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Hi everyone It’s our second period

which will be about the basics of Cinema 4D and renderers

Today we will be going over three things

First the basic settings for Cinema 4D

second the rendering theory

and third the physically based rendering

Many people don't know much

about the physically based rendering

and how important it is

So to help these people out

I will explain why physically based rendering

is important and what it is about

We need to know about the theory

because it is the basic element for the Octane renderer

which we will learn in the third period

I tried making it interesting and I hope it is

Before we get into the theories

I will run Cinema 4D first

and explain the interface and the workflow pipelines

that I mainly use

These things are not so easy to follow

especially for beginners

So you might not understand

these tips that I give about the pipelines

But don’t worry just follow through

and as we continue our lectures

you will begin to understand

Let’s run Cinema 4D

and I’ll explain the interface, object, and renders

So, this is what you see when you run Cinema 4D

Some of you may be familiar with this

but for those who are new, I will briefly explain

The initial screen of the Cinema 4D

is actually much more familiar than other softwares

If this was 3D max

it would have a lot of texts

But this screen has many icons

and they can be distinguished by colors

So it’s much more familiar

And with the updates, the graphics improved

and the icons became more explicit

These colors all have meanings

and they are grouped too

Like I’ve mentioned before

I'm using the s22 version of the Cinema 4D

I think I've told you that it was r22

But it's s, s22

That's the version I'm using

If you have s20 or s21 versions, don't worry

It's good enough for this course

But I’ll be using the latest version

I hope no one is using the outdated version

The r16 version has different names

and icons, with different locations

Anyway, I’ll be using the latest version

because most users are using this

The first thing that I do

is to add something

I’ll add a cube with this blue icon

You can see three changes

here, here, and here

This is the viewport window

where the world that we create

is shown to us and at the same time

a list is generated in this window

Let's add something else Click and hold this icon

Do you see this small arrow in the corner?

It means that there is a hidden menu

that expands when you click and hold

Let’s add a sphere

There’s no change in the viewport

because it's hidden inside the cube

Let’s move this cube away

Click this arrow and move the cube

And you can see the sphere now

So now you can see the sphere

and the cube

You can switch this Attribute window

by clicking on each shape

In this Attribute window

you can change the settings of each object

You can select both objects

and move them together

But there is a way to combine them

Press Alt + G on the keyboard

and you can group the objects together

Or let’s click and hold

on the cube icon again and create a Null object

Then you can add the two objects

in the null object, and group them

You can change the properties

of the sphere in the attribute window

This Attribute window makes it easy

for you to changes the values

of the properties of the objects

But it has it's limits

In this mode, I can't change

or modify each side of the object

In order to do that

you need to click on this icon

that says Make Editable

You can see a tag added here

It’s a UV tab

Then select the polygon mode

and you can change the direction and position of the sides

or you can select the spline mode

and modify the splines

This command can't be undone once you've made the object Editable

you can’t take it back

Ctrl + Z will still work

but you can't change the size of the object later

So it's the best to find

the optimal settings

before going into Make Editable

Let’s add some colors here

This here below is the Material window

There's nothing here for the moment

Click Create then New Default Material

to add a Material

Or you can just double click here

Double click and double click again

Delete them all then double click

I’ll add this Material to this sphere

Just drag and drop it here

Let’s try changing the color

Double click on the Material

This is the Material Editor

and you can change the color

I want to make this one blue

You can double click and add a new material

or you can copy this one

Hold Ctrl and drag this

and you can see that a new Material has been added

Drag that and add it here

Double click on the material

and you can change its color too

Here, you can see that adding the material

has created a new tag

These tags are added

when you have additional settings for the object

It's one of the greatest things about Cinema 4D

that the other 3D tools don't have

The basic tag is called as Phong tag

This sphere is angular on the sides

but it looks very smooth and round

from the front

Thats what Phong does

It makes the angles smooth

If I remove the Phong... Oh sorry, I selected the cube

I’ll select the sphere

Can you see how it changes

as I move the Phong tag?

