Maxon (C4D) Bought Redshfit

[neilmcbean]

Maybe this isn't news to many....but I thought it was kind of a big deal.

 

Maxon acquired Redshift, which is probably the most important render engine in film and commercial production. I feel like this is a missing tool in archviz - redshift is extremely stable, handles huge scene size, has great export options, and leverages the GPU in a scalable way.

 

As of now pricing will not change, but if Redshift becomes the default rendering engine for C4D I might start looking again.

 

 

In other news you might not think is a big deal the Blue Jackets beat the Lightning last night. That really came out of nowhere.

[beestee]

These types of moves are always a big deal. We might not see the complete ramifications for another year or so, but it will certainly change the landscape some.

[Ernest Burden III]

I've been hearing lots of raves for RedShift recently, but haven't had a chance to try it out. Frankly, before that was raves for Octane. And Arnold. And I've been doing well enough with Vray, and I see the writing on the arch-viz wall that says "learn Unreal, fool". I can't try them all out and still earn a living. So seing that Maxon bought Redshift puts it at the top of the list to try out.

 

What I would hope for is full integration with Cinema4D. It should work with everything in C4D, and there's a lot there. While the native engines in C4D are nothing special, they render everything you can make without a problem. Vray can't do that. Octane can't do that. Unreal doesn't even have a bridge.

 

And, Neil, Maxon will not replace their native render engines, at best they will add integration of RedShift. There are so many people who rely on the basic 'standard' engine. I use it for some big animation projects that Vray can't handle. So RedShift will be an addition, not a replacement, I am sure.

[neilmcbean]

Maxon apparently created a couple of exchange plugins for C4D to Unreal that you can get through cineversity.

 

 

I think there is going to be a hybrid of work between what I'll call 'traditional' rendering and interactive realtime rendering for a while. Even if everything is possible in Unreal, it's not necessarily practical right now. People are doing some cool experiments with realtime filmmaking, but I haven't heard of anyone going all in yet. Would love to hear about it if anyone else has, though.

[Ernest Burden III]

The next big thing in my career will be an animated children's show. It has been a very slow process as I'm doing it all myself, with some help from my brilliant kids. I am very interested in what I can do with realtime output. Initially I may have to produce a few mini-episodes completely on my own. There will be lots of freeform architecture and landscapes, so I'll still be imaging buildings. Methods to reduce the work of making animation are needed. I have found a way to go from audio recorded speaking to driving mouth shapes, for example, which could save lots of time hand animating characters talking. Possible to have walk cycles activate along a spline path. I don't want a robot-animated show, but getting enough produced as proof-of-concept is critical to finding funding for better production work.

 

There's also a book version of the launch story, and I am also working on the illustrations for that by hand. Then I want the animation to look like my pencil drawings. I'm not sure how far I can get into NPR with Unreal. Or Redshift.

 

Thanks for the link...I though the bridge Maxon was working on was to Unity Engine, not Unreal. I'll have to check into that.

[Francisco Penaloza]

This is very interesting, it is true that we all need to wait and see how all these purchases and merging turn out, but from experience with other similar purchases or merging, there is something in common. Slow in development. I am not sure if I would call Redshift "the most important render engine in film and commercial production" it is a good participant, but "the most important' that's arguable. Don't take me wrong I tried RedShift for a while and I really like it, it is incredibly fast, I mean it is ridiculous fast if you have the right hardware. But IMO it missed the boat because they made is so flexible and with so many options that it was overwhelming to learn, I love to push buttons and coming from V-Ray I felt very comfortable working with it, similar workflow, but at the same time Corona came to the game and there is nothing to compete with the straight forward workflow of Corona. it is a no brainer.

Having said that Motion graphics crown it been very comfortable with GPU based renderings. I guess because of the tight deadlines, small-ish scene, or the no specific hyperrealistic output. So Redshift fit perfectly in that realm.

My only concern is if redshift now is under Maxon umbrella, I don't see any future development for other 3D software, such as 3D Max or Modo, blender, and others. Why Maxon will do that?? Is like when Chaosgroup purchases Corona team, they stop Sketchup plugin development. It makes seance, they were competing with the same company (VRay).

[Francisco Penaloza]

The next big thing in my career will be an animated children's show. It has been a very slow process as I'm doing it all myself, with some help from my brilliant kids. I am very interested in what I can do with realtime output. Initially I may have to produce a few mini-episodes completely on my own. There will be lots of freeform architecture and landscapes, so I'll still be imaging buildings. Methods to reduce the work of making animation are needed. I have found a way to go from audio recorded speaking to driving mouth shapes, for example, which could save lots of time hand animating characters talking. Possible to have walk cycles activate along a spline path. I don't want a robot-animated show, but getting enough produced as proof-of-concept is critical to finding funding for better production work.

 

There's also a book version of the launch story, and I am also working on the illustrations for that by hand. Then I want the animation to look like my pencil drawings. I'm not sure how far I can get into NPR with Unreal. Or Redshift.

