The C4D Renderer vs The Rest!

#21

if there is not a huge ammount a money in the background, maxon won´t start to rework c4d just for adding extern renderers while they don´t earn a cent with it. i do not think that the big business lays in the small private users or companies but huge industries. it´d merely be a service update because the money for other renderers goes elsewhere and therefore i don´believe in extern renderers for c4d. who´d buy a expensive update just for another render engine? just companies that easily can afford that and that ain´t too many among the c4d users.

in c4d-treff, srek said that the option of extern renderers needs too much changes in the programm-code for calling it an easy job for the coders.

#22

someone mentioned earlier multipass…this is totally cool in c4d and that ae part kai mentions is kick ass…to often to concentrate on what we don’t have and not what we do.

but from what i can see you guys now saying…
you want prman and poss mray support…rather than not?
and you want it done right rather than a hack…i’d go along with that…

But the crucial question…revolution? you avoided…heh heh.
i mean is it possible…prman has been around an age…and by the sounds of it the best math and programmers around worked on its core code…hence its current stability and little change.
but does this mean it can be done…dare i mention the word…a NEW renderer…heh heh…would maxon be willing to make such a massive commitment in time and funds…doubt it…but sometimes maybe you gotta be a firestarter to start a revolution…thinking aloud really…but were do we go from here in the sense if we get a bridge where does that leave our native render…less funded i would think! not happy about that…or do they say no our render will do us fine for a few more years but in development we have “firestarter” a new renderer thats gonna eat you suckers for breakfast now that would be a revolution…
:shrug:

#23

i assume that you really really want a bridge, am i thinking right? so why not start a poll whit this options:

do you need a bridge to external renderers?
1 yes i need it to be able to compete with other 3d-artists
2 yes i need it because it looks good for c4d
3 yes i need it, but seriously for free
4 no i don´t need it, AR is enough
5 no i don´t need it, i won´t be able to buy it

ok…too many options but hey, make a poll!:wavey:
the multi-pass issue made me smile broadly:rolleyes:

#24

We won’t see a totally new renderer anytime soon, i’m afraid, and i’m already happy with our current renderer. We won’t see a connection to Mental Ray (or Brazil or…) anytime soon too. The only possibility we have is a connection to Prman. We’ll see if Maxon or some developer will decide to make one.

#25

I think several people have made a PRman bridge to some extent of getting geometry into it. I don’t know how far these efforts have proceded into getting lights animation info and all.

But yea maybe if we changed the cinema renderer to something the, RFHRender, or something. Just so it would sound cool people would be more happy.

#26

Originally posted by ThirdEye_01
Don’t include in the discussion the ability to use the software or the skills of the artist. And let’s stop saying the software doesn’t matter and Stahlberg blah blah blah, we’re not all Stahlbergs and if software wasn’t that important we’d all use Bryce. We’re talking about features, stability and speed with huge scenes, output quality.

Thank you :applause:

I too tire of the “look at rustboy”:rolleyes:
proclaimations that inevitably pop up in these threads
many kudos to those artists that create a great peice of work
with some limited package but that realism bar is being raised
every Day it seems and pro level apps had better be serious about providing
solutions todays CG artists demand

#27

My take on it is that there wouldn’t be much market for a render engine bridge. If anything, Maxon should look to improve AR to make Cinema a more attractive option for Max, Maya, etc. users. To that end they should address a number of issues:

  • subpixel displacement;
  • better/faster motion blur;
  • much faster area shadows;
  • soft shadow caching;
  • NPR system;
  • SSS;
  • two-point perspective;
  • dof;
  • improved GI (speed and quality).

Easy to say, eh?

As far as Brazil, maybe it’s the skill of the artists using it, but to me Brazil renders just look a notch better. Maybe a notch and a half.

#28

Originally posted by Kaiskai
The only ones I would ever want to see brides to are PRman and Mray, but personally I can’t afford either myself

I think a bridge to prman would the be the best way to go. you dont need to purchase prman. If you wanted to learn renderman there are always aqsis ( who are always looking for betatesters for their latest release) pixie (i hear is pretty neck and neck feature wise as prman), and 3delight (which i hear is the most compatible with prman shaders but not up to date in the latest features) and last if you can get a copy of bmrt (which is ffloating around online but is pretty outdated)
and as far as writing shaders theres a tool called shaderman (if you do a search it will come up) which make it alot easier then writing code. looks just like the maya hypershade (which makes me feel right at home)
And as far as network rendering there are quite a few network render programs out there that are for command based renderers.
Oh and prman is only 3 grand for license now… not that its cheap now but its a hell of alot cheaper then 9 grand a license.
As far as Mray, you dont have these options . So a bridge to Mray wouldnt be good for c4d. And not to put down c4d but if you can afford to get a few Mray licenses you probably wouldnt be using c4d. And i know these renderman renders havent been production proven but they would still be great to learn with and give you experience if you ever wanted to get a job that requires it.

