Finals on my first use of C4D

[Ernest Burden III]

The results are good enough, but the learning has been trying. The interior is rendered by Lightscape, because Cinema was going to take too long to tweek and then render. But what you see out the windows is Cinema (from a matched camera).

 

The views are not what I would have done, but they were what my client wanted.

 

The usual post work in Photoshop...

[bigcahunak]

When u have a style, you have a style.

Doesnt matter what u use and how it renders.

Congrats for another step in making the switch to C4D.

[STRAT]

very nice job at the end of the day.

 

so whats the verdict for the c4d/EBIII future then? looks like externals for c4d and internals for LS.

 

but ur correct, internals in cine need a heck of a lot more samples and processing power than externals, and unless you have a blisteringly fast pc the render quality wont be anywhere near where you want it.

[Ernest Burden III]

so whats the verdict for the c4d/EBIII future then? looks like externals for c4d and internals for LS.

 

For the time being, yes. But Lightscape has no long-term future, so either C4D for all work (with me as a more experienced user) or vRay stand-alone. Or both.

 

I really like the stochastic renderings for interiors, even with the long rendering times. They are really beautiful, and do not suffer the 'light leaks' and meshing artifacts that LS does, so I will keep working at those, as well.

 

The other important thing is to work to get Cinema to work more the way I want t to, more architectural. Get it changed. I'm working on that task, as well.

 

Here is the raw rendering from Cinema:

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

....are the people painted and scanned?

 

your technique always makes them feel natural in the scene. something that does not usual happen in photo real renderings.

[Ernest Burden III]

....are the people painted and scanned?

 

Yes. And not even by me. I split this project with a collegue, and the figures are mined out of some of his former watercolor renderings. He uses FormZ and Cinema on Mac, and working together is part of why I bought FZ and C4D.

[MJL Imaging]

Ernest, The results look good to me. nice work.

[Ernest Burden III]

Here's what I mean about the stochastic:

 

This was a render to get the outside stuff to matte under my Lightscape image, so what was on the inside was not important. But look at what a sweet image it produced, with the feel of a charcoal sketch. Not a hint of light-leak.

[leed]

Ernest

 

the images look nice, The people do really sit in with the style you have,

I must say i visited your web site for the first time today, really good, excellent stuff..... the level of detail.....

 

Just hope you persist with C4D,

Have you had a look at the Sketch module?

 

Lee

[Ernest Burden III]

Just hope you persist with C4D,

Have you had a look at the Sketch module?

 

I hope to persist, too. I bought the Studio bundle, so I'm invested...

 

I guess the Sketch module is one of the few bits that don't come in the bundle I got. I haven't looked closely at it. Thanks for reminding me about it.

[leed]

Sketch is something that we have had for a few months now but have not had the time to really get into it, this is a test.

I was quite impressed by the control you have on the line type.

Lee

[Frosty]

Ernest, if you have the studio bundle, that means you have an unlimited client render farm license am I right? You may want to think about setting up a farm of bare bones PCs. You can split up stochastic renders using a mask and then tile them up in PS. This technique would, for a relatively small price, allow you to pursue stochastic renderings at the speed we all need. If you choose to invest in this, however, make sure all of the CPUs are the same variety. AMD, Intel, and Apple computers will calculate the stochastic noise differently.

[Ernest Burden III]

The net render process with Cinema is interesting. Since it insists on being web-based, it means I could just as easily use YOUR machines in England and Canada as one ten feet from me in my own studio. I still am not sure how to set it all up, I read the manual but am not very skilled in either internet protocols or networking. I have a router that is supposed to close up most ports to keep out creeps, so do I have the right port available? I don't know.

 

I looked at the computers from Boxx meant to be render farmers, slim blades sans monitors, and they would be great. But they are expensive versus consumer-grade PC's, like HPs you buy pre-configured. I guess it would depend on how much work you normally have. I am a one-man shop, so it isn't all that often that I must get out large images, most of the time is building and setup. But its animation that really makes you want to buy the farm.

 

So far, with LS, I have been able to get full raytraced frames of complex scenes at DVD widescreen for less than 1 minute per frame just by using three PCs. Even so, that's still a long wait for 30 seconds of animation.

