C4D Prime + VRay OR C4D Visualize (+Vray someday)

[the Rev.]

Hey everyone

 

About to make a purchase of C4D R17 (coming in from R13). I imagine so much has changed in 4 releases! One question I have is: comparing the 2 products: Prime and Visualize, it seems to me I can get away with purchasing Prime and VRay for now and getting 90% of the features I would get with Visualize for Arch Viz. Is this true?

In other words, I know if I buy Prime, I'm missing out on the Physical renderer, camera, physical sky, some materials, etc...

That said, unless I'm mistaken, all of those features are contained in VRay (cameras, lights, sky, sun, hair for grass, etc.)

 

As you can tell... I want to save some $. =) Is the above reasoning true? help?

[francescobitelli]

Hello Greg, maybe I'm a bit late but I think can help.

I faced the exact same "dilemma" a month ago =)

Finally, after asking in a Italian C4d forum and looking around on the net, I purchased the Prime Version and I'm satisfied with it. In my opinion Prime will be perfect for your needs as well: VRay will give you the same features as if it were installed on the Studio Version and you'll get the basic C4D modeling features.

You will only miss some advanced modeling stuff (you will miss some function for the rendering part as well but if you use VRay that probably won't bother you at all). For example you won't have the MoGraph module which can be useful for scattering objects like grass clones around your scene. But you can use a plugin like SurfaceSpread for that (not free but cheap if compared to purchasing the C4D Studio version). You will also miss some other advanced modeling function, but I suggest you to take a look to a comparison chart because I'm not too much into modeling.

 

To sum up: Prime will be totally ok for rendering if you use VRay: you won't miss anything. So in my opinion: go for it!

If you need to use Cinema 4d for advanced modeling (I don't think is the case for architectural rendering purposes) you should be a bit more careful before taking your decision. Anyway I think you can easily update in the future.

[the Rev.]

Thanks Francesco!

Really appreciate the advise. I bit the bullet and bought Prime plus VRay and couldn't be happier. The only thing I REALLY miss is Mograph, but I'll look into Surface Spread for now. Say, one more question. I used the Floor Generator plugin a lot for hardwood floors... but it requires mograph. How do you model and texture hardwood floors with Prime? For the past few weeks I've been using bump and displacement maps, but it doesn't quite look the same as the real thing (individual models).

Thanks again!

[Ernest Burden III]

modeling manually--cut one overall flooring polygon into planks (strips then some random length cuts), select all polys, set a selection tag, extrude-inner a very small amount then normal move up a very small amount.