#29

Sorry to continue this off-topic subject, but it bugs me.

True: in the hands of a master, even mundane tools can produce great results.

However,

Everyone on that side of the argument seems to use the same basic example:
Give Stahlberg Bryce and give a newbie Maya, Stahlberg makes art, newbie’s brain explodes, yada yada.

What if, instead:
Clone Stahlberg, give Bryce to one and Maya to the other. Did anyone here learn to drive…by riding a horse?

—[ E N D _ R A N T _ M O D E ]—

As for the discussion at hand, Cinema’s renderer is capable of amazing results without hurting your budget quite as bad as Maya/XSI/PRMan would. I doubt that anyone who can’t afford any of those is in a position to actually need them for everyday use, and there are learning editions for those wanting to get there.

#30

Originally posted by crgowo
I think a bridge to prman would the be the best way to go. you dont need to purchase prman. If you wanted to learn renderman there are always aqsis ( who are always looking for betatesters for their latest release) pixie (i hear is pretty neck and neck feature wise as prman), and 3delight (which i hear is the most compatible with prman shaders but not up to date in the latest features) and last if you can get a copy of bmrt (which is ffloating around online but is pretty outdated)
and as far as writing shaders theres a tool called shaderman (if you do a search it will come up) which make it alot easier then writing code. looks just like the maya hypershade (which makes me feel right at home)
And as far as network rendering there are quite a few network render programs out there that are for command based renderers.
Oh and prman is only 3 grand for license now… not that its cheap now but its a hell of alot cheaper then 9 grand a license.
As far as Mray, you dont have these options . So a bridge to Mray wouldnt be good for c4d. And not to put down c4d but if you can afford to get a few Mray licenses you probably wouldnt be using c4d. And i know these renderman renders havent been production proven but they would still be great to learn with and give you experience if you ever wanted to get a job that requires it.

Why wouldn’t you use C4D just because you can afford renderman licenses? I’ve seen plenty of feature images using C4D’s built in Renderer. But that was never my argument. As for your statement about rednerman compliant renderers, did you read my whole post, you simply repeated the fact that these are available, and you would have noticed that we have a rib exporter which currently has a light and material shader designed to support the settings (or as many as possible) of the settings in cinema within renderman without a lot of personal code. Animation is still an issue. You’d all know this is you guys were actively testing the rib exporter.

When I said bridge, I meant a true bridge not a rib exporter, and thus it has to be to a specific renderman renderer, the maya one doesn’t work with all renderman renderers, best results are with PRman as thats what the bridge is designed to work with.

BTW, you know that 3 grand for a single license of PRman is double the price of C4D and its advanced renderer, and unlimited seats of net. Unless your doing feature, that price is a substantial difference.

#31

Sure there are things that could be improved in the C4D renderer.

However, I definitely appreciate the fact that the renderer is totally “inside” Cinema more than I would like a bridge to some external solutions.

I’ve been tortured way too much in the past while dealing with buggy connections to stand-alone renderers… It’s OK if you’ve got yourself a TD to handle all the crap, but if you don’t it is just painful.

If there’s one single addition I’d like to see in the C4D renderer, it would be a flexible shader programming interface similar to Renderman SL. Aside from that I’m so totally happy about the built-in renderer (with AR).

#32

as i already posted in postforum:

i like cinemas renderer quite well, and i am able to get decent results, no question.

but. i wished there where some functionalities fr or brazil have:

p.e.: special cameras(fish eye nad architectural)-very important!!!
micropoly displacment,
dispersion in transparent materials
good toon and technical illustration system like final toon
shader tree system (new sla)
translucence channel
faster area shadows(brazil)
saturation adjustment for reflections
ability to use netrender for single frames (bucket render system?)

smarter gi technology, i am sure it could get some improvements like fr did with stage 1 and with the recent free update to fr1.1
…

i think there are two good options:
open cinema to 3rd party renderers
update cinemas render engine

i would prefer both of course, as a user.

i think maxon does a very good job overall, and i really prefer cinemas userinterface to the max UI.i also like the new additions from version8.

i just think it is time to keep up with the rest of the industriy.

i bought cinema cause i liked its good render system. for myself i would prefer to see above improvements in this area, rather than adding more and more new features for modelling or CA animation. i think it is time again to look at the render system and do a serious update of the rendere and of netrender. this would really boost cinema again, that is what i wanted to say.

