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VRAYforC4D Manual - table of contents

Manual Version 1.1 written by Stefan LAUB / Updated by Anton Goroh (aka Tong) / Last update: 11.11.2008*

TERMS OF CONDITION...............................................................................................................3 Change Log ..............................................................................................................................6 VRAYforC4D Features .............................................................................................................. 10 About Info.............................................................................................................................. 11 Activating VrayforC4D.............................................................................................................. 14 Overview................................................................................................................................ 17 Render Settings Options.................................................................................................................................. 24 Image Sampler (Antia-aliasing)................................................................................................. 27 DMC sampler .......................................................................................................................... 31 Indirect Illumination (GI) ......................................................................................................... 33 Brute force GI......................................................................................................................... 39 Irradiance map ....................................................................................................................... 40 Photon mapping...................................................................................................................... 47 Light cache............................................................................................................................. 50 Combining GI Methods............................................................................................................. 55 Caustics ................................................................................................................................. 57 Displacement.......................................................................................................................... 59 Environment........................................................................................................................... 60 Color Mapping......................................................................................................................... 63 Vray Camera .......................................................................................................................... 65 System .................................................................................................................................. 68 MultiPass................................................................................................................................ 71 Camera Clipper ....................................................................................................................... 72 Materials Material Layered Channels........................................................................................................ 73 Matte Layer ............................................................................................................................ 75 Material Weight....................................................................................................................... 76 Bump .................................................................................................................................... 77 Luminosity Layers ................................................................................................................... 79 Reflection Layer ...................................................................................................................... 81 Specular Layers ...................................................................................................................... 83 Diffuse Layers......................................................................................................................... 87 Refraction Layer...................................................................................................................... 89 Cinema4d Shaders .................................................................................................................. 92 Assigment .............................................................................................................................. 93 Vray2SideMaterial ................................................................................................................... 94 VrayBlendMaterial ................................................................................................................... 96 VrayDisplaceMaterial ............................................................................................................... 98 Displacement Tag.................................................................................................................. 100 Vray OverrideMaterial ............................................................................................................ 102 Vray Compositing Tag............................................................................................................ 104 VRay Motion Blur Tag ............................................................................................................ 107

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Vray Material Converter ......................................................................................................... 108 Vray Lights VRayLight parameters............................................................................................................ 109 Vray Light - Common Tab ...................................................................................................... 110 Vray Light - Spot light............................................................................................................ 113 Vray Light - Area light............................................................................................................ 114 Vray Light - Sun light............................................................................................................. 116 Vray Light - IES Light ............................................................................................................ 118 VRay Physical Camera ........................................................................................................... 120 VRay Camera Dome .............................................................................................................. 123 Vray Proxy ........................................................................................................................... 124 Vrmesh Exporter Tag............................................................................................................. 127 VRAYforC4D Professional Render system for Maxon Cinema4D and Bodypait 3d Products. On OSX Intel 10.4.10 or WinXP SP2. For Cinema versions 9.6 & 10.1+. Vray system based on the 1.5.0 SDK provided by Chaosgroup. V 1.0 Released on 17.09.2007. Cinema 4D is a registered trademarks of Maxon Computer (www.maxon.net), VRAYforC4D software, VRAYforC4D logo and VRAYforC4D documentation belong to LAUBlab_Vienna (in Cooperation with Renato Tarabella and Daniele Ficini). V-Ray belongs to Chaosgroup (www.chaosgroup.com) All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

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TERMS OF CONDITION

VRAYFORC4D Software License Agreement: Home

IMPORTANT - READ CAREFULLY: By accepting this software, you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this License Agreement. These are the only terms upon which VRAYFORC4D is licensed.

Grant of License VRAYFORC4D /LAUBlab (The Company) is empowered, and has agreed in consideration of the payment by you of the license fee hereunder to grant you a personal non-exclusive, non-transferable limited license to use the enclosed program (the software or V-RAY or VRAYFORC4D) in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement. This License agreement permits a single user to use the Software’s user interface on only one computer at one location at any one time; use up to 10 running copies of the Software for distributed rendering at any one time; use unlimited number of running copies for network (frame-by-frame) rendering.

Interpretation & Definitions In this Agreement unless the context otherwise requires: Documentation means the technical manuals, user manual and other information which is being made available by the Company to you in either printed or machine readable form; Intellectual Property Rights means any and all patents, registered trademarks, registered designs, application for any of the foregoing, trade and business names, unregistered trademarks, logos, know-how, trade secrets, copyrights, rights in designs, inventions, rights under licenses and consents in relation to any such rights and rights of the same on similar effect or nature in relation to software, source code, object code and associated documentation, together with all goodwill whether or not attaching or relating thereto, in any part of the world. VRAYFORC4D means the “VRAYforC4D” rendering plugin connection to the V-RAY Render engine 1.6 (SDK) from Chaos group ltd. for MAXON Cinema 4D v9.6 and v10.+ Use shall mean the right of you to design, create and test your own works (User Works) using VRAYforC4D; distribute your User Works to End users; make back up copies of VRAYforC4D. You may modify and make unlimited copies of any resulting animations, still images or scene files contained in the Software PROVIDED THAT you shall indemnify, hold harmless and defend the Company against any and all costs, claims, demands, expenses, losses and liabilities of whatsoever nature which may arise in conjunction with the distribution or use of your User Works and copies of files contained in the Software.

Property and confidentiality in VRAYforC4D VRAYforC4D and the Documentation shall remain the sole and exclusive property of the Company. Nothing in this Agreement shall confer any rights in any trade name, business name or trademark of the Company on you. In order to properly authorize the VRAYforC4D software, the Company may obtain certain information about the user’s computer system through the VRAYforC4D license request code. The Company understands that this information may be sensible and shall consider it as confidential. The Company guarantees that this information will be used only internally and in order to prevent illegal use of the Software. The Company also guarantees that it will use its best commercially reasonable efforts to protect this information except in cases where this information might be required by applicable law.

Restrictions

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Save as otherwise expressly set out herein or as otherwise expressly permitted by law, you shall not: (a) Make any translation, adaptation, arrangement and any other alteration of the VRAYforC4D software or make any reproduction, distribution, communication, display or performance to the public of the results of such acts; (b) Adapt or reverse compile or engineer the whole or any part of VRAYforC4D. (c) Assign, transfer, sell, lease, rent, charge or otherwise deal in or encumber VRAYforC4D or use VRAYforC4D on behalf of any third party, or make available the same to any third party without the prior written consent of the Company; (d) Remove or alter any copyright or other proprietary notice from VRAYforC4D; (e) Not by itself or with others participate in any illegal, deceptive, misleading or unethical practices including, but not limited to, disparagement of VRAYforC4D or the Company or other practices which may be detrimental to VRAYforC4D or the Company; (f) Notify the Company immediately if you becomes aware of any unauthorized use of the whole or any part of VRAYforC4D by any third party;

Warranty THE COMPANY DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE USE OF VRAYforC4D WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, OR THAT THE OPERATION OF VRAYforC4D WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE. THE COMPANY DOES NOT WARRANT THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE DATA CONTAINED IN VRAYforC4D. THE COMPANY DOES NOT WARRANT THE ACCURACY OF THE COMPUTATIONS CARRIED OUT BY VRAYforC4D DURING ITS OPERATION AND SPECIFICALLY DOES NOT WARRANT ITS USE IN SAFETY CRITICAL APPLICATIONS. SUBJECT TO THE FOREGOING ALL CONDITIONS, WARRANTIES, TERMS AND UNDERTAKINGS EXPRESS OR IMPLIED STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE IN RESPECT OF VRAYforC4D AND THE DOCUMENTATION ARE HEREBY EXCLUDED TO THE GREATEST EXTENT PERMISSIBLE BY APPLICABLE LAW.

Limitation of liability & Remedies Subject to the limits set out below, the Company shall accept liability to you in respect of direct dam- age to tangible property resulting from the negligence of the Company or its employee’s agents or sub-contractors. The Company’s entire liability in respect of any Event of Default shall be limited to damages of an amount equal to the amount of the initial purchase price originally paid by you for the Software. The Company shall not be liable to you in respect of any Event of Default for loss of data, information, profits or goodwill (whether such loss is direct or indirect) or any type of special indirect or consequential loss (including loss or damage suffered by you as a result of an action brought by a third party) even if such loss was reasonably foreseeable or the Company had been advised of the possibility of you incurring the same. If a number of Events of Default give rise substantially to the same loss then they shall be regarded as giving rise to only one claim under this Agreement. The En- tire Liability of the Company and your exclusive remedy under the warranty provided herein will be to attempt to correct or work around errors, to replace the Software or to refund the purchase price and terminate this Agreement. This remedy is subject to return of the Software to the Company.

Indemnities You shall indemnify the Company, and keep the Company fully and effectively indemnified on demand from and against any and all losses, claims, damages, costs, charges, expenses, liabilities, demands, proceedings and actions which the Company may sustain or incur, or which may be brought or established against the Company by any person, which in any case arise out of or in relation to, or by reason of:- any breach by you of your obligations under this Agreement; any alteration, modification, adjustment or enhancement made by you to VRAYforC4D; or any combination, connection, operation or use of VRAYforC4D with any other equipment, software or documentation not supplied by the Company.

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Termination This License is effective until terminated. You may terminate this License at any time by destroying the Software, related documentation and all copies thereof. This license will terminate immediately without notice from the authorized publisher if you fail to comply with any provision of this License. Upon termination you must destroy the Software and related documentation and all copies thereof.

Entire Agreement The Company shall not be liable to you for loss arising from or in connection with any representations, agreements, statements or undertakings made prior to the date of execution of this Agreement other than those representations, agreements, statements or undertakings confirmed by a duly authorized representative of the Company in writing or expressly incorporated or referred to in this Agreement.

Law Any controversy, claim or dispute that cannot be so resolved shall be settled by final binding arbitration in accordance with the rules of the World Arbitration Association, and judgment upon the award rendered by the arbitrator or arbitrators may be entered in any court having jurisdiction thereof. Any such arbitration shall be conducted in the city where the Company’s headquarters are located (A-1040 Vienna, Austria). Cinema 4s is a registered trademarks of Maxon Computer (www.maxon.net), VRAYforC4D software, VRAYforC4D logo and VRAYforC4D documentation belong to LAUBlab_Vienna (in Cooperation with Renato Tarabella). V-Ray belongs to Chaos group (www.chaosgroup.com) All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

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Change Log

Change Log Home

VRAYforC4D Version 1.1

Bugs Fixes

• Fixed Global Option to disable lights doesn't work • Fixed Global Option to disable shadows (didn't work for the Physical Sun) • Fixed Global Option to disable displacement doesn't work • Fixed Light Dome HDRI texture mapping crash • Fixed Incorrect sampling for the irradiance map when the "Adaptation only" option for the color

mapping is on • Fixed Incorrect render progress report with light cache • Fixed Incorrect behaviour of Region render option in the VrayBridge panel • Fixed UV offsets ghosted in every Environment setting if Frontal mapping used in Background • Fixed Vray tags problems with some modelling tools like "Stich and Sew" and "Bridge" • Fixed Light Cache calculation when used in flythrough mode • Fixed Textures multipliers and mix mode not working properly • Fixed Displacement not working properly with UVW projection • Fixed Black background rotating the material preview scene • Fixed Decals not working with stacked materials (just use in the material weight a plain 24 bit,

without alpha, black and white texture as alpha) • Fixed SSS when used with the Diffuse2 layer

Changes

• Bucket method set to triangulation as default • Affect shadow in Refraction Layer set to on by default • All new way to save GI and Caustics calculation files. Now just choose the filename, no need for the

extension (it will be automatically added as irMap or lcMap or phMap or caMap). Just remember to do a save project before to save these files.

• Vignetting parameter in VrayPhysicalCamera is now adjustable from 0 to 1.

Enhancement

• Improved sampling in the DMC sampler • Improved handling of smoothed normals at grazing camera angles; • Enabled values above 1 for the Volume Amount under the Refraction layer of the Vraymaterial • The ISO setting in the VrayPhysicalCamera tag can now be set higher than 1600 • The handles for Area lights and Spot Lights can now be manipulated from the viewport • Impressive speed-up in exporting scenes with a lot of objects. Now you can export 20.000 objects in

few seconds.

New Features

• Added VrayBridge 64bit • Added Native Cinema4D Materials support (reflection and refraction channels don't work) • Added Vray2SidedMaterial • Added VrayBlendMaterial (you can now stack materials on polygon selections) • Added MaterialMatte option in VrayMaterial • Added "Soft Edges" option in VrayMaterial under Specular Layers

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• Added New Antialiasing FIlter (Area, Catmull, Gaussian) and enhanced some of the old ones • Added Default surface color Option when object has no material • Added Full "Material Override" • Added "Min paths per samples" for the light cache computation • Added "Override LC subdivision" option for the light cache computation (with, relative to image size,

7 step sample/ratio) • Added All new OpenGL materials preview • Added "Object Visibility" option (animatable) to VrayCompositing tag • Added "Vertical Split" (act as default option) for Split/Region under the Vray System tab of the

VrayBridge panel • Added Options in the VrayLight tag under the SunLight tab so Physical Sky doesn't override

Environment options • Added Option to in the VrayBridge panel under the Environment tab to enable/disable the way BG

Env affect GI Env. • Added White Balance presets to the VrayPhysicalCamera tag • Added Fixed exposure increments for F-stop, Shutter speed and ISO • Added Store current exposure to compensate for motionblur or dof effects (and mantain correct

exposure) • Added Object ID parameter in the VrayCompositing tag for Multipass • Added Generate/Recieve GI and Caustics in the VrayCompositing tag • Added VrayDisplaceMaterial to replace the now old VrayDisplacement tag • Added VrayCamera and VrayPhysicalCamera MotionBlur • Added Object MotionBlur, also full Rotational MB (for non-deformed objects only at the moment) • Added RGB displacement • Added Scene units now selectable from the VrayBridge Panel • Added Photometric light scale parameter to compensate exposure for non physical camera renders • Added On rendering Subdivision surfaces render (using the VrayDisplaceMaterial) • Added VrayProxy support, also with auto generating proxy objects. • Added Normal map support to the Bump layer in the VrayMaterial • Added Roughness parameter to the Diffuse Layer of the VrayMaterial • Added Sky Intensity Multiplier parameter to the Physical Sky • Added Affect Diffuse/Specular/Reflections for lights (Affect Reflections only with the VrayLight tag)

VRAYforC4D Version 1.0876

Bugs Fixes

• Fixed Infinity light smooth shadows bug. • Fixed the problem that save uncompleted frames.

Enhancement

• Parallel/perspective rendering Viewport correct. • Much faster buckets redraw. • New installer for Windows and Osx.

New Features

• Added Physical Camera support in perspective Viewport not associated with a camera. • Added Sun intensity parameters for both the Physical and Standard Camera (the renderer choose it

automatically). • Added Options to override Cinema Field of View to support FOV from 0 to 360 degree. • Added Frontal projection map for the Environment maps.

VRAYforC4D Version 1.0821 • Some little entrenchments inside and the compatibility with Xp64.

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VRAYforC4D Version 1.082

Bugs Fixes

• Fixed Distance threshold bug in Irradiance Map • Fixed Filter on/off bug • Fixed Light Dome Photon emit radius • Fixed Cinema 4D R10.5 VrayBridge panels scaling bug

Changes

• Changed Color Mapping nomenclature • Changed some default values • Number of passes in LC now defaults to CPU number

New Features

• Added native Vray Multipass render • Added VrayCameraDome tag • Added Override Material in global option • Added Camera Clipping Planes • Added Camera Geometry Clipper • Added Clamp level parameter in Color Mapping • Added Light Dome rotations • Added Environment U and V offsets • Added Specular Anisotropy textures • Added some options in the stamp rendering informations

VRAYforC4D Version 1.05 • Fixed Infinite light behavior, now can effectively use the intensity parameter both from Cinema's light

panel and the VrayLight tag.

VRAYforC4D Version 1.04

Bugs Fixes

• Fixed Photometric lights (now there's perfect values conversion from the various photometric units) for even more realistic light diffusion.

• Fixed Spot light cone angle and penumbra angle to conform to Cinema spot light render • Fixed multiple render settings bug

New Features

• Added Shadow color parameter in the VrayLight tag

VRAYforC4D Version 1.03 • Fixed the bug on the DMC AA that always set to 0.0 the threshold.

VRAYforC4D Version 1.02

Bugs Fixes

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• Fixed Alpha support for textures.

Enhancement

• New Fine tuned GI Presets. • Changed the Illumination Panel in the VrayMaterial in "OGL Textures" (the unuseful Cinema GI

settings are gone).

New Features

• Added Hair polygon shader support (from Hair module) • Added Adaptive DMC Threshold parameter in the VrayBridge Antialiasing panel. • Added Adaptation Only option in the VrayBridge Color Mapping panel. • Added Color coded icon to better visualize the VrayBridge tags

VRAYforC4D Version 1.01 • Net render now is working good • Corrected the behavior of the light when using the photometric units

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VRAYforC4D Features

VRAYforC4D Features Home

The VRAYforC4D rendering system has many advanced features; here only some of them are listed. For a full list of all VRAYforC4D modules and options, please see the help index. Note that all features are subject to change without special notice. All VRAYforC4D changes for that moment you can see here. • Full Vray 1.6 core standalone integration in to Cinema4D • Windows and OSX versions • 32bit and 64bit versions • Unlimited Cinema4D NET Render support per one license. • Efficient shading system specifically optimized for ray-tracing • Fully multithreaded, even in material preview. • Supports unlimited cpu`s and cores per workstation, scales extreme on multi core machines • Efficient geometry handling • True instance rendering • On-demand dynamic geometry creation • On-demand geometry loading from disk files • Displacement mapping • Three different image sampling methods • Full-scene antialiasing • Progressive path tracing • Support for additional render elements (diffuse, reflection, GI etc) • Advanced color (tone) mapping controls • Physically accurate full global illumination solutions • Different GI algorithms: path tracing, irradiance cache, photon maps, light cache • Reusable GI solutions for accelerated rendering of walk-through animations and animations with

dynamic objects • Physically accurate area lights • Compatible with IES lights • Efficient illumination from HDR environments • Physical sun & sky • Complete support of Cinema4D shaders • Physically plausible materials • Blurry reflections/refractions • Accurate highlights • Sub-surface scattering • Support for efficient material layering • Real Microdisplacement • Depth-of-field with bokeh effects • Accurate motion blur • Physical camera • Multipass render • Compositing tag support • Camera Clipper • Vray Proxy support • Volume Lights support • HAIR module of Cinema4D supported • Xref support in 10.5

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About Info

About Info Home

About Vray Vray is one of the very high end available render systems out there. Almost the whole architectural Visualization business changed to Vray over the last years and the trend is ongoing, but not only architects, also product designer and other areas jumped on the train. After its enormous success on the market V-Ray has become also the renderer of choice in big production studios across the world. Feature film productions, multi-million dollar game productions have trusted their visuals to V-Ray. The huge success of Vray might be a combination of wonderful GI light-distribution at unbeaten speed (also for GI animation), solid, high quality shaders, very nice antialiasing and a very intelligent but yet easy workflow. its is also a very, very stable application. For those who don`t want long explanations, here also a short description;-) : It’s good it’s fast it’s stable.

About Manual This Manual is the first incarnation. We will improve and expand it regularly. If there is any information you can’t find please use the official vrayforc4d forum or unofficial vrayc4d site ;-). We try to answer it there. But please read the manual before thoroughly;-) As a second training and learning option we also offer some on-line videos to show you how to start in VRAYforC4D. As for the language please consider we are no native English speakers, there might be errors in it, but we hope you understand all parts. For the first version the Manual is in English only, if the demand is high we might let localize it for certain languages. If you found any errors in manual, please send email to gantonr@gmail.com, thank you. The manual will not cover the c4d specific workflow, please use the Cinema4d documentation from Maxon for c4d related aspects. We assume that you have basic knowledge of cinema 4d already.

About Us We are a very small but efficient development team of people, - C4d Users and Programmers. We are responsible for the planning, conception, programming and marketing of VRAYforC4D. The Project is lead by C4d User and Architect Stefan Laub, the programming itself is lead by Renato Tarabella with Daniele Ficini as our render and shader developer specialist, without his great help the project would not have developed in such a great way. Also we have very good group of beta testers, who also helps us very much to make vrayc4d best render engine for Cinema4D ever. The VRAYforC4D team are responsible for all parts of the VRAYforC4d plugin. For the rendercore of Vray (Vray SDK 1.6) Chaosgroup is held responsible, for all parts regarding Cinema4d or Bodypaint3D Maxon Computer is held responsible.

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A big Thank goes to Vlado from Chaosgroup, without him this project would not exist, and also to Maxon Computer for providing us with internal information and help to make to most deep integration into Cinema 4d! The project is initiated & owned by LAUBlab_KG (www.laublab.com ) placed in Vienna, Austria. It is produced in partnership with Renato Tarabella (www.tarabella.it) and Daniele Ficini (www.danieleficini.com) We hope the Users will have as much fun as we have with vrayforc4d:-) With Best Greetings from Stefan, Renato, Daniele and all members of VRAYforC4D team.

