AR or FR, but much faster and absolutely clean & "splotch free")

::: quasi montecarlo

::: light cache, including PPT- progressive pathtracing

(PPT looks a bit like the Maxwellengine, is not exactly the same approach, but faster & nice too)

You can save all solutions in named files.

You can reuse the solution for the next renderings, Vray will not need to render a GI pass anymore,

just the simple shading.

This even works if the size and certain things change- a tremendous time saver.

An example: You can also render a GI Solution at lets say 1000x500px (best with glass tec.deactivated),

save this solution in a named file (like "GI view1"). and then later render the final solution (this time

glass visible) at 7000x3500px and reuse the saved solution ("GI view1"). Vray render only the highrez

shading, this takes just a few minutes. this works perfectly well, even when the original solution

was much smaller.

B) Vray offers rendered Multipass layers:

Alpha, Atmosphere, Background, Caustics, Diffuse, GI, Vraylighting, Material-ID,Normals, Object-ID,

Raw GI,Raw Lighting, Raw Shadow, Reflection, Refraction, Render-ID, Self illumination, Shadows,

Specular, Unclamped Color, Velocity, ZDepth.

So you can use "multipass" (vray calls is G-buffers) similar as we are used to it in cinema, and even

some more options. Additional, as it is possible to use the same camera setting in c4d as in Vray

an endless combination between Cinema AR, Sketch&Toon, and Vray layers is thinkable....

C) Superb Full-scene Antialiasing:

Vray offers extremely beautiful and fast AA, there are options for many types of AA for your choice:

Fixed rate, adaptive QMC, adaptive subdivision, with 12 different Filter Methods available.

D) Caustics:

Caustics are as fast as GI, they can result not only from light but also from HDRI - image based

lighting (IBL)*

E) Environment:

Vray has a Sky and Sun system* in 1.5, again looks as good as Maxwell sky, but is more flexible and

works with all GI types. The sun can be freely positioned p.e.

F) Physically-based camera*:

It simulates the internal workings of a real-world camera, complete with a film plate, aperture and lens

This allows the simulation of many phenomena not possible with standard camera types.

(Accurate simulation of the refractive lens system of real-world cameras. Real-world parameters like

focal length, f-stop etc, Non-linear DOF effects, Accurate image distortions like fish-eye effects).

G)Displacement*:

For Fur, Grass, and any 3d effect

H) SSS, ambient occlusion, fast blurry metals, etc.

A VRayshader consists of following channels:

diffuse, reflections, refraction = transparency (both with blurry+IOR), translucency,Fog

BRDF (=Anisotropy), Energy preservation mode (for realistic materials), bumb, displacement, glossy.

There are special shaders for: fastSSS, Dirt, Edges shader, HDRI, Environment mapping, Furshader,

Toon shader, for all aspects you can use maps to control the material aspects

I) depth of field (DOF), MotionBlur

J) Vrays GI engine makes it easy to also render Animations as GI, there are no "slowdowns", no flicker

or other problems, due to its speed and its efficiency a GI animations can be rendered in a normal

production timeframe. There are GI Presets that help making the right GI setup for animation.

The GI Quality is the same with Still or Animation.

K) Vray offers advanced colormapping and color correction features, direct in the Vrayframebuffer,

also for 32bit images

L) Of course everything can be saved as full 32 bit HDRI Information

This is not a full feature list, see also links below, we will put more and more info here...

For those who dont want long explanations, here also a short desription;-) :

It's good

it's fast

it's stable...

[adri]

wow!!

 

Thanks for that feature list. Great stuff.

 

Just hope the port to Mac won't be too far behind the PC version as we mostly use Macs at work.

 

Cheers

 

Nicholas