[Frosty]

I set up my farm of 8 P4s (2.6GHZ with 512ram) for about $4000. They run headless in a backroom, and are set up to launch Cinema Net CLient and connect to the server on boot. I access the server as a network drive (save project to remote folder) and control it via the built in web pages. Its very slick.

 

You hit the nail on the head with the animation concept. The Net render system splits up an animation with sets of frames going to each client. The server then pulls these together into an mov or avi file if so desired.

 

In order to do a still, I simply create an animated alpha mask (a one time task) which goes on a foreground object. This blocks out the majority of the scene so only a fraction is rendered on each frame. Each client gets a frame or two which is a different slice of the whole image. Stack them up in PS and away you go. I have successfully cut 60hr renders down to 8 hrs using this method. Any you should see the animations fly

 

But as you state, it does require a financial comitment and space.

[STRAT]

Frosty has touched on an interesting point here - rendering a single still over several pc's at the same time. generally known as letter box rendering.

 

i frequently use a similar method. just a plain completely covering the part of the image i dont want rendered. this plain has a self illum pure black material with a render tag completely ommitting it from interfering with the render. At the same time i render the second half of this image on another pc using the same method inversed on the screen

[Ernest Burden III]

Well, that's interesting. Rather than post some new comments I seem to have re-written my previous post as en edit...

 

I have successfully cut 60hr renders down to 8 hrs using this method.

 

How large an image would you need to be rendering for it to take 60 hours? If Lightscape takes more than 20 minutes to raytrace a final I get angry, I'm used to 5 - 10 minutes. A week to render one damned picture?

 

The way I work, I use lower-resolution images, they work better for my techniques. I rarely go past 3000 pixels wide or tall, usually more like 2400. That helps keep render times down.

 

Do you guys have Cinema save the radiosity solutions? When I say how long LS is taking, you must remember that it has already resolved the lighting. That may have taken many hours or a day. But then I have it, and can raytrace over and over again at very quick speeds. In Cinema you CAN save them, but do you? You cannot use stochastic and save them, though.

 

I have also observed that you get very different results, brightness-wise, when switching between regular and stochastic radiosity methods on the same scene. Any thoughts about how to predict results between them?

[STRAT]

Do you guys have Cinema save the radiosity solutions? When I say how long LS is taking, you must remember that it has already resolved the lighting. That may have taken many hours or a day. But then I have it, and can raytrace over and over again at very quick speeds. In Cinema you CAN save them, but do you?

 

i do for animations using the single frame animation method. but this is because the one cached solution is rendering a constant scene, ie, you aren't changing anything. Otherwise? no. you obviously can, and cleverly it's fine, but generally where c4d is concerned it's best to use a fresh radiosity solution for the best results each time if tweeks are to be made such as lighting changes.

 

as i say, animations are fine because the tweeking is done, and using the single cached solution, as you say, can save 50-60% of a frame's rendering time. infact, you'd be silly not to use single animation technique for animations. (where only the camera moves of course)

 

 

 

 

I have also observed that you get very different results, brightness-wise, when switching between regular and stochastic radiosity methods on the same scene. Any thoughts about how to predict results between them?

 

Stoch mode is full on in-your-face real gi/radiosity rendering, no matter how little samples you use (as long as it's over 1 sample). Ideally we'd all be using stoch mode rendering, but c4d in it's current state makes this a luxury for most of us. I dont even use it with my xeons.

 

Compaire normal radiosity mode to stoch mode you'll get extremely similar results as long as you're using 100% accuracy rendering. This is what i use. the standard 70% or lower just wont give accurate lighting results, that vary greatly in lighting levels at lower accuracy values.

All my finals are done using 100% accuracy normal gi mode radiosity. this will bring me in line with stoch mode results, nearly, only 3 times as fast. obviously stoch mode is more accurate, because max and min samples are infinate, but who's got time to wait for it to render? lighting and prediction wise go the higher the better.

[Frosty]

How large an image would you need to be rendering for it to take 60 hours? If Lightscape takes more than 20 minutes to raytrace a final I get angry, I'm used to 5 - 10 minutes. A week to render one damned picture?

 

These images are quite large, approx 4500 px wide, very high poly, and using stochastic radiosity with high settings.

[Tony]

I read somewhere that finalrender was the render engine in C4D. But from the sound of it here that can't be true.