About the project VRAYforC4D As a C4D users ourselves we were wishing for the great Vray Render engine to be available for our preferred platform Maxon Cinema 4D & Bodypaint 3D. We hoped that some “higher authority” will start to do “THE” thing. Nothing happened. So after one and a half year of waiting Stefan decided something had to be done...after several calls to Maxon, to Chaosgroup and some emails to Vlado the agreements where fixed, VRAYforC4D as born. We teamed up with the well-known cinema4d plugin programmer Renato Tarabella, to be sure quality is on our side... Both Maxon and Vlado promised us help as much as possible with the sdk, shaders etc... Vlado nicely provided us with the up to date sdk of Vray, so we use the same render core as Vray for 3d Max. We initially planned to make a raw exporter plugin bridge to the Vray standalone, also we decided to make an open development, so we made our development plan public very early the worldwide reaction was overwhelming and many users supported us with they preorder emails from around the world. Due to this heavy demand we decided to expand the project to become a fully integrated render solution for Cinema4d, also we decided to make not a clone of 3DMax Vray, but to make a very “C4D-native” Vray version, to combine the best from both worlds. To have a render system that uses the ultimate render quality and speed of Vray along with Cinema4D great Interface, easy of use, and last not least the well known and mighty c4d procedural, layered shader system, we support almost all native c4d shaders and even most 3rd party shader plugins already in first release! So after 14th month of development we are very proud to present a very high grade professional render system, that supports already in version 1.0 most aspects of vray for 3dmax that needed years to develop (see also vrayforc4d feature list for all details). The already planned updates will adds in addition to the NETRender support the Vray “DR” - distributed rendering, Vray Proxies, and the vray shaders in addition to the c4d shading system, among other new not yet announced vray features. The VRAYforC4D engine will get regular updates and will expand even further. Our goal is to deliver one of the best Vray platforms available.

About software development Our goal was to make a really stable software that meets the well known stability of Maxon Cinema4d. Already version 1.0 proved to be extreme stable in testing thanks to the well programming of Renato Tarabella, Daniele Ficini and of course Vlado from Chaosgroup. The Combination of Vray + Cinema4D might be already the most stable vray render environment available today.

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Many professional beta testers worldwide tested all stages of the development, also a big “Thank You” to all our great beta testers we have! So will the software have bugs? - Yes of course, if someone is honest we have to realize that there is no software without bugs out there. But we are confident that we have rather few for a version 1.0, we tried to minimize them as much as possible, and even more important we are committed to react fast on any possibly found bugs and fix them as fast as we can, there is the official vrayforc4d forum (www.vrayforc4d.com/forum, where you can post any bugs, irregularities, feature wishes or suggestion to us:-) LAUBlab and the developers will be there regularly and check and answer your posts. How about updates? We will already plan the next version of Vray and we will also incorporate all future Vray core updates made by Chaosgroup and/or Maxon to keep VRAYforC4D on most recent standards and compatible with the newest Cinema versions. Furthermore we will expand the VrayforC4d to become even more advanced and versatile, we want to have and keep it one the best renderengine available for Cinema4d. We see the Vray future very bright :-)

Notes • We can only give an estimation on future updates, as some parts depend on Maxon & Chaosgroup

sdk, so features of version 1.1.x & 1.2 are subject to change, check the www.vrayforc4d.com webpage for recent news.

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Activating VrayforC4D

Activating VrayforC4D Home

Very important User information After payment You have to send Your first 11 digits of Cinema4D Serial Number to register@vrayforc4d.com along with your full name, address, phone number and a valid email address to get the license key file, to receive the installation files, and to registered as valid user in our database, if any part of this is missing we cannot process your license! Important: in any case you have to register with this data at register@vrayforc4d.com otherwise your license will not be valid and you are not legible for future updates. Even if you get some or all parts of the software and/or a license key file already, but forget to register at register@vrayforc4d.com, your license will not be legal! Once you are registered you get a registration email from register@vrayforc4d.com with a personal code. Print and keep this email at a save place. without this confirmation of registration you will not be able to get future updates and your license will expire. Due to the massive spam mails these times in email we have to introduce some rules with email communication: it is quite easy if you follow these guide lines the emais will be read by us: you must use the word "vray" in the title of the email. all emails that have no "vray" in title will be filtered, we hope you understand this, it is to make a better communication with our users possible, if for any case the mail contact doesn't work, feel free to call us by phone, the number you find also in our website, we are normally reachable from monday to friday from 9h to 18h european time.

Installation Instructions For installation please read the “read me.txt” file provided in the installation folder. Follow the instructions carefully, otherwise the product will not run correct or will be unstable. If you need help for installation please visit the official VRAYForC4D Web Forum under www.vrayforc4d.com/forum

Activation within Cinema 4d 10 After installation you can activate VRAYforC4D as renderengine under: Render settings tab - Effects tab : Add effect “Vraybridge”.

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When you have activated Vray all renderings done in c4d will be made by the Vray rendercore. This works in the perspective Camera Viewport and in the picture viewer, and in the interactive region render.

Activation within Cinema 4d 11 After installation you can activate VRAYforC4D as renderengine under: Render settings tab - Effects tab : Add effect “Vraybridge”.

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When you have activated Vray all renderings done in c4d will be made by the Vray rendercore. This works in the perspective Camera Viewport and in the picture viewer, and in the interactive region render. In Cinema4D 11 you now can choose Vray from General Tab of Render Settings like any other build-in render engine.

Notes • You can make Vray the default engine when you start C4d by saving a file (that file must has Vray

already activated in render settings) called “new.c4d” in the main Cinema4d installation folder.

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Overview

Overview Home

Interface Here You can see 2 VRAYforC4D scenes in Cinema4d as an screenshot:

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As you can see VRAYforC4D looks very much as the usual Advanced Render Workflow. The Material and Render Settings are a bit different of course due to the other features and the more option. You can render in the perspective Viewport and in the picture viewer juts as in normal c4d. All light, camera, material and tag settings can be adjusted in the C4D Attribute manager. The material can be also adjusted in the C4D Material manager, as the Vray material has is very mighty i suggest using the advanced Cinema Material editor to have best view of all Material adjustments. All render settings are concentrated in the Vraybridge render setting tabs. You find them under Render Setting - Effects - VrayBridge.

Render Settings All main VRAYforC4D specific adjustments are concentrated here in the VRAYforC4D Render settings. You can adjust the Antialiasing, turn on Global Illumination (GI), choose and combine several GI Methods, adjust color mapping etc.

We tried the best to make the default settings already good for you. Basically it can be enough to just turn on “GI” on GI Tab, add light & materials and render your scene. In reality you will want to make all fine tuning and adjustments. Also all professionals find here very details settings to adjust all to their needs. Users that have some knowledge of other VRAYforC4D version like the 3d max version will find the settings very familiar;-)

VRAYforC4D Material The VRAYforC4D Material behaves just like a normal C4d Material. It shows in the normal C4d material manager.

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We recommend using the C4d material manager over the Attribute Manager as the VRAYforC4D material is very powerful and therefore has many many settings.

However the attribute manager of course is also possible to use, it just has a more dense appearance and you might need to scroll more to see all setting options. The VRAYforC4D BRDF material in the Cinema4d material editor:

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For rendering with the VRAYforC4D render engine You can use the VRAYforC4D BRDF Materials or use native Cinema4D materials, also you can convert c4d materials to vray with one click converter, see page about it) Within the VRAYforC4D Material you can use almost all (98%) c4d shaders and even most “normal” 3rd party shaders, like the great EnhanceC4D Shaders p.e., it also supports the powerfully c4d layer shader, and the projector shader to apply different projections per shader. The VRAYforC4D BRDF is a layered material system. Each layer has its own transparency mask. For high glossy and laquere materials like car shaders, coatings etc. we have implemented 5 specular-glossy layers. They can blended and mixed together, each with different reflections, anisotropy and specular. For a detailed explanation of the materials setting go to Vray Material section.

Assigning Materials To apply a VRAYforC4D material to Your objects and Scene just use the normal C4d workflow you are used to.

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You can drag and drop it p.e. to the object manager or directly to the objects in the Viewport, or use the apply command.... A VRAYforC4D material can be applied to objects or to object groups. it uses the visibility buttons of the object manger. Multiple VRAYforC4D Materials, each with different UVWs can be stacked like c4d Materials, and they can also be applied to saved polygon selections on an object, just like the normal c4d materials. Also all tools for tags and material tags work as normal in c4d. The UVW projection for each material tag is adjusted in the Attribute manager of Cinema4d in an identical way as the c4d materials. in fact all UVW projections are handled natively by Cinema4d or Bodypaint.

Please consult the Cinema4d documentation about the UVW Projections if you are new to Cinema4d.

VRAYforC4D Tags VRAYforC4D uses the native Cinema 4d Lights and Cameras.

To have access to advanced VRAYforC4D features there are VRAYforC4D tags available for your choice:

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Tags VRAYforC4D Tag Name Description

VrayCompositing Similar to C4d Compositing.

VrayDisplacement For Micropolydisplacement, uses the UVW of the first

Material Tag.

VrayPhysicalCamera To use the wide settings of the VRAYforC4D physical

camera.

VrayLight Transformed the normal c4d light into the powerful physical VRAYforC4D lights, to use the physical Sun and Sky system, IES lights, photometric lights...

VrayMotionBlur To use VRAYforC4D Motion Blur

VrayCameraDome To use the Dome Light ability with VRAYforC4D.

VrmeshExporter Quick vray proxy mesh creating from c4d mesh.

Stack and Mix VRAYforC4D Materials VRAYforC4D Materials can be stacked similar to C4d Materials. For now no selection tags supported on stacking, so if one want to stack same material more than once on same obects you must use instances (copies) of this material to see all stacked materials. You can also use Vray Blend Material to achieve the similar effect.

Apply Materials, Check Mix Textures.

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Result.

The stacking order goes from left to right, so the most right material is the most on top. In the materials you want to blend with the one below.

This is a blend of a glossy gray solid material in frontal mapping projection with a layered material weight. it uses a B/W gradient mixed with a ornamental shader from Enhanced c4d shader set (Chris from 3d attack.com). This material is blended to a Glass with transparency, sharp reflection, refraction and volume-transparency with spherical UVW mapping. How it works? - you simple have to activate “mix” materials that use material weight, thats it! This is also good for making “decals” (sticker on bottle, text on glass, et.). unlimited materials can be stacked or blended for almost unlimited possibilities.....

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Options

Options Home

Search Keywords: global options

General The Options allow you to control various aspects of the renderer globally.

Parameters

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 is off, any lights that are hidden for any reason (either explicitly or by type) will not be included in the rendering.

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Shadows - enables or disables shadows globally. Show GI only - when this option is on, 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

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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.

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Image Sampler (Antia-aliasing)

Antialiasing (Image Sampler) Home

Examples

General Antialiasing is one of the most important things for good digital produced images or animations.Vray has one of the best and most robust AA solutions available. In VRAY the antialiasing again is not just a thing that gets applied after shading but the whole engine is connected to the image and DMC Samplers. The same power that gives the GI engine its quality is also used for Images sampling. Therefore sometimes image sampling (Antialiasing) is used in vray also to support GI and glossy reflections. so all setup is party connected, specially the adaptive DMC method. Why do we need AA in renderings? - in real word cameras or in the human eye the light goes through more or less perfect lenses. those lenses and also the air filter the light and compensate extreme contrast between near points. also analog methods are not bound to pixels and therefore do not have to problem of pixel stepping when images do not have enough resolution or of very tiny and fine structures have to be rendered. Vray can render ultra fine lines, by oversampling an image in an intelligent and still fast way. for areas that don`t need much antialiasing vray can use under sampling - negative values - at the same time, depending on the method, this highly adaptive AA can give ultra crisp and still still soft results at reasonable render times. i believe one aspect of the high image quality in vray is not only the great GI engine but also the wonderful AA quality. In vray you can use values like 100x AA with Adaptive DMC Sampling (with universal setting p.e.) and still get ok render times. such extreme values wont be used all time, but they show the power behind. still high settings like 4x16x can be used at ultra high speeds for superb image quality. also i noted that images with good AA can be scaled up much better than “normal” 3d images, so it might pay to invest in learning the AA engine and use good quality settings. In VRAYforC4D, an image sampler refers to an algorithm for sampling and filtering the image function, and producing the final array of pixels that constitute the rendered image. VRAYforC4D implements several algorithms for sampling an image. You can choose between Fixed rate sampler, Adaptive DMC sampler and Adaptive subdivision sampler. Which is the fastest depends very much on the scene and on the settings of GI, Materials etc.

Parameters

Image sampler

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Type - specifies the image sampler type: Fixed - this sampler always takes the same number of samples per pixel; Adaptive DMC - this sampler takes a variable number of samples per pixel depending on the difference in the intensity of the pixels; Adaptive subdivision - this sampler divides the image into an adaptive grid-like structure and refines depending on the difference in pixel intensity. Antialiasing filter Various filter can be applied, there are sharpening methods and blurring filters, depending on what you need. for still images you might want to use sharpen filters,for animation make sure to use soften filters!

Fixed rate sampler

This is the simplest image sampler, and it takes a fixed number of samples for each pixel. Subdivision - determines number of samples per pixel. When this is set to 1, one sample at the center of each pixel is taken. If this is greater than 1, the samples are distributed within the pixel. The actual number of pixels is the square of this parameter (e.g. 4 subdivisions produce 16 samples per pixel). Note: that due to clamping of samples to the [black, white] range for the RGB color channel, sometimes this sampler can produce darker results when used with blurry effects. The solution in this case is to increase the subdivisions for the blurry effect, or to use the Real RGB color channel. .

Adaptive DMC sampler

This sampler makes a variable number of samples per pixel based on the difference in intensity between the pixel and its neighbors. This is the preferred sampler for images with lots of small details and/or blurry effects (DOF, motion blur, glossy reflections etc). It also takes up less RAM than the Adaptive subdivision sampler. Note: that due to clamping of samples to the [black, white] range for the RGB color channel, sometimes this sampler can produce darker results when used with blurry effects. The solution in this case is to increase the subdivisions for the blurry effect, or to use the Real RGB color channel. .

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Min subdivision - determines the initial (minimum) number of samples taken for each pixel. You will rarely need to set this to more than 1, except if you have very thin lines that are not captured correctly, or fast moving objects if you use motion blur. The actual number of pixels is the square of this number (e.g. 4 subdivisions produce 16 samples per pixel). Max subdivision - determines the maximum number of samples for a pixel. The actual maximum number of sampler is the square of this number (e.g. 4 subdivisions produces a maximum of 16 samples). Note that VRAYforC4D may take less than the maximum number of samples, if the difference in intensity of the neighboring pixels is small enough. Threshold - the threshold that will be used to determine if a pixel needs more samples.

Adaptive subdivision sampler

This is an advanced image sampler capable of under sampling (taking less than one sample per pixel). In the absence of blurry effects (direct GI, DOF, glossy reflection/refraction etc) this is the best preferred image sampler in VRAYforC4D. On average it takes fewer samples (and thus less time) to achieve the same image quality as the other image samplers. However, with detailed textures and/or blurry effects, it can be slower and produce worse results than the other two methods. Also note that this sampler takes up more RAM than the other two samplers - see the Notes below. Min. rate - controls minimum number of samples per pixel. A value of zero means one sample per pixel; -1 means one sample every two pixels; -2 means one sample every 4 pixels etc. Max. rate - controls maximum number of samples per pixel; zero means one sample per pixel, 1 means four samples, 2 means eight samples etc. Jitter - displaces the samples slightly to produce better antialiasing of nearly horizontal or vertical. Threshold - determines the sensitivity of the sampler to changes in pixel intensity. Lower values will produce better results, while higher values will be faster, but may leave some areas of similar intensity under sampled. Object outline - this will cause the image sampler to always super sample object edges (regardless of whether they actually need to be super sampled). This option has no effect if DOF or motion blur is enabled. Material ID - uses the material id pass (change of material) to antialiasing the transition from one to the next material on surface. Normals - this will super sample areas with sharply varying normals. This option has no effect if DOF or motion blur is enabled. Normals threshold - this will super sample areas with sharply varying normals. This option has no effect if DOF or motion blur is enabled. Z-Value - uses the z-depth pass (change of depth) to super sample the areas where a sudden depth change occurs. Z-Value threshold - adjusts the threshold of the above depth sampler.

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Notes • Which sampler to use for a given scene? The answer is best found with experiments, but here are

some tips: o For smooth scenes with only a few blurry effects and smooth textures, the Adaptive subdivision

sampler with its ability to under sample the image is unbeatable.

o For images with detailed textures or lots of geometry detail and only a few blurry effects, the Adaptive DMC sampler performs best. Also in the case of animations involving detailed textures, the Adaptive subdivision sampler might produce jittering which the Adaptive DMC sampler avoids.

o For complex scenes with lots of blurry effects and/or detailed textures, the Fixed rate sampler performs best and is very predictable with regards to the quality and render time.

• A note on RAM usage: image samplers require substantial amount of RAM to store information about

each bucket. Using large bucket sizes may take a lot of RAM. This is especially true for the Adaptive subdivision sampler, which stores all individual sub-samples taken within a bucket. The Adaptive DMC sampler and the Fixed rate sampler on the other hand only store the summed result of all sub-samples for a pixel and so usually require less RAM.

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DMC sampler

DMC sampler Home

Examples

General Monte Carlo (MC) sampling is a method for evaluating "blurry" values (anitaliasing, depth of field, indirect illumination, area lights, glossy reflections/refractions, translucency, motion blur etc). VRAYforC4D uses a variant of Monte Carlo sampling called deterministic Monte Carlo (DMC). The difference between pure Monte Carlo sampling and deterministic Monte Carlo is that the first uses pseudo-random numbers which are different for each and every evaluation (and so re-rendering a single image will always produce slightly different results in the noise), while deterministic Monte Carlo uses a pre-defined set of samples (possibly optimized to reduce the noise), which allows re-rendering an image to always produce the exact same result. By default, the deterministic Monte Carlo method used by VRAYforC4D is a modficiation of Schlick sampling, introduced by Christophe Schlick in 1991 (see the References section below). Note that there exists a sub-set of DMC sampling called quasi Monte Carlo (DMC) sampling, in which the samples are obtained from sequences of numbers, called low-discrepancy sequences, which have special numeric properties. VRAYforC4D, however, does not use this technique. Instead of having separate sampling methods for each of the blurry values, VRAYforC4D has a single unified framework that determines how many and what exactly samples to be taken for a particular value, depending on the context in which that value is required. This framework is called the "DMC sampler". The actual number of samples for any blurry value is determined based on three factors: • The subdivs value supplied by the user for a particular blurry effect. This is multiplied by the Global

subdivs multiplier (see below).

• The importance of the value (for example, dark glossy reflections can do with fewer samples than bright ones, since the effect of the reflection on the final result is smaller; distant area lights require fewer samples than closer ones etc). Basing the number of samples allocated for a value on importance is called importance sampling.

• The variance (think "noise") of the samples taken for a particular value - if the samples are not very different from each other, then the value can do with fewer samples; if the samples are very different, then a larger number of them will be necessary to get a good result. This basically works by looking at the samples as they are computed one by one and deciding, after each new sample, if more samples are required. This technique is called early termination or adaptive sampling.

For more information on the relationship and effects of these parameters, please refer to the tutorials section.

Parameters

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Adaptive amount - controls the extent to which the number of samples depends on the importance of a blurry value. It also controls the minimum number of samples that will be taken. A value of 1.0 means full adaptation; a value of 0.0 means no adaptation. Noise threshold - controls VRAYforC4D's judgement of when a blurry value is "good enough" to be used. This directly translates to noise in the result. Smaller values mean less noise, more samples and higher quality. A value of 0.0 means that no adaptation will be performed. Global subdivs multiplier - this will multiply all subdivs values everywhere during rendering; you can use this to quickly increase/decrease sampling quality everywhere. This affects everything, except for the lightmap, photon map, caustics and aa subdivs. Everything else (dof, moblur, irradiance map, brute-force GI, area lights, area shadows, glossy reflections/refractions) is affected by this parameter. Minimum samples - determines the minimum number of samples that must be made before the early termination algorithm is used. Higher values will slow things down but will make the early termination algorithm more reliable. Time independent - when this option is On, the sampling pattern will be the same from frame to frame in an animation. Since this may be undesirable in some cases, you can turn this option Off to make the samping pattern change with time. Note that re-rendering the same frame will produce the same result in both cases.

References More information on deterministic Monte Carlo sampling for computer graphics can be found from the sources listed below. • Schlick, C., 1991, An Adaptive Sampling Technique for Multidimensional Integraton by Ray

Tracing, in Second Eurographics Workshop on Rendering (Spain), pp. 48-56 Describes deterministic MC sampling for antialiasing, motion blur, depth of field, area light sampling and glossy reflections.

• Masaki Aono and Ryutarou Ohbuchi, November 25, 1996, Quasi-Monte Carlo Rendering with Adaptive Sampling, IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory Technical Report RT0167, pp.1-5; online version can be found here Describes an application of low discrepancy sequences to area light sampling and the global illumination problem.

• Fajardo, M., August 13, 2001, Monte Carlo Raytracing in Action, in State of the Art in Monte

Carlo Ray Tracing for Realistic Image Synthesis, SIGGRAPH 2001 Course 21, pp. 151-162; online version can be found here Describes the ARNOLD renderer employing randomized quasi-Monte Carlo sampling using low discrepancy sequences for pixel sampling, global illumination, area light sampling, motion blur, depth of field, etc.

• Veach, E., December, 1997, Robust Monte Carlo Methods for Light Transport Simulation, Ph. D. dissertation for Stanford University, pp. 58-65 online version can be found here Includes a description of low discrepancy sequences, quasi-Monte Carlo sampling and its application to solving the global illumination problem.

• Szirmay-Kalos, L., 1998, Importance Driven Quasi-Monte Carlo Walk Solution of the Rendering Equation, Winter School of Computer Graphics Conf., 1998 online version can be found here Describes a two-pass method for solving the global illumination problem employing quasi-Monte Carlo sampling, as well as importance sampling using low discrepancy sequences.

