Messages

1

[C4D] General Discussion / Corona or C4D Issue?

« on: Today at 21:57:02 »

I'm very frustrated here. I have this house model, imported as an FBX. The texture files links are broken. No problem since that usually happens. Pull up the Asset manager and relink everything so they all have checkmarks. Perfect. BUT, the materials in the Material Manager remain black after rendering them. If I bring the Asset Manger back up, everything is a red X again. I even tried putting the project file in the same directory. Nope. I noticed in the file path there is a "maps\." I'm on a Mac and don't usually see backwards slashes. If I replace it with a forward slash it will appear to link, but not really. I tried globalizing, localizing. Nothing.

As you can see in the screen grab, some materials I manually deleted the "maps/" and the icon in the material browser looks good, but doesn't render. If I create a new material and link to one of the maps, works as expected (Testrender image attached. Grass now shows). There are 200 materials in this scene and I'm trying to not create everything. Never had this problem before.

The scene was originally created using Max, but I'm using the .obj version since the materials came in as standard C4D. The .fbx file came in as node based PBR I think, and was a mess.

Any ideas?


Mac OS 12.5.1 Monterey
C4D r25 and r20 (same problems)
Corona Version • 10 (Daily Build Mar  9 2023)

2

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Corona Customers and V-Ray Materials

« on: Yesterday at 03:47:41 »

Good to know. I haven't looked at the Trello sheet in a while. Right now it's pretty useless feature. It doesn't handle Reflectance channel and if you don't already have a paid Vray seat, it pretty much does nothing.

Edit: Well, I may have spoken too early about the Reflectance Channel. I just did a test with a sofa model. Standard materials then converted to Physical Corona. The converter did a MUCH better job than it used to do. That is indeed much more useful. Thanks for that. As luck would have it, many models in the latest batch I acquired also come with Advanced Render materials so I will be taking advantage of that.

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[C4D] General Discussion / Corona Customers and V-Ray Materials

« on: Yesterday at 00:54:55 »

I assume this isn't possible at the moment, but it would be a very nice perk for us Corona customers to have access to a form of the V-Ray Bridge to allow us to convert a scene to Corona. Not render, just allow a conversion. I can't tell you how much time this would save me. I buy a good amount of models and it hard to find C4D+Corona all ready to go. Many model do however, offer C4D+V-Ray. If I could just hit that convert button and get 90% there, I'd be a happy man.

Since they are both Chaos products and it wouldn't take away from their customers, this seems like a no-brainer to me.

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[C4D] Daily Builds / Re: Cosmos asset features

« on: 2023-03-28, 01:25:37 »

I was unaware of this. Interesting.

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[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Team Render: Connect M1 studio with iMac

« on: 2023-03-28, 01:20:49 »

But unlike Corona, C4D allows for unlimited render nodes. Which I miss.

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[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Reflections doubts

« on: 2023-03-28, 01:16:16 »

Yeah, since that glassy phone surface see the can from a different angle, you're getting a glint/bloom from the light, but on that angle. Can I assume Corona handles the Fresnel factor realistically? An example would be go to your car, if it's clean, and look at the reflection on the paint or glass from straight on and then from a low angle. Very different.

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[C4D] I need help! / Re: normal tag issue with corona render

« on: 2023-03-27, 23:25:14 »

I was going to suggest the Phone tag since most models I import, usually FBX, either does not have a Phong tag or it does but it not enabled. The other issue I've seen that give material shading breaks is some models don't have all their vertices welded together. I will select all points in a mesh and run the Optimize command. This helps a lot.

8

[C4D] Resolved Bugs / Re: Possible Bug

« on: 2023-03-18, 19:26:40 »

Just wanted to add something new I just discovered on this topic. I sent a job to the Render Queue which showed an error and listed a lot of missing assets the queue, even though they are all linked properly.

