Corona for Cinema 4D Beta 2 daily build

[Eddoron]

Well, ok. I see no other way than compositing the image from different renderers. After all, they do it in movies too.
Baking doesn't make sense if you need a procedural 3D noise.

What I would recommend is to try Houdini. There you can create such things with ease using a non-destructive workflow. It has many presets, free stuff to download and almost everything has OpenCL support. It actually could make most C4D plugins obsolete. Terrain with erosion, vegetation, vdb modeling, fluids, liquids etc. etc.
The built-in Mantra & Renderman engines are quite fast drawing the media, but since you have Redshift, you could install it without any additional price iirc. You'll have more than enough noises for clouds ;-)

The Basic Non-Commercial version is for free,
the other two types depending on how much you make per year, but still, they're within a very reasonable price range.


PS: about your image, forgive me if I'm bothering, it's just one of my pet peeves... Large-scale scenes.
You should add a subtle volume to the scene to fake Rayleigh-Scatter. Also, a second flat, soft cloud layer wouldn't be wrong if it's not overdone. There you wouldn't need fancy scattering.
I also think that a small amount of a multiplied noise layer for the terrain, but also the water, to create a bit more variation could do wonders.

[Shawn Astrom]

Definitely appreciate all the comments and thoughts. I was also using Houdini for a couple years in production but I found the workflow extremely slow. While it is an exceedingly powerful piece of software, 90% of the time I don't require procedural workflow for everything...

Also after using Cinema 4D for over 12 years it's difficult for me to switch to other applications especially being more of an artist and less of a technical user...

I have managed to get some extremely awesome looking clouds using Cinema 4D s noises and Arnold. I'm quite happy with all the tools I have at my disposal but I'm really pushing for Corona to have some of these missing features that are more or less in the max version...

I do appreciate the artistic comments I'm still working on this particular piece of art and while there is volumetric atmosphere and of thin Cloud layer they're not very apparent I may need to tweak the settings further.

With all my experience and other render engines Corona is by far the easiest to set up and looks the best in my opinion. I'm sure technically you could get all of these engines to match extremely closely but for some reason in Corona it just is easier to do...

Anyhow can't wait for the next beta update!

- Shawn

Well, ok. I see no other way than compositing the image from different renderers. After all, they do it in movies too.
Baking doesn't make sense if you need a procedural 3D noise.

What I would recommend is to try Houdini. There you can create such things with ease using a non-destructive workflow. It has many presets, free stuff to download and almost everything has OpenCL support. It actually could make most C4D plugins obsolete. Terrain with erosion, vegetation, vdb modeling, fluids, liquids etc. etc.
The built-in Mantra & Renderman engines are quite fast drawing the media, but since you have Redshift, you could install it without any additional price iirc. You'll have more than enough noises for clouds ;-)

The Basic Non-Commercial version is for free,
the other two types depending on how much you make per year, but still, they're within a very reasonable price range.


PS: about your image, forgive me if I'm bothering, it's just one of my pet peeves... Large-scale scenes.
You should add a subtle volume to the scene to fake Rayleigh-Scatter. Also, a second flat, soft cloud layer wouldn't be wrong if it's not overdone. There you wouldn't need fancy scattering.
I also think that a small amount of a multiplied noise layer for the terrain, but also the water, to create a bit more variation could do wonders.

[Eddoron]

Ok, one last thing.
Have you tried Ozone for C4D/Vue Xstream?

You can make very nice clouds in there. The image still has to be composed but it should work faster than Arnold.

A support for the native cloud tool(or full Phys. sky) would be great, together with the option of adding CRN materials to add high-frequency details.

You could also try Navie Effex. It's for free now and you can load open VDBs and use them with AR.

Well, that's all about clouds and C4D.

edit: I just read that Furryball for Max, Maya, and C4D is for free now. Since Furryball supports pretty much all of the Arnold shaders, you could try and render the clouds with that.


edit2: one more critique. ;-)
What time of day is shown in your image? Clean clouds, especially in the morning have a well visible pink tint.

I often look at the sky, so the reverse engineered UFOs from the USAF that were shot down in Antarctica can't catch me.
Bob Lazar is still working for the government, he's lying to us!

