Shrike

Copying from my post - here are some good examples of highly useful things I can't speak for animation and mograph but this is certainly the type of stuff that is highly desired in tons of 3D environments and I always see asked for: - Pipe Builder with Unwrapping - Cable & Post connection Builder - Shelf Builder - Skyscraper Builder - Road Builder with Signs - Rock Builder with lowpoly > voxel > unwrap > bake > lods - Spline River Generator with stones and Flow maps generated - Biome Builder - controlled asset placements based on areas, falloffs, certain requirements and exclusions - Terrain Builder with slope & height based vertex color material, assets populated by vertex colors, transistion of biomes - Car Tire Builder Spline Based with High & Lowpoly - Raycasted Decal population, like paint splattering decals on shots based on entry and exit normal of a penetrated surface - Spline Castle Wall, House Wall and railing builder with doors and windows - Auto UV mapping and packing into areas - Material based destruction setups - Auto Exposure and color balance - Grow vines around objects based on geometry convexity, maybe avoiding certain types of objects even - Simulate "heat maps" based on geometry and raycasting "roomba" style to see where people are walking in your building - Automatic Edge trim decals - Voxel Operations - Create voxelized highpoly and generate variations, automatic unwrap, bake maps, material based on baked maps

I had a surface level look at scene nodes but then digged into the past material nodes again and want to share some thoughts, not so much about the functionality but the implications of the prioritized things. Maybe I am confused about some things but I think this post is very valuable regardless and contains things I thought about some time and as the C4D team seems to be listening Ill put up the effort. Scene Node & Material Node first thoughts: - First things I searched were UV, blur and curvature nodes, then normal - Right now there is no UV unwrap node, when you create one, please add parameters to clamp the packing to a range on the UV space so you can pack multiple pieces to separate areas - I am a bit confused of the existence of material nodes in parallel. Will material nodes be switched into the new system? - If not, at least link the systems in some way. And maybe have them not at totally different areas in the UI. Material nodes button next to the scene nodes button? - UX: I am heavily expecting to get a preview when I click the node in the search - show a preview on the Attibutes manager maybe with a colored border or such to indicate preview - UX: what is desperately missing is a search function on right click on the background in both. There is a "Type to search" but it can find nothing. Having to go top left and click the search bar is very inefficient and slow. At least the commander should know contextually to find the respective node graph nodes. - UX: all nodes so far have no documentation which is unusual from MAXON and one of the best parts of Cinema usually. These are the most complex things in the engine as they are used in combination with others and as such they need the documentation the most. - Talking of material nodes, I was very dissapointed to find no curvature node in either. Curvature maps are an extremely low hanging fruit way of increasing material quality by an extreme amount for users. All modern texturing apps only need curvature and AO to make extremely advanced texturing and material effects and cinema already creates a good AO. Without a good curvature generator an entire world of texturing quality is just absent in Cinema until it is introduced. The inverse AO trick is no real substitute. After seeing this I really have to iterate on why this is important, as this really shows a big detachment from what is essential in a material system and 3D Modeling in general. The state of Modeling & Texturing in Cinema 4D Don't take this too negatively when I say it, and this will sound like a big tangent but I think its very important for the future - I believe Cinema offers me a great package with just different focus but there needs to be a wake up call, the Cinema community and team is in a bubble where standard 3D modeling basically is not practiced. Many C4D users are not very keen of going above modeling simple objects and seemingly the overwhelming amount don't start to begin how to properly texture a model. For this post I tried to search picture examples and was shocked how little proper textured models exists from C4D users. Texturing is exactly half of 3D modeling. 3D modeling is the essence of everything being done in this software. People cheat around it with cubic and tiling materials and so did I, but without raw offline rendering power that would never begin to work. What C4D users are doing is throwing on raw calculation power to hide bad workflows. If you would just give people the tools for texturing you wouldn't have to put as much effort into upgrading the rendering. A good texture is doing more than you can achieve in 10 years of rendering progress or buying all the new render engines. I will make some strong suggestions later. This all is low hanging fruit really but there is a strong absence of things that users from all others software users see as absolute basic. Lets see what usually is being done; Visual Target & Examples: In other 3D applications you almost all models being done with a unique UV workflow. Very popular is the highpoly to lowpoly baking normal maps workflow as it gives you everything you need (certain special texture maps) to make cutting edge texture work, which is then usually done in a painting app like substance painter or 3D coat. Often are also only masks created and then the model is assembled with shaders in final engine by using the complex masks as a base for layering. Texturing & Baking - Lets reiterate why highpoly > lowpoly baking (not the same as cinema 4D baking features), curvature [ ], normal mapping [ ], AO [x] is such a popular and extremely powerful workflow for asset creation in the entire world of 3D and see what is out there. (Not saying any of these artworks are bad of course!) You can get by with tiling materials only, but this is generally regarded as not good by the average 3D modeller and cinema users get good results regardless due to raw power of offline rendering making things still look pretty good but there is so much more possible. Lets ignore the complicated normal map baking, in cinema polycount dosnt matter that much, but lets focus on the things that drive majority of the quality in the visuals and that means texturing. The UV tools are finally there, so people can take the next step now. Curvature Maps - This is the essence of any good texture. One can do some trickery to get a really poor replacement by using a channel from a baked normal map, or in cinema the inversed AO shader but that is far from great. If you want to texture well, you need to generate a proper curvature map. Based on a curvature map presenting cavity and convexity, one can extremely quickly derive extremely complex edge wear by just multiplying 1-2 overlapping noises onto it. A good artist will further paint but that alone would be a extreme advancement. Proper curvature is usually baked to a texture by raycasting an objects surface but some also use a post effect for a cheap approximation. Blender offers a cheap curvature in the viewport based on scene depth, which make my employees preview renders look way better than my cinema 4D previews. There is an "Edges mask" node but I just cant get it to work. It only has a color output but dosnt do anything no matter which setting, always pure black. Model UVd or not, phong breaks or not. There is no documentation and nobody on the internet seemed to use it so I assume it has a bug. (This all is not for me, Im getting my curvature either way by full baking workflow but I wouldn't say no If I can automatize with shader nodes) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Suggestions: Now that we know what our visual targets are, what can we do to improve? 