this is what i like to see in future advanced render…

my two cents…
cheers

stefan
lllab

#33

no— please update the animation before the renderer system ;-)— IMHO much more important then the renderer.
Not that Micropoly would not be nice—
but I seriously need an overworked timeline, more control over animation-segments and FBX support (so I can transfer animation to other 3d software).
See—its a conflict of interest.
If you only do stills you might nit care about that-- but its Cinem 4 D after all–
What good is the best renderer if you cannot animate a complicated scene with characters—
:wink:
Olli

#34

My gut feeling is that even if Maxon included a perfect bridge plugin for PRman in XL9, 95% of the people on forums like this would still use the built-in renderer. If that’s true, why bother? Because it sounds cool? I’d rather Maxon work on things that ARE cool, instead of things that just make the spec sheet look impressive.

Yes, max6 has MR 3.2 now. Great. Wonderful. I could have it for $800 (upgrade). And it means absolutely nothing to me. I’d rather have a great max-to-c4d connection so that i could model/animate in max and texture/render in XL8…

As someone mentioned earlier, XL has an outstanding raytracer. Certainly things like SSS and microdisplacement would be great, but let’s not knock the core, as it’s very, very good.

(And ya, i’ve have enough of “Rustboy” too.)

thorn

#35

I hope Maxon improves the modeler and the animation stuff so we could bring you back home thorn :wink:

#36

As do I. :wink:

Believe me, jumping to 3dsmax was a long and painful (and expensive) decision… i loved C4D more than ANYONE. I ate, slept, and breathed C4D.

Unfortunately, several key features of XL8 were not implemented correctly; despite my messages, mock-ups, feedback, and frankly - begging and pleading.

Some of these things are easy to conceptualize, and wouldn’t have been THAT big of a problem to do. Others, such as the character toolset, are more challenging. But unforunately, there are certain factions which held more influence than I did, and as a result I had to find another solution for 3D.

thorn

#37

Originally posted by neverwake
[B]As do I. :wink:

Believe me, jumping to 3dsmax was a long and painful (and expensive) decision… i loved C4D more than ANYONE. I ate, slept, and breathed C4D.

Unfortunately, several key features of XL8 were not implemented correctly; despite my messages, mock-ups, feedback, and frankly - begging and pleading.

Some of these things are easy to conceptualize, and wouldn’t have been THAT big of a problem to do. Others, such as the character toolset, are more challenging. But unforunately, there are certain factions which held more influence than I did, and as a result I had to find another solution for 3D.

thorn [/B]

But I guess it’s going to be hard to switch away from Max entirely, given that Discreet makes it all but impossible to transfer their pricey licenses. Or am I wrong about that?

Assuming I’m wrong, what about going with Motion Builder for character stuff along with Cinema? FBX is just a matter of time, and I believe MB has considerably better character tools than Max. And as far as modeling goes, Mesh Surgery takes Cinema to a new level. So for $300 + Cinema you can have a pretty sweet setup.

#38

But I guess it’s going to be hard to switch away from Max entirely, given that Discreet makes it all but impossible to transfer their pricey licenses. Or am I wrong about that?

It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible. It requires discreet’s permission… in some cases, they do say yes. But, I don’t think i’d ever sell my max license unless I was either cross-grading to XSI (unlikely, i’m not that loaded) or getting out of 3D entirely.

Assuming I’m wrong, what about going with Motion Builder for character stuff along with Cinema? FBX is just a matter of time, and I believe MB has considerably better character tools than Max.

I haven’t used MB, but i assume it’s rather nice based on others’ comments. However, unless you have that magazine with MB on the CD it can get a bit pricey to get MB5.

And as far as modeling goes, Mesh Surgery takes Cinema to a new level. So for $300 + Cinema you can have a pretty sweet setup.

MeshSurgery does look nice, but the lack of n-gons (pls DON’T take that as an invitation to restart that n-gon thread) is a problem for me. Plus, MS is $100+ and if I’ve already got most of that power in max, i’d just keep modeling in max and export as OBJ.

thorn

#39

well, meshsurgery is the latest excuse for maxon not to add better polygonal modelling tools directly in c4d. it´s just a guess and slightly off this particular topic ‘renderers’.

#40

That’s what people said about Donovan Keith’s “Golem”… that either a) Maxon would buy it, and not do their own thing or b) Maxon wouldn’t do anything at all, and let Golem just stay a 3rd party solution.

Which of course, they did neither. They developed their own toolset, and Golem remained a 3rd party product.

thorn