jacobite

Cheers Deck, thanks for your reply. U'll keep messing about and see if I can get something to work. Jacobite

Hi Guys, I’m planning a new project (Freebee) for 2 friends of mine. These 2 friends research War Memorials for the local communities. I’m sure you can appreciate the work that goes into this one and it is free for the community to browse. Anyway, I thought that I could model the War Memorial and have all the names of The Fallen displayed. This would be for the front end of their Website. My plan for the workings is to allow the user to do a 360° around the model, find the name and click it to take them to the appropriate information, held on the site. My thoughts are; The render would have to be compatible with Quicktime VR or something else to do the 360°. There would have to be Invisible Hyperlinks attached to the names on the Memorial at the Website side. So, if any you guys have rendered a 360° or can give me any advice, it would be greatly appreciated. Jacobite

I use R18 for doing my projects and R26 to render them. I can edit in R26 and open it in R18 no probs. The only annoying thing, is that when saving in R26 then opening in R18, R18 gives the warning about not having "Magic Bullet Looks" although I have not used it anywhere in the project. Why do I use R18 when I have 26? Simply because the interface is far superior and I know where everything is. I also have some scripts and plugins that don't work in R26. The only downside to R18, is that it does not support Apple Silicon. Jacobite

CBR, you are a Master Craftsman. I love the way you go about problem solving and the natural way you communicate and explain where errors are going to come from and why. We would all love to see more tutorial if you ever find the time. Jacobite

I haven't looked at your file as I have a heavy render going on. The simplest way to do a 360° loop rotation, is to setup your timeline from 0-359. that way each frame will be 1°. Set frame 0 to 0° and 359 to 359° because when it loops to zero it has completed the rotation. Now go into the Dope Sheet and reduce or streatch the Summery to your specifications.

Yeah Happypolygon, the weird thing is that, Once the model has been exported via Daz to C4d Bridge and saved from C4D with assets. The model looks great, Once I copy and paste the model into a new document and relink the textures, they are discrepancies in the materials. for instance, the original has Luminance in some of it's materials with Surface Scattering. When copied Surface Scattering.is missing. This is also true for some others like Color the RGB levels will be slightly different. This also occurs when I use Merge. I just cannot understand why this is happening. I have tested on R18, R23, R25 and R26. They all react identically and lose key information from the materials. Jacobite

Sorry Happypolygon, I think I have over complicated the issue. I think I was wrong with my analysis. Let me start again! I am using 12 Daz 3D models in a massive scene. When one of the models is brought into C4D as a single models, it looks great and renders great. My workflow is to position the model, animate it then save it with assets to be merged into the bigger scene. When I merge it into the bigger scene, the model comes in with strange Luminance around the eyes. First I thought it was occurring because I am using Genesis for all the models and because all the models are using the same body textures, that was causing some sort of conflict. Therefor, that is why I decided to rename the textures. Anyway, while writing this I have solved the issue. For some reason when I open the model as a single file, then copy and paste or even merge the model into a new scene, C4D puts a strange Luminance into some materials! The pic on the left shows the original model rendered, the one on the right is what is happening when copied or merged into a new document. As I said it has been resolved new, so thank you for your feedback. Jacobite

During my project I created multiple Genesis Character and brought them into my C4D R25 scene. Wasn't easy but I got there. The problem that occurs, is that because all the Characters are Genesis and all have the same skin textures, for whatever reason the faces have all sorts of madness going on. The only way I found to get around this problem, is to bring in each Character separately and save with assets. Then in the Tex folder rename the textures, ie, "Whatever.JPG" to "Whatever 1.JPG" putting a " 1" before the extension. The 2 for the next etc.. When the file is opened again, obviously the textures can't load and have to be relinked through the Asset Inspector the missing textures file names can be edited and the " 1" can be added. The file will automatically relink to the new file name. While going through this process, I thought, how cool it would be to have a find and replace tool/script in the Asset Inspector and search for .JPG and replace with " 1.JPG. I have still got a few hundred to replace, therefore, it won't help me on this occasion but I'm sure it would be a great asset for the community.

Just did a test, It works if I highlight all instances and change from "Render Instances" to "Instance" then all the trees reappear. Hope this speeds things up. Thanks Guys for your help it is always appreciated. Jacobite

I did the Scatter of the trees (Model Trees from the content browser) first and when it came to rendering, the time to render trees was mad. Like all my project, this one is about 7,500 frames, (massive landscapes). I break all my renders into scenes so I persevered with the render. Then, with 2 scenes to go, I thought (poly reduction generator). When I tried it, all trees disappeared and the instances did not update. I think I should have used the poly reduction generator first before Scattering. Now that I cannot go back because I have rendered the majority of the project and could never reposition the trees. That brings another thought, I did see a tutorial about changing an instance into a model, the back to an instance again. Anyway, I think you may be right CBR, maybe I just did not give C4D enough time to recalculate and update the instances. Sometimes we all have to learn the hard way! I really appreciate you guys help, I'll try poly reduction generator and give it more time and I'll let you know how I get on. Jacobite

Rendering a scene in R23 with tons of trees. The Trees are killing the render times. Trees have been placed on the landscape with Scatter (Instances). Anyway, I thought using the Polygon Reduction on the original Tree models would reduce render times. However, what I found is that the Instances do not get updated and all the trees disappear. Perhaps I need to use the Polygon Reduction before creating the Scatter Instances (but It is a bit late in the day to try that procedure). Any feedback would be great to why the Instances are not updating. Jacobite