Without it these objects have angles under this value

will be shown as they are

but the Phong tag makes it smooth

I added one Material tag

but you can add multiple Material tags

Let’s try changing the color

and make the Sphere blue

You can drag the blue to the object

Or you can drag it here

The existing tag is still there

and a new tag is added

The tag on the right appears on the top layer

You can change the order of the tags

And it's red again The Material tags

can be overlapped when there's something here

in the Selection tag But in this case

they are separate and the one on the right

appears prior to the left one

Let’s click side and the sphere

Select some sides and make them red

Don't drop the material here

Just drop it on the polygons that you selected

and you can change their color You can see

that another tag has been added Click on it

and you can select the polygons

that you just chose to change

If you click on this Material

you can see that in the Selection this tag is added

Let’s make a new tag

I’ll select these four

Click Select on top and Set Selection

And now there is a new Selection tag

I’ll add this Material again

It's applied to the whole object

But drag the new Selection tag and drop it here in Selection

Then it's applied only to the newly selected polygons

In Cinema 4D, you can add

the properties of the object

to the tags Now I’ll explain

relative paths and absolute paths

Many people don't know this

but it's very important in team projects

If you don’t know this

and work with absolute path

the file will open normally in your PC

but it may not in someone else's

That’s because the path is set

to the path on your PC. To prevent that

we need to use relative path Let's try saving

this great exercise on my PC

Click file on the top

and Save Project As Honestly, this is too much work for me

So I just use the shortcut key

Press Ctrl + Shift + S for this task

I’ll save this exercise

This folder is called ‘Exercise’ As you can see

I named the folders in Korean

I always use English for folder names

because it works fine on Cinema 4D

but some softwares that I use don’t support Korean

I've had a hard time because I named the folders in Korean

and there were errors with the software so when I name the files

I always use English and I never insert asterisks

I hate to see them

Just don't use any of the special characters

I’ll open this folder that says ‘Period 2’

then this folder ‘C4D’

It sounds like a swear word in Korean

Anyways open it and I already have a saved file here

I’ll just save it again

You have to know how to save your projects

This unit is one the basics

and the unit is about Cinema 4D

so let’s type that and put underscore

then version 002 The version 001

is the file that's already there Then click save

Now let’s open that folder

When opening the file explorer

you can right click on the folder icon here

But there is a shortcut key for that too

On your keyboard there's a window key

between Ctrl and Alt keys

Press Window and E to open the file explorer

So let’s find the file in ‘Period 2’ -> ‘C4D’

And here it is

In order to explain the relative and absolute paths

I'll add a Material image

In the parent folder you will find a folder

named ‘Tex’ Open it

I will open this tex file in C4D

Just drag it and drop it in the Material window

There is a long message in English

You shouldn’t be afraid of English

If you learn English

it opens a whole new level of knowledge

So everyone get a dictionary

This is the part that confused me a lot

Let me explain this to you

This is the first step of the relative and absolute paths

I’ll go ahead

and click ‘No’ I clicked ‘No’

but the file is still opened Let’s do that again

and this time I’ll click ‘Yes’ but it’s the same

So what’s the difference?

Let me explain the difference

When you click ‘No’

and double click the Material

the image is added to the color channel automatically

Inside the image you’ll see that the path of the file

says F drive\Class\Exercise and so on

This is the example of absolute path

It starts from the name of the drive

I'm not saying that using absolute path is bad

But if you keep using absolute path

there might not be a F drive in other PCs

and in that PC the path will be something else

It could be F drive or C drive

and different paths will be accumulated

in this one project which makes it difficult

for you to send the file to someone else

and it makes it difficult for you to keep track of it

So I don't use absolute path

In order to not use that

let's go back

I’ll delete that

Let’s drag that again

and press ‘Yes’ this time

It looks the same but it's different

inside the color channel

The path has changed

and only the file name is displayed

The Cinema 4D can change the absolute path

of the file you added to a relative path

Let’s go back to the file

that we saved before and you will see

a new folder that wasn’t there before

The folder named ‘tex’ Let's open it

and you can see that the file is automatically copied here

Cinema 4D does this

to prevent incidents with using absolute path

It creates a tex folder

in the path where the C4D file is

and saves the image there

That’s why I saved this project

before I tried opening this image

If I don’t save the project before opening the image

it will be saved somewhere else called app data

So always save your C4D project first

then open images and do other tasks

There is another thing I would like to explain

Some of you might be wondering

This image is not directly

with the C4D file

It’s in this tex folder

but the path here doesn’t say that

So how is this image opened?