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Indirect Illumination (GI)

Indirect illumination (GI) Home

Examples

General Global Illumination is getting more and more standard today, VRAYforC4D is built from ground up to not only support it, but to be built directly for using the best GI algorithms around. But what is GI, and what is it for? In real world all what we see is possible due to light that travels from the light source to objects and being reflected by these objects traveling to the next objects etc. So the light is almost endless reflected from surface to surface. each object has a certain amount of reflection (only absolute black bodies do not reflect, like a black whole in space). Through reflection we see colors and light intensity, so basically what we see is all about light. Classic render engines without GI do not consider the reflection of light, they only calculate the light between the source and the first surface the light hits - this obviously very unrealistic and can only be partly compensated by good and skilled artists. Also the render engines today do not replace the need for an artist of course, but they give a much more powerful tool to play with light and surface properties, light in CG now behaves very close to how we see it in nature, and it became much more predictable. It is reflected between the objects in many bounces, so a room p.e. that has only one window is automaticly filled with light, also in the parts where the sun beams do not directly hit a surface. Also luminance in objects or HDRI images add real light to the scene, the VRAYforC4D lights also have a physical size in space and a physical correct intensity (in real world units) and falloff. The VRAYforC4D material again is the counterpart to a good GI engine, VRAYforC4D has a highly advanced BRDF material model that has physical properties for all kind of reflections (mirror and glossy) and refraction (when light travels through a volume body), both: reflections and refractions can use an IOR (index of refraction) like most real world materials, and anisotropy like materials with directional microstructure. The refraction takes volume, depth and surface structure into account and therefore also can scatter light for things like sandblasted glass, wax, translucent leaves, skin, plastics etc. The combination of VRAYforC4D lights, VRAYforC4D brdf materials, and different high end GI algorithms all together gives the unsurfaced image - and light quality famous in VRAYforC4D. The human eye is capable of seeing the most fine nuances of color and light, and therefore it is just good to use the best tools available, VRAYforC4D is one of them, delivering ultra highend quality, combined with great speed, and still being highly adaptive and versatile, to give the artist the choice to break the laws of physics where he wants to. Examples for an image calculation with GI or without GI to see the main difference:

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No Global IIllumination (left image), the light (c4d sun) comes from the light source and hits the surfaces., no further light transportation is calculated, good for certain cinematographic effects but far from reality. With GI Button (right image) simply turned on you see, much more is happening, this is still just one light source, but also the scattering of the light is calculated within the image, also the areas where the light does not come to directly gets lit, the shadows are softer (area shadows), also the colors are different as the blue sky reflects diffuse in to the shadow parts, where the sun is more dominant the slight yellow sunlight is visible, specially for architects, designers and others that want to have close to really world light behavior GI can be a big advantage and help.

Approaches to indirect illumination

VRAYforC4D implements several approaches for computing indirect illumination with different trade-offs between quality and speed: • Brute force - this is the simplest approach; indirect illumination is computed independently for each

shaded surface point by tracing a number of rays in different directions on the hemisphere above that point. Advantages: o this approach preserves all the detail (e.g. small and sharp shadows) in the indirect lighting; o it is free from defects like flickering in animations; o no additional memory is required; o indirect illumination in the case of motion-blurred moving objects is computed correctly.

Disadvantages: o the approach is very slow for complex images (e.g. interior lighting); o it tends to produce noise in the images, which can be avoided only by shooting a larger number of

rays, thus slowing it even more.

• Irradiance map - this approach is based on irradiance caching; the basic idea is to compute the indirect illumination only at some points in the scene, and interpolate for the rest of the points. Advantages: o the irradiance map is very fast compared to direct computation, especially for scenes with large flat

areas; o the noise inherent to direct computation is greatly reduced; o the irradiance map can be saved an re-used to speed up calculations of different views for the

same scene and of fly-through animations; o the irradiance map can also be used to accelerate direct diffuse lighting from area light sources.

Disadvantages:

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o some details in indirect lighting can be lost or blurred due to the interpolation; o if low settings are used, flickering may occur when rendering animations; o the irradiance map requires additional memory; o indirect illumination with motion-blurred moving objects is not entirely correct and may lead to

noise (although in most cases this is not noticeable).

• Photon map - this approach is based on tracing particles starting from the light sources and bouncing around the scene. This is useful for interior or semi-interior scenes with lots of lights or small windows. The photon map usually does not produce good enough results to be used directly; however it can be used as a rough approximation to the lighting in the scene to speed the calculation of GI through direct computation or irradiance map. Advantages: o the photon map can produce a rough approximation of the lighting in the scene very quickly; o the photon map can be saved an re-used to speed up calculation of different views for the same

scene and of fly-through animations; o the photon map is view-independent.

Disadvantages: o the photon map usually is not suitable for direct visualization; o requires additional memory; o in VRAYforC4D's implementation, illumination involving motion-blurred moving objects is not

entirely correct (although this is not a problem in most cases). o the photon map needs actual lights in order to work; it cannot be used to produce indirect

illumination caused by environment lights (skylight). • Light cache - light caching is a technique for approximating the global illumination in a scene. It is

very similar to photon mapping, but without many of its limitations. The light map is built by tracing many many eye paths from the camera. Each of the bounces in the path stores the illumination from the rest of the path into a 3d structure, very similar to the photon map. The light map is a universal GI solution that can be used for both interior or exterior scenes, either directly or as a secondary bounce approximation when used with the irradiance map or the brute force GI method.

Advantages: o the light cache is easy to set up. We only have the camera to trace rays from, as opposed to the

photon map, which must process each light in the scene and usually requires separate setup for each light.

o the light-caching approach works efficiently with any lights - including skylight, self-illuminated objects, non-physical lights, photometric lights etc. In contrast, the photon map is limited in the lighting effects it can reproduce - for example, the photon map cannot reproduce the illumination from skylight or from standard omni lights without inverse-square falloff.

o the light cache produces correct results in corners and around small objects. The photon map, on the other hand, relies on tricky density estimation schemes, which often produce wrong results in these cases, either darkening or brightening those areas.

o in many cases the light cache can be visualized directly for very fast and smooth previews of the lighting in the scene.

Disadvantages: o like the irradiance map, the light cache is view-dependent and is generated for a particular position

of the camera. However, it generates an approximation for indirectly visible parts of the scene as well - for example, one light cache can approximate completely the GI in a closed room;

o currently the light cache works only with VRAYforC4D materials; o like the photon map, the light cache is not adaptive. The irradiance is computed at a fixed

resolution, which is determined by the user; o the light cache does not work very well with bump maps; use the irradiance map or brute force GI

if you want to achieve better results with bump maps. o lighting involving motion-blurred moving objects is not entirely correct, but is very smooth since

the light cache blurs GI in time as well (as opposed to the irradiance map, where each sample is computed at a particular instant of time).

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Which method to use? That depends on the task at hand.

Primary and secondary bounces

The indirect illumination controls in VRAYforC4D are divided into two large sections: controls concerning primary diffuse bounces and controls concerning secondary diffuse bounces. A primary bounce occurs when a shaded point is directly visible by the camera, or through specular reflective or refractive surfaces. A secondary bounce occurs when a shaded point is used in GI calculations. It often is very efficient to mix to different engines: one for the primary and one for the secondary bounces, to have the advantages from both. One engine can be faster for one thing and the other for another aspect. If you select one or two GI methods you will see that the corresponding GI setting tabs will be visible, the non chosen GI methods will be hidden for more visible clearness. VRAYforC4D can combine them in an intelligent way to give you high speed with very high quality at the same time, also for certain animation types it makes sense to mix fast smooth solutions with physical accurate ones p.e. Combining 2 engines for primary and secondary GI is actually the standard way to work in VRAYforC4D.

Parameters

GI on - turn indirect illumination on and off. Save Gi Settings - you can save yours GI settings. Load Gi Settings - you can load previously saved yours GI settings. Presets - this dropdown list allows you to choose from several presets for some of the irradiance map parameters. You can use these to quickly set the color, normal and distance thresholds, as well as the min/max rates. The following presets are available: • Custom - defines by you. • Very low Quality - this preset is only useful for preview purposes to show the general lighting in the

scene. • Low Quality - a low-quality preset for preview purposes. • Medium Quality - a medium quality preset; works fine in many situations in scenes which have

don't small details. • Medium animation Quality - a medium quality preset targeted at reducing flickering in animations

- the Distance threshold of Irradiance map is higher. • High Quality - a high-quality preset that works in most situations, even for scenes with small details

as well as for most animations. • High animation Quality - a high-quality preset that can be used if the High preset produces

flickering in animations - the Distance threshold of Irradiance map is higher.

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• Very high Quality - a very high quality preset; can be used for scenes with extremely small and intricate details.

• Unbiased - outstanding quality and outstanding time. Note that the presets are targeted for a typical 640x480 image. Larger images usually can do with lower Min/Max rates than those specified in the presets.

GI Caustics

GI caustics represent light that has gone through one diffuse, and one or several specular reflections (or refractions). GI caustics can can be generated by skylight, or self-illuminated objects, for example. However, caustics caused by direct lights cannot be simulated in this way. You must use the separate Caustics section to control direct light caustics. Note that GI caustics are usually hard to sample and may introduce noise in the GI solution. Reflective - this allows indirect light to be reflected from specular objects (mirrors etc). Note that this is not the same as Caustics, which represent direct light going through specular surfaces. This is off by default, because reflective GI caustics usually contribute little to the final illumination, while often they produce undesired subtle noise. Refractive - this allows indirect lighting to pass through transparent objects (glass etc). Note that this is not the same as Caustics, which represent direct light going through transparent objects. You need refractive GI caustics to get skylight through windows, for example.

Post-Processing

These controls allow additional modification of the indirect illumination, before it is added to the final rendering. The default values ensure a physically accurate result; however the user may want to modify the way GI looks for artistic purposes. Saturation - controls the saturation of the GI; a value of 0.0 means that all color will be removed from the GI solution and will be in shades of gray only. The default value of 1.0 means the GI solution remains unmodified. Values above 1.0 boost the colors in the GI solution. Contrast - this parameter works together with Contrast base to boost the contrast of the GI solution. When Contrast is 0.0, the GI solution becomes completely uniform with the value defined by Contrast base. A value of 1.0 means the solution remains unmodified. Values higher that 1.0 boost the contrast. Contrast base - this parameter determines the base for the contrast boost. It defines the GI values that remain unchanged during the contrast calculations. Save Maps per Frame - when this option is on, VRAYforC4D will save all GI maps (irradiance map, photon map, caustic, light maps) if in options they set to Auto-Save.

Primary bounces

Multiplier - this value determines how much primary diffuse bounces contribute to the final image illumination. Note that the default value of 1.0 produces a physically accurate image. Other values are possible, but not physically plausible. GI engine - the list box specifies the method to be used for primary diffuse bounces. Irradiance map - selecting this will cause VRAYforC4D to use an irradiance map for primary diffuse bounces. See the Irradiance map section for more information. Photon map - selecting this option will cause VRAYforC4D to use a photon map for primary diffuse bounces. This mode is useful when setting up the parameters of the global photon map. Usually it does

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not produce good enough results for final renderings when used as a primary GI engine. See the Photon map section for more information. Brute force - selecting this method will cause VRAYforC4D to use direct computation for primary diffuse bounces. See the brute force section for more information. Light cache - this chooses the light cache as the primary GI engine. See the Light cache section for more information.

Secondary bounces

Multiplier - this determines the effect of secondary diffuse bounces on the scene illumination. Values close to 1.0 may tend to wash out the scene, while values around 0.0 may produce a dark image. Note that the default value of 1.0 produces physically accurate results. While other values are possible, they are not physically plausible. GI engine - this parameter determines how VRAYforC4D will calculate secondary diffuse bounces. None - no secondary bounces will be computed. Use this option to produce skylight iimages without indirect color bleeding. Photon map - selecting this option will cause VRAYforC4D to use a photon map for primary diffuse bounces. This mode is useful when setting up the parameters of the global photon map. Usually it does not produce good enough results for final renderings when used as a primary GI engine. See the Photon map section for more information. Brute force - selecting this method will cause VRAYforC4D to use direct computation for primary diffuse bounces. See the Brute force section for more information. Light cache - this chooses the light cache as the primary GI engine. See the Light cache section for more information.

Notes • You will get physically accurate lighting if you set both the primary and secondary GI multipliers to

their default value of 1.0. While other values are possible, they will not produce a physically accurate result.

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Brute force GI

Brute force GI Home

Examples

Search Keywords: brute force, direct calculation, GI

General This section is available only if you have chosen Brute force GI as either the primary or the secondary GI engine. The brute force method for computing global illumination recomputes the GI values for every single shaded point separately and independently from other points. While very slow, this method is very accurate, especially if you have many small details in the scene. To speed up brute force GI, you can use a faster method (the photon map or the light map) for approximating secondary GI bounces, while using the brute force method for the primary bounces or you can use the OMC engine as the secondary bounce engine to combine and refine a Irradiance Map GI solution.

Parameters

Subdivision - this determines the number of samples used to approximate GI. Note that this is not the exact number of rays that VRAYforC4D will trace. The number of rays is proportional to the square of this number, but also depends on the settings in the DMC sampler rollout. Ray depth - this parameter is available only if Brute Force GI is selected as a secondary GI engine. It controls the number of light bounces that will be computed.

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Irradiance map

Irradiance map Home

Examples

General This section allows the user to control and fine-tune various aspects of the irradiance map. This section is enabled only when the irradiance map is chosen as the GI method for primary diffuse bounces. Some background for understanding how the irradiance map works is necessary in order to grasp the meaning of these parameters. Irradiance is a function defined for any point in the 3D space and represents the light arriving at this point from all possible directions. In general, irradiance is different in every point and in every direction. However, there are two useful restrictions that can be made. The first is the surface irradiance - which is the irradiance arriving at points which lie on the surface of objects in the scene. This is a natural restriction since we are usually interested in the illumination of objects in the scene, and objects are usually defined through their surface. The second restriction is that of diffuse surface irradiance - which is the total amount of light arriving at a given surface point, disregarding the direction from which it comes. In more simple terms, one can think of the diffuse surface irradiance as being the visible color of a surface, if we assume that its material is purely white and diffuse. In VRAYforC4D, the term irradiance map refers to a method of efficiently computing the diffuse surface irradiance for objects in the scene. Since not all parts of the scene have the same detail in indirect illumination, it makes sense to compute GI more accurately in the important parts (e.g. where objects are close to each other, or in places with sharp GI shadows), and less accurately in uninteresting parts (e.g. large uniformly lit areas). The irradiance map is therefore built adaptively. This is done by rendering the image several times (each rendering is called a pass) with the rendering resolution being doubled with each pass. The idea is to start with a low resolution (say a quarter of the resolution of the final image) and work up to the final image resolution. The irradiance map is in fact a collection of points in 3d space (a point cloud) along with the computed indirect illumination at those points. When an object is hit during a GI pass, VRAYforC4D looks into the irradiance map to see if there are any points similar in position and orientation to the current one. From those already computed points, VRAYforC4D can extract various information (i.e. if there are any objects close by, how fast the indirect illumination is varying etc). Based on that information, VRAYforC4D decides if the indirect illumination for the current point can be adequately interpolated from the points already in the irradiance map, or not. If not, the indirect illumination for the current point is computed, and that point is stored in the irradiance map. During the actual rendering, VRAYforC4D uses a sophisticated interpolation method to derive an approximation of the irradiance for all surfaces in the scene

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Parameters

Basic parameters

Min rate - this value determines the resolution for the first GI pass. A value of 0 means the resolution will be the same as the resolution of the final rendered image, which will make the irradiance map similar to the direct computation method. A value of -1 means the resolution will be half that of the final image and so on. You would usually want to keep this negative, so that GI is quickly computed for large and flat regions in the image. This parameter is similar to (although not the same as) the Min rate parameter of the Adaptive subdivision image sampler. Max rate - this value determines the resolution of the last GI pass. This is similar to (although not the same as) the Max rate parameter of the Adaptive subdivision image sampler. Hemispheric Subdivision - this controls the quality of individual GI samples. Smaller values make things faster, but may produce blotchy result. Higher values produce smoother images. This is similar to the Subdivision parameter for direct computation. Note that this is not the actual number of rays that will be traced. The actual number of rays is proportional to the square of this value and also depends on the settings in the DMC sampler. Interpolation samples - this is the number of GI samples that will be used to interpolate the indirect illumination at a given point. Larger values tend to blur the detail in GI although the result will be

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smoother. Smaller values produce results with more detail, but may produce blotchiness if low Hemispheric Subdivision are used. Interpolation frames - this determines the number of frames that will be used to interpolate GI when the Mode is set to Animation (rendering). In this mode, VRAYforC4D interpolates the irradiance from the maps of several adjacent frames to help smooth out any flickering. Note that the actual number of frames used is 2*(interp. frames)+1 - e.g. the default value of 2 means that in total 5 irradiance maps will be interpolated. Higher values slow down the rendering and may produce "lagging" effect. Lower values render faster but may increase flickering. Intensity threshold - this parameter controls how sensitive the irradiance map algorithm is to changes in indirect lighting. Larger values mean less sensitivity; smaller values make the irradiance map more sensitive to light changes (thus producing higher quality images). Normal threshold - this parameter controls how sensitive the irradiance map is to changes in surface normals and small surface details. Larger values mean less sensitivity; smaller values make the irradiance map more sensitive to surface curvature and small details. Distance threshold - this parameter controls how sensitive the irradiance map is to distance between surfaces. A value of 0.0 means the irradiance map will not depend on object proximity at all; higher values place more samples in places where objects are close to each other.

Options

Show calc phase - when this option is on, VRAYforC4D will show the irradiance map passes as the irradiance map is calculated. This will give you a rough idea of the indirect illumination even before the final rendering is complete. Note that turning this on slows the calculations a little bit, especially for large images. This option is ignored when rendering to fields - in that case, the calculation phase is never displayed. Show direct light - this option is only available when Show calc phase is on. It will cause VRAYforC4D to show direct lighting for primary diffuse bounces in addition to indirect lighting while the irradiance map is being calculated. Note that VRAYforC4D does not really need to compute this. The option is only for convenience. This does not mean that direct lighting is not calculated at all - it is, but only for secondary diffuse bounces (only for GI purposes). Show samples - when this option is on, VRAYforC4D will show visually the samples in the irradiance map as small dots in the scene. Previsualization mode - 2 modes for choice how the prepass will be shown on screen during rendering. Normal mode is the preferred one.

Detail enhancement

Detail enhancement is a method for bringing additional detail to the irradiance map in the case where there are small details in the image. Due to its limited resolution, the irradiance map typically blurs the GI in these areas or produces splotchy and flickering results. The detail enhancement option is a way to calculate those smaller details with a high-precision brute-force sampling method. This is similar to how an ambient occlusion pass works, but is more precise as it takes into account bounced light. On - turns on detail enhancement for the irradiance map. Note that an irradiance map calculated in this mode should not be used without the detail option. When detail enhancement is On, you can use lower irradiance map settings and higher Interpolation samples. This is because the irradiance map is only used to capture the general far-off lighting, while direct sampling is used for the closer detail areas. Subdivs mult. - this determines the number of samples taken for the high-precision sampling as a percentage of the irradiance map Hemispheric subdivs. A value of 1.0 means that the same number of

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subdivs will be used as for the regular irradiance map samples. Lower values will make the detail-enhanced areas more noisy, but faster to render. Scale - this determines the units for the Radius parameter: Screen - the radius is in image pixels. World - the radius is in world units. Screen Radius - this determines the radius for the detail enhancement effect. Smaller radius means that smaller parts around the details in the image are sampled with higher precision - this would be faster but may be less precise. Larger radius means that more of the scene will use the higher precision sampling and may be slower, but more precise. This is similar to a radius parameter for an ambient occlusion pass. World Radius - this determines the radius for the detail enhancement effect. Smaller radius means that smaller parts around the details in the image are sampled with higher precision - this would be faster but may be less precise. Larger radius means that more of the scene will use the higher precision sampling and may be slower, but more precise. This is similar to a radius parameter for an ambient occlusion pass.

Advanced options

Interpolation type - this option is used during rendering. It selects the method for interpolating the GI value from the samples in the irradiance map. Weighted average - this method will do a simple blend between the GI samples in the irradiance map based on the distance to the point of interpolation and the difference in the normals. While simple and fast, this method tends to produce a blotchiness in the result. Least squares fit - the default method; it will try to compute a GI value that best fits in among the samples from the irradiance map. Produces smoother results than the weighted average method, but is slower. Also, ringing artifacts may appear in places where both the contrast and density of the irradiance map samples change over a small area. Delone triangulation - all other methods of interpolation are blurry methods - that is, they will tend to blur the details in indirect illumination. Also, the blurry methods are prone to density bias (see below for a description). In difference, the Delone triangulation method is a non-blurry method and will preserve the detail while avoiding density bias. Since it is non-blurry, the result might look more noisy (blurring tends to hide noise). More samples will be needed to get a sufficiently smooth result. This can be done either by increasing the hemispheric subdivs of the irradiance map samples, or by decreasing the Noise threshold value in the brute force sampler rollout. Least squares with Voronoi weights - this is a modification of the least squares fit method aimed at avoiding the ringing at sharp boundaries by taking in consideration the density of the samples in the irradiance map. The method is quite slow and its effectiveness is currently somewhat questionable. Although all interpolation types have their uses, it probably makes most sense to use either Least squares fit or Delone triangulation. Being a blurry method, Least squares fit will hide noise and will produce a smooth result. It is perfect for scenes with large smooth surfaces. Delone triangulation is a more exact method, which usually requires more hemispheric subdivs and high Max irradiance map rate (and therefore more rendering time), but produces accurate results without blurring. This is especially obvious in scenes where there are a lot of small details. Sample lookup - this option is used during rendering. It selects the method of choosing suitable points from the irradiance map to be used as basis for the interpolation. Nearest - this method will simply choose those samples from the irradiance map which are closest to the point of interpolation. (How many points will be chosen is determined by the value of the Interpolation samples parameter.) This is the fastest lookup method and was the only one available in early versions of VRAYforC4D. A drawback of this method is that in places where the density of the samples in the irradiance map changes, it will pick more samples from the area with higher density.

