BigAl3D

A buddy of mine built a crazy video editing monster using a 64-core Threadripper CPU. I asked him to run Cinebench. That thing got over 24,000 on the CPU test. Yeah. That's really fast. Of course, it was a tad pricier than this deal. haha

Another possibility if you DID convert your object to editable mesh is if you have the Axis tool selected, you won't be able to select polygons. It's the button on the left with two arrows in a 90° angle. Good luck.

@teknow Very impressive indeed. What render engine did you use and which do you think is better for what task?

I too am impressed with some of the features in Blender and it now sports a much friendlier UI. I've been checking out the new Mantaflow Liquids simulation system and it's very impressive. Does anyone know of a way to get a liquid simulation mesh animation into C4D? If I export as Alembic, I can play the simulation inside C4D, but it's only dots and no mesh.

Do a YouTube search for "Cinema 4D modeling tutorial beginner" This brings up several hours of free content. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cinema+4d+modeling+tutorial+beginner For a more structured lesson, I recommend https://www.linkedin.com/learning/ (formally Lynda.com). They have great content and many are courses that follow a process and even gives you a certificate of completion at the end. Depending on which account you get, you can also download the files from the lessons. You can sign up monthly ($29.99) or if you buy a year at a time, you get one month free. Even with the monthly, you get access to EVERYTHING on the site to watch as many times as you like.

The lighting is definitely better. Try making the tiles 50% smaller and reduce the depth of field by a lot. Going in the right direction though!

Wow. That's a bunch of questions. To see the power of Takes, I recommend looking up the demo from Chris Villa's presentation at NAB. He goes fast, but when you set it up the right way, it's very powerful. Also, you don't mention which computer you "launch" your renders from. My info below is based on Mac is the main, then PC is the render node. #1 — Unless you can dedicate a LOT of time to learn and manage something like Deadline AND have a lot of render nodes, I'd skip that one. Overkill unless you're a decent size shop. #2 — C4D should save out a .AEC After Effects file which will have a comp with all your layers set up. Not sure why your isn't saving automatically. Make sure you have the Save box checked. #3 — First thing to do is, on the PC, go into the preferences of the Team Render Client, Renderer --> Team Render and set a Security Token. Pick something simple like 12345 since you're within your own network. I've had issues with Team Render nodes on newer Windows boxes not seeing the server. If you install iTunes on the PC, it will also install Bonjour, which looks around to see if there's anything to connect to. If you're launching a render from your Mac and you're still not seeing the PC, get the IP address from the PC. On the Mac, bring up the Team Render Machines window (in the Render menu). Go to the Machine menu and select Add Machine. Put in the IP address here, followed by a ":" colon (no quotes), and a port number. Probably 5401. Should look like this "000.000.00.000:5401" Then right-click and Verify. Type in 12345 and you're done. The only other thing is if you have any plug-ins or third part Content Browser libraries. Make sure EACH render node has them, as they don't always copy over when rendering.

All this is well and good, but you're forgetting the most important question. When the tree falls in the forest, will it make any noise? Sorry, I couldn't resist. All kidding aside, at some point, anything good requires hard work. Sometimes tedious work to get a big payoff at the end. No way around that.

Bonjour! Pardon my French, I'm American. 😉 I know this sounds obvious, but did you choose V-ray as the Renderer in Render Settings? I use Corona and if I forget to do that, my scene will render black.

@BIgor The biggest thing that bothers me is the scale. Having the depth-of-field so extreme really shrinks the apparent scale down a lot. Much like a tilt-shift effect, which makes images look like miniatures. Since I create images and animation for cars, the other big thing is the size of the tiles on the floor. Looks like a bathroom floor. Try using large, square tiles that are in the 16" or 18" (45 cm) range and very small grout lines. Smooth and reflective too. I know you're in Europe, but I imagine the look would be similar. It is odd that the yellow care in particular, gets a little dark on top, when it should be very well lit with all those lights. I've attached a test render I did last year using Corona. The lighting isn't perfect, but the scale and the tile floor are good. I'm currently working on finishing this project, so will post updates soon. Good luck and post more images when you make adjustments.

https://greyscalegorilla.com/downloads/gorillacam/

Problem with Mograp is I don't believe you will have enough control so you can have smaller boxes for the legs and arms, but larger ones for the torso. Well, at least not easily. Using one or more Random effectors with Spherical falloff might work somewhat. Try setting a Cloner to Volume, set the Position to a small number and the scale to the size you need. If you need more than one Effector, use the Mograph Selection tool to choose what area each Cloner affects.

Sadly I don't think many studios are using C4D for their character pipeline, at least no major studios.

I don't have experience in Xref rigs, but I think the Xref system is very buggy. Always try it and I always abandon it. The first problem you'll have is the path to the materials needs to be changed to absolute (I think) up front, or it causes lots of problems. I've had car models just "fly apart" in the scene and not being able to use the Undo option. Just be careful with Xrefs is my advice.