Usually for this to work

the image file should be directly with the C4D file

Let’s try cutting this file

and paste it here Then Reload it

Yup it still works When there is just the file name here

it usually means that the image

is in the same path

where the C4D is installed

Actually for this file to be read

inside the tex folder you have to change the path

Type a ‘.’(dot) and ‘\’(backslash)

and ‘tex’, then ‘\’(backlash)

Hit Enter and that’s the path

This first . and \ means

that the path is the same

as the path where C4D is installed

And there’s the ‘tex’ folder with the file

This is the proper way to do this

But in C4D you can delete this

and it can still be read

This is a bit complicated

but we need to go over this now

because later we will be using a token to save

And we need to know about the relative path

when we are using the token

So I had to explain this to you

You might not understand well yet but let’s move forward

Next I’ll explain the Preference settings

Click Edit on the top

and here's Preference

This is kind of like settings

All tools have settings

and the C4D settings have a very important function

Open Preferences and click here

on the interface and you can see

many settings The first thing to change

is this ‘Insert New Object At’

and ‘Paste New Object At.’

This decides where the new object starts

when it's inserted

The default is set as ‘Top’

Top means that when I insert a new object

it will automatically be inserted

at the top here

This will be very annoying later

when the scene gets complicated

and there are many objects

When I insert a new object

it will be on the top

So you have to bring it down all the time

and that’s a lot of trouble

This is the first thing that I change

when I install Cinema 4D

Change the ‘Top’ to ‘Previous’

and the new object will be inserted

above the object that I selected

This Paste is the setting for objects

that you copy and paste When I copy this cube

and paste it you can see that

it goes to the top here So change that

to Previous and then when you paste it

it will be added above the object that you selected

The default setting will be ‘Top’

I meant to leave it at ‘Top’

and change it during this class

but I couldn’t bear with it so I changed it to ‘Previous’ before this class

Now let’s talk about rendering

It’s the last part of our basic exercises

It's a bit complicated

and you might not be used to it yet

but don't worry about it because

we will be going over this again next time

These three icons have to do with the renders

The first icon is the Render View

It renders in the viewport window

Click it and the rendering begins in the viewport window

However after the lecture on Octane

you will not use this button

because Octane has a viewport window

where you will be rendering in real-time

It's called the Live Viewer

So you will be rendering in the Live Viewer

and in this viewport you will be adjusting

the angles and change settings The pipelines have changed

I used to click on this icon to confirm

then make changes and click the icon again

but now you can work in real-time

The second icon is the final render button

But we haven't configured where to save

and what size to save for this project

So we have to configure that first To do that

click on the third icon Edit Render Setting

You can see that the renderer type

is set to ‘Standard’ We haven't started on the Octane yet

so we’ll just leave that as it is

Later when we are working with Octane

change that to Octane Here in the output

You can set the size

and the frame settings, etc.

The width and the height

is set to 1280 x 720 which is small

So what I usually do

is to click on settings and use the presets

I can change it myself

but let’s try using the presets

We are going to make something that looks like a movie

so let’s click on film

and you can see the NTSC and PAL

I’ll explain that later

For now let’s skip that and go to HDTV

Go to HDTV 1080 24

The 1080 is the pixel size

and the 24 is the FPS

I will go over the FPS and image size

later in the lectures on theories

So just click on it

The width has change to 1920

These numbers 1920 and 1080

will be coming up a lot

1920 and 1080 this size is called Full HD

It's a standardized image size

Let’s leave that and look down here

and the fps Frame Rate has changed to 24

I’ll go into more detail about the frame rate later

It basically means that

we’ll be using 24 images in 1 second

The default setting for C4D is 30

So we need to change that

Click on Mode and Project

and change the FPS to 24

Now these are the same

From 0 to 72, so 73 output images

It also says 72 in the viewport

So we're done with the settings

Let’s save this now

Click on the Save tab and set the format to png

I absolutely love the png format

so we’ll use that to save

Now we need to set the path

to save this file

Go to the 'Exercise’ folder, ‘Period 2’

and here's a folder that says ‘C4D render’

Open it and this is

where we’ll save

I always name the file

and the render sequence the same

That way it’s much easier to find

Before we save this

go to Save Project as and copy the file name

Don’t save the file yet

and open the folder, ‘Exercise’ ‘Period 2’