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When a blurry interpolation method is used, this leads to the so-called density bias which may lead to incorrect interpolation and artifacts in such places (mostly GI shadow boundaries). Nearest quad-balanced - this is an extension of the nearest lookup method aimed at avoiding density bias. It divides the space about the interpolated point in four areas and tries to find an equal number of samples in all of them (hence the name quad-balanced). The method is a little slower than the simple Nearest lookup, but in general performs very well. A drawback is that sometimes, in its attempt to find samples, it may pick samples that are far away and not relevant to the interpolated point. Precalculated overlapping - this method was introduced in an attempt to avoid the drawbacks of the two previous ones. It requires a preprocessing step of the samples in the irradiance map during which a radius of influence is computed for each sample. This radius is larger for samples in places of low density, and smaller for places of higher density. When interpolating the irradiance at a point, the method will choose every sample that contains that point within its radius of influence. An advantage of this method is that when used with a blurry interpolation method it produces a continuous (smooth) function. Even though the method requires a preprocessing step, it is often faster than the other two. These two properties make it ideal for high-quality results. A drawback of this method is that sometimes lonely samples that are far-away can influence the wrong part of the scene. Also, it tends to blur the GI solution more than the other methods. Density-based - the default method; it combines the Nearest and the Precalculated overlapping methods and is very effective in reducing ringing artifacts and artifacts due to low sampling rates. This method also requires a preprocessing step in order to compute sample density, but it performs a nearest neighbor look-up to choose the most suitable samples while taking sample density in account. Being the fastest of the three methods, Nearest lookup may be used for preview purposes. Nearest quad-balanced performs fairly well in the majority of cases. Precalculated overlapping is fast and in many cases performs very well, but may tend to blur the GI solution. The Density-based method produces very good results in the majority of cases and is the default method. Note that the lookup method is mostly important when using a blurry interpolation method. When using Delone triangulation, the sample lookup method does not influence the result very much. Calc. pass interpolation samples - this is used during irradiance map calculation. It represents the number of already computed samples that will be used to guide the sampling algorithm. Good values are between 10 and 25. Low values may speed the calculation pass, but may not provide sufficient information. Higher values will be slower and will cause additional sampling. In general, this parameter should be left to the default value of 15. Mixed resolution - this is used during irradiance map calculation. When checked, this will cause VRAYforC4D to use all irradiance map samples computed so far. Unchecking it will allow VRAYforC4D to use only samples collected during previous passes, but not those computing earlier during the current pass. Keeping this checked will usually cause VRAYforC4D to take less samples (and therefore compute the irradiance map faster). That means that on multiprocessor machines, several threads will be modifying the irradiance map at the same time. Because of the asynchronous nature of this process, there is no guarantee that the rendering the same image twice will produce the same irradiance map. Normally this is not a problem at all and it is recommended to keep this option checked. Randomize samples - this is used during irradiance map calculation. When it is checked, the image samples will be randomly jittered. Unchecking it will produce samples that are aligned in a grid on the screen. In general, this option should be kept checked in order to avoid artifacts caused by regular sampling. Check sample visibility - this is used during rendering. It will cause VRAYforC4D to use only those samples from the irradiance map, which are directly visible from the interpolated point. This may be useful for preventing "light leaks" through thin walls with very different illumination on both sides. However it will also slow the rendering, since VRAYforC4D will trace additional rays to determine sample visibility.

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Mode

Mode - this groups of controls allow the user to select the way the irradiance map is (re)used. Bucket mode - in this mode, a separate irradiance map is used for each rendered region ("bucket"). This is especially useful since it allows the irradiance map computations to be effectively distributed among several computers when using distributed rendering. Bucket mode can be slower that the Single frame mode, since an additional border must be computed around each region in order to reduce edge artifacts between neighboring regions. Even so, there may be such artifacts. They can be further reduced by using higher settings for the irradiance map (the High preset, more hemispheric subdivs and/or smaller Noise threshold for the DMC sampler). Single frame - the default mode; a single irradiance map is computed for the whole image, and a new irradiance map is computed for each frame. During distributed rendering, each render server will compute its own full-image irradiance map. This is the mode to use when rendering animations of moving objects. In doing so one must make sure that the irradiance map is of sufficiently high quality to avoid flickering. Multiframe incremental - this mode is useful when rendering a sequence of frames (not necessarily consecutive) where only the camera moves around (so-called fly-through animations). VRAYforC4D will compute a new full-image irradiance map for the first rendered frame; for all other frames VRAYforC4D will try to reuse and refine the irradiance map that has been computed so far. If the irradiance map is of sufficiently high quality as to avoid flickering, this mode can also be used in network rendering - each rendering server will compute and refine its own local irradiance map. Note that this mode is not supported for distributed rendering. From file - in this mode VRAYforC4D will simply load the irradiance map from the supplied file at the start of the rendering sequence and will use this map for all the frames in the animation. No new irradiance map will be computed. This mode can be used for fly-through animations and will work well in network rendering mode. Add to current map - in this mode VRAYforC4D will compute a completely new irradiance map and will add it to the map that is already in memory. This mode is useful when compiling an irradiance map to render multiple views of a static scene. Note that this mode is not supported for distributed rendering. Incremental add to current map - in this mode VRAYforC4D will use the irradiance map that is already in memory and will only refine it in places that don't have enough detail. This mode is useful when compiling an irradiance map to render multiple views of a static scene or a fly-through animation. Note that this mode is not supported for distributed rendering. Animation (prepass) - in this mode VRAYforC4D calculates irradiance maps to be used later on for final rendering with the Animation (rendering) mode. One irradiance map is created for each frame and written into a separate file. Note that in this mode you have to render one map for each frame (i.e. you cannot render every Nth frame). VRAYforC4D automatically disables rendering of the final image in this mode - only irradiance map prepasses are calculated. Animation (rendering) - in this mode VRAYforC4D renders a final animation using irradiance maps created with the Animation (prepass) mode. Irradiance maps from several adjacent frames are loaded together and blended so as to reduce flickering. The number of irradiance maps that are interpolated is determined by the Interp. frames parameter. The irradiance map mode that should be used depends on the particular rendering task - a static scene, a static scene rendered from multiple views, a fly-through animation or an animation with moving objects. Refer to the tutorials section for more information. Irradiance map control buttons There are some more buttons in this group that allow one to perform certain operations on the irradiance map:

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Load file - this button allows the user to select the irradiance map file which will be loaded if the From file mode is selected. Alternatively, the user can enter the path and name of the file directly in the edit box. Save to file - this will save to file the irradiance map which is currently in memory. Note that the Don't delete option in the On render end group must be turned on. Otherwise VRAYforC4D will automatically delete the irradiance map at the end of the rendering process. Save Multiframe File - when using a IRMap method that saves multiple GI solutions in one file such as “Multiframe incremental” mode here there save path can be set. This is used for animation mostly.

On render end

This group of controls instructs VRAYforC4D what to do with the irradiance map at the end of the rendering process. Don't delete - the default for this option is on, which means that VRAYforC4D will keep the irradiance map in memory until the next rendering. If this option is cleared, VRAYforC4D will delete the irradiance map when rendering is complete. This means that you will not be able to save the map manually afterwards. Auto save - if this option is set, VRAYforC4D will automatically save the irradiance map to the specified file at the end of the rendering. This mode is particularly useful if you want to send the irradiance map for rendering on a different machine through network rendering. Auto save file - this option is only available if the Auto save option is turned on. If Auto save file is on, then VRAYforC4D will also automatically set the irradiance map mode to From file and will set the file name to be that of the map that was just saved.

Notes

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Photon mapping

Photon mapping Home

Examples

General The global photon map is somewhat similar to the irradiance map. It is also used to represent the lighting in the scene, and it is a collection of points in 3D space (a point cloud). However, the photon map is built in a different way. It is built by tracing particles (photons) emitted by the scene lights. Those photons bounce around the scene and hit various surfaces. The hit points are stored in the photon map. Reconstructing the illumination from the photon map is also different from the irradiance map. With the irradiance map, a simple interpolation is used to blend the nearby GI samples. With the photon map, we need to estimate the photon density at a given point. The idea of density estimation is central to the photon map. VRAYforC4D can use several methods for density estimation, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Usually these methods are based on looking for the photons that are nearest to the shaded point. Note that in general, the photon map provides a less accurate approximation of the scene illumination than the irradiance map, especially when it comes to small details. The irradiance map is built adaptively, whereas the photon map is not. Also a major disadvantage of the photon map is the boundary bias. This unwanted effect is mostly visible around corners and object edges, which appear darker than they should be. The irradiance map can also exhibit boundary bias, however its adaptive nature allows one to decrease the effect greatly. Another disadvantage of the photon map is that it cannot simulate illumination from skylight. This is because the photons need an actual surface to be emitted from. The skylight, at least in VRAYforC4D, is not a surface actually present in the scene. On the other hand, the photon map is view-independent and can be computed relatively quickly. This makes it ideal for approximating the scene illumination when used together with more accurate methods like direct computation or the irradiance map.

Parameters

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Note that the building of the photon map is also controlled by the photon settings of individual lights in the scene. See the Light settings dialog for more information.

Photon Map

Bounces - this parameter controls the number of light bounces approximated by the photon map. More bounces produce a more realistic result, but take more time and memory. Prefilter- his will cause VRAYforC4D to precomputed the irradiance at the photon hit points stored in the photon map. This allows fewer photons to be used when interpolated the irradiance during rendering, while keeping the result relatively smooth. It is important to note that the resulting map stores irradiance, but is not the same as the irradiance cache used by VRAYforC4D for primary diffuse bounces.. Inter. samples - this controls how many irradiance samples will be taken from the photon map once it is converted to an irradiance map. Larger values produce smoother results, but may be slower; smaller values produces more noisy results but rendering is faster. Auto search distance - when this is on, VRAYforC4D will try to compute a suitable distance within which to search for photons. Sometimes the computed distance is ok, in other cases it might be too big (which will slow down the rendering) or too small (which will produce a more noisy result). Search distance - this option is only available when Auto search dist is off. It allows you to specify the photon search distance manually. Keep in mind that this value depends on the size of your scene. Lower values will speed up the rendering but may produce more noisy results. Larger values will slow down the rendering but may produce smoother results. Max photons - this option specifies how many photons will be taken into consideration when approximating the irradiance at the shaded point. More photons mean a smoother (and more blurry) result and may also slow down the rendering. Smaller values mean a more noisy result but will render faster. When this value is 0, VRAYforC4D will use all the photons in the given search range. Max density - this parameter allows you to limit the resolution (and thus the memory) of the photon map. Whenever VRAYforC4D needs to store a new photon in the photon map, it will first look if there are any other photons within a distance specified by Max density. If there is already a suitable photon in the map, VRAYforC4D will just add the energy of the new photon to the one in the map. Otherwise, VRAYforC4D will store the new photon in the photon map. Using this options allows you to shoot many photons (and thus get smoother results) while keeping the size of the photon map manageable. Multiplier - this allows you to control the brightness of the photon map. Convex hull area estimate - when this is off, VRAYforC4D will use a simplified algorithm for computing the area, covered by a number of photons (by only taking the distance to the farthest photon). This algorithm may cause corners to be darker. Using the convex hull area estimate avoids the dark corners problem, but is slower and not as robust. Store direct light - when this is on, VRAYforC4D will store direct illumination in the photon map as well. This may speed up the irradiance map or brute force GI, when used as a primary engine, and there are lots of lights in the scene. When this is off, direct lighting will be computed always by tracing the necessary rays. This may slow things down if there are lots of lights in the scene. Show calc. phase - when this is on, VRAYforC4D will visualize the calculation phase of the photons during rendering. Retrace threshold - when this is greater than 0.0, VRAYforC4D will use brute force GI near corners, instead of the photon map, in order to obtain a more accurate result and to avoid splotches in these areas. This may slow down the rendering. When this is 0.0, the photon map will be used always, which will be faster, but may produce artifacts near corners or in places where objects are close to each other.

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Retrace bounces - controls how many bounces will be made when retracing corners. If Retrace threshold is 0.0, then this parameter is ignored. Typically this should be equal to the Bounces parameter.

Photon map mode

Mode - determines the rendering mode of the light cache: Progressive path tracing - in this mode, the light cache algorithm is used to sample the final image progressively. For a discussion of this mode see the tutorial. Single frame - this will compute a new light cache for each frame of an animation. Fly-through - this will compute a light cache for an entire fly-through animation, assuming that the camera position/orientation is the only thing that changes. The movement of the camera in the active time segment only is taken in consideration. Note that it may be better to use World Scale for fly-through animations. The light cache is computed only at the first rendered frame and is reused without changes for subsequent frames. From file - in this mode the light cache is loaded from a file. The light cache file does not include the prefiltering of the light cache; prefiltering is performed after the light cache is loaded, so that you can adjust it without the need to recompute the light cache. Load file - specifies the file name to load the photon map from, when the Mode is set to From file.

On render end

This group of controls determine what happens with the photon map after rendering is complete. Don't delete - when on (the default), the photon map remains in memory after the rendering. Turn this option off to automatically delete the photon map (and thus save memory). Auto save - when on, the photon map will be automatically written to the specified file. Note that the photon map will be written as soon as it is calculated, rather than at the actual end of the rendering. Auto save file - when on, after the rendering is complete, the photon map Mode will be automatically set to From file and the name of the auto-saved photon map file will be copied to the File parameter.

Notes • The photon map is mostly useful for interior scenes with artificial lighting or relatively small windows.

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Light cache

Light cache Home

Examples

General Light caching (sometimes also called light mapping) is a technique for approximating the global illumination in a scene. This method was developed originally by Chaos Group specifically for the VRAYforC4D renderer. It is very similar to photon mapping, but without many of its limitations. The light cache is built by tracing many many eye paths from the camera. Each of the bounces in the path stores the illumination from the rest of the path into a 3d structure, very similar to the photon map. On the other hand, in a sense, it is the exact opposite of the photon map, which traces paths from the lights, and stores the accumulated energy from the beginning of the path into the photon map. Although very simple, the light-caching approach has many advantages over the photon map: • It is easier to set up. We only have the camera to trace rays from, as opposed to the photon map,

which must process each light in the scene and usually requires separate setup for each light.

• The light-caching approach works efficiently with any lights - including skylight, self-illuminated objects, non-physical lights, photometric lights etc. In contrast, the photon map is limited in the lighting effects it can reproduce - for example, the photon map cannot reproduce the illumination from skylight or from standard omni lights without inverse-square falloff.

• The light cache produces correct results in corners and around small objects. The photon map, on the other hand, relies on tricky density estimation schemes, which often produce wrong results in these cases, either darkening or brightening those areas.

• In many cases the light cache can be visualized directly for very fast and smooth previews of the lighting in the scene.

Even with these advantages, light caching is similar in speed to the photon map and can produce approximations to the global lighting in a scene very quickly. In addition, the light cache can be used successfully for adding GI effects to animations. Of course, the light cache has some limitations: • Like the irradiance map, it is view-dependent and is generated for a particular position of the

camera.

• Like the photon map, the light cache is not adaptive. The illumination is computed at a fixed resolution, which is determined by the user.

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Parameters

Calculation parameters

These parameters affect the calculation phase of the light cache; they do not affect the final rendering. Override LC Subdivision - this option, allow override Subdivision passes number with auto passes number depended from Sample ratio and image resolution. Sample ratio - this setting defines number of subdivs depends to the final image size resolution. Lowering the ratio reduces time but also lowers light cache quality. Subdivision - this determines how many paths are traced from the camera. The actual number of paths is the square of the subdivs (the default 1000 subdivs mean that 1 000 000 paths will be traced from the camera). Passes - the light cache is computed in several passes, which are then combined into the final light cache. Each pass is rendered in a separate thread independently of the other passes. This ensures that the light cache is consistent across computers with different number of CPUs. In general, a light cache computed with smaller number of passes may be less noisy than a light cache computed with more passes, for the same number of samples; however small number of passes cannot be distributed effectively across several threads. For single-processor non-hyperthreading machines, the number of passes can be set to 1 for best results. Now VRAYforC4D by default place value of threads of computer. Scale - this determines the spacing of the samples in the light cache. Smaller numbers mean that the samples will be closer to each other, the light cache will preserve sharp details in lighting, but it will be more noisy and will take more memory. Larger numbers will smooth out the light cache but will loose detail. This value can be either in world units or relative to the image size, depending on light cache Scale mode. Scale - this parameter determines the units of the Sample size and the Filter size: Screen sample size - the units are fractions of the final image (a value of 1.0 means the samples will be as large as the whole image). Samples that are closer to the camera will be smaller, and samples that are far away will be larger. Note that the units do not depend on the image resolution. This value is best suited for stills or animations where the light cache needs to be computed at each frame.

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World sample size - the sizes are fixed in world units everywhere. This can affect the quality of the samples - samples that are close to the camera will be sampled more often and will apear smoother, while samples that are far away will be noisier. This value might work better for fly-through animations, since it will force constant sample density everywhere. Min paths per sample - XX. Store direct light - with this option, the light cache will also store and interpolate direct light. This can be useful for scenes with many lights and irradiance map or direct GI method for the primary diffuse bounces, since direct lighting will be computed from the light cache, instead of sampling each and every light. Note that only the diffuse illumination produced by the scene lights will be stored. If you want to use the light cache directly for approximating the GI while keeping the direct lighting sharp, uncheck this option. Show calc. phase - turning this option on will show the paths that are traced. This does not affect the calculation of the light cache and is provided only as a feedback to the user. This option is ignored when rendering to fields - in that case, the calculation phase is never displayed. Adaptive tracing - when this option is on, VRAYforC4D will store additional information about the incoming light for each light cache sample, and try to put more samples into the directions from which more light coming. This may help tp reduce the noise in the light cache, particularly in the case of caustics. Use directions only - this option is only available when the Adaptive tracing option is on. It causes VRAYforC4D to only use the optimized directions, generated from the light cache samples, rather than the accumulated irradiance from the samples themselves. This produces more accurate results, but also a noisier light cache.

Reconstruction parameters

These parameters control how the light cache is used in the final rendering, after is has been calculated. Pre-filter - when this is turned on, the samples in the light cache are filtered before rendering. Note that this is different from the normal light cache filtering (see below) which happens during rendering. Prefiltering is performed by examining each sample in turn, and modifying it so that it represents the average of the given number of nearby samples. Prefilter samples - More prefilter samples mean a more blurry and less noisy light cache. Prefiltering is computed once after a new light cache is computed or loaded from disk. Use light cache for glossy rays - if this option is on, the light cache will be used to compute lighting for glossy rays as well, in addition to normal GI rays. This can speed up rendering of scenes with glossy reflections quite a lot. Filter - this determines the type of render-time filter for the light cache. The filter determines how irradiance is interpolated from the samples in the light cache. None - no filtering is performed. The nearest sample to the shaded point is taken as the irradiance value. This is the fastest option, but it may produce artifacts near corners, if the light cache is noisy. You can use pre-filtering (see above) to decrease that noise. This option works best if the light cache is used for secondary bounces only or for testing purposes. Nearest - this filter looks up the nearest samples to the shading point and averages their value. This filter is not suitable for direct visualization of the light cache, but is useful if you use the light cache for secondary bounces. A property of this filter is that is adapts to the sample density of the light cache and is computed for a nearly constant time. Interpolation samples - determines how many of the nearest samples to look up from the light cache.

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Fixed - this filter looks up and averages all samples from the light cache that fall within a certain distance from the shaded point. This filter produces smooth results and is suitable for direct visualization of the light cache (when it is used as the primary GI engine). Filter size - determines the size of the filter. Larger values blur the light cache and smooth out noise. Typical values for the Filter size are 2-6 times larger than the Sample size. Note that Filter size uses the same scale as the Sample size and its meaning depends on the Scale parameter. Use light cache for glossy rays - if this option is on, the light cache will be used to compute lighting for glossy rays as well, in addition to normal GI rays. This can speed up rendering of scenes with glossy reflections quite a lot.

Mode

Mode - determines the rendering mode of the light cache: Progressive path tracing - in this mode, the light cache algorithm is used to sample the final image progressively. For a discussion of this mode see the tutorial. Single frame - this will compute a new light cache for each frame of an animation. Fly-through - this will compute a light cache for an entire fly-through animation, assuming that the camera position/orientation is the only thing that changes. The movement of the camera in the active time segment only is taken in consideration. Note that it may be better to use World Scale for fly-through animations. The light cache is computed only at the first rendered frame and is reused without changes for subsequent frames. From file - in this mode the light cache is loaded from a file. The light cache file does not include the prefiltering of the light cache; prefiltering is performed after the light cache is loaded, so that you can adjust it without the need to recompute the light cache. Load file - specifies the file name to load the light cache from, when the Mode is set to From file.

On render end

This group of controls determine what happens with the light cache after rendering is complete. Don't delete map - when on (the default), the light cache remains in memory after the rendering. Turn this option off to automatically delete the light cache (and thus save memory). Auto save - when on, the light cache will be automatically written to the specified file. Note that the light cache will be written as soon as it is calculated, rather than at the actual end of the rendering. Auto save file - when on, after the rendeing is complete, the light cache Mode will be automatically set to From file and the name of the auto-saved light cache file will be copied to the File parameter.

Notes • Do not set the Adaptive amount in the DMC sampler rollup to 0.0 when using the light cache, as

this will cause excessive render times.

• Do not apply perfectly white or very close to white materials to a majority of the objects in the scene, as this will cause excessive render times. This is because the amount of reflected light in the scene will decrease very gradually and the light cache will have to trace longer paths. Also avoid materials that have one of their RGB components set to maximum (255) or above.

• If you want to use the light cache for animation, you should choose a large enough value for the Filter size in order to remove the flickering in the GI.

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• There is no difference between light caches computed for primary bounces (direct visualization) and for secondary bounces. You can safely use light caches computed in one of these modes for the other.

• Similar to the photon map, you can get "light leaks" with the light cache around very thin surfaces with substantially different illumination on both sides. Sometimes it may be possible to reduce this effect by decreasing the Sample size and/or the filtering.

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Combining GI Methods

Combining GI Methods Home

Examples

General It often is very efficient to mix to different engines: one for the primary and one for the secondary bounces, to have the advantages from both. One engine can be faster for one thing and the other for another aspect. If you select one or two GI methods you will see that the corresponding GI setting tabs will be visible, the non chosen GI methods will be hidden for more visible clearness. VRAY can combine them in an intelligent way to give you high speed with very high quality at the same time, also for certain animation types it makes sense to mix fast smooth solutions with physical accurate ones p.e. Combining 2 engines for primary and secondary GI is actually the standard way to work in VRAYforC4D.

