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Cinema4 render engine? takes soo much longer

rob2218
Enthusiast
just curious.....it appears the Cinema4 rendering process takes soooo much longer than the old "Lightworks" process.

Have any others noticed this?
...Bobby Hollywood live from...
i>u
Edgewater, FL!
SOFTWARE VERSION:
Archicad 22, Archicad 23
Windows7 -OS, MAC Maverick OS
12 REPLIES 12
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
It entirely depends on your settings. When global illumination and/or other advanced lighting and surface features are enabled, it will indeed be slow ... as is any other product on the market that computes light accurately.

If you want fast renders, use the 'fast' scenes as a start. You can disable all advanced features to get a render that is as quick in time and poor in results as the old LW engine. 😉
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Sequoia 15.2, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
rob2218
Enthusiast
Well...obviously no one wants "poor" rendering quality but it was touted as "look how photo realistic this new render engine is"......yet no one stated it'd be a heck of a lot slower.....even OOTB rendering with Cinema4 settings.

I've seen the results side by side, and well......it's 'ok'. A little better in lighting but, umm...dunno. Clients just aren't as astute to these kinds of subtle changes in eye candy.

Seems the "lightworks" engine did an ok job and clients were none the wiser....but now we have this Cinema4 engine and in an out-of-the-box first attempt with a model....it's, like I said, well....ok.
...Bobby Hollywood live from...
i>u
Edgewater, FL!
SOFTWARE VERSION:
Archicad 22, Archicad 23
Windows7 -OS, MAC Maverick OS
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
What settings (pre-defined OOB 'scene') are you using?
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Sequoia 15.2, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
rob2218
Enthusiast
I reset an AC17 project.
Opened up a copy in AC18.
Followed YouTube video that said "simply change your rendering
Engine to the Cinema4d and see how different and much improved
Your rendering now looks......"

I dish just as I was instructed and rendering quality was EH...ok.
But not as much of a "WOW" as it had been touted.....
Basically just switched out the rendering engine expecting mind-blowing
Eye candy and allz I got was a "fizzle" then a "burp".
Karl wrote:
What settings (pre-defined OOB 'scene') are you using?
...Bobby Hollywood live from...
i>u
Edgewater, FL!
SOFTWARE VERSION:
Archicad 22, Archicad 23
Windows7 -OS, MAC Maverick OS
Anonymous
Not applicable
Sounds like perhaps you aren't using the Maxon materials if it was an AC17 file - have you looked into the migration process?

I have to say that the results I have been getting have been "okay" - much better than the joke Lightworks engine, but some way off the likes of Vray/Corona etc etc. Perhaps an unfair comparison, but Gsoft have marketed it as photo-realistic, so fair, imo.

Try using the likes of brute force rendering in Maxwell, or even Irradiance Mapping/Light cache at high quality settings in Vray etc - then you will know about render times

I asked the trainer at my local AC18 training about distributed rendering in future, which would obviously be a big plus for an architectural office with many multi-core machines - he suggested it was a possible future move, but nothing planned.

Our office is finding most value in the "clay" style renderings - the white model mode is very cool for concept work.
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Rob,

OOB (out of the box) means... just that. The default 18 template for a fresh project. Opening a 17 project is not OOB. Not only will the materials not be tuned to CR as eliotbnz says, but the CR settings and scenes are also not pre-set if you open an existing project.

Also... and unfortunately... the template is different for every localized version... and the video was made by HQ I think, perhaps for the INT version and template. The US template created by GSNA in Boston has issues, but is also unlikely to match other localizations (e.g., the videos - unless GSNA made the video in question) as far as settings.

See the attached to open a pre-defined (by GS) 'scene' with fast settings and see if you get satisfactory results. A scene is just a named collection of all of the many CR settings. I don't believe the predefined ones are necessarily good, but provide a reasonable starting point.

Karl
Screen Shot 2014-11-06 at 6.12.26 PM.png
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Sequoia 15.2, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
rob2218 wrote:
Well...obviously no one wants "poor" rendering quality but it was touted as "look how photo realistic this new render engine is"......yet no one stated it'd be a heck of a lot slower.....even OOTB rendering with Cinema4 settings.

I've seen the results side by side, and well......it's 'ok'. A little better in lighting but, umm...dunno. Clients just aren't as astute to these kinds of subtle changes in eye candy.

Seems the "lightworks" engine did an ok job and clients were none the wiser....but now we have this Cinema4 engine and in an out-of-the-box first attempt with a model....it's, like I said, well....ok.



Counterpoint.....

These are direct from ArchiCAD 18 and Cinerender with some having minor post-processing in Photoshop to adjust light balance and others (Foam Renders) obviously photocomposited with Sketch renders also direct from ArchiCAD.

These may not be at the level of more professional render engines like Vray or Maxwell, but they're lightyears ahead of anything you could ever get out of Lightworks (sans tons of tedious adjustment and cheating) with the average render times between 5 minutes (the Foam renders) to mostly 1-2 hours at most.....













....continued following.....
....continued...

....a few single family homes as well with some interiors.....












....one last post continued below....
....continued...

.....a few more...












ALL Cinerender and ALL with minimal effort and adjustments once the settings template was set.

Like I said, nowhere near the level of Maxwell or Vray (Which I also still use for more professional looking images and heavier scenes (read: 3D trees and heavy polygons), but I don't think it's even remotely debatable that Cinerender is way more superior to Lightworks ever was or could be.

Don't be one of those people that blames their tools for poor quality work when you didn't bother learning how to use the tool nor used it correctly or with any skill or competence at all.

If you're going to bash it, at least take the effort to learn how to use it first and use it well.


When I get some time I may post some Vray and Maxwell render versions of some of the projects (the first single family home and some of the multi-unit residential mid-rises) for comparison purposes.

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