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V-RayforC4D Basic Startup (Part2) - Basix

Josef Blog Roll, CINEMA 4D, Tutorials, VRayforC4D Tutorials 32 Comments

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

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V-RayforC4D - Basic Startup (Part1) - Basix

Josef Blog Roll, Tutorials, VRayforC4D Tutorials 18 Comments

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

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MAXON Cinema 4D R15 Announced

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Maxon just announced Cinema 4D R15 with huge improvements and list of changes .

Key Highlights of CINEMA 4D Release 15

Rendering Enhancements

R15 is packed with rendering improvements to achieve faster, higher-quality imagery. The new Team Render delivers quick control over an entire network to take advantage of all surplus processing power – either manually or automatically via Bonjour. Utilize an unlimited number of render nodes with CINEMA 4D Studio and 3 nodes with CINEMA 4D Visualize or Broadcast. Users can distribute the rendering of a single frame or complete animation directly within the CINEMA 4D interface and view the results in real-time within CINEMA 4D’s Picture Viewer for a streamlined workflow.
On the quality side, a new irradiance caching algorithm for faster approximation of Global Illumination and improved ambient occlusion, physical rendering and multi-threading features in R15 has been added offering artists unprecedented rendering performance.

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Modeling Enhancements and New Bevel Tool

MAXON has enhanced modeling productivity in CINEMA 4D, introducing all-new interactive beveling for improved manipulation and control over object edges and curves for adding depth and dimension to designs and ensure that resulting meshes are clean and flow correctly.

Lean More About CINEMA 4D R15