3 Steps to upgrade visual outcomes of C4D artists and worth of shader nodes setups drastically: 1. Embrace Curvature Add a curvature node in the material graph using the standardized curvature map style output all bakers use, add a curvature feature to the baker. Think about how to bring this extremely simple and powerful feature to majority of the users on the most direct way, this is the easiest way to increase visual quality of virtually everything C4D users output. This needs to be right next to the Fresnel, Gradient, Color and Noise in the material dropdown. Make sure to add a 'levels' or similar in the node itself. + Fix the vertex map shader not working when layered + Fix? the edge wear node + Add a curvature based detail edge chipping effect to the metal, plastic, rock, wood graph example materials to show off the power. 2. Embrace object space masking All the other things which are not based on curvature or AO are usually based on a directionality. Like sand coming from the top, ice layering, dirt on the car skirts etc Use the triplanar functionality as a base and add a directional gradient node. Add a dropdown to select the direction in easy to read directions "Left, Right, Top, Bottom" etc and add a gradient. This can then be used in an easy and user friendly way as a mask to make all these type of effects like sun bleaching, ice, etc. I would strongly suggest looking at 3D coats implementation of additionally wrapping the complicated things in an easy front end node, which makes creating complex materials a breeze but in reality its just some very simple world/objectspace and curvature multiplications in a preset but this increases the output of good art per time immensely. (3D coat does not offer the raw directions so you are limited in the end but like this is is way faster to create these complex layered masks than in substance painter or quixel mixer) Also make sure these new masks are compatible with other renderers if that is possible. The C4D material nodes are crazy in what they offer, texture things by approximation of 2 objects? There are so many advanced options but sadly the absolute essentials are missing, making the entire thing so much less interesting than it could be. Imagine the big vision of scene nodes in conjunction of material nodes, there is so much potential here. Its so close of going all the way through the entire pipeline. 3. Add Anti-Tiling - Vertex Painting Yes you can do this already but its not in great shape. This is the last of the big texturing essentially aside of maybe trim sheets. Add a vertex painting example material. Fix the vertex map not working with layers. Add a vertex painting shader node that works with the first given vertex map of the shaded object. Right now using vertex maps is extremely cumbersome as you would need one material per model with unique vertex map. In other engines the material just checks the vertex color and thats it. Also I would get rid of the vertex map concept and make everything into vertex color but thats easy said. This seems like a relict and makes everything confusing. You can also not see your shaded model when painting a vertex map right now IIRC. - Stochastic Sampling This is for the people using cubic only regardless. Add stochastic sampling to remove tiling in the projections and as a node. This won't help push people towards proper texturing but this will greatly aid all the people who rely so heavily on cubic mapping and tiling materials. Its not that hard and its a killer feature. - Interpolated cubic mapping I think I saw this somewhere, the cubic mapping interpolated the values at the intersection between both sides based on an angle, it was not perfect but you would not have the ugly seams you get right now with cubic mapping in cinema 4d. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lets talk about practical "Real world" NODE examples and what I feel is wrong. In cinema circles people do a lot of simple abstract things and ""real world"" usage cases really like to fall under the table, (and material nodes did really fall under the table) so I really want to highlight some real world scenarios that many people would like to build given the chance and are needed all the time. If MAXON could pull this off and include the material nodes to do some parametric texturing and include baking, then this all could be extremely powerful and a big contender for the procedural workflows which are very much in focus nowadays. Doing some crazy random abstract shapes and such is cool for motion graphics but if the engineering team is always just doing such things then the practical things fall flat and people will be pushed even further to just do some abstract random stuff and see it as gimmick for motion graphics. I feel the material nodes had this exact issue, where nobody did some real texturing with it and as such it has a LOT of highly advanced features but the essentials for good texturing are basically absent. So I very strongly suggest to pick out a set of "real world" examples as goals to achieve to really get to know the requirements and not just add features coming to mind. You see it in the new example videos as well. Twisty tubes, Extruded faces, arrays of primitives. Suggestions for Scene Node goals: The engineering team needs clarity and to know what people want it to support. What are the goals? What do people actually need and want? Hrvoje made some good attempts with the road and raycast, thats the stuff has real potential. I can't speak for animation and mograph but this is certainly the type of stuff that is highly desired in tons of 3D environments and I see always asked for: - Pipe Builder with Unwrapping - Cable & Post connection Builder - Shelf Builder - Skyscraper Builder - Road Builder with Signs - Rock Builder with lowpoly > voxel > unwrap > bake > lods - Spline River Generator with stones and Flow maps generated - Biome Builder - controlled asset placements based on areas, falloffs, certain requirements and exclusions - Terrain Builder with slope & height based vertex color material, assets populated by vertex colors, transistion of biomes - Car Tire Builder Spline Based with High & Lowpoly - Raycasted Decal population, like paint splattering decals on shots - Spline Castle Wall, House Wall and railing builder with doors and windows - Auto UV mapping and packing into areas - Material based destruction setups - Auto Exposure and color balance - Grow vines around objects based on geometry convexity - Simulate "heat maps" based on geometry and raycasting "roomba" style to see where people are walking in your building - Automatic Edge trim decals - Voxel Operations - Create voxelized highpoly and generate variations, automatic unwrap, bake maps, material based on baked maps Imagine the future of the C4D nodes, what would you want to be able to do? What is the big vision? For me, p.Ex. Model a parametric shelf, set up infinite variations with a seed, select 20 variations, make them automatically into highpoly wood through volume building and projecting different wood noises from all directions (you can do this now to a degree), unwrap your input lowpoly geometry and or remeshed highpoly automatically in the node system with the new unpacker, let the graph cut out all the unnecessary loops based on angle - pack the wood in the upper 3/4th and leave the metal pieces in the lower 1/4th of the UV, dynamically create a decal mesh based on the text, pack the text lettering into a seperate UV, then get your AO and curvature bake to make AAA level quality materials based on actual geometry based on your material node setup, then be able to export this all into any render engine of choice with all textures and lowpoly on a naming convention (or render in C4D) - These all are of course a very optimistic wishlist. I'm sure not all these are achievable and some would probably be misplaced by using this system but we need to get away from playing and thinking with abstract objects and shapes, and into something practical otherwise it will be the same fate as material nodes are right now, amazing potential and highly advanced featureset but missing the real world use cases - and are then rarely used. These node structures have a lot of potential but we'll only see it when the engineers actually get the feedback from the designers, and only when the designers have some actual practical goals in mind they try to achieve, they can properly give back feedback where the limits are right now and what they need engineering to expand on.