No problem. I've learned so much from this forum over the years. That's why it exists. One day you will pass it forward, young padawan.

I don't have that material in my browser. I attached my scene file to my post above. Just re-link the material.

@bryanfsmith Well, you're making it very difficult to get this look when your glass has no transparency. What I did what on your stained glass material, you can turn off Color and turn ON Transparency. Put your glass texture in this channel. The next major thing to change is the Shadow for your light. Set it to Raytraced (Hard). This will prevent the big light spot on the floor. For some reason, C4D has always had a bug if you use the Raytraced (Soft) setting. Light will always leak along the floor. One last thing. You have three spot lights to make sure to cover the entire shape. Since you're most likely mimicking sunlight, change your ONE light to Parallel Spot. This will cover the entire shape and give you straight light streaks, like the real sun. The only thing I don't like about this test, is the intensity of the color on the floor. When the light streaks are nice and bright, the image on the floor is very bright. But that's just me. Good luck. StainedGlass.c4d.zip

I feel like every time there is an unusual request for a feature or plugin, I always find the answer with Nitroman. Check out this demo video to see if it does what you need. Check them out. https://nitro4d.com/product/magic-cubes/ https://nitro4d.com/product/nitrofit/

Well, at this point, I'd have to see the C4D file myself. If you can't post it here, you can PM me a link. Either way.

Like I said, the size of the Compositing Tag object is irrelevant in the long run. It's just the 3D data that you're using. I'm a little confused when you say Null, but maybe its what @southpaw mentioned about the Solid setting. After dragging your replacement comp, you shouldn't see the outline of that huge layer anymore. Your comp will replace that layer entirely. I forgot to mention earlier, once you drag and replace, you can then dupe this new layer and drag your second comp on it to replace. You can also dupe the original and turn it off for future use as well. If you do put dimensions in there, just put something on the small side. Like I said, it doesn't matter at all. It's a lot of setup, but once it's done, you can crank out different version from AE in minutes. Here's an example I did in the past. I was able to drop new screens behind the car and gifts with ease. https://vimeo.com/tier10studios/review/308307511/1ceae244b5

There are several steps to get this effect working, so don't be put off if you mess up the first time. With this technique, you do NOT need to do any tracking or even corner pinning. While I don't fully get what you tried, if I was tasked with being able to easily replace those screens in After Effects, you would need to use an External Compositing tag in addition to the Object Buffer on the screen object. I believe you can name this tag so you know what it is in AE. The External tag will give you a 3D layer when you bring into AE. This next part used to confuse me, but I get it now. This 3D layer is only for the data and not what you see of that layer, which will probably show up as a red box that follows the motion, but isn't the right size of your screen. This is fine. So in AE, you need to create your two comps, Screen 1 with what's on the first screen and Screen 2 with what is revealed. Make the content in these comps take up the entire comp size and make all the layers 3D. In your main AE comp with the rendered animation, select that red box layer (compositing tag) and select the comp with Screen 1. Holding the Option key, drag the Screen 1 comp onto Red Box layer in the timeline. Boom. Your Screen 1 comp is now using the 3D data from C4D. Scrub to see it moves correctly. Now scale you layer down the right size. Drop you Object Buffer mask on top and set it to Luma Matte. Magic From here you need to work through AE stuff and clip layers when you need to, and stack things correctly. The best thing about this technique is that, from this point on, when you need new info on those screens, you just double-click the comps and you can edit them in flat, 2D. You can put ANYTHING in Comps Screen 1 and Screen 2 and they will fit perfectly every time. MAKE SURE YOUR ANIMATION AND YOUR AE COMPS ARE ALL THE SAME FPS! I made that mistake before, and it drove me nuts until I figured it out. If you're still confused, or if I misunderstood what you're trying to do, post back.

Nitroman also has a cheap plug-in that makes effects like this easier. I haven't used this one, but usually hit stuff is pretty good.

Our friend Nitroman has a free plug-in for just this situation. It's called Magic Merge. Give it a try and see if it does what you need. You might also want to check out his other plugins too. He has many free tools, as well as, many cheap paid ones. https://nitro4d.com/product/magic-merge/

@rasputin I am a Corona user and can tell you it's amazing. I haven't done too much with hair lately since most cars don't usually have hair. haha You mention "Corona 3 Hair Material" several times. Is that the actual Corona HAIR version, or are you saying the render engine version? I ask only because it's up to version 5 now and many things have improved since v3. The only issues I have with them is how long it's taking them to finish all the tutorials, materials pack and finish promised features and major fixes. There are still a bunch of Mograph issues and some motion blur problems, weird Team Render behavior and material problems. Aside from that, it's such a good render engine and it's all CPU so it works on almost any computer. At home, I use it with a very old 2008 Mac Pro tower running OS 10.11. Of course it's not as fast as a Threadripper, but I get work done.