‘C4D render’ and create new folder

Paste the file name for this folder

so that the name is the same as the C4D file

that we're working with

Open the new folder

and paste it again then save

This is the basic saving path that I use

You can see that the path

has changed to an absolute path

Let’s change that to a relative path

I’ll try rendering this first

Save this and click render icon

and you see that it's rendering

Let’s check it out at the folder

Go to ‘Exercise,’ ‘Period 2,’ ‘C4D render’

Open the folder and inside it

you can see the images printed out

Now I’ll close this window

and change the path

to a relative path

I’ll change the file's name first

Click Save Project as and I’ll name it version 3

Then go to Render Settings

I’ll copy this settings to explain

and make changes to the copied one

You can see the path

is set to the C4D render folder under F drive

This is the absolute path

Now I’ll change it to relative path

I’ll open up the folder

In the folder you can see the ‘C4D’ folder

and the ‘C4D render’ folder

I want to work with these files in the ‘C4D’ folder

and put in in the render folder

To do that you have to move back

to the parent folder and open the C4D render folder

and save it there

To do that I’ll delete the front line of this path

Delete that and add ..(two dots)

This is the abbreviation for the relative path

moving to the parent folder

This means it will go to the parent folder

which is this folder with the C4D file

It moves up from here

then to the C4D render It says version 2

Let’s change the file name to version 3

Then click Save

The rendering began

and you can see the new version 3 folder

is generated and the images are being saved

We can go a step further

and use a token

instead of typing this name myself

Sometimes when I do this in Cinema 4D

I would name the file as version 4

and forget to change the 3 here to 4

So in order to prevent that

we can use the token in C4D

and use this project file name

to name the folder and the file

I’ll delete this first

After that in the C4D render folder

Do you see this arrow?

Click it and scroll down

and click on this tab

that says Project Name

Now you can see $prj here

This is the token and when you use this

this becomes the file name in C4D

We need to create a folder in this file name

Type \(backslash) to create folder

It's just above the Enter key

Then use the Project Name token again

Let me explain how this path works

I’ll copy the path

Using the token will automatically create a folder

save the file in the folder using the project name

Let’s try it

If it works properly we will have the version 4 folder created

Click on that and Yes it worked

Let me try something

If you wanted to change the name

of the file to something else

Let me name this as ‘TEST’

I don't have to change the name here

The token will automatically

create a folder with that name

and save the file in that folder Click that

Then open the C4D folder

Yes the 'TEST’ folder has been created

and files are being saved here

You can use the token like this when you are working

with other people The path won't be set

to each person's PC It will use the relative path

It will allow you to create a folder

with the name of the project

and save the files there

You may not fully understand now

but I’ll go over it again

during the lecture on renders

So that was the basics of Cinema 4D

Now I’ll explain the rendering theory

First of all what is rendering?

Rendering and renderer

For those of you who are not familiar with 3D

won't be familiar with rendering

In 3D for final output

many data values in 3D are summed up for results

and rendering is the calculation process

that converts the 3D information into 2D images

Then renderers would be different programs

with different calculation method

The rendering results can be different

depending on which renderer you use

That is why you need to find

a renderer that fits you In our lecture

we will be using the Octane renderer for rendering

So why do we need to know about rendering?

You might think it's just a method

of getting the results

But you need to know this

to predict how rendering will change

in the future and that is why

I want to discuss rendering in our class

So I’ll briefly explain its principles

and how it is developing

Rendering is actually closer

to science than it is to art

To be honest when I tried to learn this

it was very difficult and it seemed

to be irrelevant to my own field

But I’ve learned enough

and gathered a lot information

to share this knowledge

with my fellow artists

in this lecture

So to start talking about rendering

The most advanced rendering these days

is the Physically Based Rendering(PBR)

Some of you never heard of it

and some of you might have heard about it

This PBR is a technology

that is almost used as a standard

It is being developed to be more realistic

You can call PBR as

Physically Based Rendering

or Physically Based Shading

If you look at this image

The reason why we can see something

is because light is being absorbed or reflected on the surface

and when the light enters our eyes

we can see its colors or form

PBR is an advanced technology

that can take an object and calculate the changes

that happens when light hits its surface

What about before PBR?