Here are both control panels. And I forgot; Here is an image of 10000 Poly mesh from cinema without Support Splines: Notably does C4D trade blows much better at this resolution even without the support spline. + Results on an armored character I put into volume builder strongly mirror the vehicle test conclusions. I also noticed that adding a shrink wrap to the final mesh pointing towards the original can make results slightly better. Ext

I probably rated it too quickly. We tested it on some ideal remesher cases and there it did perform well. Remesher comparison: Input mesh: Worst case scenario: - sharp hard surface with many thin elements and stuff pointing outwards (thrown in volume builder) 2000 Polygons: C4D (Blue) - 5 seconds +- Exoside (Red) - 3 minutes +- (thought it froze the first 3 times but it actually is just very slow - Edit: its not that slow on other models, must have an issue with the mesh geo in some way) The exoside does not break the mesh and has noticeably better flow but is an extreme amount slower and does not work automatically and is not non-destructive. Changing settings and observing results is almost impossible at minutes of waiting time. Changing settings in the C4D version had little effect in this test. Exoside also supports mirroring features. The C4D remesher supports Flow splines, which the other dosn't have. This is a good idea and improves results a lot. It starts to retain elements and flow the other could not, although the main issue, the exploding of thin surfaces retains. Calculation time with such simples increased drasically, from 5 seconds to around 1.5 minutes. Some of these flows actually look good but overall this still would need a total retopo pass. That makes you think however how a flow spline could be abused to create a base for retopo meshes though this workflow. Changing the polygon count does not retain the spline calculation that was done prior. This could probably be cached. It also appears that the remesh somehow is calculating even when turned off? changing a spline after turning it off froze my PC and I got the feeling prior as well. 10000 Polygons: Times stayed similar. Support splines are still used, I generated them by phong angle selection around 40° and deleted some Exoside (Red) Cinema 4D (Blue) Notably cinema 4D still does explode and break the meshes, however you notice that both work rather differently and have different advantages. With the splines, cinema did retain some shapes better, especially some outlines and sharper elements. Cinema also did not delete some of the spikes on the side bars. The top of the weapon is also much more straight (hard to see in this image) The exoside made things a lot softer, which works better in some areas but strange in others but does not require any work with splines. I would also wish for a "freeze remesh" function so I would not have to disable the remesh and recalculate it when I want to not have any calculating done. Right now I would have to merge down the mesh. The exoside spits out a merged mesh while the C4D one works with any input. Overall I would say that Cinema should aim to fix this exploding polygon issue and then it would be on a similar level to the exoside version with some advantages and some disadvantages. Cinema: + Can be much faster, depends on spline complexity, may also be longer on very complex splines I assume + Works automatically on anything you work on + nondestructive workflow possible + Retains hard edges better with splines + Allows the change of flow + Triangle mode + Can have better results when flow splines are used + Can retain hard edges and smaller objects better when flow splines are used - Big Issue: Explodes thin objects, making some meshes unusable without retopo - Much worse results on some hard surface meshes on low polygon count without flow splines - Flow splines require work and are hard to make non destructive - Keep 100% in quads will increase polygon count noticeably and offers no control over this Exoside Quad remesher: + Noticeably better results out of the box + Works much better on low polygon count models + Uses adaptive sizes for better usage of the budget and increases density in important areas + Remeshed the pipes noticeably better + Allows Symmetry + split by normals and materials possible (not tested) + allows painting of dynamic resolution (per example leave more resolution on the face) + Does everything 100% in Quads which makes loop selections much better - Takes much longer baseline - Creates more smoothed shapes which do not really retain the silhouette and original shape as much - Removes more smaller elements totally but without leaving a mess behind - Requires manual remeshing, no automatic updating, leaves a 'destructive workflow' final editable mesh Verdict: If Cinema can fix the exploding issue then these would be worthy rivals, but maybe this is not an issue for your type of meshes. See for yourself at best. In general both have strong advantages and disadvantages. I would really suggest you do have both + the volume mesher if you do work that requires a lot of remeshing, it is clearly much better owning both and testing on model basis. For our rocks we actually used the volume mesher adaptive in the end as it gave the best quality where it mattered for the vertice count.