I have found similar problems. What solved it for me was to shut everything down and restart all clients. I know this is really basic but it works for me. Sorry I can't give anymore help. Jacobite

MJV, I have been using Mac since the early 80's. QT is an amazing piece of kit and I use it constantly with C4D to import Image Sequences and save them out at Pro Res for FCPX. QT will not however save an MP4. Why, who knows! Anyway, I have used many converters, they are alright but at a price. The ultimate tool is "HandBrake" Send her this instructions or talk her through them. That way she will get some confidence and once she completes these instructions it will make her day and you score points with a client. Send her a link to https://handbrake.fr/downloads.php Tell her to click on Download, under Mac OS. Then ask her to press the two keys to the left of the spacebar (Control +Alt) + "L". this will show the downloaded file in her Browser. Right click on the file. Now she has the option to open or view the file. Select Open. The file is a .DMG, just like a .ISO in windows and will automatically mount on the Desktop. Now all she has to do is drag the application"HandBrake" to the desktop or any place she likes. On launch she will be presented with a window looking for the video file to be converted, just drag her file into that window and press open. All she has to do now is press start at the top of the screen, sorted. Her converted file will default to her Movies folder that should be in her sidebar, if not because everyone sets up their Mac differently, to get to the Movies folder (While HandBrake is still open. At the bottom of the interface it shows the path to the destination file. "TO User - Movies. If she right clicks on the "Movies Folder" it will say "Reveal in Finder", click on that and that will take her to the file location. HandBrake will convert and compress her file amazingly. Her 17GB will come in about 5-900MB with no quality loss. It is available for multiple Platforms, so you can try it out before instructing her or maybe you can do it for her. Good Luck Jacobite HandBrake.app.zip

Thanks Bezo for your valuable time. I'll do a full reinstall of R25 but in the meantime get this one away in R18. Cheers Jacobite

Nope, Can't work this one out. Substance is in R25 resource / modules Location and I cannot find the Plugin or how to even install it. It does not show anywhere and I can't find an installer. Funny how it is in R18 (simple). I even installed "Insidyum Bridge" into the preferences plugins folder and assigned that folder in preferences and tried it in Moaxon/plugins folder to run AoB - Sparkle Shader v1.0 and followed the instructions to the letter, nothing again. Sorry, but I just can't get my head around this situation. Guess I will have to render in R18 for this project. Or maybe the problem is with my new computer. Mac Studio M1 Max. Maybe theses plugins have not been compiled for Mac Silicon. I'm sure one of you guys have came upon similar problems with R25. Any hail would be most appreciated. Jacobite

How do I get Substance Shader to work in R25? Jacobite

Thank You guys for the excellent feedback. I will most certainly research the subject in more detail. What I take from the important discussion is that I cannot just install a 3rd party render engine and render old scenes without going through the process of converting Materials, Lights, Cameras etc.. Mash, I think you have made an excellent review of Octane's capabilities and I think at this point, it is the way I want to go as my new project is almost 10 minutes long and with those render times I could go on holiday. LOL As Always Thanks for your professional experiences. Jacobite

Just a quick question to all of you in the know. Firstly I would like to say that I am very negative towards 3rd party render Engines. However, my thinking is, if it speeds up render times, then I have to go with the flow. My question is; with the vast variety of these products on the market, I would like to know what is the best, in the sense of: I wasn’t to render old scenes again, therefore, what would be my best investment to render these projects. I do not want to change materials to Redshift or whatever. I just want to render the scenes as they are. Most, if not all my renders have been rendered with the C4D Physical Engine. All I wand to know, if I use Redshift or whatever, can I keep the scenes as is and change the renderer in the render settings and benefit from speed improvements? If so, what would be my best investment? Another factor would be; I have just bought a new Mac Studio and plan to use team render with my Ryzen Threadripper. Does this mean I have to buy the Mac and Pc versions of the plugin? I have very limited knowledge in this field, therefore and information would be great. Jacobite

Yes CBR I could do that and of course that would solve the problem. Sometime I just can't see the wood for the trees. As always, CBR "Nailed It". Thanks CBR and have a wonderful rest of the day, I'm off for a sleep! Jacobite

Spent all day yesterday trying to work this one out. This is roughly the outline of 2 canal walls at the Falkirk Wheel. The Final part of my project. I have put in a cube to illustrate the problem, This is where the lough gates would be used to take the canal boats down 18 feet to Join the next Canal. The points are not all finalised as yet. I discovered that when I used a Sweep, Rectangle and Spline the wall turns in on itself. All the point seem to have the correct Axis, the Rectangle seems fine. I just can’t get my head around this one. Hope one of you guys can help as I need a sleep! Jacobite Mad Sweep.c4d

Really Cool CBR Jacobite

You can try copying your scene into a new scene. That way the new scene will have all the C4D setting that you originally started with. It is easy while working on something, to hit a wrong keystroke that brakes stuff. It only takes a few seconds to copy and paste and create a new project. If that does not work, copy each object and test it in the new project to try and isolate the problem. Good Luck Jacobite

CBR is bang on! Good idea to check "Make Backup after X Minutes" in Preferences.

Cheers guys, after thinking about it for a wee while, I thought the answer I was looking for was within the scope of an Emitter. I never use them but after messing about I got something that I really like. Thanks Again Jacobite