1. V-RayforC4D Basic Startup (Part2) - Basix

    17
    | Blog Roll, CINEMA 4D, VRayforC4D Tutorials
    14/08/2013

    In this Tutorial We are going explore some of the essential things when it comes to creating V-Ray materials , what we going to be discussing here is hopefully going to get you started making V-Ray materials and again , some more in depth tutorials are going to be available for specific parts that are not covered in this series

    V-Ray materials are not as simple as the standard materials , the way they behave is more physical ( as surfaces can absorb light , refract it , reflect it .. etc ) and for that reason , each parameter is tight another and colors play a huge role in this regard

    VRay has a number of material types which can be used in combination or separately to produce high quality renders . The main materials that we are going to be working with is the V-Ray Advanced Material .

    Click Here To Download The Tutorial Files

    V-Ray Advanced Material

    1_Adv_Mat

    The Advanced V-Ray material is arranged in layers , each layer has its own options and most of them have a transparency option ( or a mask ) that can be used to mix between the layers , and just like in photoshop , we need a gray map or shader to be used as a mask .

    General Options :

    • Gamma : adjusts the gamma of the material preview but has no effect on the actual material
    • Overridable : you can uncheck this option if you don’t want a specific material to be overtaken by the override option in the general options ( render settings )
    • MltID Color : define the color ID of each material , will appear when using the material ID with the multipass

    - Material Weight

    This is the alpha option in the vray advance material , you can use gray shaders or textures to delete specific parts from an object in the render time

    2_Mat_Wi

    The options for this layer are fairly easy to work with , the Invert option will invert the blacks and whites of your textures or shader , and the Mix Strength defines the amount of this material when it’s combined with other materials ( when mixing materials with the blend material for example )

    3_Bump

    • Notes : Any invert option in other layers is going to do the same thing . and its only meant to work gray textures so its best not to be used with normal maps

    - Bump

    Bump and normal maps add sense of depth to renders on individual objects , both can be used via this layer by changing the type .

    • Bump Shadows : Enabling this parameter is going to provide better looking shadows . its recommended to keep it off ( especially when using V-Ray dirt )
    • Bump Delta Scale : This parameter can be decreased to sharpen the bump and Increased to blur it
    • Bump amount : The bump amount in scene units

     

    4_Bump_2

    - Luminosity Layer

    The luminosity layer can be used to make an object ( polygonal surfaces ) emit light , it works with the default color or with textures and shaders it also has the transparency slot so we can mix it with all of the layers beneath it ( tested with v1.2.6.2 and it seems that it doesn’t work , all other layers transparency options work just fine ). lets explore some of its options

    • Color : When there is no texture being used , this is going be used as solid color for the light
    • Color Amount : This is the intensity of the illumination for the color ( ignored when direct light is enabled )
    • Texture Amount : When a texture is being used this defines the illumination of it ( also ignored when direct light is enabled )
    • Double Sided : This option determines whether the light is going to be on each side of a normal or not

     

    5_lunm

    • Compensate Exposure : This option adjusts the intensity when using a Physical Camera , its ineffective when using the direct light option but very useful the majority of the time so keep it on .

     

    6_lunm

    • Direct illumination : Converts the objects of the material into actual lights with area shadows , the parameters of direct light are similar to an area light ( then intensity will be overridden by the direct light intensity so adjust that instead )

    - Reflection Layer

    The reflection layer is like simplified version of the specular layer , without any specular option it can only be used to provide sharp reflection , the recent versions have added a fresnel option to so it has its applications sometimes but most of the time , we use the specular channels with high fresnels for sharp reflections and over time you will use this layer less . will discuss the options of the specular layer since they very similar and the concepts can be similar in regards of the options .

    Before we talk about the specular layer , the transparency option for this and other layers after it work fine so this an example of how the transparency solution should work with gray shaders or textures ( note the slight reflection in the orange area is specular layer reflection )

    7_Trans

    - Specular Layer

    Ref_1

    Continue reading «V-RayforC4D Basic Startup (Part2) - Basix»

  2. V-RayforC4D - Basic Startup (Part1) - Basix

    4
    | Blog Roll, VRayforC4D Tutorials
    11/08/2013

    Hello everybody and welcome the this new series of basic tutorials for V-Ray for Cinema 4D , this series of tutorials is re-make of the old non-english tutorials and aimed at new users to get them started using V-Ray for Cinema 4D . please note that V-Ray is a constant development plugin and therefore these tutorials are going to be constantly updated to correct , adapt , or rewritten the suit the latest VRay releases . in this first article we are going to be using V-Ray 1.2.6 and Cinema 4D R13 .

    Firstly , Congratulations on choosing one of the best high-end render engines on the market for Cinema 4D , its beautifully integrated and you can start rendering realistic images almost immediately . with (very) fast GI for both flicker free animations and Still renders

    What is V-Ray ?

    V-Ray is a render engine that extends your 3D Software in the rendering field by providing advanced ray tracing technologies and other specific features , its available today for the most advanced 3D packages including Cinema 4D by The V-RayforC4D Team . and its originally developed by ChaosGroup .

    The Main V-RayforC4D Features

    • Global Illumination
    • V-Ray lights
    • Physical Camera
    • Physical BRDF material
    • Fast Render Proxies
    • Sup-surface scattering
    • Volume scattering
    • Full Cinema 4D shader integration

    and many other features . one of the biggest advantages of V-Ray for Cinema 4D is that ts also a multi platform plugin ( works on mac os and windows ) . We are going to start simple in this first tutorial by locating its main features in Cinema 4D , such as lights , gi , physical cameras , etc

    Rendering with V-RayforC4D

    To Set your renderer to V-Ray , open the Render Settings Menu and Change it from Standard to VRayBridge .

    1_Render_Setup

    normally when deciding on moving to the rendering part, we must have a final working project file with geometry and modeled or animated objects , for the purposes of this tutorial and other tutorials , we are going to be working with this simple demo file , you can download it using the link below . after you open it , you will notice its pretty much empty except for the objects .

    Click Here To Download The Tutorial Files

    2_Scene

    we will start simple by setting a basic clay render to get an idea of what we are going to be working with before we do any shading or lighting , to do that , it’s best if we use the fastest way of lightning , using the default environment color along with GI and Ambient Occlusion

    To do that , go to your render settings and find the Gi tap under VrayBridge . and then set the the GI to ON

    3_GI_On

    Next to the ON option , you will notice that there are a good number of presets , its best to start by the Default 00A preset , its the fastest and will give an ok result for the start . Of course you can see that there are a number of settings and options for the GI settings , as we are writing this tutorial , we tried to keep it simple as possible and discuss the settings more in depth in separate tutorials

    4_GI_Preset

    Now if we hit render you will get a render result like in the image below , this could be a good way to see draft result of your project . if you wanted to improve your clay render , try using better irradiance map/light cash render settings with a reinhard color mapping and gamma 2.2 .

    5_Render

    Here are the steps to make you render a little bit better with different color mapping and gamma 2.2 settings

    6_GI_1

    7_Color_Mapping_2

    8_Envi_3

    9_Render_2

    Continue reading «V-RayforC4D - Basic Startup (Part1) - Basix»

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