 

Thanks for the link...I though the bridge Maxon was working on was to Unity Engine, not Unreal. I'll have to check into that.

 

I also agree that there is always so much to learn in this field, and for us "oldtimers' it is hard to catch up sometimes.

I am very focused to learn Unreal now, I truly believe that traditional Raytracing rendering will lose more field in the short run here in the USA at least, production times are getting shorter and shorter. and the interest of more than a single media is becoming a standard at least for our industry. Now clients not only ask or are used to get still images and animations but they are also asking for 360 panoramas and VR presentations. and doing all that with a more traditional raytracer it takes way longer than with other real-time application. Of course, this doesn't apply to everyone, but there is a strong trend for sure.

 

Regarding your Children's show, that sounds really fun, actually I thought of doing something similar to my self some time ago, but time for production was prohibitive, until... of course, real-time engines came in to play, now it is very possible to produce something with high quality and a shorter more financially acceptable way using, Unity or Unreal.

I would be very interested to see how you develop your project or if you need help in some way let me know.

 

Take a look at this, is a great example.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/animated-children-s-series-zafari-springs-to-life-with-unreal-engine?sessionInvalidated=true

Edited April 18, 2019 by fco3d

[Ernest Burden III]

...Take a look at this, is a great example.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/animated-children-s-series-zafari-springs-to-life-with-unreal-engine?sessionInvalidated=true

 

Boom! Thank you for sharing that, made my day. That is awesome, and what I'm hoping to take advantage of to get my show produced.

 

Back to arch-viz, there is a frequent problem of rendering and post work get left to the last moment, usually by clients slow to complete designs of revise the formerly-final versions. That means I have almost no time to get the real artistic quality into my work. Getting things to render faster but about as well would really help. Unreal is looking good enough for what I do, since I pull renders into post and do a lot of stylizing and tweaks. For me the only issue is how well it interfaces with Cinema4D.

[neilmcbean]

This is very interesting, it is true that we all need to wait and see how all these purchases and merging turn out, but from experience with other similar purchases or merging, there is something in common. Slow in development. I am not sure if I would call Redshift "the most important render engine in film and commercial production" it is a good participant, but "the most important' that's arguable. Don't take me wrong I tried RedShift for a while and I really like it, it is incredibly fast, I mean it is ridiculous fast if you have the right hardware. But IMO it missed the boat because they made is so flexible and with so many options that it was overwhelming to learn, I love to push buttons and coming from V-Ray I felt very comfortable working with it, similar workflow, but at the same time Corona came to the game and there is nothing to compete with the straight forward workflow of Corona. it is a no brainer.

Having said that Motion graphics crown it been very comfortable with GPU based renderings. I guess because of the tight deadlines, small-ish scene, or the no specific hyperrealistic output. So Redshift fit perfectly in that realm.

My only concern is if redshift now is under Maxon umbrella, I don't see any future development for other 3D software, such as 3D Max or Modo, blender, and others. Why Maxon will do that?? Is like when Chaosgroup purchases Corona team, they stop Sketchup plugin development. It makes seance, they were competing with the same company (VRay).

 

I think at this point Redshift is the lead production renderer in commercial and film - it's doing the things the others are trying to do. Arnold and RenderMan have a lot of the market (and 15-20 years old), but nothing is matching Redshift's growth in market share AFAIK. Films will use multiple renderers to achieve results, so studios will hold licenses for everything useful. Right now it's those three. In advertising VRay and Redshift are popular (fast, good results), but Redshift integration with C4D and Houdini is better at this point, and Maxon's relationship with Houdini mean that support will probably continue. My crystal ball says that's the space Maxon wants. Support should be good - at least that's what the Redshift people are saying. They wanted the acquisition because they want to focus on product, and let Maxon worry about the sales.

[neilmcbean]

The next big thing in my career will be an animated children's show. It has been a very slow process as I'm doing it all myself, with some help from my brilliant kids. I am very interested in what I can do with realtime output. Initially I may have to produce a few mini-episodes completely on my own. There will be lots of freeform architecture and landscapes, so I'll still be imaging buildings. Methods to reduce the work of making animation are needed. I have found a way to go from audio recorded speaking to driving mouth shapes, for example, which could save lots of time hand animating characters talking. Possible to have walk cycles activate along a spline path. I don't want a robot-animated show, but getting enough produced as proof-of-concept is critical to finding funding for better production work.

 

There's also a book version of the launch story, and I am also working on the illustrations for that by hand. Then I want the animation to look like my pencil drawings. I'm not sure how far I can get into NPR with Unreal. Or Redshift.

 

Thanks for the link...I though the bridge Maxon was working on was to Unity Engine, not Unreal. I'll have to check into that.

 

Unity actually imports C4D, Blender and Maya files as assets. They get converted into FBX on load.

