This is a small update with a few bugfixes and copy/paste feature for textures which can be done across different materials.
This is a list of changes
[C4D plugin] texture/shader copy-paste as instance across different materials.
[C4D plugin] Fix problems with texture paths using “preset…” using native Cinema 4D bitmap procedures.
[C4D plugin] Now cntlTexture supports all those image formats that are supported by Cinema 4D itself (FreeImage lib dependency is removed).
[C4D plugin] Checkbox “reflect as coat” in cntlStdMat (valuable for reflections at grazing angles)
[C4D plugin] Update camera position during interactive motion (in 0.43 IPR updated only when the motion was over)
[C4D plugin] Camera near/far clipping
[C4D plugin] Fixed standard object visibility settings
[C4D plugin] Fixed crash when picture viewer is stopped
[C4D plugin] Few cosmetic material GUI changes: Diffuse on top, Mix for roughness, etc.
[IPR] Enable/disable IPR status info
Known issues to be solved
- No yet multi-GPU
- Sometimes GUI of IPR window may have old style controls.
- May not initialize if AMD GPU is in your computer together with NVIDIA GPU.
- Very limited scene converter tool from Cinema 4D native materials (only diffuse color and texture are converted and translated if assigned to the object)
- May not support non-latin texture paths
- Need to update documentation and create examples
Please, test it and tell about the bugs.
We are currently working on multi-GPU and an algorithm which accelerating the scenes with many light sources.C
Edited: Kirgman - 06.11.2016 20:47:37(Updated user manual added)
please make a web gallery to show some Centileo renderings, will be nice too
Thanks! There will be a gallery in a couple of weeks. There should be also few video demos and tutorials.
Right now we are concentrated on several features and also need to fix displacements issues.
Does this happen when you render in IPR and then click the top-left button to transfer it to PV? Does this happen when you just render in PV only?
Cinema 4D changes the gamma of rendered image in PV based on own settings in Output or Save tab. I haven't yet checked all their laws regarding this, so now such things still may happen
E.g. sometimes when Cinema4D enables Post Effects then Cinema 4D doesn't change the gamma which is applied in PV. If Post Effects not enabled then Cinema 4D changes the gamma by 2.2
However you can make gamma correction: it can be changed in CentiLeo render settings in Post production tab in order to get required gamma in PV (just test values 0.45, 1 or 2.2). Alternativelly it can be changed in PV in Filter settings.
Btw, this new feature of inter-material copy-paste for textures creates the foundation for node-based material editor. What we need is to map things to GUI. It is planned to be done later after core improvements.
Well, mesh light will come slightly later, however I like this feature a lot. But next few versions will contain multi-GPU, faster multi-lights, light pass blender (aka light mixer) and some improvements for displacement tesselator. We simply come very close to these features, they are partially done. I hope, this is not too long to wait for them.
And then there will be mesh lights, physical sun & sky. Mesh lights should be done via texturing, so that some part of polygon is emissive and another part is reflective.
Btw, currently the native Cinema Sun tag is translated and it determines the directional light based on the used time.
Tiago, I have checked: well by saying "directional" light I was meaning "Infinite" light (of Cinema). To tune it's parameters you need to add our cntlTagLight. Spot, Area, Omni, Infinite - they work.
In our cntlLightTag there are 2 parameters: "scale area" and "scale angle". The first one scales the area of light source surface (this is valid for Omni (becomes a sphere), Spot and Area light). The second parameter changes the directional angle of light (valid for Spot and Directional light). Both params have effect only in renderer output (not yet in viewport).
As for Parallel, Parallel Spot, Square Parallel Spot, IES - they don't work yet. IES is important, so need to make it.
And please don't forget to post your WIPs here so we can visually see where to change the engine to make better performance and integration.
Welcome to our board! What GPUs are there in the system? It worked with NVIDIA GPUs with at least 2GB memory.
Have you updated the NVIDIA display drivers to the latest one?
Have you any one AMD GPU in the system?
Can you start Cinema 4D with copied plugin?
Or CentiLeo just does'nt start inside loaded Cinema?
That's good! Just wanted to write you about it. Because since 0.43 we have moved to CUDA 8 and it requires the latest display drivers.
Since 0.43 CentiLeo became much faster.
Recentily we have found few interesting things.
For example
1) if in Hardware Settings you set rather small GPU cache sizes (below 1GB for geo and 500MB for tex)
2) then start IPR.
3) And after that while IPR is running you may increase the cache size to previously set maximum.
If make steps 1-3 the renderer may perform faster (sometimes much faster for small scenes) compared to default behavior where max cache sizes are enabled and with which you start IPR.
For next version we will try to make this process automated. It's quite intersting thing with the roots from out of CUDA driver.
I see that when I'm using area light, and change the Size X and Y in details, the light intensity in IPR is decreased, but I think it is very diferent or weird, because in my all past experience with other renderes like mental ray, vray, arnold, thea render, any way, it always increase.
Other thing that I see is the default environment color illuminates the scene, only when I set black color it is off, or when I'm using some HDRI image. So there is some diferent way to disable this parameter?
It currently the same history with other lights too like Omni and Spot. Currently when you change SizeX/SizeY you change the area of the light source, but the intensity (with multiplier) is specified for the entire light area. So the same intensity is evenly distributed on entire light area (if area become very large then intensity of small light part may become less bright). So when you change the SizeX/SizeY the emssion doesn't change but the softness of shadows changes.
I remember that few other renderers have a checkbox to "normalize intensity over area" which basically tells that intensity is specified for unit area (not for the whole area). Should I do similar option too?
Default environment color - it is used to illiminate the scene only when Sky with cntlEnvMapTag (HDRI) is not specified. It works per each visibility set (available in this tag). There are 5 of them: visible for camera (it is a background), for reflections, base and transmission. It is possible to setup diffent HDRI for each visibility set. But if some visibilit set (eg. camera) has no enabled checkbox (eg, "visible to camera") then default env color is used.
This is true that to disable default env color you make it black. Can add checkbox enabled/disabled so that color is not needed to change.
Hello Daniel and welcome to our board! Thanks to Rodrigo and Tiago
Usually when Cinema 4D doesn't start then it seems there is need to update NVIDIA display drivers to some latest one.
What GPU do you have? Do you also have AMD GPUs in the system?
Since 0.43 we have upgraded to CUDA 8 in order to support GTX10XX and it required all users to update drivers.