Possible combination of GI methods

Irradiance Map & DMC

This is actually the default setting. The Irradiance cache is used for the primary GI, and DMC for the secondary bounces, the combination of the fast and smooth IR Maps and the very accurate and detailed DMC fits many scenes and can be used for stills and animation. Depending on the settings you use this method can be extremely fast, also for previews, or can be a very detailed GI solution for ultra high quality, and of course all in between:-) Also You can save the IR Map and reuse the saved GI file, also if you raise the final image resolution, you can still use a saved IR Map that was calculated at smaller resolution. A BIG advantage! In some cases it is better to save a detailed GI solution at small size (800x400 p.e.) and render the final image with the saved solution at full print size ( works with final outputs like 5000x2500pixel). this method brings higher(!) Quality than rendering the final 5000x2500 pixel with full site GI at lower GI setting. With this method you can also change the camera angle a bit, or adjust and change a materials and most of the time the IRMap will still get you good results. A very flexible method.

Irradiance Map & Light Cache

This is a cool method to combine the great light cache with its “instant preview” capabilities with the smooth irradiance map. The light cache resembles a bit the unbiased engines that are out there like maxwell render. there is also an option in it to render fully unbiased (PPT). however most of the time you want to combine high quality with good speed to get your projects out. In light cache you see a rough pixeled/noise image of the whole scene within seconds, basically thats already a good approximation how the scene will look like. The longer you wait the more light is traced and the image will get more noise free, however in most light cache methods you will want to set the light cache to be rendering to a specific amount of light traces and then use another method to cleanup the image and make it smooth and noise free. the combination with irradiance map again is a very common one and combines very fast preview in the gi pass with high image quality.

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The light cache is also very detailed in it settings. so you can also combine a very rough light cache with IRMap to get good and fast image results. Always take care to set the number of passes to the amount of cpu`s you are using to get most speed out of light cache, if the result is too noise simple increase the sample size a bit. this makes the rendering also faster (you loose some image detail though)

DMC & Light Cache

Also interesting can be the combination with DMC, in this method you often use a very high DMC - AA setting to smooth out a very noise and fat light cache solution, the image quality can be very high through the combination with DMC. Also Vlado famous universal setting is based on this combination. Often you want to change the adaption of the DMC sampler settings in render settings tab / DMC sampler to 1.0 for this method. the internal DMC engine is therefore used not only for GI but also for AA and overall image sampling. Possible is both having DMC for primary engine and light cache for secondary or also the other was around.

Light Cache & Light Cache

You can also combine 2 time light cache, this is also used to make vray rendering like an fully unbiased engine, using the PPT algorithms. Usually this method can take some time to cleanup noise,. good AA settings can help here.

Combinations with Photon Map

All methods can be combines with photon mapping,. for indoor solutions that do not use a sky photon mapping can have advantages, also some professionals long term vray users seem to like photon mapping in certain circumstances.

Not combining GI

Of course you can also decide to just use a primary GI engine. Just put the secondary to “none”. This will result in poorer results of course but brings speed advantages. Specially for previews you can turn of the secondary engine, or if you have scenes that not at all use any glossy effects.

Notes

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Caustics

Caustics Home

Examples

General VrayforC4D supports the rendering of the caustics effects. In order to produce this effect you must have proper caustics generators and caustics receivers in the scene. In order to calculate the caustics effects, VrayforC4D uses a technique known as photon mapping. It is a two-pass technique. The first pass consists of shooting particles (photons) from the light sources in the scene, tracing them as they bounce around the scene, and recording the places where the photons hit the object surfaces. The second pass is the final rendering, when the caustics are calculated by using density estimation techniques on the photon hits stored during the first pass.

Parameters

On - turns rendering of caustics on and off. Search distance - when VrayforC4D needs to render the caustics effect at a given surface point, it searches for a number photons on that surface in the area surrounding the shaded point (search area). The search area in fact is a circle with center the original photon and its radius is equal to the Search distance value. Smaller values produce sharper, but perhaps more noisy caustics; larger values produce smooher, but blurrier caustics. Max photons - this is the maximum number of photons that will be considered when rendering the caustics effect on a surface. Smaller values cause less photons to be used and the caustucs will be sharper, but perhaps noisier. Larger values produce smoother, but blurrier caustics. The special value of 0 means that VrayforC4D will use all the photons that it can find inside the search area. Max density - this parameter allows you to limit the resolution (and thus the memory) of the caustics photon map. Whenever VrayforC4D needs to store a new photon in the caustics photon map, it will first look if there are any other photons within a distance specified by Max density. If there is already a suitable photon in the map, VrayforC4D will just add the energy of the new photon to the one in the map. Otherwise, VrayforC4D will store the new photon in the photon map. Using this options allows you to shoot many photons (and thus get smoother results) while keeping the size of the caustics photon map manageable.

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Multiplier - this multiplier controls the strength of the caustics. It is global and applies to all light sources that generate caustics. If you want different multipliers for the different light sources then you should use the local light settings. Note: this multiplier is cumulative with the multipliers in the local light settings.

Caustics mode

Caustics mode - controls the mode of the irradiance map: New map - when this option is selected a new photon map will be generated. It will overwrite any previous photon map left over from previous rendering. Save to file - hit this button if you want to save an already generated photon map in a file. From file - when you enable this option VrayforC4D will not compute the photon map but will load it from a file. Hit the Browse button on the right to specify the file name. Load file - the file name with the caustics photon map to be loaded when the Mode is set to From file.

On render end

Don't delete map - when checked, VrayforC4D will keep the photon map in memory after the scene rendering has finished. Otherwise the map will be deleted and the memory it takes will be freed. This option can be especially useful if you want to compute the photon map for a particular scene only once and then reuse it for further rendering. Auto save - when this is turned on, VrayforC4D will automatically save the caustics photon map to the provided file when rendering is complete. Auto save file - this option is only available if Auto save is on. It will cause VrayforC4D to automatically set the Mode to From file with the file name of the newly saved map.

Notes • Caustics also depend on the individual light settings.

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Displacement

Displacement Home

General This section allows you to control displacement of objects with displacement tag or with Vray Displace Material on it.

Parameters

Amount - this is a scaling parameter for the default displacement. Values larger than 1.0 increase the displacement amount, while values lower than 1.0 reduce it. Edge length - this determines the quality of the displacement. Each triangle of the original mesh is subdivided into a number of subtriangles. More subtriangles mean more detail in the displacement, slower rendering times and more RAM usage. Less subtriangles mean less detail, faster rendering and less RAM. The meaning of Edge length depends on the View-dependent parameter below. Max. subdivs - this controls the maximum subtriangles generated from any triangle of the original mesh. The value is in fact the square root of the maximum number of subtriangles. For example, a value of 256 means that at most 256 x 256 = 65536 subtriangles will be generated for any given original triangle. It is not a good idea to keep this value very high. If you need to use higher values, it will be better to tesselate the original mesh itself into smaller triangles instead. View-dependent - when this is on, Edge length determines the maximum length of a subtriangle edge, in pixels. A value of 1.0 means that the longest edge of each subtriangle will be about one pixel long when projected on the screen. When View-dependent is off, Edge length is the maximum subtriangle edge length in world units. Relative - if this parameter is on, the actual displacement amount is based on the bounding box of the objects. If this option is off, the displacement is expressed in generic world units where white areas in the displacement map correspond to displacement of 1 generic unit. You can use the Amount parameter to increase or decrease displacement amount. Tight bounds - when this is on, VRAYforC4D will try to compute the exact bounding volume of the displaced triangles from the original mesh. This requires pre-sampling of the displacement texture, but the rendering will be faster, if the texture has large black or white areas. However, if the displacement texture is slow to evaluate and varies a lot between full black and white, if may be faster to turn this option off. When it is off, VRAYforC4D will assume worst-case bounding volumes, and will not presample the texture.

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Environment

Environment Home

Examples

General The Environment section in VRAYforC4D render parameters is where you can specify a color and a texture map to be used during GI and reflection/refraction calculations. This group allows you choose Environment settings for indirect illumination calculations.

Parameters

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Background

Background color - lets you specify the environment color. Brightness - a multiplier for the color value. Note that the multiplier does not affect the environment texture (if present). Texture - lets you choose a GI environment texture. Note that if present, the texture overrides the specified Background Color. Multiplier - a multiplier for the texture value. Map type - allow you to choose type of apply of texture map. Offset U - allows you to adjust the environment texture placement in horizontal direction. Offset V - allows you to adjust the environment texture placement in vertical direction. Don`t affect GI enc. color - when this option is on Background color has no effect on GI env.override value.

Global Illumination

This group allows you to override Environment settings for indirect illumination calculations. The effect of changing the GI environment is similar to sky light. GI env. override - lets you specify the environment light color. Note that this is ignored if there is an environment texture specified. Brightness - a multiplier for the GI env. override value. Note that the multiplier does not affect the Texture (if present). Texture - lets you choose a GI environment texture. Note that if present, the texture overrides the specified GI env. override Color. Multiplier - a multiplier for the Texture value. Map type - allow you to choose type of apply of texture map. Offset U - allows you to adjust the GI override texture placement in horizontal direction. Offset V - allows you to adjust the GI override texture placement in vertical direction.

Reflection

This group allows you to override environment settings when reflections and refractions are calculated. Note that you can also override the reflection/refraction environment on a per material basis (see VRAYforC4D Materials section). If you do not enable the Refraction override, this group of controls affects both reflections and refractions. If you enable the Refraction override, then this group affects only reflections. Reflection env. override - lets you specify the environment color for reflections/refractions. This is ignored, if there is an texture specified. Brightness - a multiplier for the Reflection env. override value. Note that the multiplier does not affect the Texture (if present). Texture - lets you choose a GI environment texture. Note that if present, the texture overrides the specified Color.

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Multiplier - a multiplier for the color value. Note that the multiplier does not affect the environment texture (if present). Use an Output map to control the brightness of the environment map if the map itself does not have brightness controls. Map type - allow you to choose type of apply of texture map. Offset U - allows you to adjust the reflection texture placement in horizontal direction. Offset V - allows you to adjust the reflection texture placement in vertical direction.

Refraction

This group allows to override the environment for refraction rays only. When this override is disabled, VRAYforC4D will use the environment specified in the Reflection/refraction group when calculating refractions. Refraction env. override - specifies the environment color for refractions. This color is ignored if there is an texture specified. Brightness - a multiplier for the Refraction env. override value. Note that the multiplier does not affect the Texture (if present). Texture - lets you choose a GI environment texture. Note that if present, the texture overrides the specified Refraction env. override color. Multiplier - a multiplier for the Texture value. Map type - allow you to choose type of apply of texture map. Offset U - allows you to adjust the refraction texture placement in horizontal direction. Offset V - allows you to adjust the refraction texture placement in vertical direction.

Notes

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Color Mapping

Color Mapping Home

Examples

Search keywords: color mapping, tone mapping, burn-out, overexpose

General It seems that real world photography and the human eye sees a bit different than a pure digital produce image. It can adjust to different light levels and contrasts, so the eye can compensate rather good dark indoor rooms p.e. after a short while they eyes “color mapping” is adjusted and you see also the darker parts of the environment. also different film paper types have not a linear behavior to colors and light, the perception of the eye might also not be linear, and also our screens of today have a non linear gamma of 1.8 to 2.2. So we have probably many things to consider there are many different approaches and theories, one of them the “linear workflow” LWF. No all professional believe the LWF is correct, but it definitely tries to solve some problems seen with digital produced imagery. Others use their own methods of color mapping and gamma adjustments. However, in most of this methods some kind of gamma adjustment or gamma recorrection for textures and the screen are used. camera mapping can help a lot for this or for simulating different film behavior. For architects specially in indoor scenes can get improved much by the right use of color mapping. For cinematographic use you may want to compensate the GI light to have a bit more contrast so you can push the dark tomes etc... In VRAYforC4D the special thing is that the color mapping is not a simple post process, but really changes the way the light is computed in the GI solution. make some tests at start of the scenes to find the correct settings for your need. also note that different color mapping settings might lead to longer render times. often color mapping is used in combination of adjusting the input of material colors. p.e. some people like to get rid of the 2.2 gamma many images have already implied due to the 2.2 screen gamma. to compensate this you can use the c4d filter shader and reduce gamma to 0.4545 (1/2.2). We cannot give any instant solution here fro all kinds of use, but color mapping is definitely an interesting aspect in trying to achieve most realistic imagery. The color mapping should be used with care and might so not be an dramatic effect, but often the slight differences make the big difference at the end.

Parameters

Type - this is the type of transformation used. These are the possible types: Linear multiply - this mode will simply multiply the final image colors based on their brightness are. Color components that are too bright (above 1.0 or 255) will be clipped. This can result in burnt out spots near bright light sources.

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Exponential - this mode will saturate the colors based on their brightness. This can be useful to prevent burn-outs in very bright areas (for example around light sources etc). This mode will not clip bright colors, but will instead saturate them. HSV exponential - this mode is very similar to the Exponential mode, but it will preserve the color hue and saturation, instead of washing out the color towards white. Intensity exponential - this mode is similar to the Exponential one, but it will preserve the ratio of the RGB color components and will only affect the intensity of the colors. Gamma correction - this mode applies a gamma curve to the colors. In this case, the Dark multiplier is a general multiplier for the colors before they are gamma-corrected. The Bright multiplier is the inverse of the gamma value (f.e. for gamma 2.2, the Bright multiplier must be 0.4545). Intensity gamma - this mode applies a gamma curve to the intensity of the colors, instead of each channel (r/g/b) independently. Reinhard - this mode is a blend between exponential-style color mapping and linear mapping. If the Burn value is 1.0, the result is linear color mapping and if the Burn value is 0.0, the result is exponential-style mapping. Dark multiplier - this is the multiplier for dark colors. Bright multiplier - this is the multiplier for bright colors. Gamma - this parameter allows the user to control the gamma correction for the output image regardless of the color mapping mode. Note that the value here is the inverse of the one used for the Gamma correction color mapping type. For example, to correct the image for a 2.2-gamma display, you should set the Gamma parameter simply to 2.2. Sub-pixel mapping - this option controls whether color mapping will be applied to the final image pixels, or to the individual sub-pixel samples. In older versions of VRAYforC4D, this option was always assumed to be on, however its default value is now off as this produces more correct renderings, especially if you use the universal settings approach. Clamp output - if this is on, colors will be clamped after color mapping. In some situations, this may be undesirable (for example, if you wish to antialiasing HDR parts of the image, too) - in that case, turn clamping off. Clamp level - this option specifies the level at which color components will be clamped if the Clamp output option is on. Adaptation only - when this parameter is on, the color mapping will not be applied to the final image, however VRAYforC4D will proceed with all its calculations as though color mapping is applied (e.g. the noise levels will be corrected accordingly). This can be useful, for example, if you know that you will apply some color correction to the image later on, but wish to keep the rendering itself in linear space for compositing purposes. Note that the Clamp output option will have an effect regardless of the value of the Don't affect colors option. Affect background - if this is off, color mapping will not affect colors belonging to the background.

Notes • For Linear workflow you must set Gamma parameter to 2.2. and filter every material in scene with

C4D Filter applying with gamma 0.454 (for PC).

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Vray Camera

Vray Camera Home

Examples

General The camera rollout controls the way the scene geometry is projected onto the image. Note that if you use the VRayPhysicalCamera in your scene, most of the parameters in this section are ignored, with the exception of some of the motion blur parameters (those on the right-hand side of the dialog).

Parameters

Camera type

The cameras in VRAYforC4D generally define the rays that are cast into the scene, which essentially is how the scene is projected onto the screen. VRAYforC4D supports several camera types: Standard, Spherical, Cylindrical (point), Cylindrical (ortho), Box, Fish eye and Warped spherical. The parameters in this section are ignored, if you are rendering from a VRayPhysicalCamera. Type - from this list you can select the type of the camera. See the Examples section for a more detailed discussion on camera types. Standard - this is a standard pinhole camera. Spherical - this is a spherical camera which means that the camera lenses has spherical form.

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Cylindrical-Ppoint - with this type of camera all rays have a common origin - they are cast from the center of the cylinder. In the vertical direction the camera acts as a pinhole camera and in the horizontal direction it acts as a spherical camera. Cylindrical-Ortho - in vertical direction the camera acts as an orthographic view and in the horizontal direction it acts as a spherical camera. Box - the box camera is simply 6 standard cameras placed on the sides of a box. This type of camera is excellent for generation of environment maps for cube mapping. It may be very useful for GI too - you can calculate the irradiance map with a Box camera, save it to file and you can reuse it with a Standard camera that can be pointed at any direction. Fish eye - this special type of camera captures the scene as if it is normal pinhole camera pointed at an absolutely reflective sphere which reflects the scene into the camera's shutter. You can use the Dist/FOV settings to control what part of the sphere will be captured by the camera. The red arc in the diagram corresponds to the FOV angle. Note that the sphere has always a radius of 1.0. Warped spherical - another spherical camera with slightly different mapping formula. Height - here you can specify the height of the Cylindrical (ortho) camera. This setting is available only when the Type is set to Cylindrical (ortho). Auto-fit - this setting controls the auto-fit option of the Fish-eye camera. When Auto-fit is enabled VRAYforC4D will calculate the Distance value automatically so that the rendered image fits horizontally with the image's dimensions. Distance - this setting applies only to the Fish-eye camera. The Fish-eye camera is simulated as a Standard camera pointed to an absolutely reflective sphere (with a radius of 1.0) that reflects the scene into the camera's shutter. The Distance value contorts how far is the camera from the sphere's center (which is how much of the sphere will be captured by the camera). Note: this setting has no effect when the Auto-fit option is enabled. Curve - this setting applies only to the Fish-eye camera. This setting contorts the way the rendered image is warped. A value of 1.0 corresponds to a real world Fish-eye camera. As the value approaches 0.0 the warping is increased. As the value approaches 2.0 the warping is reduced. Note: in fact this value controls the angle at which rays are reflected by the virtual sphere of the camera. Override FOV - with this setting you can override the Cinema4D FOV angle. This is because some VrayforC4D camera types can take FOV ranges from 0 to 360 degrees, whereas the cameras in Cinema4D are limited to 180 degrees. Vray FOV - here you specify the FOV angle (only when Override FOV is turned on and the current camera type supports FOV angle). Use Clipping Planes- turns the clipping effect on. Clip Near - distance from camera to clip in front of it. Clip Far - distance from camera to clip in back of it.

Depth of field

These parameters control the depth of field effect when rendering with a standard Cinema4D camera or with a perspective viewport. The parameters are ignored if you render from a VRayPhysicalCamera view. DOF on - turns the depth-of-field effect on. Subdivision - controls the quality of the DOF effect. Lower values are computed faster, but produce more noise in the image. Higher values smooth out the noise, but take more time to render. Note that

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the quality of sampling also depends on the settings of the DMC sampler as well as on the chosen Image sampler. Aperture - this is the size of the virtual camera aperture, in world units. Small aperture sizes reduce the DOF effect, larger sizes produce more blur. Center bias - this determines the uniformity of the DOF effect. A value of 0.0 means that light passes uniformly through the aperture. Positive values mean that light is concentrated towards the rim of the aperture, while negative values concentrate light at the center. Bokeh effect - defines the shape of the camera aperture. When this option is off, perfectly circular aperture is simulated. When on, a polygonal aperture is simulated. Sides num - this option allows you to simulate the polygonal shape of the aperture of real-world cameras. When this option is off, the shape is assumed to be perfectly circular. Rotation - specifies the orientation of the aperture shape. Anisotropy - this option allows the stretching of the bokeh effect horizontally or vertically. Positive values stretch the effect in the vertical direction. Negative values stretch it in the horizontal direction.

Motion blur

MBlur on - turns motion blur on. Duration - specifies the duration, in frames, during which the camera shutter is open. Interval center - specifies the middle of the motion blur interval with respect to the Cinema4D frame. A value of 0.5 means that the middle of the motion blur interval is halfway between the frames. A value of 0.0 means that the middle of the interval is at the exact frame position. Bias - this controls the bias of the motion blur effect. A value of 0.0 means that the light passes uniformly during the whole motion blur interval. Positive values mean that light is concentrated towards the end of the interval, while negative values concentrate light towards the beginning. Geometry samples - this determines the number of geometry segments used to approximate motion blur. Objects are assumed to move linearly between geometry samples. For fast rotating objects, you need to increase this to get correct motion blur. Note that more geometry samples increase the memory consumption, since more geometry copies are kept in memory. Prepass samples - this controls how many samples in time will be computed during irradiance map calculations. Subdivision - determines the quality of the motion blur. Lower values are computed faster, but produce more noise in the image. Higher values smooth out the noise, but take more time to render. Note that the quality of sampling also depends on the settings of the DMC sampler as well as on the chosen Image sampler.

Notes • When DOF and motion blur are both enabled, they are sampled together using the higher of the two

Subdivs parameters.

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System

System Home

Examples

Search keywords: System, VRay System, Raycaster, frame stamp, geometry

General In this section you can adjust a variety of VRAYforC4D parameters related to the overall operation of the renderer.

