topic Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard in Visualization

Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Thu, 11 May 2023 10:28:25 GMT

Maxon has recently upgraded their flagship product, Cinema 4D to version 10. They have also released a plug-in for ArchiCAD 10. These programs make for a terrific pair, ease of use, mature feature sets, speed and wonderful workflow.

For several months I have been putting other software packages through my personal learning curve and user testing. I work with the software and post my experiences in threads like this at the Talk.

I enjoy the fact that so many views happen within the threads. Better yet, I enjoy when others kick in their experiences with the subject software. No need to butt in with examples from other software programs, it is more interesting to just fully explore a single package - which in this thread is Cinema 4D. There are many existing architectural users of this fine piece of software and I call upon them to post recent examples of (WIP) work in progress and final renders. Not everything is perfect and there are currently a few kinks in the plug-in, but I will get into explaining that later.

If this is your first introduction to C4D, trust me it won't be your last. Nemechek is the parent company of Maxon and the C4D suite. News is that Nemecheck is or will soon own GraphiSoft and ArchiCAD. Just put two and two together.

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I'll start the thread with a quick example scene I assembled with bits and parts laying around on my hard drive. Tree entourage by xFrog, a snowy hillside from an example file on the internet, sky effect built into C4D, building from an ArchiCAD training file I use at the aBPa office in San Diego. All of this thrown together within 30 minutes, the render took 2 hrs. on a G5 dual 2GHz.

Cinema is the king when it comes to import/export. If you can get your entourage into practically any export format, chances are C4D will be able to import it. This is an extremely important factor to creativity. Now that I have gotten past my need to throw together something in C4D v10. It it time to slow down and create some examples of workflow issues, speed tests realistic rendering techniques. Once again I ask for help from other C4D users who can post examples, please jump right in - the water is fine and with a little MAXON soap you get a squeaky clean render.

Links to more info:

Architectural Examples:
http://www.maxon.net/pages/dyn_files/dyn_htx/htx/sol_archi_e.html
ArchiCAD related links:
http://www.maxon.net/pages/solutions/archicad/archicad_e.html
Achievements:
http://www.maxon.net/pages/dyn_files/dyn_htx/htx/press_e.html

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 06:48:57 GMT

Continuing with the Sky Manager tool. The first thing I noticed is that the sky preset toggle is called Beginner - oh well, the word presets would suffice.

This area of the Sky Shader Object allows you to set the place, time and weather. On the image below I tried out Midday, gloomy, foreboding and clearing. The non-GI images render in just below 2 minutes at 1280x720. This tool makes it easy to set up a time lapse animation showing the sun effects, etc. Now if it would only remind me of my anniversary, it would be perfect.

This tool will remain the center of activity for a while. Lots to explore here.

Animations involving the background are picture perfect because the sky is made of real volumetric clouds. It is a snap to create and as variable as you desire. It included a Hard Shadow (fast render) - Area Light Shadow (slower) and no shadows (zippy fast).

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:45:36 GMT

The goal of the next series of images are to show a comparison with C4D and Maxwell Render. The set-up scene is a marquee (sectional perspective).

It was exported to C4D using the downloaded plug-in, which by the way works without purchasing the Exchange Plug-in - You just cannot update the export later.

The subject matter of this test was ArchiCAD based lighting. The upstairs room was outfitted with recessed lighting in ArchiCAD and a floor lamp was placed on the second floor. As a comparison, flat slab panels were placed on the first floor ceiling with the Maxwell Emitter material.

This first image shows exactly what you end up with after a simple export from ArchiCAD to C4D. The light sources show up in the editor of C4D.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:48:29 GMT

Now a render of the export without any tweaking of the light sources leads to a rendering that goes nowhere. Lots of tweaking needed in C4D.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:51:39 GMT

1: Change SPOTS to OMNI Lights
2: Turn on Shadow
3: Reduce brightness to 20% down from 100%.

You end up with a better image. Screen shot shown midway between radiosity solution and openGL screen.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:55:00 GMT

A finished look at radiosity, hard shadows are not good. Time needed to fix that 10 min.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:59:49 GMT

Here is what happened when the same scene was sent to Maxwell. The lights in the kitchen area worked, but the lamps did not. 15 min. time was spent tweaking the model in Studio, adding emitter material to lamp objects. Then it was left to render for about 30 min. The result is a noisy rendering, but the lighting is somewhat convincing. A smooth rendering would take 3 hours.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 21:09:38 GMT

The conclusion for me was that C4D can be worthwhile after you fix the light sources. Tested light setups can be saved and reused in other scenes which would save time. The final renderings are much quicker for this type of indoor lighting test and the results can be controlled. With Maxwell you are pretty much letting the rendering engine dictate the final result. You can work with the light levels while it is rendering which is a big plus, but the render times can kill you.

If C4D would allow for adjusting the lights after the rendering is finished, it would be perfect. The downside with C4D is that if your rendering is poorly exposed you need to rendering it again.

