Cinema 4D + VRAY Tips and Tricks #1

Hello dear readers. In rendering, the most crucial part of it is how to put up your rendering settings with all the right amount so your 3D models would look realistic (since that's the goal here). :-)

First and foremost we will define each and every single term here (Vray : Chaos group), so you may understand sometimes most of what I'll be talking about.

Geometry 

Displacement - enables (default) or disables VRAYforC4D's own displacement mapping. 

Scene units - here you can setup scene units, it madded for quick setup, and to save parameters with file. 

Lighting

Lights - enables or disables lights globally.

Hidden lights - enables or disables the usage of hidden lights. When this is checked, lights are rendered regardless of whether they are hidden or not. When this option isoff, any lights that are hidden for any reason (either explicitly or by type) will not be included in the rendering.

Shadows - enables or disables shadows globally.

Show GI only - when this option ison, direct lighting will not be included in the final rendering. Note that lights will still be considered for GI calculations, however in the end only the indirect lighting will be shown.

Photometric scale - this parameter allow to compensate exposure for non physical camera renders.

Indirect illumination

Don't render final image - when this option is on, VRAYforC4D will only calculate the relevant global illumination maps (photon maps, light maps, irradiance maps). This is a useful option if you are calculating maps for a fly-through animation.

Materials 

Reflection/Refraction - enables or disables the calculation of reflections and refractions in VRAYforC4D maps and materials.

Max depth - enables the user to limit globally the reflection/refraction depth. When this is unchecked, the depth is controlled locally by the materials/maps. When this option is checked, all materials and maps use the depth specified here.

Maps - enables or disables texture maps.

Filter maps - enables or disables texture map filtering. When enabled, the depth is controlled locally by the settings of the texture maps. When disabled, no filtering is performed.

Max transparency levels - this controls to what depth transparent objects will be traced.

Transparency cutoff - this controls when tracing of transparent objects will be stopped. If the accumulated transparency of a ray is below this threshold, no further tracing will be performed.

Glossy effects - this option allows the user to replace all glossy reflections in the scene with non-glossy ones; useful for test renderings. 

Override material - this option allows the user to override the scene materials when rendering. All objects will be rendered with the chosen material, if one is selected, or with Default surface color materials if no material is specified.

 

Overriding material- this option allows to choose material that will be use for overriding scene materials. Just drag and drop here vray material from Materials Manager.

Default surface color - color that replace all the scene materials when rendering.

Raytracing

Secondary rays bias - a small positive offset that will be applied to all secondary rays; this can be used if you have overlapping faces in the scene to avoid the black splotches that may appear. 

Geometry back face cull - enables or disables (default) back face culling for camera and shadow rays. When this option is on, the surfaces of objects which are turned away from the camera (or the light source, when tracing shadows) will appear fully transparent. This allows to look inside closed objects when the camera is outside.

Cinema4D Volumetrics Effects

Volumetric Effects (experimental) - turning this option on will allow you to use Volumetric Effect on Lights in VRAYforC4D. For use it you must also enable it in Cinema4D Light Common Options. 

  

Miscellaneous options

Optimized atmospheric evaluation - turning this option on will cause VRAYforC4D to first evaluate the atmospheric effects, and shade the surface behind them only if the atmospherics are sufficiently transparent.

Low thread priority - turning this on will cause VRAYforC4D to use threads of lower priority when rendering.

Stamp Vray informations - the frame stamp is a convenient way to put some short text over the rendered images. It can be useful in many ways - for example, in network rendering, to quickly determine which frames were rendered by which machine. The frame stamp is one line of text, which appears at the bottom of the image.

Total Triangles - the number of unique intersectable primitives, such as a triangle, generated for the current scene.

Label - here you enter the text you wish to appear in the images.