Only commenting on the things I used. Scene nodes look promising (haven't tested), but more importantly again show a strong vision for the future. I also comment on the general outlook, MyMaxon and the pricing on the bottom. Feedback on new UV workflow: It is definitely a huge step forwards but it seems like in beta still. There are many bugs and broken tools right now. This includes S22 but in general there is still a clunkyness that could be easily solved, mostly by fixing the broken not working selections. The new S22 auto unwrapper is mind blowing in some areas as it does advanced things I would have only done by hand on many occasions and no software can repeat, not even rizom but sadly inconsistent, still very useful. Very impressed by that one, but other areas can still be questionable. I actually have forgot to test multi UV but I assume it just works as expected. Broken / Not working Tools: Some tools straight up do not work in the UV space and make it feel like a beta still or plain buggy. Just nothing happens or they glitch out. The colleagues were also surprised. - Fill selection does not work (no way to select an entire UV island? That is very basic and required - it creates a buggy hover selection and makes the UV view appear frozen) Edit: Double click does fill the UV island - this is convenient but not consistent and I didn't get it even after trying all my possible tools. Fill should definitely work. - Outline Selection does not work (not much to see in the gif it just dosnt do anything) - Live selection scaling the selection size Freezes the UV view for the time you try to drag the size with the typical command - UV Magnet (very cool tool btw) does the same freezing - probably more tools do it (Am I being stupid or is there no way to select an UV island?) Edit: Double click does it - this is not consistent but is convenient. Why not for normal non UV selections as well? - Path selection does now work (Broken with S22, now fixed!) (the only good way to unwrap messy geometries, Rocks or similar well) That was very needed, makes certain things crazy faster. We desperately need a function to get an edge selection back from the UV cuts we made. There is no proper way to get this selection and if you want to split your Phong properly based on UV split as it is required for widespread highpoly-lowpoly baking workflows, you have to make all your cuts in one go, keep shift pressed all the time and save the selections which is extremely clunky and inconvenient. Please add a function to select by UV islands borders. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also from the perspective of years back, it took me literal years to understand that UV mapping in cinema is supposed to work by making cut selections across the mesh and then pressing the Unwrap button. It is easy but nothing hints you on it. Its not an button, its not an action, its a workflow that is never implied or mentioned. It is so simple but I just understood that like 6 months ago after 10 years of Cinema usage. Maybe that me but maybe that is also part of why it has a bad reputation. The UV layout feels very cramped at first glance. The new center bar is good but the rest is overflowing. Having UV settings hidden in view settings is also something I would have never found if not seeing the video. Just add a button to the new UV palette for convenience leading to this. The packers could work better, this will still be worth to export and repack in some other tool I would say. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Plugins Many Plugins no longer working is a bummer but thats out of hands I understand This can however be a very harsh blow to an already dwindling plugin community (more towards that below) Remesher We tried the new Remesher today and I have to say that this is absolutely excellent. I tried a popular plugin mentioned in the thread before but the C4D remesher is definitely better and just works as you expect. Very clean and professional. Delta Mush Delta mush working on varied Deformers just like that was a positive surprise. Ill probably use it to add some quality to damaged objects that need deformation. Deformer Polish The new handles are great to see, please also add it to the Array modifier, it can be extremely disorienting. Dragging Handles for Spline objects would also be very needed. I need unending spline rectangles for rounded rectangle models with is just a basic primitive shape that should exist imo. Also please for a nice parametric workflow you aim for, allow us to Disable and enable Top and Bottom caps of cylinders individually, there are unending screws which have unnecessary hidden caps that need to be manually converted and optimized just to get rid of one bottom cap, otherwise it could just stay primitive ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subscription / MyMaxon As a company owner I am very pleased with the new MAXON service. At first I hated the idea of online login and the google login bugged out. But now I really love the way the Seats are handled, this is the absolute best I've seen. For Photoshop I had to create a dozen Adobe accounts. Autodesk Urgh. Forgot to log out? No problem. Its just a click. I can just go home, kick my work PC out, and keep working. You see all your licenses and who uses them on startup. Give the environment artist from the other team a license to just get some 30m volume builder action, kick the other guy out who is on a break and free him up a seat. Just want