To address this problem I will next explore, MultiPass in Cinema4D version 10 which now includes Multi-Lights.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 21:27:58 GMT

Same subject matter, this time with two omni lights placed outside. The light sources are set to 30% each, the resulting pre-pass, shown here being rendered with dual processors, looks to be a good exposure after 5 min. Only a little more time will tell.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 22:03:19 GMT

After 24 min. The finished image shows up as a washout (LEFT IMAGE). Since I checked Multi-Pass prior to rendering I knew that there would be a multilayered PhotoShop file in my folder. I opened that and reduced the Diffuse and Global Illumination layer strength which rescued the image within 5 min. - Much better than playing with the lights and rendering again for 24 min.

Let's see, so far C4D has terrific file handling capabilities from ArchiCAD, entourage available all over the internet - drag and drop into scenes, the scene editor is among the best in the industry, the rendering of Global Illumination scenes is much faster than before, and Multi-Pass allows for post rendering corrections in order to save the over/under exposed renderings.

So far C4D is doing an excellent job.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 21:43:39 GMT

Here is an example of a project designed by (Architects BP, Inc. - San Diego, CA) showing what makes C4D an excellent architectural program.

Architectural projects often involve doors, windows, walls, and then more doors, windows and walls. After a while a multi-building project will weigh down ArchiCAD to an absolute crawl. This project did, in fact I could not place more than 7 of the buildings into it within ArchiCAD before it became unbearable (8 min. refreshes, etc.)

Breaking the project up into individual building files, I exported them and the site into C4D. Quickly I was able to put it all back together and explore the site in Enhanced Open-GL. The typical rendering time is 3.5 minutes. This image attached is an radiosity solution that took 3 hrs. Not a whole lot of difference between the standard renderings and radiosity when your view is this far back. This same file caused Maxwell to slow way, way down. It just could not handle it.

C4D can handle this type of file with ease.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 21:45:44 GMT

A close up of the original render.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 15:53:12 GMT

Screen shots.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

stefan — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 09:09:19 GMT

Did you use the "instance" object in Cinema4D? Or just plain copy-paste? Or is the whole site and buildings collected in ArchiCAD?

I'm asking since it would be good to have some advice to tackle large scenes efficiently.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 17:38:36 GMT

I have been using the "Cut & Paste" in C4D [the site populated with 1/3 the buildings became unbearable in AC] , I too would like to know more about instances / mirror - I"ll test it soon. So far not a big problem using the cut and paste method, I organize the file and turn off rows of buildings while exploring and composing. Everything works very quickly. I started with 12mb this morning with site and bldgs., have been adding cars, trees and ground cover and I am now up to 13.4mb.

From the manual: An instance object is a special duplicate of an object that does not have its own geometry. As a result, instances require far less memory than conventional duplicates, but the advantages do not end there. Imagine that you have created a street scene with over 40 street lamps (all instances of the same original object). By adjusting the brightness of the original lamp’s light, you can change the brightness of all lamps in one go. You may even edit the original with the modeling tools and the instances will follow suit. Material properties are adopted as well. Only the position, scale and rotation are independent of the original.

An instance object will not significantly increase the size of the saved CINEMA 4D file. However, the CINEMA 4D editor will still need to allocate additional memory as if the instance object were a non-instance duplicate. The Scene Information dialog shows instance objects to consume as much memory as duplicates.

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

stefan — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 08:45:45 GMT

I ask this because some rendering engines work more efficient using instances. They are called "blocks" in AutoCAD and also "instances" in 3ds max. Most 3D applications support the concept.

In your particular scene, it could possible improve the rendering time and since it is so large, any optimization would be noticed.

That is, if you have the time and patience to let it render again with instanced buildings...

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:25:26 GMT

Hi

I'm just trying out C4D. When I go File -> Save As -> Cinema4D and then try to open the file C4D says 'Unknown File format'

I'm using AC10 ver 1010. The plugin for AC was downloaded from the Maxon site today. And I'm using the demo of C4D R10. My Os is Mac OS X 10.4.8 on a Mactel.

Anyone got any ideas?

TIA

Adri

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:52:05 GMT

my mistake.

didn't read the installation instructions properly.

Adri

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 13:01:19 GMT

Well,

I'm just starting out with C4D but initial impressions are that it's harder to get to grips with than Maxwell.

Does anyone know of any tutorials for C4D used with Archicad?

We want to produce high quality renders but really important is that producing those renders doesn't add hours and hours of work for a single image. It's one thing leaving a machine overnight to generate the render but another if it takes a person the best part of a day to set up the scene in the first place.

Anyone got any links to tutorials?

TIA

Adri

Re: Cinema 4D - The Industry Standard

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:58:39 GMT

adri wrote:
my mistake.

didn't read the installation instructions properly.

Adri

ALSO: Realize that you need the initial product [eXchange plug-in] - the web site is only an update. Without the actual product you cannot update a scene with new geometry.

See product at:

http://www.novedge.com/Page_Bookmark.asp?SKU=2093