Top Ten C4D tips

[tezuka 0]

so let's add some more :-)

my top ten (hopefully no double post's here):

 

1- hit "q" in order to activate/deactivate any generator in the object manager, like hypernurbs, cloners, arrays etc.

 

2- alt+d hides/shows the axis display

 

3- in order to transfer the PSR of one object to another, just drop it under the parent object and zero out his PSR

 

4- hold "j" together with LMB in the viewport in order to scrub trough your timeline

 

5- use the hair render tag in order to render splines/particles etc. blazingly fast

 

6- the quickest way I know of to make clay renders: take an environment object, set brightness 100%, turn AO on, turn on GI with QMC mode, hit render.

 

7- you can use iterative formulas in any attribute field: select a bunch of objects, go to P.X for example, type in num*400, smile.

 

8- learn the shortcuts for the different shading/view modes to speed up viewport performance,

my favourites: n~b (gouraud-shading with lines), n~f (hidden lines) and n~i for isoline viewing

 

9- color your AO, don't leave it with the standard black to white gradient

 

10- there is an advanced mode for the timeline, where PSR keys are colored and positioned seperately, click RMB on the timeline, go to Options, activate advanced mode, click RMB again, activate "Split PSR Keys". Unfortunately this doesn't work in "normal" mode. In the advanced mode, you can double-click on a frame number in order to play the animation.

[douwe 0]

5- use the hair render tag in order to render splines/particles etc. blazingly fast

 

i just found out about this use for the hair render tag a couple days ago in the comments on this video by mostyle.

have been playing around with it, and it absolutely works wonders.

does some interesting tracing as well (named trail).

[tezuka 0]

i just found out about this use for the hair render tag a couple days ago in the comments on this video by mostyle.

have been playing around with it, and it absolutely works wonders.

does some interesting tracing as well (named trail).

 

It does indeed, I was so amazed by it's flexibility and performance, that when I first learned about it, I tried to build a Particle Setup in C4D which resembles the functionality of Particular for AE.

Here's a bunch of screenshots put together from my effort:

p4d.jpg

You should also play with the antialiasing settings in the hair render tab.

I tried to imitate pyrocluster behaviour/shading by raising the filter value to very high values with nice results, unfortunately not as controllable as one would like to.

But there's potential for sure.

[JamesDohertyEsq 0]

It does indeed, I was so amazed by it's flexibility and performance, that when I first learned about it, I tried to build a Particle Setup in C4D which resembles the functionality of Particular for AE.

Here's a bunch of screenshots put together from my effort:

p4d.jpg

 

 

 

 

Wow, that looks interesting! Did you finish/release it?

 

 

Great tips from everyone, really useful.

Fairly new to c4d, here are my tips:

 

1. Cinema 4d is the big blue icon

2. hmmmm...

[rovino 0]

it's cool how 5 years later these tips are still great.

Yep, sorry wasnt able to start learning till last year. I'm playing catch up. Never too late to learn something new.

[NastyJames 0]

Wow. So I tweaked this from .01% to 50%.. honestly Im just spitballing here. But then I tried rendering out a file that originally took me 49hrs. rendered in 1hr. I havent taken a look at it.. gonna see what it looks like after post. but I must say that some crazy specs there.

thanks for the heads up monkey.

 

Is this Ray Threshold, in render settings? If so, I can't quite figure this one out. I bumped it up to 50% and saw no render time increase. What exactly does it do? The scene I'm rendering is very heavy in shadow maps and AO.

[JamesDohertyEsq 0]

I've assumed that he means the threshold in Anti-Aliasing.. Haven't had a play with it but the wiki says this:

 

 

While the antialiasing process runs within one pixel, a constant comparison of the interim result with the final results of the neighbour pixels takes place. If the colour value of the actual calculated pixel is similar enough to the colour values of its neighbours, the antialiasing process will be terminated. It is simply supposed that the pixels are in fact quite similar in colour. In most cases this is a good decision - sometimes not. If e.g. the user adjusts the threshold value to 5% the antialiasing process will be terminated if the colour difference between the actual calculated pixel and its neighbours is less than 5%. At least the number of sub pixels entered as the Min Level value will be computed. If no sufficient resemblance is achieved, the Max Level input value will be used as the final termination criterion. This method delivers a considerably faster computation of poor in detail areas.

 

 

 

Which is confusing as f****k!

 

I take it to mean that it's the value which dictates where each pixel should be on the scale between the Min Level and Max Level values.. Haven't had time to test it yet though..

[levante 0]

Which is confusing as f****k!

Basically the threshold forces all pixels above its value to be anti-aliased using the "max level" settings and the pixels below to use the "min level" setting.

This means that in most cases rendering might be faster (without altering image quality) when setting the "min" value down and simultaneously decrease the threshold % a bit than rendering with a higher "min level" value (as a lot of users would do).

 

(correct me if i'm explaining this wrong)

[the_Monkey 8]

There has been some confusion.

 

The Ray Threshold and AA Threshold are completely different settings.

At the time (R9.6?) Ray Threshold was just called "Threshold".

 

Ray Threshold behaves similarly to AA but controls the threshold for transparent and reflective objects.

 

-m

[levante 0]

The Ray Threshold and AA Threshold are completely different settings.

At the time (R9.6?) Ray Threshold was just called "Threshold".

Ok sorry - i thought everybody was talking about AA settings.

Upping the ray threshold sure can decrease render times. But i often experienced clipping in combination with gradient / fresnel maps when altering this setting.

 

So my general render advice (for whatever 3d app you're using) would be: always take some time for optimizing your render-settings, cause every project is different. In the end it will almost always pay of in saved render time.

 

In Cinema 4d: if a certain object in your scene requires higher AA than the rest (often happens with transparencys) - use the compositing tags "force antialiasing" to increase AA values only for the object instead of upping the settings for the whole scene.

[vozzz 2]

wow, tezuka, that thing looks pretty awesome!