Parameters

Raycaster

Here you can control various parameters of VRAYforC4D's Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) tree. One of the basic operations that VRAYforC4D must perform is raycasting - determining if a given ray intersects any geometry in the scene, and if so - identifying that geometry. The simplest way to implement this would be to test the ray against every single render primitive (triangle) in the scene. Obviously, in scenes with thousands or millions of triangles this is going to be very slow. To speed this process, VRAYforC4D organizes the scene geometry into a special data structure, called a binary space partitioning (BSP) tree. The BSP tree is a hierarchical data structure, built by subdividing the scene in two parts, then looking at each of those two parts and subdividing them in turn, if necessary and so on. Those "parts" are called nodes of the tree. At the top of the hierarchy is the root node - which represents the bounding box

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of the whole scene; at the bottom of the hierarchy are the leaf nodes - they contain references to actual triangles from the scene. Max tree depth - the maximum depth of the tree. Larger values will cause VRAYforC4D to take more memory, but the rendering will be faster - up to some critical point. Values beyond that critical point (which is different for every scene) will start to slow things down. Smaller values for this parameter will cause the BSP tree to take less memory, but rendering will be slower. Min leaf size - the minimum size of a leaf node. Normally this is set to 0.0, which means that VRAYforC4D will subdivide the scene geometry regardless of the scene size. By setting this to a different value, you can make VRAYforC4D to quit subdividing, if the size of a node is below a given value. Face level coefficient - controls the maximum amount of triangles in a leaf node. If this value is lower, rendering will be faster, but the BSP tree will take more memory - up to some critical point (which is different for every scene). Values below that critical point will make the rendering slower. Dynamic memory limit (in MB) - the total RAM limit for the dynamic raycasters. Note that the memory pool is shared between the different rendering threads. Therefore, if geometry needs to be unloaded and loaded too often, the threads must wait for each other and the rendering performance will suffer.

Region sequence

Here you can control various parameters of VRAYforC4D's rendering regions (buckets). The bucket is an essential part of the distributed rendering system of VRAYforC4D. A bucket is a rectangular part of the currently rendered frame that is rendered independently from other buckets. Buckets can be sent to idle LAN machines for processing and/or can be distributed between several CPUs. Because a bucket can be processed only by a single processor the division of the frame in too small a number of buckets can prevent the optimal utilization of computational resources (some CPUs stay idle all the time). However the division of the frame in too many buckets can slow down the rendering because there is a some time overhead related with each bucket (bucket setup, LAN transfer, etc). Bucket X size - determines the maximum region width in pixels (Region W/H is selected) or the number of regions in the horizontal direction (when Region Count is selected) Bucket Y size - determines the maximum region height in pixels (Region W/H is selected) or the number of regions in the vertical direction (when Region Count is selected) Bucket type - 2 methods of bucket distribution during rendering, preferred is W/H. Region sequence type - determines the order in which the regions are rendered. Note that the default Triangulation sequence is best if you use a lot of dynamic geometry, since it walks through the image in a very consistent manner so that geometry that was generated for previous buckets can be used for the next buckets. The other sequences tend to jump from one end of the image to another which is not good with dynamic geometry. Reverse sequence - reverses the region sequence order, performance will suffer.

Split / Region

Allows to automaticly render a still image across a cinema4d NET renderfarm. Set the number of splits to the number of machines in the network. Set the same number of frames in the cinema4d animation (output c4d preferences) starting with frame1. so when you have 4 machines to render, set the splitting to 4 and the animation to frame 1-4. Render the file on NET and you get 4 images that you can merge easily in Adobe Photoshop or similar applications.

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Pixeloverlapp: this lets you set an overlap of the splitting, always use an overlap greater than 0 as the AA will otherwise have a visible border when merging the final image. You can manually adjust this. We recommend 4-20pixels depending on image size and AA settings. The image splitting is a very fast and efficient method to render high resolution images across a c4d NET Render network. It is the preferred method for many professionals as it is very stable and more efficient as DR. Rendering Split On/Off - lets you turn on or off the render splitting( good for workflow when you have setup a splitting, but want to prerender locally only). Splits number - determinates the number of splits. Set this to the same number of machines on the net (7 PCS = 7 Splits) Horizontal Split - split image horizontaly. Pixel Overlap - lets you manually adjust the pixeloverlaping. Region ON/OFF - lets you activate full size region render. Left - pixels from left start. Top - pixels from top start. Right - pixels from right start. Bottom - pixels from bottom start. Get Last Region Render - this is a method if you don’t want to set the render region by exact pixels but directly in camera editor view. Activate render region tool in c4d, set a region, start to render the region ( you don’t have to wait to finish it) and go to vray system options and press the “get last region render”, vray will then set the pixels in relation to the final output size automaticly for you. When you render in picture viewer the exact region you have chosen gets rendered only. This is a great time saver and usable for high resolution detail previews or for rerendering only parts of the image ( if there was a mistake p.e.)

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MultiPass

MultiPass Home

Examples

General This Section allow Multipass rendering with VRAYforC4D. Activate Post effects in Cinema4D Multipass Render Settings and select the passes you want to render in that section, not in Cinema4D post effects. Vray Multipass can make .psd blended file directly from the render. In VRAYforC4D there are 3 types of passes: Standard Vray buffer - the pass you need to build the same result of rgba advanced, extra feature pass like raw ext. and Depth Vray buffer: where you find zdepth normal and velocity pass. Limitations:no color mapping on Multipass image, suggestion is render rgba with tone mapping and reproduce it on Multipass version via curve control in post. No support of physical camera, sky and sun shadow are not traced on shadow layer.

Parameters

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Camera Clipper

Camera Clipper Home

Examples

General With these settings you can clip all objects that lies in front or back of camera. This is useful for rendering objects in cross-section.

Parameters

Apply Camera Clipper - Apply camera clipper values. Store Visibility - save visibility of objects. Restore Visibility - restore visibility of objects. Front Clip Distance - distance from camera to clip in front of it. Back Clip Distance - distance from camera to clip in back of it. Confirm this Clip for this scene - click this button to confirm clipping.

Notes • Camera Clipper for now works only with Cinema4D native camera and not support

VRayPhysicalCamera Tag.

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Material Layered Channels

Material Layered Channels Home

BRDF Layered Material Channels

The VRAYforC4D Materials is a very powerful combination of parts of the Cinema4d shader system and of the high level VRAY BRDF shading System. It is specially tailored to use all aspects of the VRAY engine, without hiding any functionality. Also the Material is already designed to be compatible with future Cinema4d and VRAY developments. It is important to understand the concept of the VRAYforC4D material to understand its power and possibilities. A few important points: • The VRAY material consists of 12 material layers, Layers are stacked one above the others. Maybe

the easiest thing is to imagine them as a photoshop file with 12 layers. • Most of this layers can have its own mask or transparency. • If parts of one layer are transparent the layer below shows through. • The whole material can be masked, blended or stacked with other vray materials through the

“material weight” parameter (similar to c4d alpha). The Material Layers:

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The Layers (Channels) The VRAY material can be edited through the Attribute Manager (AM) or through the Cinema Material Editor. I personally recommend using the Material editor or an extra AM as it has normally more space to see all settings in the Vray Material. Here is a screenshot of the Material Editor:

One the left there are the material “layers” or channels, within the channels You can load textures or Cinema 4d shaders just as You probably are already used to it from Cinema 4D. one the right side you have the vray specific settings. almost all aspects can be controlled via shaders and textures. The Material preview is done in real time, you can use all preview types like in normal cinema 4d (sphere, cube, rounded cube, cylinder, double knot etc...) The double knot p.e. is very good for previewing reflective materials like metals. Right click on the preview to choose the size of it (here i used “huge”), there is also a drop down menu to select the preview quality to adjust it to your needs. the preview is done by the native vray engine and uses all cpu in your system it is fully multithreaded. VRAYforC4D Material Layers: Material Matte

Material Weight

Bump

Luminosity Layer

Reflection Layer

5 Specular Layers

2 Diffuse Layers

Refraction Layer

Notes • To render in Vray one must use the VRAY Material, there is a one button translator in the plugins

menu to convert c4d materials to vray materials to start rendering in vray, know you can render with native c4d material, but VRAY Materials have more options.

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Matte Layer

Matte Layer Home

Examples

General Material Matte Layer is a tool to make much more easy compositing session, think about it like a object matte in c4d compositing tag, but at material level, for example if you have a scene with some back object an one character,with black hole mode you can render a static backgrounds character with in black Hole mode and then you can make another render with character and back in black hole, with this situation if you need to change some thing in character, you can rerender only it and not the back, you can use it to isolate object and fake inclusive or exclusive lighting in various part of the sceneand it can be used to make object and material ID with AA and Physical Camera.

Parameters

Matte Mode - This option allow choose matte mode: Matte Opacity - XXXXXXXXXXXXX. Invert - This option simply inverts the Matte Opacity. Alpha Transparency - XXXXXXXXXX. Invert - This option simply inverts the Alpha Transparency, so transparent and solid areas are reversed. This works for both clipped images and images with built-in alpha channels. Map Preview Size- Here you’ll find entries from 64x64 (16 KB) to 4096x4096 (64 MB). The value controls the internal resolution of the map — the higher you set this value, the more detailed the map will be in the viewport. The value has no effect on the rendered result.Proceed with caution when increasing the Map Preview Size. Higher settings require more RAM and increase the filesize of the CINEMA 4D scene. OpenGL is also affected because the map previews must be loaded into the graphics card’s memory.

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Material Weight

Material Weight Home

Examples

General Here you can put in any texture or shader black white, gray shaded and even colored to mask the whole material. you can use a black and white texture to cutout parts of the material (= Alpha). You can use gradients or color filter to blend the materials with other vray materials or fade it into transparency. The material weight is good for many things. therefore we did not call it just Alpha. But if you search an Alpha channel here it is:-)

Parameters

Color Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the current material and other object materials. Invert - This option simply inverts the Color Map, so transparent and solid areas are reversed. This works for both clipped images and images with built-in alpha channels.

Notes • Do not use Invert button, with decal mapping or stacking, it could make unpredicted results on

yours model texture look, so don`t use it with it.

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Bump

Bump Home

Examples

General This layer allows you to control bump of objects. Bump is a technique for adding detail to your scene geometry without having to model it first. The concept is very similar to material displacement. However, bump is a shading effect that only changes the appearance of a surface, while displacement actually modifies the surface. The bump layer also accepts all kind of shaders, also layered combination, at image below we use the 3rd party plugin EnhanceC4D Shaders.

Parameters

Bump Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Bump amount - the amount of bump. A value of 0.0 means the object will appear unchanged. Higher values produce a greater bump effect. Intensity of the bump is sets in really world units, thous units are taken from the c4d units of the file, if you change the units there also the bump size changes accordingly. Bump amount value can`t be negative. Invert - This option simply inverts the Texture Map, so bump is reversed. Map Type - here you can define type of texture map file, simple image texture or normal map in different space.

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Bump Shadows - Activate it for best reality shadows of object. Map Preview Size- Here you’ll find entries from 64x64 (16 KB) to 4096x4096 (64 MB). The value controls the internal resolution of the map — the higher you set this value, the more detailed the map will be in the viewport. The value has no effect on the rendered result.Proceed with caution when increasing the Map Preview Size. Higher settings require more RAM and increase the filesize of the CINEMA 4D scene. OpenGL is also affected because the map previews must be loaded into the graphics card’s memory.

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Luminosity Layers

Luminosity Layer Home

Examples

General A luminescent object can be seen even when there are no lights in the scene. It is self-illuminated. So the luminance layer channel in VRAYforC4D gives real light to the scene when using GI. You can put in it any HDRI texture, any image or shader. It also has a transparency or mask, when the transparency is set to 100% the parts that are not luminance are transparent and the layers below the luminance channel get visible, when the transparency is set to 0% the dark parts of the channel are just shown dark.

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The luminance channel can be used to lighten a material, to make an object emit light, to make parts of an object emit light (like luminescent letters on a digital sign p.e.), and it can also be used to insert images (in the background p.e.) that should have a certain lightness, in the texture multiplier you can set values far over 1 to simulate real light or to give more power to textures. the result is a HDRI like effect. You can also use the filter shader p.e. to set the gamma of an image or to set the exposure of an HDRI image.

Parameters

Luminosity Color

Color

- this is the luminosity color of the material. Amount - use this setting to adjust the brightness of a channel color. The Brightness setting functions somewhat like a multiplier and can be set to greater than 100%. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined, also in luminosity layer you can put as texture map HDRI on a sphere or skydome to lighten your scene with HDRI or shaders. Amount - this is the multiplier for the texture. Note that this does not affect the Color.

Luminosity Layer Transparency

Transparency Color - this is the transparency color of the material. Amount - use this setting to adjust the transparency of a channel. use this setting to adjust the transparency of a channel. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Invert - This option simply inverts the Texture Map, so transparent and solid areas are reversed. This works for both clipped images and images with built-in alpha channels.

Luminosity Layer Parameters

Double Sided- checking this option makes the object emit light from its back side as well. If this is off, the material is rendered as black on the back sides.

Notes • You can use the Luminosity Layer as a light source assigned to an object. Increasing the multiplier

will affect the GI solution and will produce more light. Note that overbright colors may look the same as pure white but the GI results will be different. For more information see the Examples section.

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Reflection Layer

Reflection Layer Home

Examples

General The reflection layer is for sharp reflections like you have it in mirrors, glass or water. Again the reflection layer can have its own mask, here a simple gradient makes the right side of the sphere transparent, the layers below, if activated would get visible. Of course the transparency can be set to something in between to make the material less reflective. if a material is 100& reflective only the reflection channel is visible, like a mirror or perfect chrome, if it is 50% reflective it mixes with 50% of the layers below ( like diffuse color p.e.)

Parameters

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Reflection Color

Color - this is the reflection color of the material. Brightness- use this setting to adjust the brightness of a channel color. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Mode- use these parameters to mix the color and texture panes using one of four modes. The default mode for all channels is Normal. If you load a texture or shader, it is placed on a layer above the color (i.e. the texture is placed on top of the color). Please consult the Cinema4d documentation about the different mix modes. Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color.

Reflection Layer Transparency

Transparency Color - this is the transparency color of the material. Amount - use this setting to adjust the transparency of a channel. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Mode - use these parameters to mix the color and texture panes using one of four modes. The default mode for all channels is Normal. If you load a texture or shader, it is placed on a layer above the color (i.e. the texture is placed on top of the color). Please consult the Cinema4d documentation about the different mix modes. Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color. Invert - This option simply inverts the Texture Map, so transparent and solid areas are reversed. This works for both clipped images and images with built-in alpha channels.

Reflection Layer Parameters

Cutoff- this is a threshold below which reflections will not be traced. VRAYforC4D tries to estimate the contribution of reflections to the image, and if it is below this threshold, these effects are not computed. Do not set this to 0.0 as it may cause excessively long render times in some cases. Back side - if this is true, reflections will be computed for back-facing surfaces too. Note that this affects total internal reflections too (when refractions are computed).

Reflection Layer Fresnel

Use Fresnel- checking this option makes the reflection strength dependent on the viewing angle of the surface. Some materials in nature (glass etc) reflect light in this manner. Note that the Fresnel effect depends on the index of refraction as well. Fresnel IOR - the IOR to use when calculating Fresnel reflections. Normally this is locked to the Refraction IOR parameter, but you can unlock it for finer control. Refl. Color - reflection color. Refr. Color - refraction color. Note that the actual refraction color depends on the reflection color as well.

Notes

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Specular Layers

Specular Layers Home

Examples

General For first lets answer the question: What has the specular to do with glossy reflection? All is the answer specularity is physically seen an unsharp or glossy reflection of an light source or any other light part in the environment of an object, therefore also in vray the specularity is bound to the glossy reflection, VRAY however gives you the possibility to use both: traditional "cheated" specular effects and real physical correct glossy reflections. The specular color gives the main color of the reflection. a car paint p.e. might be “Ferrari red”, maybe uses also a Fresnel falloff with slight color variation depending on viewangle. The Specular Layer parameters let you set the glossiness of the specularity (classic fake specular) and the glassy reflection, this can be set via texture, you can set a multiplier for the texture, shader or slider, a value of white or 1 will give a sharp non glossy reflection. a value of 0.8 will give a 80% glossiness (equals 20% roughness), you can adjust both values independently. and also you can deactivate either or with the check boxes “trace reflections” or “trace specularity”. The glossiness subdivision controls the exactness of the calculation, higher values produce a more exact solution but render longer. most time when using proper AA settings 8 might be enough. for high level surfaces you might want to set a higher value like 16 or 32 etc. last not least there are also Fresnel settings below: You can turn Fresnel behavior on or off, when on the layer transparency get disabled, because this is now controlled by the Fresnel, the IOR gives again real world behavior. in reality almost all materials have a certain amount of glossy reflectivity and also a Fresnel behavior with a certain IOR. Glass has a IOR of 1.5- 1,75, ceramics, plastics, polished wood, etc. have an IOR of 3-6, metals have IOR starting with 10 going up to 200. You can also adjust the color of the Fresnel. it does not have to be black and white. often gray shades or even slight colors give good results, as glossy reflections are very important for all kind of high level materials we have implemented 5 specular layers to mix! You can each setup individually and blend them together via the specular layer transparency or Fresnel behavior. each layer can have its on glossiness, own anisotropy, colors, filters...this is excellent for car paints, silk, plastics, multilayer materials like coated woods, brushed metal etc. You can also use one layer for only specular effects and one only for glossy reflection to have different controls and colors for both. the variation is only limited by your imagination:-) The specular layer in the Vray material gives a totally new way to build materials, as all real world materials have a specular/glossy reflection, so it is good that they render fast in vray, also in combination with GI and refraction....

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Parameters

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Specular Type

Type - this determines the type of specular (the shape of the highlight): Phong, Blinn and Ward. They all look a bit different. Blinn and Ward (good for metals) also offer true anisotropy for specular and glossy reflections.

Specular Color

Color - this is the specular color of the material. Brightness- use this setting to adjust the brightness of a channel`s color. The Brightness setting functions somewhat like a multiplier and can be set to greater than 100%. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Mode- use these parameters to mix the color and texture panes using one of four modes. The default mode for all channels is Normal. If you load a texture or shader, it is placed on a layer above the color (i.e. the texture is placed on top of the color). Please consult the Cinema4d documentation about the different mix modes. Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color.

Specular Layer Transparency

Transparency Color - this is the transparency color of the material. Amount - use this setting to adjust the transparency of a channel. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Mode - use these parameters to mix the color and texture panes using one of four modes. The default mode for all channels is Normal. If you load a texture or shader, it is placed on a layer above the color (i.e. the texture is placed on top of the color). Please consult the Cinema4d documentation about the different mix modes. Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color. Invert - This option simply inverts the Texture Map.

Specular Layer Parameters

Soften edges - use this setting to make "rough" edges more soften. Highlight glossiness - this determines the shape of the highlight on the material. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color. Invert - This option simply inverts the Texture Map. Reflection Glossiness- controls the sharpness of reflections. A value of 1.0 means perfect mirror-like reflection; lower values produce blurry or glossy reflections. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color.

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Invert - This option simply inverts the Texture Map. Anisotropy - determines the shape of the highlight. A value of 0.0 means isotropic highlights. Negative and positive values simulate "brushed" surfaces. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Invert - This option simply inverts the Texture Map. Anisotropy Rotation - determines the orientation of the anisotropic effect in degrees (rotation in degrees). Different brushed surfaces can be simulated by using a texture map for the anisotropy rotation parameter. Anisotropy axis - controls how the direction for the anisotropic effect is chosen: Local axis X - the direction is based on the selected local object axis. Map channel - the direction is based on the selected mapping channel. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Invert - This option simply inverts the Texture Map. Cutoff- this is a threshold below which specular will not be traced. VRAYforC4D tries to estimate the contribution of specular to the image, and if it is below this threshold, these effects are not computed. Do not set this to 0.0 as it may cause excessively long render times in some cases. Back side - if this is true, specular will be computed for back-facing surfaces too. Note that this affects total internal specular too (when specular are computed). Trace Reflections- if this is off, reflections will not traced. Trace Specular- if this is off, specular will not traced. Glossiness Subdivs - controls the quality of glossy reflections. Lower values will render faster, but the result will be more noisy. Higher values take longer, but produce smoother results.

Specular Layer Fresnel

Use Fresnel- checking this option makes the specular strength dependent on the viewing angle of the surface. Note that the Fresnel effect depends on the index of refraction as well. Fresnel IOR - the IOR to use when calculating Fresnel specular. Refl. Color - reflection color. Refr. Color - refraction color. Note that the actual refraction color depends on the reflection color as well.

Notes • In ward note it is not possible to have no specularity, the result will be black, this lies in the nature of

ward, when using ward don not deactivate trace specular or do not set the specular glossiness to 1 use 0.99 instead p.e.

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Diffuse Layers

Diffuse Layers Home

Examples

General The diffuse layer is basically the color of an object, although it final color is a composite of many material aspects of course. Again the diffuse layer can have a transparency mask, we have 2 diffuse layers. You can use the transparency to make mixes of both diffuse layers (handy for fast mixing textures) or you can make the diffuse both just a slight effect, like a dirty glass p.e. in the screenshot below you see the white dots in transparency that lets looks through the yellow diffuse below, also in combination with translucency, it often makes sense to keep a certain amount of diffuse to achieve a semi opak body.

Parameters

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Diffuse Color

Color - this is the diffuse color of the material. Note the actual diffuse color of the surface also depends on the reflection and refraction colors. Brightness- use this setting to adjust the brightness of a channel’s color. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Mode- use these parameters to mix the color and texture panes using one of four modes. The default mode for all channels is Normal. If you load a texture or shader, it is placed on a layer above the color (i.e. the texture is placed on top of the color). Please consult the Cinema4d documentation about the different mix modes. Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color. Roughness - this parameter controls the surface roughness for the material. A value of 0.0 produces a diffuse material, while higher values give the surface a translucent quality. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined.

Diffuse Layer

Transparency

Transparency Color - this is the transparency color of the material. Amount - use this setting to adjust the transparency of a channel. use this setting to adjust the transparency of a channel. use this setting to adjust the transparency of a channel. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Mode - use these parameters to mix the color and texture panes using one of four modes. The default mode for all channels is Normal. If you load a texture or shader, it is placed on a layer above the color (i.e. the texture is placed on top of the color). Please consult the Cinema4d documentation about the different mix modes. Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color. Invert - This option simply inverts the Texture Map, so transparent and solid areas are reversed. This works for both clipped images and images with built-in alpha channels. Map Preview Size- Here you’ll find entries from 64x64 (16 KB) to 4096x4096 (64 MB). The value controls the internal resolution of the map — the higher you set this value, the more detailed the map will be in the viewport. The value has no effect on the rendered result.Proceed with caution when increasing the Map Preview Size. Higher settings require more RAM and increase the filesize of the CINEMA 4D scene. OpenGL is also affected because the map previews must be loaded into the graphics card’s memory.