We called it LAGACY

LAGACY is a representation

of the past or the old model

PBR is more advanced in many aspects

First PBR uses Global Illumination

instead of Local Illumination

(Explaining the meaning of Local Illumination and Global Illumination in Korean)

(Explaining the meaning of Local Illumination and Global Illumination in Korean)

(Explaining the meaning of Local Illumination and Global Illumination in Korean)

Local illuminations calculates

only the surface directly touched by light

Whereas Global Illumination also calculates all the light

including the rays reflected and scattered

off the object

Many of you might have heard of GI

GI is a much more improved method

in calculating light

PBR uses advanced GI technology

that calculates not only the LI

but the indirect light sources too

Another function of PBR

is the path tracing

it's more advanced than the ray tracing

Path tracing also uses rays

for tracing but it's more advanced

than ray tracing

When light reflects off a surface

there is the specular reflection

and the diffused reflection

Previously only the specular reflection

was calculated in tracing

but PBR also calculates the diffused reflections

for more realistic results

We call that technology path tracing

I will get into more details

about path tracing later

That’s it for now Another characteristic of PBR

is the law of conservation of energy

These are identical metal objects Their roughness increases

as you move to the images on the right

The object on the right is rougher than the left

and the first row of objects violates

the law of conservation of energy

The size of the bright spot is the same in all three objects

But in the other three rows the rough surfaces

scatter more light resulting in weaker reflections

That’s the law of conservation of energy

LAGACY did not have this function

but with PBR the renderings

follow the law of conservation of energy

for more realistic results

Another characteristic of PBR is the microsurfaces

In the real world even the most smooth surfaces

like a mirror for example

have rough microsurfaces

that scatters the light in multiple directions

PBR can express those microsurfaces

in the real world

So it’s not just the straight reflections

but also includes scattered lights

PBR also has the Anisotropy function

which allows you to use the reflections

that comes off the surface of the object

in various angles

to create these various shapes

Another function of PBR

is the Fresnel and Metallic

More materials are being added

to Metallic for the realitic property of metals

Let me explain Fresnel in detail

Fresnel can make reflections clearer

depending on the viewing angle

I will explain this

with an example In this Cinema 4D window

the camera is our eyes

Depending on the angle of the camera

this reflection here

will become clearer

The lower the angle the higher the clarity

And if we move higher it gets darker

and the reflection becomes weak

This is Fresnel function

where reflection changes

according to the viewing angle

PBR rendering is using this function

for more realistic results

Finally I’ll explain the difference

between biased and unbiased renderers

Renderers can be classified into two types

biased and unbiased

It sounds complicated

But you’ll understand

when you see this example

On the left the image is rendered

in boxes if you zoom in

you can see the little dots

These dots are first calculated

and then the boxes are calculated

That’s the biased renderer In unbiased renderers

such as Octane the whole image

becomes clearer as the noises are removed

There is a reason

for this method of rendering

Biased renderers are like sample surveys

These little dots are samples

and the light around those dots

not all the light

are calculated in average values

Unbiased renderers calculate

every other pixels accurately

They each have their pros and cons

Vray and Redshift

are the main biased renderers

They have a very high rendering speed

and you can work more freely

such as applying only diffuse to an object

As for unbiased renderers

they are very easy to learn

There are only few menus

and not much setting to do

So it’s easy to get a nice

and realistic result

This renderer calculates the whole thing accurately

and you can get good outputs

without having to make difficult settings

The downside of biased renderers

is that sample surveys may produce many errors

and therefore flickers occur from those errors

It is also difficult to learn

because it has so many options

You will have to know

all the options

to fix the errors and flickers

Unbiased renderers

require much more calculations

because it expresses more details

which makes the rendering very slow

However we now have a system

that can run unbiased renderers

with great speed improvement

It's the new graphic card and I’ll explain that later

Also unbiased renderers don't offer much freedom

But this problem is improving

with new updates

that combines the biased and unbiased renderers

Another downside is the noise

The accurate calculation of each pixel

can cause noises for various reasons

such as not enough light

You need to know how to reduce the noise

and I will go over that in our classes later

The main unbiased renderers

are Octane and Arnold

We will be using the Octane renderer

which is an unbiased renderer

Next time I will talk about

the introduction of unbiased renderers

and the development of Octane

That’s it for today

Thank you