I just discovered that if you go in the Project Assets Inspector, select all your assets and hit the Consolidate Assets option, C4D will collect everything and save just the assets to a new folder. No sign of that random-named texture map I was seeing with the materials that used Corona Bitmap node.

Two caveats to this "workaround". The consolidate option did NOT collect the .vrmesh for the Cosmos model I added to this test scene or the HDRI for some reason. Still much faster than replacing materials on the other system/farm where the rendering will take place.

The last point is C4D's assets inspector will show the warning icon that the assets are there, but have the wrong path. Just a quick asset re-link and ready to render.

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[C4D] General Discussion / Re: HDRI Lighting

« on: 2023-03-18, 17:17:02 »

Well all right then. I'm already doing things the Corona way then. I've been called "legacy" a few times as well. ha

Thanks for the reply.

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[C4D] I need help! / Re: Problems with Displacement Material: Material from Corona-Material-Library

« on: 2023-03-18, 14:05:03 »

I'm no doctor, but if indeed you have models you didn't create and it will be unreasonable to try and fix the mesh, for a flat surface like that the handy Cubic projection setting would work even if the topology is bad. Usually. Just have to adjust the scale to make sure it's right.

This example is a little extreme, but it's a Cosmos rug object, made editable and stretched quite a bit. The topology isn't bad necessarily, but by stretching it creates long triangles. The carpet is from the library. On the bottom is the material set to follow the UVs. Not so good, a little different than your issue. The top is the same object and the same material set to Cubic. Since there isn't a specific need to follow those UVs (which I struggle with) on a flat surface, it's a much quicker solution in many cases.

11

[C4D] General Discussion / HDRI Lighting

« on: 2023-03-18, 13:40:23 »

I have noticed over the years that many times when you grab an image to use for lighting, it may also come with a low-res blurry version called Environment, a medium res clear version-2k usually and one large file coming in a 16k or so.

What is the proper use of that small blurry file? Environment override? What's the advantage of using the blurry image versus just letting the sky provide reflections?

12

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Affordable Render Farm Services

« on: 2023-03-15, 19:00:05 »

Looks like they give you the credits directly on their end.

"As a new user you will receive a free trial of 25 RenderPoints worth 26.84 $ which will be automatically added to your account right after your registration."

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[C4D] I need help! / Re: Odd Motion Blur

« on: 2023-03-15, 18:58:13 »

Curious. So on your test with my model, is the car moving left to right? The decals on your example are crisp, but mine are very blurred. In my final animation, which you moved to the gallery section, shows there is some additional camera movement in addition to the camera following the car, so I should expect some decal blur, not what I'm actually getting. And of course the shutter speed will affect the blur, but I assume you used my set up.

This was a just-for-fun project, so don't drive yourself crazy. One thing I did not try was using v9 release. I made it with v10 daily.

Added a decal to the front wheel just to see. Same result for me.

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[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Affordable Render Farm Services

« on: 2023-03-15, 01:01:22 »

I have read good things about Rebus and their estimator was the best one I've tried so far. Since I'm on a Mac and can almost never find an equivalent CPU to match, their option of use a Cinebench score fixed that problem.

I was unaware about free credits with my sub. Where would I find those?

Also, what's the store with the Chaos farm solution? I don't think it's available for Cinema 4D yet, but wondering if the costs would be competitive. Frankly, theirs should be cheaper since it would be a value added service to spending all that money on subscriptions. Just a thought, but a pipe dream I'm sure.

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[C4D] I need help! / Re: Odd Motion Blur

« on: 2023-03-14, 18:07:44 »

OK so I'm back. I have collected just the car and will upload after this post. I think my issue has more to do with textures map than the meshes blurring. In the annotated image, you can see the center of the wheels are properly blurred, while the sidewall texture is not, only horizontally. In addition, the Decals are blurred, but they should not since the camera is a child of the car's motion.

The second image is the inspiration for this model. My son's Pinewood Derby car from 10 years ago.

Uploaded:  Submission ID# 7AV7-5W3A