to show some other guy some very basics so he may learn C4D down the road, just get a free seat for 10minutes. Just log in with one single account and it all works. That's just the greatest service and the best handling of seats and licenses I've seen and that must really be highlighted. Price, Plugins & Community The 60 Euro per month are not cheap but as company thats not a big deal. In the end the efficient usage of seats is also a value proposition going into the price of the subscription. Id say with 5 seats I would gain more the value of 6.5-7 as a company. However, outside of company usage, I really have to say that 60 a month would not feel great if they came out of my pockets. But much more importantly, I strongly feel that the high barrier of entry (its not 100 for 1 month, its the commitment towards continuous payment of these 60 you have to set yourself to) is really limiting the reach of the software. C4D right now is in a bubble and mostly used in one specific field. Things which are the bread and butter of other 3D softwares, baking highpolies down for high quality 3D assets, texturing with proper unique UVs and painting based on baked maps in Substance painter or such, that is all basically nonexistant in Cinema circles which is just mind boggling as this is the core to industry standard 3d assets of any kind. There is a huge untapped crowd of the most essential 3D modellers / asset producers (Hard surface, environment art, character art). If you go to a 3D modeling community like polycount, nobody uses Cinema. Id estimate 3%. MAXON really needs to be careful with gating the community, give means for hobbyists and solo developers to be happy with the purchase and enter the ecosystem, and start reaching new grounds especially with Realtime and Games. There needs to be an affordable indie license with acceptable limits that make you really want to get the full version but not require it entirely. Remember where your users come from in the end, Teenagers like me who started using it with a crack or at school and then work on minimum cash then own a company later or do freelance. If you don't offer Teenagers, Students, 2 man indie developers, movie makers, hobbyists, freelancers on low money, or living in east europe / asia - a way into the ecosystem the future users will logically die out. Plugin development is what is driving many of these other softwares as well. Blender lives based on plugins and game engines make most of their money from plugin stores. The plugin community is dying and S23 could be the killing blow with C++ recompile and Python 3 breaking many things. Plugin devs also always need the latest versions to fix their plugins. Be the first and implement a plugin & script store on your own website. Give creators the reach, more power to make money, and you take a modest share (+- 1/7th) knowing this is overwhelmingly to your benefit either way (and you want to not make people think its worth setting up their own site to cirvumvent a harsh 30% cut or so) - and give out a piece of the revshare back as discount on C4D versions so plugin makers can cheaply get the new versions to update their plugins and also buy more new versions. Cryengine made the big mistake of not keeping up with asset stores when they could and have been entirely crippled and left behind. Gamedev lives by plugin stores just like Blender. Unity makes way more money with the Asset store than with their actual engine licenses for sure. Many plugins for varied softwares are or were system sellers at varied points. This is low hanging fruit. Start with a contest, give the best creators a bonus, incentives, promotion. Be smart about this, don't miss the window. Outlook A couple years back I would have said I bet on the wrong horse but imo MAXON does make slower advancements in the weak areas but if they do things they are usually very methodical / specific in one area and well executed and on a deeper technical level that you would unlikely see implemented by other 3D apps (which do seem to often scramble together random but cool features). In gamedev I see that a strong foundation is extremely valuable and C4D is the only software I used from the big ones (aside of Houdini, maybe modo?) that feels like its not hacked together and it will get harder and harder for these others to not stagnate. While I don't know, I have a strong feeling C4D was set up in a much more modern component way back in the beginning days compared to the competition, (the UI components hint towards it) to mostly strong contrast, and seeing things such fields implemented throughout the project is something that would just never happen without huge work effort in other patchwork environments. Fields, Volume Builder, the Modeling Core Rework, Neutron are very big elements that do show a strong vision and hint towards a extendable and healthy codebase and I am more and more happy to use C4D each iteration and it feels like the critical weaknesses are clearly diminishing, while a lot of strong advantages have opened in the last years that clearly overshadow certain issues (even if large roadblocks), at least for my usage cases. It has shifted from the constant feeling of "Ah damn, in 3DS you could have done this" towards more "Hey look what convenient or crazy stuff I can setup here" so I am very positive of the future of the tool, but I can't say the same for the community and userbase which in the end does drive everything, that depends on management not engineering.

