Topics

1

[C4D] I need help! / Animating the size of lights, but not from centre?

« on: 2025-06-08, 11:20:16 »

Is there a trick to animating the size of a light? I have a rectangle strip light and I want to animate the size to illuminate part of an object. But I want the light to grow from one side and not the centre which it does by default. I thought maybe the Axis Centre node would do it but it messes with all the lights in the scene. How might I solve this? Would it just be to animate a shape that blocks the light and not the light itself?

2

[C4D] I need help! / Decoding an Octane file for Corona

« on: 2024-08-05, 07:21:37 »

Hi there. I've been handed a file with an Octane to recreate in Corona. It seems simple enough but I'm stuck as I've never used Octane. There's a single material stuck on the Specular channel of the Octane material. But where do I put that on my Corona setup? And can I do a similar texture projection to Octane?

3

[C4D] I need help! / Rendering Clone from a Matrix object

« on: 2024-02-27, 08:28:02 »

I have a scene where I am disintegrating an object with some mograph. I have a Cloner that is driven by a Matrix.
In Redshift I understand I can just render the Matrix with a Redshift tag so I don't need the cloner but with Corona I do, correct?
But with Corona I can't seem to get the clones to appear in my render. What's the trick?
Working file attached
V2023.2.2
Corona 10 Hotfix 2

4

[C4D] I need help! / Decals and objects from Cosmos Browser

« on: 2023-10-10, 09:19:35 »

Is there a trick to have a decal object only apply to a certain selection? I have a car from the Cosmos Browser and I only want to apply the art to the paint sections. in the include/exclude it seems like you can only select objects. Is there another way, other than render twice and mask in photoshop?

5

[C4D] I need help! / Adding user data to Corona Materials?

« on: 2023-07-10, 08:48:33 »

Is there a way to add user data to Corona materials?
I've been watching this tutorial that makes use of Scene Nodes at the point linked below he links a black and white noise material to a Redshift 'Display Colour' so the colour matches the bw noise (I think I've butchered that explanation!) Is there a way of achieving a similar thing in Corona so the colour is mapped to the noise?

This is as far as I have got but I'm scratching my head as to what to do to with Corona material: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fa1k9mqoxxcwq1z/Torus%20nodes%20clones%201.c4d?dl=0

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[C4D] I need help! / understanding Save "Compositing Project File"

« on: 2023-06-26, 21:48:16 »

Hi there. I'm about to export an image sequence for AE with an alpha channel. Normally I just export TIFs. What is the difference between checking the Alpha Channel, Straight Alpha and Separate Alpha?

Today I noticed that under the Corona Save is a Compositing Project File section. Can someone explain what this bit does. I tried looking it up in the Help but didn't find anything.

Thanks

7

[C4D] I need help! / Help optimising a scene (40 mins/frame)

« on: 2023-05-09, 00:45:43 »

I've just completed a short render of a simple product of a plastic fume cupboard. For reasons I don't understand the frames were taking as long as 40 minutes each (res=1080p). Even the fastest frame was 15 mins. I thought maybe the caustics of the glass were responsible so I removed them. Luckily I didn't need my computer for three days! But now that it's rendered I'd like to understand if I did anything stupid to make it take so long to cook each frame. Just in case the client has any change requests… I appreciate that on Apple Silicone Corona is running in Rosetta so it's not as fast as it has the potential to be (right?) but even so I thought I'd have better performance.
   
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/09pog93tutjt42v/AAAxXjL5DSAIbtwKouQ43BuMa?dl=0

Mac M1, 12.6.3
Corona 9 Hotfix 1
C4D 2023.2.1

8

[C4D] I need help! / How to use the Wire Shader?

« on: 2023-04-02, 23:54:05 »

I've just discovered there is a Wire Shader in Corona, but I've no idea what it's for. There are a few posts in this forum but would appreciate some tips on it if anyone can advise on what it is designed to do, or how one might use it.
Thanks

9

[C4D] Feature Requests / Smarter Cosmos library - thoughts

« on: 2023-04-01, 22:08:16 »

I appreciate the convenience of Cosmos materials and objects at my fingertips but find it a little basic in its current form.

For example if I want to search for a 'plastic' material I get zero results. But there a plenty of objects in there with plastic materials that I could 'borrow' from. Some more property tagging would be helpful.

Also, having massive thumbnails of the materials without text is nice to look at, sometimes I want to READ what the material is (especially for wood materials) so I can choose by name as well. The same way that C4Ds material panel allows me to view by material, or material list etc.

