Adam Trachtenberg
Forum Replies Created
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Come to think of it, the easiest way to do this is to create an alpha and map it to the cube’s side. 🙂
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You’ll have to either connect the parts into a single object or use separate lights for each part.
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Yep, Cinema does a good job importing .obj files. The only red flag is that it doesn’t read associated .mtl files, so you’ll have to assign materials by hand. Or … you can dowload the free Riptide plugin which does handle .mtls, and provides more control over the import process. https://www.skinprops.com/fr_c4d.htm
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Make sure to ask for dxf 12, and ask them to purge the document of xrefs etc. If you are getting 2d cad plans from Acad, ask them to explode lines before exporting.
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To be perfectly honest, based on your criteria I would stick with Cinema and Advanced Render. AR’s only real weak spot is GI, and in particular GI animation, but it’s more than sufficient for product shots. That, and it doesn’t support bucket rendering (automatically splitting a still image across a network). You can render a still in slices across a network, but then you have to assemble the pieces in Photoshop.
Advanced Render has some of the best lighting features around and it’s still one of the fastest raytracers. The material system is flexible but still powerful, and relatively user friendly. You can use it on mixed networks and you don’t have any compatibility headaches. Maxon’s tech support is good (and free!). IMO it’s the most stable 3D application around.
If I was going to recommend something else it would probably be 3dsMax with VRay, but neither of those will run on a Mac. Max is a good program, but personally I just don’t care for the GUI and workflow. That’s more of an individual thing, though. Definitely try the demo for yourself if you’re thinking about it.
You might also wait on the Mac port of finalRender. I can’t imagine it will be *too* much longer. I haven’t had stability problems with fR’s bucket rendering but I’ve seen several complaints about it.
Something I didn’t mention about Maxwell is that it’s network rendering is a real PITA to set up. I know a guy who bought 32 licenses and as of now he’s more or less determined that they’re unuseable due to the work required. Something else to consider is that you don’t get any break on NET render nodes; you pay $1,000 for four cpus (dual-cores count as two), period, so you can do the math.
Why is nothing ever easy, eh?
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Personally I think Cinema is easier to learn than Max, but I guess it’s a personal thing.
You might want to have a look at the new MoGraph module. It makes 3D for motion graphics about as easy as it can be.
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Wow, I could write a book on this topic. 🙂 The short version is, I have both render engines and I would recommend fR-2 for animation or interior GI renders (like architectural visualisation). Normally I would advise anyone to steer clear of Maxwell because it’s extreeeemely slow in many cases and integration with other applications is troublesome. On top of that, the development process has been very rocky and Next Limit has been misleading at best in their statements to customers. Further, there is no demo and if you decide you don’t like Maxwell you can’t get a refund *or* transfer your license.
There are, however, limited situations in which Maxwell could be a good choice:
1. You’re interested in producing the most accurate lighting simulation possible and you don’t care how long it takes;
2. The vast majority of your work will be product-type renders involving small scenes and direct lighting;
3. The vast majority of your work will be exterior renders involving direct lighting.Note the emphasis on direct lighting. This is because Maxwell render times increase geometrically when indirect lighting is involved. A production quality, print resoution interior render could take 200 hours or more on a fast computer, and that’s no exaggeration. By way of comparison, finalRender could produce an equivalent render in 5-10 hours.
finalRender is much *much* better integrated into Cinema, so that you can almost use it like Cinema’s own render engine. In contrast, Maxwell connects to Cinema via a plugin that has numerous problems. First, it does not support animation or motion blur (in case you *really* have a lot of time on your hands). Second, 90+% of the time you will have to create your materials in Maxwell’s standalone Studio application or material editor. Hopefully these limitations will be corrected, but past experience doesn’t bode well for a quick resolution.
Unfortunately, Cebas(maker of fR-2) hasn’t been the model of good customer relations either. Notably, they still haven’t released their Mac/OSX version and there’s no telling when that might happen.
If you can wait a while, VRay might be the best option of all. It has, in my opinion, the best combination of speed and quality presently available. A Cinema connection is coming, but it’s still in the early stages. You can read more about it here: https://www.vrayforc4d.com/
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It’s pretty easy actually. Create a light and set the type to “Area”. Then go to the light’s Details tab and set the “Area Shape” to object/spline. Now drag your object into the object box and check the “show in render” box below that.
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FBX will be your best shot. There may be an issue with camera animation but I think there’s a workaround (will lookaround and see if I can find it).
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The coordinates in the attributes manager are always local, whereas the coordinates manager can show local or global coordinates. Also, you can keyframe the AM coords but not the coordinates in the coordinate manager.
Example: create a null and a cube and make the cube the child of the null. Move the null in the Y axis. If you select the cube you’ll see that it’s position in the AM is still at 0,0,0. If you look in the coord manager and change the mode to “World”, you’ll see the cube’s world position.