Very cool, finally multi UV, so it was worth to complain on all channels ; P So big for the workflow. And nice other UV features as well. Didnt expect the nodes to appear so soon. I hope they don't forget the UVs in the node system. Now all I need is to find someone who can make a face weighted normals tool based on angle against payment and I'm set.

Remember you can also bake down objects externally. This is kinda unheard in cinema circles and has a strong learning curve but highpoly to lowpoly baking is the bread and butter of gamedev and other workflows as well. So you can make a highpoly and bake it down to a lowpoly with Marmoset Toolbag and then have a WAY more performant model than you ever could otherwise. As you can see in my first video about welding seams, the Oil Pump was baked down and looked very highpoly as with hundreds of thousands of polygons but was extremely lowpoly, like 3000 or something. This is a lot of effort but speeds up rendering insanely if you really need the performance. (On the polycount.com wiki there is a lot of info about Highpoly > Lowpoly baking) Volume builder is really next level for baking down things. Baking down curvature and AO is also the only good workflow to create good textures. If you want real professional grade texturing with proper damage you need baked maps. You can get so far with proceduals and tiling cubic materials but it dosn't come close to a professionally baked properly textured asset. These are some extremely lowpoly props (no texture, curvature map only) so these are noticeably flawed, but you can bake at any resolution, the closer to the highpoly, the more perfect the result. But imagine how much faster this 80 vert mattress renders than your 500000 vertex mattress. The huge advantage with volume builder is that my lowpoly can be my highpoly. Usually you would need to model both seperately entirely, but here I can basically generate myself a highpoly which is huge.

DamageExample.c4d Heres a scene file with both examples but its very fast to setup

Added a new video as well:

Hey hey I recently saw someone finding a way to do this in Houdini, which sparked my interest again of trying to solve the issue and I think I figured it out now and its surprisingly easy. Anyone who is doing a lot of texturing knows that edge definition is the key for realistic models. The Same does count for the models themselves. People usually sculpt this with a lot of manual labor. Now its very easy to add noise to your objects with volume builder to get some smooth edges and cool details but this is always on your entire mesh. So how do we get damage only at the edges? I found out some nice tricks after some experimentation which are actually rather easy to do. There are 2 methods, one more classical with a boolean, one which is volume builder exclusive. You can also get much better results than in my preview as I spent nearly no time tweaking for looks. Also check out my previous Video about Welding Seams: And my thread about GAME ART workflows for C4D:

I tried both Paint 4D and UV to Object but while UV to Object would be ideal I assume, it sadly does not work anymore on S22 Paint 4D also does not show anything when having more than one object selected sadly After some more thinking and testing around, I don't think I can optimize the workflow much better than this: Requiring a seperate software only for packing is pretty clunky but you can do it. C4D UV Workflow for creating sets of props: Folder 1: Work Raw Files - Seperate the models as usual by object (Shelf, Chair..), but also separate by mirrored / array subobject in case UV should be reused efficiently - In this folder you work and have all the messy hierarchy you want to keep and not merge down Folder 2: Work Instances - Uses instances of the work files objects for overview and easy merging - Make a 0 scale triangle as the folder so FBX keeps the hierarchy - Copy this folder for the UV process and merge each instance down Folder 3: UV Edit - In this copy of the triangle folder you unwrap the models individually as properly as possible - this should not be offloaded to 3D coat or other at best - do as much in this step as possible - In case one mesh is broken, you only need to remake the UV of that object - When unwrapping is done for each object, you export the folder as FBX to another software ideally simply for packing 3D Coat unwrap: Export as FBX and fix the scale on reimport - FBX keeps the folder if you used a triangle or plane as folder Next step: Check is all UVs are correct with a simple texture and or test bake, if not go back to the UV unwrapping step If all UVs are working, bake your models and test again if all is working (in engine) Reimport the packed UVs to cinema and apply the array modifiers, symmetries and cloners again, arrange the final objects. Make LODs after vertex painting or animating Save down and Export for final result and texture painting

Glad you find it helpful! I hope to boost the search results so new users can find it. Especially all the phong and baking things can be very hard to learn, especially as resources are for other software usually. @hvanderwegen I think you are repeating yourself there and I already answered to this. Somehow Possible (even if technically on par or even better) does not mean convenient, nor encouraged nor focused. Thats exactly the reason I make this thread for realtime workflows for C4d. Very possible, even better than others in some ways but very neglected.