 

Would love to talk to you about this. A few years back we did a series of children's apps called Bramble Berry Tales. We're currently relaunching them, and did some exploration for how to create a multi-channel pipeline using Unity. Unreal is a little more AAA gaming, and we wanted something flexible. Unity was also a little further ahead in terms of realtime editing at that point, and the rendering for our needs (DOF, AO, skylights, AA) was kind of a wash. Our main goal has been to be able to produce apps, shorts, and broadcast content using a single pipeline. I found Blender and Maya far more predictable in terms of asset exchange, but people do it in C4D.

 

Non linear animation and use of mocap are really good in both Unity and Unreal. I started out as an oldschool, multi-plane camera, draw-it-yourself character animator, and applying those principles to realtime production make a ton of sense to me.

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UtS7cucwZbPUBTP1-PcJ5BVFJfMGT1uU/view?usp=sharing

 

This is one of our early tests, straight out of Unity. Ultimately we didn't go that route because our first launch is for ipad - it's hard to control the experience that way, because there is too much variability in devices, and kids get the hand-me-downs. I think a hybrid approach can also work - build an animation bank, and output to game engines and render/composite depending on the best use in each case.

 

No matter what, would love to see what you're up to and share more of what we're doing.

Edited April 18, 2019 by neilmcbean

[Francisco Penaloza]

Boom! Thank you for sharing that, made my day. That is awesome, and what I'm hoping to take advantage of to get my show produced.

 

Back to arch-viz, there is a frequent problem of rendering and post work get left to the last moment, usually by clients slow to complete designs of revise the formerly-final versions. That means I have almost no time to get the real artistic quality into my work. Getting things to render faster but about as well would really help. Unreal is looking good enough for what I do, since I pull renders into post and do a lot of stylizing and tweaks. For me the only issue is how well it interfaces with Cinema4D.

 

What I have learned so far is, if you already know that your 'main tool' will be unreal, then you prep your model for that. In the beginning, I was only relying on DataSmith to translate my VRay scene as close as possible to Unreal. Soo enough I realized that this works fine in some cases but not in others. If I know that I will produce something in Unreal I prep my materials and models in Max so they translate well into Unreal, this means that I won't make sophisticated VRay shaders or they may be a basic placeholder standard material to later be replaced with Unreal's material and shaders. also since I am learning Allegorithmic suite of products, then materials are prepared in there and not in Max. For me, the main problem is scale of projects. When we are talking about large developments or many buildings, then is when Unreal start to fall behind traditional Raytracing renderers, and is not because it can't handle geometry, but because most or all our models are from REVIT, Sketchup, Rhino, prepared for CD purposes, so they are a big mess.

 

But if you are in a more controlled environment I think you should have better results. in the case of preparing assets for a video, short or book then it becomes a more controlled workflow, keeping everything modular will make totally possible to use this real-time engine to produce some quality output.

 

BTW I had a gig a few years ago, preparing some training material for military use, their whole workflow was under Apple and Mac, so I had to use Cinema 4D to create assets to match video footage, it was very fun to work with Cinema, everything was rendered with the Physical render and the output was very good. I am sure if we had something like Redshift by then it could be a lot faster, but physical render performed like a champ actually.

Edited April 22, 2019 by fco3d

[Ernest Burden III]

Unity actually imports C4D, Blender and Maya files as assets. They get converted into FBX on load...

 

I have to look into how you control cameras in the outside engines. I have great control in Cinema, and when I render with something like vray, it simply functions within C4D. In fact, with my show, I have modifiers that adjust the geometry of characters to maintain an 'edge look' a profile, taken from how I draw them by hand. So there are scripts that use camera position relative to subject that control non-linear scaling and splines that deform. I doubt I can do those things with exports unless those effects are baked, perhaps Alembic, which is not impossible, but would all be easier within the DCC app's walled garden.

 

Would love to talk to you about this.

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UtS7cucwZbPUBTP1-PcJ5BVFJfMGT1uU/view?usp=sharing

 

This is one of our early tests, straight out of Unity. Ultimately we didn't go that route...

 

No matter what, would love to see what you're up to and share more of what we're doing.

 

Thank you for sharing that and your interest. Those kids are cute, and look well-thought out. My project is perhaps earlier in development, but has characters, settings, story outlines and story generation criteria, plus drawings by me and my kid, all by hand. Here is a placeholder for our website,so only two sketches up:

 

http://www.idenstelescope.com/

 

Iden lives in a world that looks like this:

[Francisco Penaloza]

here is a good read from Unreal.

Toon shader is getting there, but like everything is more an art than a science if you find workaround you can get very nice results.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Resources/Showcases/Stylized

[Scott Schroeder]

Borderlands had a breakdown of their toon process, which they used Unreal for. If I can remember, it was a combo of a toon shader in the engine and toon lines on the diffuse map for the finer details.

[neilmcbean]

I think to do accomplish that you want to develop shaders inside the final render engine - for UE you would probably use post-processing, which likely makes realtime performance impossible for most users IME, but you can render.

 

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/slug/post-process-shader-pack-vol

 

The 'Borderlands' stuff is pretty jawdropping.

 

https://www.polygon.com/2017/3/1/14778806/borderlands-3-video