[Tony Spark]

Thanks for the link. For Andrew’s problem the light dome worked well. Not so much for car paint in a scene where both car and camera are moving. The paint has to reflect the “sky” and still “sit” on the road. And to move a dome of 40 or so lights that is dependent on the same camera angle isn’t quite as easy. I had tried using Tim Claphams light dome https://www.helloluxx.com/cinema4d-mograph/cinema4d-light-dome/which is really cool for stage setting but not for a moving object.

What was interesting in Andrew’s demo was the tacit admission that GI flickers in Max as well in low GI settings. I had gone to 30 hours (mostly mid level settings with high stochastic) but maybe it requires throwing the book at it to get the true look of animated GI. Try going to https://www.suurland.com/ and you can see what I mean about “sitting” a car. Somewhere on there he has a movie that he did and when I grow up I want to be like him. Maybe it just means stupid amount of rendering time and the 1 minute cool still is just a tease for one hour a frame for the big time look. Or maybe Vray can do it. They certainly have nice animations.

Anyway thanks again.

[Tony Spark]

Thanks Anthony.

That’s essentially what the second solution I put up is but I used an area light and added a little direction with a spot that was attached to the car. It’s OK but not as nice as the GI stills.https://vimeo.com/9860546Here also there’s a little flickering of the shadow which I don’t understand since there’s no GI at all. These are just tests but I would love to start getting this into our production schedule in lieu of old running footage that is now drying up.

I’m still not sure why GI isn’t a good solution in animation in C4d when it works so well in stills. Most of the architectural stuff I’ve seen is peppered with it and, of course, the 3rd and the 7th (https://www.thirdseventh.com/index.php?/4thdimension/film/) Clearly it’s being used to give that ultra real feel that I can’t seem to get with lighting.

By the way I couldn’t find Kramer’s tutorial. A lot of AFX stuff but no 3d. I’m pursuing solutions to this like a starved dog so if you have a link, please let me have it.

[Tony Spark]

Thanks Adam for keeping up with this.
Both camera and cars are moving. The camera in a slow camera projection dolly and the car going down the road.

So which mode is best? I’ve tried the full animation mode on a previous test and the same thing happened with a huge hit on render time. In other tests I’ve gotten flickering on leaves, in the car paint, on all reflective surfaces and have been hearing/seeing that this seems to be an issue with C4d and GI in animation. But so far no solutions, other than getting away from GI in animation altogether. Seems a shame, because otherwise C4d rocks. I was hearing that Vray was solving these issues, but after your post I’m less optimistic.

Last night I faked a GI with a huge area light and an omni attached to the car. I was OK, but nothing as good as GI with the stills.

I remain hopeful that you or somebody have some magic bullet here that I’ve been missing.

Vimeo link https://vimeo.com/9860546 to see, roughly, the problem.

Thanks.

[Tony Spark]

Thanks for getting back, Adam. This is killing me. The stills look great and the animation …”booty”.
It’s essentially a car animation set on a large panorama setting (1800X576). Road going off into the distance. The car goes down the road. With GI (I’ve put the same photo of the background in the sky as a fake HDR to get the paint working right) the car sits correctly on the road. But not once it’s animated. The shadow gets blotchy and isn’t under the car, and leaves dark streaks where it was. Similar results with a “sound stage” set with the car driving around using arrrayed lights. Looks fine in stills but weird artifacts in animation and in the paint.

The last animation of about 160 frames took 30 hours with GI settings:
IR+QMC Camera Animation / diffuse depth 2 / Stochastic Samples-high / Record density Medium / Smoothing medium and oversamling medium. Anti aliasing-best with Sinc filter. What’s strange is that the stills were only about a minute each, but in animation it went up to almost 12 minute per frame.

I appreciate any ideas/suggestions you might have. I have about twenty of these that I could slam out if I can make them convincing.

Thanks.

[Tony Spark]

I’m stuck in a similar space trying to nail camera projection, insert 3d (in my case cars), and use GI to illuminate the whole thing. Works fine on rendering stills but falls apart when you animate. The shadows become awful and the cars don’t “sit” in the scene. I upped all the render settings(30 hours for 160 frames) and, while better, still was unconvincing. I’m now playing with light domes but they mess with the car paint and still don’t convince me.
I’ve read here and there that animation and GI are not the best of friends in C4d. I’m wondering if Vray has this one licked. The possibilities of camera projection are stunning but not if the “flickering” and muddy shadows are the result of GI and an animated scene.

If anybody knows a fix for this I would be hugely grateful.

Tony