Cool, ill send you a pm! One other thing would be the C4D normal handling. If one could make the normal tag read out the normal information and basically convert this to phong splits that would amount to equivalent normal directions, that could solve the major issue of C4D and other software interchangeability, as the normals do always break when swapping software. And a face weighted normals modifier that works by angle split and with a selection of sorts would be very powerful, for anyone not just games, really strong trick and workflow; Great tip for anyone really. Everyone knows the issue where you need to subdivide the bevels or a cube so many times until the flat surface becomes really flat. With face weighted normals you can save a ton of performance and time and your mesh looks better. I have found a script that works but applies to the entire model and not angle based so usage is limited sadly.

Maybe I'm seeing this differently but as someone who does a lot of UX and game design I think its less about what is technically possible in its entirely but what is realistically done and how does the actual user experience and workflow look like for majority of the users. The senior power user will find his way and will probably find methods to have a kinda similar workflow in all, that is for sure, but which kinds of workflows and results come out on average are defined by what is going with the flow of the software UI and UX. Cinema 4D users could easily adopt UV mapping workflows with external tools, yet you extremely rarely see any traditionally textured meshes from C4D Users and people rely heavily on tiling cubic mapping materials due to the software and MAXON (and as result; Content Creators) not pushing UV mapping and texturing at all (until S22). Path of least resistance definitely matters a lot in software as in game design. If I need a plugin to do something then 95% of users won't do it. If a cloth modifier is clunky and hard to get right then you see a ton less cloth work, that is the reality of UXD and conversion rates.

Yes this is possible but just given how Blender and Max / Maya do not even offer editable primitives by default is just a indicator where they put their focus. Their Editors are built around different wants and needs. Some of these other apps just got a working hierarchy patched in kind of recently. MAXON is clearly strongly pushing towards their crazy non code parametric setups and scene management, just like Houdini is pushing their node generation setups. Every C4D talk or video is about some kind of special setup, that is really the C4D thing. Thats also why they undergo a huge effort in making their core modular ECS nodes now. There is a strong difference in what these different companies value in their 3D apps. The C4D team just values and pushes parametric approaches a lot more, just like Blender values having a piece of everything possible, Maya is pushing animation a lot and Max seemingly values having 3 alternate versions of everything but I'm surprised max is still running. I pity the engineers working on that monstrosity.

The focus here is really not to fight between Blender and C4D, If I learned anything then both are very different at every corner and there can be no winner, but you should know the differences. Max and Maya compare much better to Blender, while C4D is a little more of a in between Houdini and a classical modeling app from what I feel. @hvanderwegen You can not do this setup in blender as you can not even change a cylinders diameter without making it editable, let alone having an circular array that allows changing afterwards or in real time. It breaks at the first step which is having a parametric cylinder. There are plugins to fix these in some way but still. Our Maya users also were shocked when I told that I could edit a Cylinder later. You will find for many of C4Ds strengths (aside of fields and volume builder) that you can do these as well in Blender, blender can do about everything in some way. Blender even has a voxel tool as well, but then you find that these are more rudimentary or more out of your way so they are actually used less or not like you would in C4D (or Max or Maya or wherever). The workflows are just different. Some of Blenders modifiers are better, especially boolean stacks on one level and bevel as well, they both have good upsides and strong weaknesses. We have 2 experienced Blender artist and how they work is very different from what I constantly watch. Blender is really more a software like 3DS max or Maya, they work in a more classical 1 depth way, working on one Layer and then tucking other models away in a folder you don't work on - making a model and editing the planes and vertices because that is what the software is built around. In cinema its all full of small pieces. You can surely go parametric but its not pushed to the point that our Blender users even rarely go as far as to use an instance. The guy on the set demonstrated the instances do also work but then preferred doing it by hand with copy and paste as this was preferable. Maybe this is on them but this certainly is true for 3DS as well. However MAXON has started with a much stronger core architecture with a modern component approach from what it seems like from the outside, adding something such as Fields throughout the Project would surely be a huge undertaking in a classical style Architecture or the Patchworking the competition is mostly doing, and I doubt a rewrite as they are planning with the node ECS approach would even be possible in these other apps, so I am looking forward towards the future. And yes its always best to know and use 2 to their own advantages as there will never be "the one" software.