Notes • The diffuse layers are below the reflection and luminance layers, as they get covered by this effects

full or partly, so when you have a 100% reflection you will never see the diffuse layer of course, this is physical correct and makes sense, you never see that color of a mirror, the mirror will only show the reflecting environment (At most the reflection can be tinted). In real world there are very few materials that have 100% reflectivity of course. Most materials have a Fresnel effect and show also the diffuse color.

• If you have a very bright luminance (100+%) you will also not see the diffuse color.

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Refraction Layer

Refraction Layer Home

Examples

General The refraction layer/channel combines all kind of transparency and translucency effects. You can make: Glass, Sandblasted Glass, Crystals, Fluids, SSS (Subsurface Scattering), Translucency and other materials. There is also a volume effect in it to make physical correct Glass and Fluids, the thicker/deeper a transparent object or fluid is, the less transparent it gets, the volume can get tinted in a color. Best is to use a very slight and light color of the one the object shall have, so for a dark red wine it might be enough to use a slight rose tined in the volume effect, the volume also uses an IOR for refraction.

Parameters

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Refraction Color

Color - refraction color. Note that the actual refraction color depends on the reflection color as well. Brightness- use this setting to adjust the brightness of a channel color. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Mode- use these parameters to mix the color and texture panes using one of four modes. The default mode for all channels is Normal. If you load a texture or shader, it is placed on a layer above the color (i.e. the texture is placed on top of the color). Please consult the Cinema4d documentation about the different mix modes. Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color.

Refraction Layer Parameters

IOR - index of refraction for the material, which describes the way light bends when crossing the material surface. A value of 1.0 means the light will not change direction. Examples Cutoff - this is a threshold below which refractions will not be traced. VRAYforC4D tries to estimate the contribution of refractions to the image, and if it is below this threshold, these effects are not computed. Do not set this to 0.0 as it may cause excessively long render times in some cases. Affect shadows - this will cause the material to cast transparent shadows, depending on the refraction color and the fog color. If it off shadows will be opak. Affect alpha - this will cause the material to transmit the alpha of the refracted objects, instead of displaying an opaque alpha. Note that currently this works only with clear (non-glossy) refractions. Trace Refractions - if this is off, refractions will not traced, even if the refraction color is greater than black. Glossiness- controls the sharpness of refractions. A value of 1.0 means perfect glass-like refraction; lower values produce blurry or glossy refractions. Avalue 0 is a 100% rough lamber surface, you can control this material aspect with a shader or texture too. Glossiness Subdivs - control the quality of glossy refractions, adjust this to have more precise unsharp refraction, higher values give better result. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color. Invert - This option simply inverts the Texture Map, so transparent and solid areas are reversed. This works for both clipped images and images with built-in alpha channels.

Volume Fog Parameters

Enable Volume - if this is off, volume fog is disable. Volume Color - the attenuation of light as it passes through the material. This option allows to simulate the fact that thick objects look less transparent than thin objects. Note that the effect of the fog color depends on the absolute size of the objects and is therefore scene-dependent. The fog color also determines the look of the object when using translucency. Amount - the strength of the fog effect. Smaller values reduce the effect of the fog, making the material more transparent. Larger values increase the fog effect, making the material more opaque. In

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more precise terms, this is the inverse of the distance at which a ray inside the object is attenuated with am amount equal to the Volume Color. Distance Bias - this parameter allows to change the way the fog color is applied; by adjusting this parameter you can make thin parts of the object to appear more transparent than normal, or less transparent than normal. IOR - index of refraction for the material, which describes the way light bends when crossing the material surface. A value of 1.0 means the light will not change direction. Examples.

SSS Parameters

SSS on - sub-surface scattering. Light is scattered within the volume of the material or beneath the surface. This is the more physical correct approach, but needs some time to render, for faster SSS you can use the c4d SSS shader in most cases. Translucency Color - normally the color of the sub-surface scattering effect depends on the Fog color; this parameter allows you to additionally tint the SSS effect. Subdivisions - controls the quality of sub-surface scattering. Lower values will render faster, but the result will be more noisy. Higher values take longer, but produce smoother results. Light Multiplier - a multiplier for the translucent effect. Thickness - this limits the rays that will be traced below the surface. This is useful if you do not want or don't need to trace the whole sub-surface volume. Scatter Coefficient - the amount of scattering inside the object. 0.0 means rays will be scattered in all directions; 1.0 means a ray cannot change its direction inside the sub-surface volume. Scatter Direction- controls the direction of scattering for a ray. 0.0 means a ray can only go forward (away from the surface, inside the object); 0.5 means that a ray has an equal chance of going forward or backward; 1.0 means a ray will be scattered backward (towards the surface, to the outside of the object). Scatter Levels - determinate the deepness of scattering light ( how often a ray gets scattered until termination). the higher the value the more often the light is scattered within the volume. Higher values need longer render time but give nicer SSS.

Notes • For real SSS, you should have volume activated, and in most cases also some slight diffuse body and

most of the time some glossy reflection. • For “architectural glass” you can deactivate volume and just use plain refraction, you can also use

the c4d Fresnel in refraction, also almost all reflective Materials should be combined with reflection (sharp or glossy).

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Cinema4d Shaders

Cinema4d Shaders Home

VRAYforC4D support Native C4D Materials, only reflections and refractions channels don't work. Also it supports almost all native Cinema 4d shaders, for most aspects there are texture channels to control the material slots. In all texture channel slots of the VRAY material you can use the c4d shaders from cinema4d, only very few like the proximal shader are not yet supported. VRAYforC4D support 99% of the c4d shaders like noise, lumas, c4d fresnel, falloff, filter, layer, projection, distorter, fusion, colorizer,gradients, most effect shaders like spline shader, SSS (partly supported), Ambient occlusion, all surface shaders like tiles, water, wood, special shaders for mograph, etc... Even many 3rd party shaders work in first tests. we tested the great EnhanceC4D Shaders set from Chris, or the cool Add the Sea Plugin with it’s water shaders and deformers p.e. special shader that “hacks” into the Advanced render wont work, all shaders that produce a texture, gradient or pattern will work. Here you see a screenshot showing that you can use all kind of complex c4d shaders, also mixed and stacked together, with all kind of texture filters and transformations. The c4d shaders are use nativly and not wrapped, so they are really handled by c4d main app.

Notes • VRAYforC4D supports some shaders from 3-party developers, like EnhanceC4D Shaders.

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Assigment

Assigment Home

Examples

General In this box, you’ll find a list of all objects in the scene that use the selected material. Using the context menu, you can carry out commands on these objects that relate to the selected material. To open the context menu, right-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) on an object’s name in the list.

Parameters

Map Preview Size- Here you’ll find entries from 64x64 (16 KB) to 4096x4096 (64 MB). The value controls the internal resolution of the map — the higher you set this value, the more detailed the map will be in the viewport. The value has no effect on the rendered result.Proceed with caution when increasing the Map Preview Size. Higher settings require more RAM and increase the filesize of the CINEMA 4D scene. OpenGL is also affected because the map previews must be loaded into the graphics card’s memory.

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Vray2SideMaterial

Vray2SideMaterial Home

Examples

General VRay2SidedMtl material is a material that allows seeing the light on the backside of the objects. Use this material to simulate thin translucent surfaces like paper, cloth curtains, tree leaves etc.

Parameters

Basic Properties

Name - here you can enter a name for the object. Layer - If an element was assigned to a layer its layer color will be displayed here. This field reflects the layer color in the Layer Palette. You can drag & drop layers from the Layer Browser or similar layer fields onto this field. You can also assign layers or remove elements from current layers using the menus located behind the small triangle. Preview Quality - quality of material preview in preview window.

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Parameters

Front Side Material- this is the material which is going to be used for front-side faces as defined by the object normals. Back Side Material- this is the material VRAYforC4D will use for back side faces as defined by their normals. Translucency Color - this determines which side (front or back) relative to the camera is more visible in the rendering process. For example value 50%, means that both the side facing the camera, and the one facing away from it, will be visible to the same degree. When this parameter is closer to 0 the more of the material facing the camera is going be seen. When it is closer to 100%, the more of the back material is seen. Brightness- use this setting to adjust the brightness of a channel’s color. Translucency Texture - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined. Mix Mode- use these parameters to mix the color and texture panes using one of four modes. The default mode for all channels is Normal. If you load a texture or shader, it is placed on a layer above the color (i.e. the texture is placed on top of the color). Please consult the Cinema4d documentation about the different mix modes. Texture Multiplier - a multiplier for the texture value. Map Preview Size- Here you’ll find entries from 64x64 (16 KB) to 4096x4096 (64 MB). The value controls the internal resolution of the map — the higher you set this value, the more detailed the map will be in the Viewport. The value has no effect on the rendered result.Proceed with caution when increasing the Map Preview Size. Higher settings require more RAM and increase the file size of the CINEMA 4D scene. OpenGL is also affected because the map previews must be loaded into the graphics card’s memory.

Assignment

In this box, you’ll find a list of all objects in the scene that use the selected material. Using the context menu, you can carry out commands on these objects that relate to the selected material. To open the context menu, right-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) on an object’s name in the list.

Notes • This material will give best results when assigned to single side objects (non-shelled) objects like

planes, extruded splines etc. Otherwise it can lead to extremely longer render times. • Special credits to Francesco Guazzi for providing the image at the bottom of the page.

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VrayBlendMaterial

VrayBlendMaterial Home

Examples

General VRayBlendMaterial can be used to layer several Vray materials in an efficient manner. It can be used to create complex materials like car paints, human skin (when used with SSS as a base material) etc. VRayBlendMtl takes a base material and applies other materials (coatings) on top of it. This works like a stack, where each coat material blends between its own shading and that of the materials below it in the stack.

Parameters

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Basic Properties

Name - here you can enter a name for the object. Layer - If an element was assigned to a layer its layer color will be displayed here. This field reflects the layer color in the Layer Palette. You can drag & drop layers from the Layer Browser or similar layer fields onto this field. You can also assign layers or remove elements from current layers using the menus located behind the small triangle. Preview Quality - quality of material preview in preview window.

Parameters

Use Material - enables or disables use of Coat Material. Coat Material - these specify materials to use as coatings. Base Material - the base material over which other materials are layered. If this is not specified, the base material will be assumed to be a perfectly transparent material. Map Preview Size- Here you’ll find entries from 64x64 (16 KB) to 4096x4096 (64 MB). The value controls the internal resolution of the map — the higher you set this value, the more detailed the map will be in the Viewport. The value has no effect on the rendered result.Proceed with caution when increasing the Map Preview Size. Higher settings require more RAM and increase the file size of the CINEMA 4D scene. OpenGL is also affected because the map previews must be loaded into the graphics card’s memory.

Assignment

In this box, you’ll find a list of all objects in the scene that use the selected material. Using the context menu, you can carry out commands on these objects that relate to the selected material. To open the context menu, right-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) on an object’s name in the list.

Notes • Special credits to Sebastien Florand for providing the image at the bottom of the page.

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VrayDisplaceMaterial

VrayDisplaceMaterial Home

Examples

General This material allows you to control displacement of objects. Displacement is a technique for adding detail to your scene geometry without having to model it first. The concept is very similar to material bump. However, bump is a shading effect that only changes the appearance of a surface, while displacement actually modifies the surface. VrayDisplaceMaterial used in the same way like usual vray material. .

Parameters

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Basic Properties

Name - here you can enter a name for the object. Layer - If an element was assigned to a layer its layer color will be displayed here. This field reflects the layer color in the Layer Palette. You can drag & drop layers from the Layer Browser or similar layer fields onto this field. You can also assign layers or remove elements from current layers using the menus located behind the small triangle. Preview Quality - quality of material preview in preview window. Use Displacement - when this option is checked Vray Displace Material will affect object. Use as Subdivision Surface - when this option is checked Vray Displace Material will apply a subdivision scheme to the object. For triangular portions of a mesh, the Loop subdivision scheme is used. For quadrangular portions, the Catmull-Clark scheme is used. Other polygons are first converted to triangles.

Parameters

Texture - the displacement map. This can be any texture map - a bitmap, procedural map etc. Texture Type - for displacement texture you can use a classic luminace grayscale based map (Luminance texture) or Normal Map (RGB). Amount - the amount of displacement. A value of 0.0 means the object will appear unchanged. Higher values produce a greater displacement effect. This can also be negative, in which case the displacement will push geometry inside the object. Intensity of the displacement is sets in really world units, thous units are taken from the c4d units of the file, if you change the units there also the displacement size changes accordingly. Shift - this specifies a constant, which will be added to the displacement map values, effectively shifting the displaced surface up and down along the normals. This can be either positive or negative. Keep continuity - using this will try to produce a connected surface, without splits. Use Global parameters - when this option is off VRAYforC4D's displacement tag will use own displacement parameters, not Displacement Render Settings values. View dependent - when this is on, Edge length determines the maximum length of a subtriangle edge, in pixels. A value of 1.0 means that the longest edge of each sub triangle will be about one pixel long when projected on the screen. When View-dependent is off, Edge length is the maximum sub triangle edge length in world units. Edge length - this determines the quality of the displacement. Each triangle of the original mesh is subdivided into a number of subtriangles. More subtriangles mean more detail in the displacement, slower rendering times and more RAM usage. Less subtriangles mean less detail, faster rendering and less RAM. The meaning of Edge length depends on the View-dependent parameter below. Max subdivs - this controls the maximum subtriangles generated from any triangle of the original mesh. The value is in fact the square root of the maximum number of subtriangles. For example, a value of 256 means that at most 256 x 256 = 65536 subtriangles will be generated for any given original triangle. It is not a good idea to keep this value very high. If you need to use higher values, it will be better to tessellate the original mesh itself into smaller triangles instead.

Notes • You can use with VrayDisplaceMaterial normal maps in Texture slot in RGB mode of Texture Type.

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Displacement Tag

Displacement Tag Home

Examples

General This section allows you to control displacement of objects with displacement tag on it. It`s old way in VRAYforC4D now, but still can be usefull, you can use new one VrayDisplaceMaterial. Displacement is a technique for adding detail to your scene geometry without having to model it first. The concept is very similar to material bump. However, bump is a shading effect that only changes the appearance of a surface, while displacement actually modifies the surface.

Displacement Tag is a simple object tag, just select the object and right click on it to add the VrayDisplacement Tag in the tag you can output in any texture or shader or combination. The tag needs also a vray material applied. It uses the UVW method of the first left material.

Parameters

Basic Properties

Name - here you can enter a name for the object.

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Layer - If an element was assigned to a layer its layer color will be displayed here. This field reflects the layer color in the Layer Palette. You can drag & drop layers from the Layer Browser or similar layer fields onto this field. You can also assign layers or remove elements from current layers using the menus located behind the small triangle.

Geometry Parameters

On - when this option is on VRAYforC4D's displacement tag will affect to object. Use Global parameters - when this option is off VRAYforC4D's displacement tag will use own displacement parameters, not Displacement Render Settings values. View dependent - when this is on, Edge length determines the maximum length of a subtriangle edge, in pixels. A value of 1.0 means that the longest edge of each sub triangle will be about one pixel long when projected on the screen. When View-dependent is off, Edge length is the maximum sub triangle edge length in world units. Edge length - this determines the quality of the displacement. Each triangle of the original mesh is subdivided into a number of subtriangles. More subtriangles mean more detail in the displacement, slower rendering times and more RAM usage. Less subtriangles mean less detail, faster rendering and less RAM. The meaning of Edge length depends on the View-dependent parameter below. Max subdivs - this controls the maximum subtriangles generated from any triangle of the original mesh. The value is in fact the square root of the maximum number of subtriangles. For example, a value of 256 means that at most 256 x 256 = 65536 subtriangles will be generated for any given original triangle. It is not a good idea to keep this value very high. If you need to use higher values, it will be better to tessellate the original mesh itself into smaller triangles instead.

Mapping Parameters

Texture - the displacement map. This can be any texture map - a bitmap, procedural map etc. Amount - the amount of displacement. A value of 0.0 means the object will appear unchanged. Higher values produce a greater displacement effect. This can also be negative, in which case the displacement will push geometry inside the object. Intensity of the displacement is sets in really world units, thous units are taken from the c4d units of the file, if you change the units there also the displacement size changes accordingly. Shift - this specifies a constant, which will be added to the displacement map values, effectively shifting the displaced surface up and down along the normals. This can be either positive or negative. Keep continuity - using this will try to produce a connected surface, without splits.

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Vray OverrideMaterial

VrayOverrideMaterial Home

Examples

General This material allows a surface to look in a different way depending on whether it is seen through reflections, refractions or GI. With this material you can get a fine control over the color bleeding, reflections, refractions and shadows of the objects.

Parameters

Basic Properties

Name - here you can enter a name for the object. Layer - If an element was assigned to a layer its layer color will be displayed here. This field reflects the layer color in the Layer Palette. You can drag & drop layers from the Layer Browser or similar layer fields onto this field. You can also assign layers or remove elements from current layers using the menus located behind the small triangle. Preview Quality - quality of material preview in preview window.

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Parameters

Base Material - this is the material VRAYforC4D will use while rendering the object. GI Material - this is the material VRAYforC4D will use while calculating the GI solution. Reflection Material - this is the material material VRAYforC4D will use to render the object with, when the object is seen in reflections. Refraction Material - this is the material VRAYforC4D will use to render the object with, when the object is seen through refractions. Shadow Material - this is the material that will be used to render shadows cast from the object. Map Preview Size- Here you’ll find entries from 64x64 (16 KB) to 4096x4096 (64 MB). The value controls the internal resolution of the map — the higher you set this value, the more detailed the map will be in the Viewport. The value has no effect on the rendered result.Proceed with caution when increasing the Map Preview Size. Higher settings require more RAM and increase the file size of the CINEMA 4D scene. OpenGL is also affected because the map previews must be loaded into the graphics card’s memory.

Assignment

In this box, you’ll find a list of all objects in the scene that use the selected material. Using the context menu, you can carry out commands on these objects that relate to the selected material. To open the context menu, right-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) on an object’s name in the list.

Notes

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Vray Compositing Tag

Vray Compositing Tag Home

Examples

General This section allows you to control visibility of objects at render.

Vray Compositing Tag is a simple object tag that control of object different ways of visibility, just select the object and right click on it to add the VrayCompositing Tag.

Parameters

Basic Properties

Name - here you can enter a name for the object. Layer - If an element was assigned to a layer its layer color will be displayed here. This field reflects the layer color in the Layer Palette. You can drag & drop layers from the Layer Browser or similar layer fields onto this field. You can also assign layers or remove elements from current layers using the menus located behind the small triangle.

Comp Properties

Visible to camera - if this is on, object will be visible for camera and object will be rendered. Cast Shadows- if this is on, object will have shadows.

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Generate GIs - if this is off, object will not be used in GI calculation. Show in reflections - if this is on, object will take part in reflection on other objects. Show in refractions - if this is on, object will take part in refraction on other objects. Object visibility - , with this option you can change visibility of the object, it also can be animated.

Surface Properties

Generate GI - controls the GI generated by the material. Recieve GI - controls the GI received by the material. Generate Caustics - controls the Caustics generated by the material. Receive Caustics - controls the Caustics received by the material.

Matte Properties

Matte surface - makes the material appear as a matte material, which shows the background, instead of the base material, when viewed directly. Note that the base material is still used for things like GI, caustics, reflections etc. Alpha contribution - determines the appearance of the object in the alpha channel of the rendered image. A value of 1.0 means the alpha channel will be derived from the transparency of the base material. A value of 0.0 means the object will not appear in the alpha channel at all and will show the alpha of the objects behind it. A value of -1.0 means that the transparency of the base material will cut out from the alpha of the objects behind. Matte objects are typically given an alpha contribution of -1.0. Note that this option is independent of the Matte surface option (i.e. a surface can have an alpha contribution of -1.0 without being a matte surface). Shadows - turn this on to make shadow visible on the matte surface. Affect alpha - turn this on to make shadows affect the alpha contribution of the matte surface. Areas in perfect shadow will produce white alpha, while completely unoccluded areas will produce black alpha. Note that GI shadows are also computed, however GI shadows on matte objects are not supported by the photon map and the light map GI engines, when used as primary engines. You can safely use those with matte surfaces as secondary engines. Color - an optional tint for the shadows on the matte surface. Brightness - an optional brightness parameter for the shadows on the matte surface. A value of 0.0 will make the shadows completely invisible, while a value of 1.0 will show the full shadows. Reflection amount - shows the reflections from the material. Refraction amount - shows the refractions from the material. GI amount - determines the amount of GI shadows. No GI on other mattes - this will cause the object to appear as a matte object in reflections, refractions, GI etc for other matte objects. Note that if this is on, refractions for the matte object might not be calculated (the object will appear a matte object to itself and will not be able to "see" the refractions on the other side).

Misc Properties

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GI surface ID - this number can be used to prevent the blending of light cache samples across different surfaces. If two objects have different GI surface IDs, the light cache samples of the two objects will not be blended. This can be useful to prevent light leaks between objects of vastly different illumination.

Add to Object Buffer

Add to Object Buffer

- Use this options to specify up to 10 object buffer IDs for the object. These object channels correspond to the object channels defined in the Multi-Pass setting’s Channel menu. If you subsequently define an object channel in the Multi-Pass settings with an ID of 1, an alpha channel will be created that matches the object. This method can be used to create any number of alpha channels. An ID of 1 can also be assigned to other objects, letting you combine a wide variety of objects that can be output as alpha channels. Refer to the Multi-Pass description for more details.

Notes

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VRay Motion Blur Tag

VRay Motion Blur Tag Home

Examples

General In VRAYforC4d you can add a Vray Motion Blur tag to have extra control of motion blur of objects.

