The C4D Renderer vs The Rest!

#61

cool…so it not in the realm of impossibility then…cheer pit:thumbsup:

#62

Because I occasionally work with a very small film special effects shop, I would like to be able to render to .cin ‘Cineon’ file format for feature work. It uses an extended bit depth to accomodate the color space available on film. The shops software of choice, for almost everything is ‘Houdini’.

stay well

#63

I’d like proper motionblur. Micropoly Displacement. Shader Tree. Reaktor Dynamics. And a simpler Particle thing ala Thinking Particles, kinda the way that Particle Flow is in max6.

And a better viewport technology. Maya’s viewport is much much faster than c4d

#64

“I’d like proper motionblur.”

Scene motion blur IS proper motionblur

“And a simpler Particle thing ala Thinking Particles, kinda the way that Particle Flow is in max6.”

C4D already has Thinking Particles, what do you want more?

“And a better viewport technology. Maya’s viewport is much much faster than c4d”

It’s a joke, right? C4D has the fastest OGL support out there, have you even enabled it in the preferences?

#65

ive done that mistake… didnt know i had to enable it :frowning:

#66

Hm, I think no one mention here one of the biggest problems of a built-in renderer: you can’t place it into an existing rendering pipeline. Most of the companies (even the smallest) have 3dsmax, Maya and maybe XSI in their pipeline, because one app is good for this, another one is good for that, and I’m sure Cinema would be good for some things too, but now it isn’t possible to place it into a MR or PRman pipeline.

And to be honest, there were no real changes in the AR module from v7 to v8 (okay, maybe HDRI, but that’s all). There were no changes in material management and light & shadow options, and these heavily affect image quality.

#67

Originally posted by supremacy
And to be honest, there were no real changes in the AR module from v7 to v8 (okay, maybe HDRI, but that’s all). There were no changes in material management and light & shadow options, and these heavily affect image quality.

8.0 vs 7.3: 40% (mac)-30% (pc) speed increase, support for .hdr files
8.1: hdri full support
8.2: new camera GI for non flickering camera animation, new much faster and precise GI algos, new light falloffs

#68

Oh, I will check if it’s enabled.

And about the motionblur, when you compare it to Maya’s motionblur which is in my experience faster and better looking. Maya doesnt have this feature but, this would be nice to have, and it would cover up all the woes with the current MotionBlur.
Check it HERE

Allso about Thinking Particles, when you compare it to Max6 Particle Flow, it’s really complicated. for some small tasks you have to create expression’s with something like 20 nodes. Check a video on Particle Flow here: Here

But I have to check the OGL viewport thing. When R8 came they sayd something about OGL viewport, but i didnt see/feel any diffrence. But i will check if i have it enable. Think not…

#69

Originally posted by ThirdEye_01
[B]“I’d like proper motionblur.”

Scene motion blur IS proper motionblur
[/B]

It’s a very inefficient approach. Rendering the whole scene 20 times just to get a strobe-free bullet shooting through your otherwise static scene is not what I’d call an elegant solution. If you take a look a the method PRMan (and other mainly REYES rendererrs) take, they render it in one pass where only the sections in which the bullet is visible take longer to render, the rest is rendering as fast as before.

#70

The technique that Stew pointed out is probably the same as maya uses. And that actually is the way it should work. It would be much faster to use that way

#71

C4D is a scanliner/raytracer, not a REYES renderer, and so it’s Maya. The motion blur of finalRender is raytraced motion blur, which takes an age to render, not exactly the fastest thing on earth. And neods: have you enabled OGL? :wink:

#72

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]

Hi thorn. I love C4D too, and as difficult as the thought of using something else is, I am frequently frustrated by the lack of advanced CA tools and timeline, and so occasionally find myself too wondering how other programs might serve me better. Occasionally I try something else for a little bit, first LW then Maya, but ultimately thus far always find myself saying to myself, oh my, this won’t do at all! Now that you’ve been using Max for awhile, do you feel that the move was really worthwhile, and if so, please explain exactly why. Thanks.

#73

I’d also be interested in hearing an objective comparison from someone who knows Cinema inside and out, and who must be pretty familiar with Max by now.

#74

No, Third_eye… Now that i’ve enabled it. It’s much better.

And Thorn, I would allso like to hear you opinioins is it worth the hassle to change software? I’ve been thinking about Max myself, has it been good, and how is it compared to c4d?

#75

Well, having come the opposite way (from the evil discreet planet to the sunny Maxonshire) I have to chime in, although I feel that I’m still a C4D noobie.

My point is that there’s more to software than its features - the licencing policy. Discreet’s piracy…err policy is to make license transfers practically impossible, so if you go with Max, you’re stuck with it. Considering Max’s price point, it’s worth a long, hard look before you leap - if you’re funding it yourself.