[Shawn Astrom]

I have tried Vue and Ozone for Cinema 4D, fortunately those tools are extremely slow and I don't even think they're in development anymore...

it's not that I can't get awesome results with Cinema 4D and Arnold I just want that functionality in Corona :)

I make all of these computer-generated HDRI Maps with terragen... http://shawnastrom.com/cghdri/

Still very slow to render though some of them took over 80 hours on a 40 core server with a Cinebench score of 4900 at 16,000x8,000 resolution.

Thanks for the tips on the image not quite finished working on it but I think I will definitely reevaluate a few things.

A lot of my comments boil down to hoping to one day have just one engine that I can use for all types of 3D imagery instead of having to switch around between multiple render engines for specific needs...

- Shawn

Ok, one last thing.
Have you tried Ozone for C4D/Vue Xstream?

You can make very nice clouds in there. The image still has to be composed but it should work faster than Arnold.

A support for the native cloud tool(or full Phys. sky) would be great, together with the option of adding CRN materials to add high-frequency details.

You could also try Navie Effex. It's for free now and you can load open VDBs and use them with AR.

Well, that's all about clouds and C4D.

edit: I just read that Furryball for Max, Maya, and C4D is for free now. Since Furryball supports pretty much all of the Arnold shaders, you could try and render the clouds with that.


edit2: one more critique. ;-)
What time of day is shown in your image? Clean clouds, especially in the morning have a well visible pink tint.

I often look at the sky, so the reverse engineered UFOs from the USAF that were shot down in Antarctica can't catch me.
Bob Lazar is still working for the government, he's lying to us!

[Eddoron]

Ok, I hope I could help at least a little bit.

A lot of my comments boil down to hoping to one day have just one engine that I can use for all types of 3D imagery instead of having to switch around between multiple render engines for specific needs...

PAINT 3D! Just wait, it's time will come.
But honestly, I think if there'll ever be an all-in-one package, then it'll be Maya. Autodesk just needs to buy a few more companies.

[zbieraj]

I was wondering - are you guys planning to set the new Trello for next versions of Corona for C4D? What about Corona 2.0, and so on?

[indexofrefraction]

I was wondering - are you guys planning to set the new Trello for next versions of Corona for C4D? What about Corona 2.0, and so on?

corona 2.0 ??
we dont even have a finished beta2. if we are lucky the rc will get released in august,
but this still wont be the final beta2 (which was supposed to be released at the beginning of august, by the way)
so we are still weeks or months away from a final beta2 which will be production ready and installed on render farms.
by the way 1.0 is on the trello, release date tba.

[TomG]

Just for clarity, when the final is released the naming will be based on the Corona core that it is based on.

This means that if it were released today for example, it would be called Corona Renderer 2 for Cinema 4D (even though there was no Corona 1). Otherwise, people will be thinking that Corona for C4D at version 1 is behind 3ds Max at version 3 and why aren't they on version 3 yet.

[TomG]

(with Corona Renderer 3 for 3ds Max due soon, I would say the likely first official release will be Corona Renderer 3 for Cinema 4D, even though there was no 1 and 2 :) But, that would depend on how fast Corona Renderer 4 comes out I guess!)

[Cinemike]

So this raises two questions: Will Corona for C4D 3.0 be as feature-rich as Corona for Max 3.0 and will C4D have to crash then as often as Max does?

[TomG]

Point 1, that has always been the idea, yes. There should as little difference between Corona on one product than on another, and there should be a minimum of difference (only those arising from the software architecture of the 3d program, where some things may be not needed, or some things may be not possible; but this should be a rare exception rather than rule) between any Corona version. We want Corona to be Corona whichever software you are using, and that is the reasoning behind the naming convention so that people know they are getting the same thing in whatever software they are using.

On point 2, that is not the plan :) Most crashes are not actually caused by Corona anyway ;)

[Cinemike]

Great prospects!

[indexofrefraction]

well i wait for a final corona beta2 installed on rebus, that will make my happy for some time O:-)

[tuami]

Hello,
I have a problem with IES lights on latest Beta 2.
When the IES light is inserted from the library, Cinema 4D crashes.
When you connect the IES light from a local source, it works as it should.

[iacdxb]

I can confirm this... ies file from library c4d quits in OSX also.

...

p.s.
and stand alone apps does not work also.