Parameters

Name - here you can enter a name for the object. Layer - If an element was assigned to a layer its layer color will be displayed here. This field reflects the layer color in the Layer Palette. You can drag & drop layers from the Layer Browser or similar layer fields onto this field. You can also assign layers or remove elements from current layers using the menus located behind the small triangle. Motion Blur Samples - this value determines number of samples VRAYforC4D takes into account when blurring the current frame. Increasing this value produces smoother results at the cost of increased rendering times.

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Vray Material Converter

Vray Material Converter Home

General This plugin allow you to convert Cinema4D materials to VRAYforC4D materials with one click only.

Channels converting guide

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VRayLight parameters

VrayLight parameters Home

Examples

General Basically VRAYforC4d uses native c4d lights and cameras. To expand their functionality to all VRAY features you should actually add a Vray light tag or a vray camera tag, this tags give You extra control about vray specific features, one you applied the light tag, all light settings are made in the Tag only, we decided to do so to make the huge amount of settings better to overview.

Parameters VRAYforC4D Light Tag Tabs:

Common Tab Spot light Area light Sun light IES Light

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Vray Light - Common Tab

Vray Light - Common Tab Home

Examples

General Here you can adjust color intensity, turn shadow on or off. You can also define if you want to use real world light decay or not.

Parameters

Light type - specifies the light type: Omni light- An Omni light source acts like a real life light bulb — casting rays in all directions. Spot light - Spotlights cast their rays in just one direction, which is along the Z-axis by default. Infinite light - light type is so called because it mimics light that is cast from an infinite distance.

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Area light - The light rays from an Area light expand from all points on its surface outwards in all directions. A rectangular computer screen is a good example of such a light. Parallel light - Parallel lights resemble a very distant light source. The Parallel light has an origin and simulates a large, single axis wall of light. These lights take the appearance of an infinitely large surface, radiating parallel light in a single direction. Intensity Units - allows choosing the light units. Only in Area light type mode. Using correct units is essential when you work with the VRayPhysicalCamera. The light will automatically take the scene units scale into consideration to produce the correct result for the scale you are working with. The possible values are: Default (image) - the color and multiplier directly determine the visible color of the light without any conversion. The light surface will appear with the given color in the final image when seen directly by the camera (assuming there is no color mapping involved). Luminous power (lm) - total emitted visible light power measured in lumen. When this setting is used, the intensity of the light will not depend on its size. A typical 100W electric bulb emits about 1500 lumen of light. Luminance (lm/m^2/sr) - visible light surface power measured in lumen per square meter per steradian. When this setting is used, the intensity of the light depends on its size. Radiant power (W) - total emitted visible light power measured in watts. When using this setting, the intensity of the light does not depend on its size. Keep in mind that this is not the same as the electric power consumed by a light bulb for example. A typical 100W light bulb only emits between 2 and 3 watts as visible light. Radiance (W/mІ/sr) - visible light surface power measured in watts per square meter per steradian. When this setting is used, the intensity of the light depends on its size. Intensity - the light intensity in the units chosen by the Intensity Units parameter. Cut-off threshold - this parameter specifies a threshold for the light intensity, below which the light will not be computed. This can be useful in scenes with many lights, where you want to limit the effect of the lights to some distance around them. Larger values cut away more from the light; lower values make the light range larger. If you specify 0.0, the light will be calculated for all surfaces. Light color presets - some common Kelvin Light Source temperatures coupled with their RGB Equivalents. Note that this temperature has nothing to do with how "hot" a light source is - just with the color of its light. A light source with a low Kelvin temperature is very red. One with a high Kelvin temperature is very blue. More accurately, when we see two light sources side by side in a scene, the higher Kelvin light appears more blue, and the lower Kelvin light appears more red. Its all relative. Light color - the color of the light. When using photometric units, this color is mixed with Filter color from IES Light tab. Affect diffuse - this determines whether the light is affecting the diffuse properties of the materials. Affect specular - this determines whether the light is affecting the specular of the materials. Enable shadows - when on (the default), the light casts shadows. Turn this option off to disable shadow casting for the light. Shadows color - the color of the shadow. Shadow bias - bias moves the shadow toward or away from the shadow-casting object (or objects). If the Bias value is too low, shadows can "leak" through places they shouldn't, produce moire patterns or making out-of-place dark areas on meshes. If Bias is too high, shadows can "detach" from an object. If the Bias value is too extreme in either direction, shadows might not be rendered at all.

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Shadow radius - adjusts the softness of non area shadows. Shadow subdivisions - this value controls the number of samples VRAYforC4D takes to compute shadow. Lower values mean more noisy results, but will render faster. Higher values produce smoother results but take more time. Note that the actual number of samples also depends on the DMC settings. Photon subdivisions - this settings define the quality of light sampling for caustic calculation. Caustic subdivisions - this option controls the amount of photons that VRAYforC4D will trace to estimate caustics. Large numbers slow down the calculation of the caustics photon map and may take more memory. Beam radius - adjusts the wideness (radius) of parallel light. Decay - allows choosing the behave of light intensity with distance. normally the light intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the light (surfaces that are farther from the light are darker than surfaces which are closer to the light). The possible values are: None - when this option is on the intensity will not decay with distance. Inverse - light intensity inversely proportional to the distance from the light. Inverse square - light intensity inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the light. It`s normal behavior of light.

Notes • VRAYforC4D uses real to physical light calculation, therefore there is no parameter to set the light

falloff distance, as in real nature the light fall of is always inverse square and only influenced by the intensity of the light. In vray it is just the same, the stronger a light is the wider the falloff is. We strongly recommend using decay for all kind of lights, it will give you better results. In Vray there is no need for cheating with lights.

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Vray Light - Spot light

Vray Light - Spot light Home

Examples

General Here you can determine Spot light parameters.

Parameters

Cone angle - angle of light funnel. Penumbra angle - gradient of shadow boundary, can be equal or more than cone angle. Barn-Door effect - four side shutter for light. The values are: Left Door angle - left shutter value. Right Door angle - right shutter value. Top Door angle - top shutter value. Bottom Door angle - bottom shutter value.

Notes

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Vray Light - Area light

Vray Light - Area light Home

Examples

General Here you can determine Area light parameters.

Parameters

Area type - specifies the area light type: Rectangle- light has the shape of a planar rectangle. Sphere - light has the shape of a sphere. Dome - light acts like the Sky. The light is coming from a hemispherical dome above the y-axis of the light. Size X - the X length (width) of the light source, measured in scene units. This parameter is ignored for Sphere or Dome lights. Size Y - the Y length (height) of the light source, measured in scene units. This parameter is ignored for Sphere or Dome lights. Radius - If Sphere or Dome light source is selected this value corresponds to the sphere's radius, measured in scene units.

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Affect reflections - this determines whether the light will appear in reflections of materials. Invisible - this setting controls whether the shape of the VRayLight source is visible in the render result. When this option is turned off the source is rendered in the current Light color. Otherwise it is not visible in the scene. Note that this option only affects the visibility of the light when seen directly by the camera or through refractions. Subdivisions - this value controls the number of samples VRAYforC4D takes to compute lighting. Lower values mean more noisy results, but will render faster. Higher values produce smoother results but take more time. Note that the actual number of samples also depends on the DMC Sampler settings. No decay - normally the light intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the light (surfaces that are farther from the light are darker than surfaces which are closer to the light). When this option is on the intensity will not decay with distance. Store with irradiance map - when this option is on and GI calculation is set to Irradiance map VRAYforC4D will calculate the effects of the VRay Light and store them in the irradiance map. The result is that the irradiance map is computed more slowly but the rendering takes less time. You can also save the irradiance map and reuse it later. Double-sided - when the light is a rectangle light source this option controls whether light is beamed from both sides of the rectangle. This field has no effect for Sphere or Dome light sources. Light portal - when this option is on, the Color parameter are ignored; instead the light will take its intensity from the environment behind it. Ignore light normals - normally, the surface of the source emits light equally in all directions. When this option is off, more light is emitted in the direction of the source surface normal.

Light Dome

Spherical Dome - when on, this option causes the dome light to cover the entire sphere around the scene. When off (the default), the light covers a hemisphere only. Texture - specifies an environment texture for the Dome light. Mapping type - determinates how the HDRI image will be mapped on the light dome. Texture resolution- specifies the resolution at which the texture is resampled for importance sampling. Photon target radius - for the Dome light, defines a sphere around the light icon where photons are being shot when photon-mapped caustics or the global photon map are used. Photon emit radius - for the Dome light, defines a sphere around the light icon from which photons are being shot towards the target radius area.

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Vray Light - Sun light

Vray Light - Sun light Home

Examples

General The Physical Sun and Physical Sky are developed to work together, they reproduce the real-life Sun and Sky environment of the Earth. Both are coded so that they change their appearance depending on the direction of the Physical Sun The VRAYforC4D Sun and Sky are based largely on the SIGGRAPH'99 paper "A Practical Analytic Model for Daylight" by A. J. Preetham, Peter Shirley, Brian Smits.

Parameters

Physical Sun - turns on and off the sun light. Sun invisible - when on, this option makes the sun invisible, both to the camera and to reflections. This is useful to prevent bright speckles on glossy surfaces where a ray with low probability hits the extremely bright sun disk. Physical Sky - turns on and off the sky light and environment. Sky intensity multiplier - this is an intensity multiplier for the Physical Sky. The multiplier can be set to greater than 100%. Note that Physical Sky intensity increasing does not affect Physical Sun brightness intensity. Override Background Env - when this option is unchecked Physical Sky has no effect to Background and Background from Enviroment tab will be visible on render. Override GI Env - when this option is unchecked Physical Sky has no effect to GI Enviroment and GI Enviroment from Enviroment tab will be visible on render.

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Override Reflection Env - when this option is unchecked Physical Sky has no effect to Reflection and Reflection from Enviroment tab will be visible on render. Override Refraction Env - when this option is unchecked Physical Sky has no effect to Refraction and Refraction from Enviroment tab will be visible on render. Turbidity - this parameter determines the amount of dust in the air and affects the color of the sun and sky. Smaller values produce a clear and blue sky and sun as you get in the country, while larger values make them yellow and orange as, for example, in a big city. For further info, please see the Examples section. Ozone - this parameter affects the color of the sun light. Available in the range between 0.0 and 1.0. Smaller values make the sunlight more yellow, larger values make it blue. For further info, please see the Examples section. Water vapour - aqueous vapor, is the gas phase of water. Water vapor is one state of the water cycle within the hydrosphere. Not used in current version. Intensity multiplier for Phys Cam - this is an intensity multiplier for the Physical Sun. Since the sun is very bright by default, you can use this parameter to reduce its effect. See the Notes and Examples sections for more information. Intensity multiplier for Std Cam - this is an intensity multiplier for the Physical Sun. Since the sun is very bright by default, you can use this parameter to reduce its effect. This multiplier affects only on Cinema4D Camera render, even if it have VRay Physical Camera Tag on it. Size Multiplier - this parameter controls the visible size of the sun. This affects the appearance of the sun disc as seen by the camera and reflections, as well as the blurriness of the sun shadows. For further information, please see the Examples section. Photon emit radius - determines the radius of the area, in where photons would be shot. Photon emit distance - determines the distance of the area, in where photons would be shot. This area is represented by the green cyllinder around the Sun's ray vector. This parameter has effect when photons are used in the GI solutions or caustics.

Notes • By default, the VRaySun and VRaySky are very bright. In the real world, the average solar

irradiance is about 1000 W/m^2. Since the image output in VRAYforC4D is in W/m^2/sr, you will typically find that the average RGB values produces by the sun and the sky are about 200.0-300.0 units. This is quite correct from a physical point of view, but is not enough for a nice image. You can either use Color mapping to bring these values to a smaller range (which is the preferred way) or you can use the Sun intensity multiplier to make the sun less bright. Using the VRayPhysicalCamera with suitable values also produces a correct result without changing the sun and sky parameters.

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Vray Light - IES Light

Vray Light - IES Light Home

Examples

General Here you can use IES lights. IES standard file format was created for the electronic transfer of photometric data over the web. It has been widely used by many lighting manufacturers and is one of the industry standards in photometric data distribution. An IES file is basically the measurement of distribution of light (intensity) stored in ASCII format.

Parameters

On - turns on and off the IES lights use. IES File - Path to IES file. Filter color - the color of the IES light. This color is mixed with Light color from Common Light tab. Filter multiplier - IES light intensity multiplier. Soft shadows - turns on and off the soft shadows for IES lights.

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Ies Preview

Camera distance from the floor - with this options you can adjust how far camera in preview will be from IES light. Light distance from the floor - with this options you can adjust how far IES light will be from the floor. Camera distance from the wall - with this options you can adjust how far camera in preview will be from IES light. Light distance from the wall - with this options you can adjust how far IES light will be from the wall. Ies Preview - show the IES preview. Front Preview - this option change IES preview from floor to wall preview.

Notes • IES Preview madded only for preview IES files, and changes in it does not affect on IES Light

behavior in scene.

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VRay Physical Camera

VRay Physical Camera Home

Examples

General The VRayPhysicalCamera allows you to use real-world parameters to set up the virtual CG camera (e.g. f-stop, lens focal length etc). It also makes it easier to use light sources with real-world illumination.

Parameters

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Basic

Name - here you can enter a name for the object. Layer - If an element was assigned to a layer its layer color will be displayed here. This field reflects the layer color in the Layer Palette. You can drag & drop layers from the Layer Browser or similar layer fields onto this field. You can also assign layers or remove elements from current layers using the menus located behind the small triangle.

Lens parameters

Use Physical Camera - when this option is checked VRAYforC4D's Physical camera tag will affect to c4d camera. Camera type - specifies the type of the camera: Still camera - simulates a still photo camera with a regular shutter. Movie camera - simulates a motion-picture camera with a circular shutter. Video camera - simulates a shutter-less video camera with a CCD matrix. Zoom factor - specifies a zoom factor. Values greater than 1.0 zoom into the image; values smaller than 1.0 zoom out. This is similar to a blow-up rendering of the image. Lens Distortion - specifies the distortion coefficient for the camera lens. A value of 0.0 means no distortion; positive values produce "barell" distortion, while negative values produce "pillow" distortion. Lens shift - allows the simulation of shift lenses for 2-point perspective. Changing this parameter is similar to applying a Camera correction modifier. Vignetting effects - when this option is on, the optical vignetting effect of real-world cameras is simulated. You can also specify the amount of the vignetting effect, where 0.0 is no vignetting and 1.0 is normal vignetting. White balance presets - presets for different day time conditions. White balance - allows additional modification of the image output. Objects in the scene that have the specified color will appear white in the image. Note that only the color hue is taken into consideration; the brightness of the color is ignored. Exposure - when this option is on, the F-Stop, Shutter speed and Film ISO will affect the image brightness. Fixed exposure increments - when this option is on, you can use physical camera as a real camera; all real camera works with not user defined value for f stop, iso and timing, but you can increase or decrease values with stop fraction. One stop define for the camera, half or double of light quantity for final shot,for example if you set f stop from 5.6 to 8 you will use half light for your shot. Store exposure - this option can be used to optimize DOF and Motion Blur use, to use this you must use On first Fixed exposure increments. First you must find correct exposure with fixed increments, then turn on store exposure, then turn On DOF or Motion Blur and now you can modify fstop or timing for sampling feature without exposure modification. 1 stop increment - 50% plus or minus. Film ISO - determines the film power (i.e. sensitivity). Smaller values make the image darker, while larger values make it brighter. 1/3 stop increment - 33% plus or minus.

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F-Stop - determines the width of the camera aperture and, indirectly, exposure. If the Exposure option is checked, changing the f-stop will affect the image brightness. 1/3 stop increment - 33% plus or minus. Shutter speed - the shutter speed, in inverse seconds, for the still photographic camera. For example, shutter speed of 1/30 s corresponds to a value of 30 for this parameter. Shutter angle - shutter angle (in degrees) for the cinematic camera. Shutter offset - shutter offset (in degrees) for the cinematic camera. Latency - CCD matrix latency, in seconds, for the video camera.

Sampling

MBlur

on - turns on motion blur. DOF on - turns on depth of field sampling. DOF display threshold- determinates the detail quality of the dof calculation, lower values means more quality but longer rendertime. Higher values speed up rendering. Subdivision - determines the number of samples (rays) for calculating depth of field. Bokeh effects - defines the shape of the camera aperture. When this option is off, perfectly circular aperture is simulated. When on, a polygonal aperture is simulated. Blades number - Number of blades. Blades rotation - defines the rotation of the blades. Center bias - defines a bias shape for the bokeh effects. Positive values make the outer edge of the bokeh effects brighter; negative values make the center of the effect brighter. Bokeh anisotropy - allows stretching of the bokeh effect horizontally or vertically to simulate anamorphic lenses.

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VRay Camera Dome

VRay Camera Dome Home

Examples

General This Tag allow your to make spherical type of image.

Parameters

Name - here you can enter a name for the object. Layer - If an element was assigned to a layer its layer color will be displayed here. This field reflects the layer color in the Layer Palette. You can drag & drop layers from the Layer Browser or similar layer fields onto this field. You can also assign layers or remove elements from current layers using the menus located behind the small triangle. Field of View - determinates the angle of view, this can be set to 360 degree ( it over rides the 180degree limit of the c4d cam. Flip X - mirrors the image in X. Flip Y - mirrors the image in Y.

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Vray Proxy

Vray Proxy Home

Examples

General

VrayProxy allows you to use geometry from an external mesh at render time only. The object geometry is not present in the memory or scene and does not take many resources. This allows the rendering of scenes with many trillions of triangles - more than Cinema4D itself can handle.

Materials are not saved in the .Vrmesh file, so use Cinema4D materials with proxy objects, like with any other Cinema4D object. You can convert .obj files to .Vrmesh files with the help of the ply2Vrmesh converter tool, it`s MS-DOS command line utility or use Vrmesh Exporter Tag. • Export c4d object to .obj (File - Export - Wavefront). • Download ply2Vrmesh tool. • Use it in any free commander, like simple ms-dos utility. ply2vrmesh <inputFile>.obj <outputFile>.vrmesh This converts the given .ply or .obj file and writes it to the given .vrmesh file. Note that you must specify the file extension, it will not be added automatically. For example: ply2vrmesh.exe grass.obj grass.vrmesh -smoothNormals There are also additional options that you can specify:

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-smoothNormals - generates smooth vertex normals. Only valid for .obj files. -flipNormals - reverses the face normals. Only valid for .obj files. -mapChannel <chanIndex> - stores the UVW coordinates to the specified mapping channel (default is 1). Only valid for .obj files.

Parameters

Basic Properties

Name - here you can enter a name for the object. Layer - If an element was assigned to a layer its layer color will be displayed here. This field reflects the layer color in the Layer Palette. You can drag & drop layers from the Layer Browser or similar layer fields onto this field. You can also assign layers or remove elements from current layers using the menus located behind the small triangle. Visible in Editor - Controls whether the selected objects are visible or invisible in the Viewport. Visible in Renderer - Controls whether the selected objects are visible or invisible in the renderer.. Use Color - Determines whether the selected objects use their display color. Off switches off the display color so that material colors are used instead. Automatic means the display color is only used if the object has no materials. Always means the display color is always used, even if the object has materials. If a primitive is assigned to a layer, selecting Layer will color the primitive using the color of that layer. Display Color - Defines the display color. Click the color box to access the system color chooser or click the small triangle to access CINEMA 4D’s color chooser. Choose the desired color.

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Shaded Wire Mode - controls when the Shaded Wire Color will be used: never Off, only if the object has no materials Automatic or always Always. Shaded Wire Color - You can define a custom wireframe color for the object that will be used when the object is inactive. Wireframe colors are visible in the following Viewport display modes (set the desired mode from the view’s Display menu). Enabled - Switches generators, deformers and primitives on or off. Disabled objects are not visible in the Viewport. X-Ray - If this option is enabled, the selected objects will be semi-transparent. All points and edges can then still be seen when using a shaded display mode, such as Gouraud shading.

Coordinates

P [XYZ m] - Displays the position of objects lying within a hierarchy, based on the world coordinate system the prevailing coordinate system. S [XYZ ] - Displays the scale of objects lying within a hierarchy, based on the world coordinate system or the prevailing coordinate system. R [HPB °] - Displays the rotation of objects lying within a hierarchy, based on the world coordinate system or the prevailing coordinate system.

Object Properties

Linked Object - you can link Vrmesh Exporter Tag from object with proxy, so object will be used like proxy without making proxy instance manualy. It`s good for making proxy instance from object in scene. Use Filename - when this option is on VRAYforC4D will use Vrmesh file for proxy. Vrmesh file - this is the source .vrmesh file. Choose it on your computer.

Notes • The geometry generated by the proxy object is not modifiable, but you can replace proxy object on

hard drive with new version of object. • If you need to create several VrayProxies in Cinema4D linked to the same .Vrmesh file, it's better to

make them instances - this will save memory since the .Vrmesh file will be loaded only once, especialy it good with Mogrpah.

• For now in Cinema4D VrayProxy object can`t be used with material Selection, so you need make separate proxy object for different parts of one c4d mesh, for example, if you want make Proxy Tree, you need to make Proxy bark object and Proxy leaves object, and apply different materials to it.

• You can use .Vrmesh files generated in other applications, like 3ds Max - for example. • The ply2Vrmesh tool understands most of the popular .ply formats, both ASCII and binary, big-

endian or little-endian.

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Vrmesh Exporter Tag

Vrmesh Exporter Tag Home

Examples

General This Tag allow your to make quick vray proxy mesh in scene, so no need to make it manualy. Vray proxy mesh will be generated automaticly when you hit render.

Parameters

Name - here you can enter a name for the object. Layer - If an element was assigned to a layer its layer color will be displayed here. This field reflects the layer color in the Layer Palette. You can drag & drop layers from the Layer Browser or similar layer fields onto this field. You can also assign layers or remove elements from current layers using the menus located behind the small triangle. Enable Smoothing - generates smooth vertex normals.

THE END & have fun with VrayC4D

cheers from VRAYforC4D Team PS: If you have any suggestion to improve this manual, please feel free to write it to gantonr@gmail.com