What's New shows me stuff tagged with December 2022 content. Which isn't that new really. Especially as there were a bunch of humans added in 2023. But if I type 2023 I get zero results, not April 2023, but only april2023. Some smarter search functions would be welcome.

Also I can't 'select all then 'delete'' in the input field to delete my entry. I have to manually backspace my entry like it's the 1990s.

I'm suer I have more ideas....

10

[C4D] General Discussion / Corona-Material website.

« on: 2023-01-04, 01:23:55 »

I've been a user of the Corona Materials website ( www.corona-materials.de) for ages. Although Cosmos has some good materials browsing in Cosmos is really poor user experience so I'd often pop over there and grab what I need from the site instead.
After my holiday I popped back to look for a specific material and see that the site is pretty much broken. Is it an 'unofficial' site? Is it being shut down? Would be such a shame.

11

[C4D] I need help! / Art on soda can material question

« on: 2022-12-08, 09:14:09 »

Hi — There are some good metallic base materials in the General material presets. I have some White artwork on a metallic soda and am not getting a good result just fiddling with it. Where would I put my UV'd bitmap artwork as a rule of thumb? Base later Texture channel? On Octane it goes in the specular (according to a video I've just seen), but I realise they approach things differently. Thanks

12

[C4D] I need help! / Workflow tips for compositing- maybe Multi Pass?

« on: 2022-11-25, 04:56:24 »

I feel I'm doing more work than I need to for this project and hope someone can shed light on a more efficient way.
I've created a number of static scenes that will and up being A1 prints. As the backgrounds are all this companies brand colour, and to save render time I decided I don't need to render the entire poster, just the region with the objects. So the challenge is to separate the object from the background, but include the shadow. I have a shadow catcher on a floor plane, but when I render it (without the floor) my floor shadows are black, not the red/orange that they are visually. So instead I've been rendering the file three times to mask in photoshop properly
- once of the entire scene including background,
- once with the  background with a composting tag set to not be seen by camera but with a plane on the floor with a shadow catcher material
- and once with just the object alpha.

When I composite the file I use the layer with the floor shadows set to multiply to create nice red shadows on the solid background.

I feel there is a smarter way of doing this rather than render three times! Looking at mulitpass it wasn't obvious how I could solve it. Any advice gratefully received!

13

[C4D] I need help! / Weird alpha

« on: 2022-11-19, 01:57:16 »

I'm rendering the alpha of large image (7050px x7050px) that is too large for the VFB window to show the whole image on my monitor. I didn't think it would be an issue. I stopped the render after a while as the UI told me the noise was under 2%. Opening the render in Photoshop it's a crazy mess. It seems to have only calculated the noise of the region that was in view at the time (the neck area in the image) — note there were no actual render regions. I'd use the +/- magnifying glass if the buttons work to fit the image in frame but they don't seem to work (at least on my Mac with this large window, is there a keyboard shortcut??)

Anyone have a suggestion? The convenience of rendering the alpha from the VFB is so much better than multi-passing it IYAM.

C4D 2023 / Corona 9 / Mac 12.6

14

[C4D] I need help! / HDRI workflow

« on: 2022-10-19, 06:19:12 »

I have learnt a lot about Corona from the CommonPoint blogs. (https://thecommonpoint.com/blog)
I'm trying to apply their knowledge about HDRI workflow (not C4D, is it Max?) to Cinema4D but struggling a little. I understand how to load and image, and connect it to a ColorCorrect map, but am not sure about how to connect it to the 'Single Map' Scene environment in C4D as they describe. Does anyone have any pointers? Is it the same as 'Override whole environment?' Any if so do I need to create a light (?) material first, because if I just use the node material editor how do I connect it to the scene?

Load your HDRI as CoronaBitmap and plug it into CoronaColorCorrect map. Connect it to “Single map” under Scene Environment, and you’re ready to go!

https://thecommonpoint.com/blog_hdri

Many thanks

15

[C4D] I need help! / Mystery object from volume grid

« on: 2022-08-22, 22:39:49 »

I'm pretty inexperienced with the volume grid. But I thought I'd got the hang of it. Unfortunately looking at the render from last night I'm seeing the volume element 'container' seems to be causing a shadow where it shouldn't. (more obvious in the video)
Can anyone help me work out what I've done wrong, or a work around?
Video:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h3zi3mv9crn0so3/steam.mp4?dl=0

Simplified project file here
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/stdwsavizz0kgee/AABhlaZzDdAq5nC9Pt7vmbFta?dl=0