As there is a severe lack of resources for cutting edge real-time asset creation workflows for C4d and as we use C4D for games I felt the need to give something back to the community, especially as it took me many years to learn how these things all work. (Link below) Hopefully this helps other people and I hope MAXON will push more towards realtime modeling and baking workflows as real-time seems to be the future even for movies and VFX with the lines continually blurring, Plus it turns out that C4D surprisingly has very strong advantages in many areas over the typical real-time Modeling softwares (Blender, Max, Maya) nobody seems to know about in these circles. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://polycount.com/discussion/212367/cinema-4d-for-game-art-game-development-resources-c4d-vs-blender-or-max/p1?new=1 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Additional Notes: C4D Has surprisingly many advantages over other software even for realtime / games and its smarter workflows can be leveraged for big advantages that were not so apparent at first, in our comparisons inhouse with Blender it did win strongly overall but is then sadly roadblocked by a couple of key issues: - Lack of multi object UV editing (by far the biggest issue) - Lack of Split Phong by UV splits (Essential for Baking, saves a lot of work) - Lack of Face Weighted normals modifier (Popular and powerful current gen workflow - please add a angle based setting to Bevel modifier) - Lack of Usable Internal Normal / Curvature Baker (not a must have tho but baking curvature could also aid the others / MoGraph guys a lot) We have a successful game modelled entirely in C4D with 95% rating and hundred thousand players, if anyone from MAXON is reading this, please message me if you want a report on pitfalls/C4D marketability for cutting edge realtime workflows, I would be very pleased to help. Edit: Added new Video

Sadly the UV based phong splits script no longer works with the new modeling and UV changes so Id have to do it in our R20 Definitely checking out the "UV mesh display" one, maybe thats the life saver, thanks!

Sadly unless C4D allows the super basic thing of UV unwrapping multiple objects at the same time its impossible to survive without an external tool for us (also no split phong by UV edges function for baking) 3D Coat does well at it, Rizom is surely the best but overkill for our use

Hey, We are looking for an experienced C4D Artist to work on effects and graphics for our upcoming Games. There are multiple potential ways / positions: - Full time Motion-Graphics / VFX at Location in Berlin (Freelance is an option) - A Senior Generalist, Character Artist or Art Director is always being searched as well - (Freelance C4D scripting would also be needed) We are a small Studio in Berlin working on 2 new upcoming core games (No Mobile / Browser) using Unity and C4D (amongst others) - www.flowfiregames.com Our Studio is small, agile, with a relaxed atmosphere, top hardware, good pay and our first game was reviewed at 95% on Steam. Please write us at: jobs@flowfiregames.com Best - S

In gamedev such shaders are used, its probably the same. On untextured it looks the best but still pretty decent with textures Should be possible with the C4D shader graph Search for mesh blending shader

Blender is a good software but we have 2 blender users in the team and we will likely all swap to cinema mostly. blender is still free and you can always do something you cant do in cinema if you need. The biggest drawback in cinema for us is the lack of Multi UV editing and relying on a script for face weighted normals and such things (and bad booleans) Working with a modeller on Blender who has always used it, I noticed that it also has a lot of downsides like cinema or any software. Some things you think are given in cinema seem like a godsend in blender. If you want to use a cylinder in blender, then change the amount of sides - you do that once, then its editable when you move it once. You cant stay with primitives and just change their size later without making them editable. Things like arrays are not easily done. These are things where I think "***" - but it also has a lot of upsides clearly. It does feel as if some things are just not possible to do in cinema, but in the last years the gap has closed noticeably and cinema has really gained its own big advantages. So is the other side of the grass greener? Id say definitely no. Its up and downs. Volume builder and fields are a game changer on cinema for us. Cinema has a great hierarchy and makes it easy to change things down the road. Non destructive workflows are really second only to Houdini I would say. Also the cinema UI is the best, making it very easy for me to make a easy to use workspace for the team getting everyone on track fast, while Blender has the worst usability of all 3D apps still, which is the mayor drawback of it. If only cinema had a little more care for realtime. Realtime clearly is the future, and game dev is a big market. If anyone from C4D is reading this, give us multi UV, split phong by UV islands, face weighted normals workflow options and cinema could be amazing for gamedev and any realtime art.

- Multi UV editing - Select Edges of UV islands (to create phong breaks for proper baking) - Volume builder performance Also I wish for this for so long - please allow us to have materials in a shared folder that can be accessed by all projects. Not like the content library but like a windows folder - or add a "auto update" function to the content library. With inheritance and changes changing all. Materials should just be in one folder and update. Just like in a game engine, or windows. its so superior. No 15 different rubber materials in 15 projects. Also C4D renderer wouldnt be half as bad if they had Tone Mapping.

Hello, We are looking for someone who can assist with one multiple things, of course Paid: - 1. Fix a script for selecting UV islands by border to create phong breaks which works with S22 - 2. We have a budget for other art creation workflow improvements for our pipeline, just write if you think thats something you could assist with jobs@flowfiregames.com Best, S

FPS numbers above 300 or so are not meaningful anymore and should never be compared I hope there will be more volume builder performance