Rendering in Cinema 4D

[Randy Johnson]

there are a lot of threads about rendering, rendering times and how to optimize them.
The scene you have is pretty big and its being rendered HD. This stuff takes time. There are tons of things you can do to speed up the render but if you need to know what you are looking for.

If you are in an office take advantage of NET RENDER it ships with C4D (for the most part) you might be able to render on three machines or is you have studio you can render on them all.

You could also look into a render farm. I have used these two with out issues:https://www.rebusfarm.com/
https://www.renderking.com/ there is also https://www.rendertitan.com/main although I have not used it.

here are a couple render threads:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/19/870347#870347
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/19/863197#863199

And AE and cinema do not render the same type of data so they cannot really be timed against each other…

/Randy

[Quintus Lubbe]

Hi there, Anthony

This is going to be a long render as it is quite a complex scene with many textures and lighting setups. Volumetric lighting (which there seems to be lot of in this scene) always takes much longer to render, so that’s something to keep in mind. However, volumetric lighting makes everything look so much better.

Also if you have motion blur switched on in the scene each frame can be rendered from 5 up to 64 times depending on the level of motion blur set in render settings. So take the time it takes to render one frame without motion blur and multiply that by the amount of motion blur set in the render tab.

To speed things up you could try setting your max anti-aliasing down to 2×2. Also check the shadow map resolution. You might be able to save some time there by pulling that down.

Something to keep in mind is that you would never be able to recreate a scene like this in after effects… ever.

[Anthony Setty]

Ive given up… Just going to let the stupid render run… As of right now Im on frame 76 of 621 and have been rendering for 30 hours and 15 minutes… What a joke! Im sure its a great program and does have many useful applications BUT after this project is done I’m uninstalling and trowing the install discs in the trash.

NET render and render farms not an option… Im freelancing and for right now Im running 1 MacBook Pro (15 inch) with a core i7 at 2.66 and 8 gigs ddr3 ram.

The thing that’s busting my balls… Its just a (going to be used as) 30 second countdown timer for kids church… Ive made a ton of countdown timers for churches, sermonspice, and worshiphousemedia in the past threw AFTER EFFECTS… 5 minute countdown timer = about 20 to 30 minute render… Cinema 4D: 30 second countdown timer…. well, been rendering for over 30 hours now and have about 3 seconds rendered out… Im sorry, but Maxon can bite me! What a waste… Maybe in 3 more WEEKS ill be able to move on to other things…

FYI thanks for not answering my question… I asked whats the fastest RENDER SETTINGS to turn that template into 720p .mov file to which you unloaded on me about net rendering and render farms and all this other stuff that had nothing to do with render settings… Awesome! Sure ill buy a bunch of crap and set up a render farm or go buy 10 more macs to use net render… Yeah right its 1 project and will be my last… Its just a countdown timer for kids church why put thousands into it. I would never have even opened up Cinema 4d if it wasn’t for the fact that the boss wanted this specific template and I agreed before I knew what I was getting into… (Got a copy of Cinema 4d from my school and haven’t even opened it up until this project)…

Cant wait to get back to normal countdown timers in AFTER EFFECTS! Good luck guys with your Cinema 4D junk… I can make 50 countdown timers in the time it takes to render 3 seconds of ONE timer in Cinema 4d… Which one is more productive?

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Probably best that you stick to AE. All 3D programs require a serious commitment of time to master and if you think you can pick it up and instantly turn around good results then you’re bound to be disappointed. There is no Toy Story button and there is no Render Fast button.

[Anthony Setty]

Thank you for the information. That\’s what I was looking for. Motion blur settings have it running 5 times per frame. Backed the other settings down to 2. This has made the render faster but not by much. After this (one and only) project in cinema 4d I will be done with it. I\’ll leave cinema 4d work for others like yourself and stick to After Effects where I belong at my level. Thank you seriously though! If I did my math right your recommendations to adjust my settings has saved me 2.93 days! Still taking way to long (I think a mentally handicapped person could re-paint rembrant\’s entire collection faster than cinema 4d could render) but at leased you cut a couple days off of it for me. Thank you!!!

[Matthew Oneill]

[Anthony Setty] “I think a mentally handicapped person could re-paint rembrant\’s entire collection faster than cinema 4d could render”

I’ll start rendering, you get painting and we’ll see who finishes first.