When my previous employer no longer needed their Max (it was up to R3 then), I enquired from the reseller about aquiring it. I was told that it would take ages to sort it out with discreet and that I could probably buy it but not upgrade. (Another such example of discreet’s approach was in the letters section of the latest 3DWorld.)

After a period of healthy non-CGI life I lapsed and bought Cinema :wink: My humble verdict ? Although Max does cover more ground (not least because of its gazillion plugins), I find myself repeating that old cliché: Cinema is more “direct”, more fun to work with. So I´ve relly not looked back - except for three things: decent Flash output, a much nicer dirt plugin and… character animation!! (OK, so I’m a spoiled Character Studio sissy, but at least you’d get to actually animate your models!)

As my Max knowledge doesn’t extend beyond 3.1 and we didn’t use any 3rd party renderers (except Illustrate), I have to leave it there, just short of the actual topic of this thread :wink:

#76

Definitely Discreet’s resale policy is a huge disincentive to switch to Max–not to mention the price.

#77

heaven forbid…and i slap myself on the wrist for doing it…but i went to newtek to see what was in r8 of lightwave…
native hard/soft body dynamics…new ik stuff…cloth…timeline stuff.

add to stuff like voxels and the modelling and animation toolset and it looks very nice. dunno how it is as an alternative to max?

also looked at final render feature list.
http://www.cebas.com/products/feature.asp?UD=10-7888-35-788&PID=36&FID=359

brazils feature list
http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/sf_gen_page.php3?printer=1&page=1.0Features

mental rays feaures
http://www.mentalray.com/2_1_1_technical/index.html

visited these guys you might know of them.
https://renderman.pixar.com/products/news/prman11_release.html
https://renderman.pixar.com/products/tools/renderman.html

have fun always…:cool:

#78

People talk a lot about PRman and Mray being awesome renderers, but I think it’s a lot of lip service more than anything. Why are they the best? And the best for WHO?

Mray: To get good results in Maya using Mray, you need a Ph.D. The shader implementation is awful, and you’re walking with crutches until you get into writing your own shaders. Do you know how to program shaders? Then Mray is probably not for you. Many of the features that make Mray seem desirable are glacier slow (motion blur, DOF, blurred reflections), and you’d be a total goof not to fake that stuff in post (in ANY software). The “fine displacement” is supposed to be like micro-triangle displacement, but it doesn’t cut it. Not even close. Baking GI into textures seems to be its strongest area. Don’t think you can render film-res GI scenes in Mental Ray without baking and faking.

PRman: fast, solid, amazing displacement, deep shadows, and that’s about it. That’s why it’s the most used, but again, what makes it “the best”?

Cinema isn’t hurt by its renderer, it’s hurt by its shading. Say you wanted to drive surface luminance on one object by sampling the refelction color of another object? It’s a silly hookup, but the point is, in PRman/Mray, you can hook those right up, if you know how to drag connections between nodes.

My point is, use a renderer that’s right for YOU. There is no one best renderer (duh), and the grass is always greener over there. The only RENDERER feature that would be nice in Cinema is displacement. Otherwise, I’d like to be able to hook any material attribute into anything else, and a load of sampling nodes.

#79

Originally posted by Brent Turbo
[B]People talk a lot about PRman and Mray being awesome renderers, but I think it’s a lot of lip service more than anything. Why are they the best? And the best for WHO?

Mray: To get good results in Maya using Mray, you need a Ph.D. The shader implementation is awful, and you’re walking with crutches until you get into writing your own shaders. Do you know how to program shaders? Then Mray is probably not for you. Many of the features that make Mray seem desirable are glacier slow (motion blur, DOF, blurred reflections), and you’d be a total goof not to fake that stuff in post (in ANY software). The “fine displacement” is supposed to be like micro-triangle displacement, but it doesn’t cut it. Not even close. Baking GI into textures seems to be its strongest area. Don’t think you can render film-res GI scenes in Mental Ray without baking and faking.

PRman: fast, solid, amazing displacement, deep shadows, and that’s about it. That’s why it’s the most used, but again, what makes it “the best”?

Cinema isn’t hurt by its renderer, it’s hurt by its shading. Say you wanted to drive surface luminance on one object by sampling the refelction color of another object? It’s a silly hookup, but the point is, in PRman/Mray, you can hook those right up, if you know how to drag connections between nodes.

My point is, use a renderer that’s right for YOU. There is no one best renderer (duh), and the grass is always greener over there. The only RENDERER feature that would be nice in Cinema is displacement. Otherwise, I’d like to be able to hook any material attribute into anything else, and a load of sampling nodes. [/B]

:applause: :applause: :applause:

#80

Originally posted by Brent Turbo
…The only RENDERER feature that would be nice in Cinema is displacement. Otherwise, I’d like to be able to hook any material attribute into anything else, and a load of sampling nodes.

:beer: :applause: