Tutorial Details
- Software: Maxon Cinema4D (v11+)
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Length: 6 Steps
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Final Product What You'll Be Creating
In today’s quick tip, new Cgtuts+ author Santiago Degetau will show new users how to create a basic render setup with lighting and Global Illumination in Cimema4D. Although there are a many ways to create a render setup, what we’ll be creating today is going to be very simple, but will be a good fist step towards creating your own renders. So, let’s create a new project and get started!
Step 1
First add a new Sky Object, by going to Objects > Scene > Sky. Then create a new material, and call it “Sky_Mat”. Open the material, and in the Color Channel apply a “2D – V” Gradient from light blue to white. Do not forget to uncheck the Specular Channel. Finally apply this material to the Sky Object.
Now let’s do a quick render (Ctrl + R | Command + R), and the gradient we just applied will show up.
Step 2
Now that we have created the sky, let’s create the floor. To add a Floor Object go to Objects > Scene > Floor.
Let’s create a new material for the floor and name it “Floor_Mat”. Open it and select a white color in the Color Channel. Now uncheck the Specular Channel and finally apply the material to the floor.
If you render the scene now, you will notice that the scene looks very poor with low definition, but we will fix that right away.
Step 3
Go to Objects > Scene > Light. This will create a default light. Move this light up and render the scene (Ctrl + R | Command + R). You’ll see that the scene still looks bad. I’m pointing this out because I want you to see the difference between every step, so that you learn more.
We need two fundamental colors on this scene. One hot and the other one cold. The sky is the cool color, and the light we just added will be the warm color. So change the color of the light to a pale orange.
Finally change the Shadow from “None” to “Shadow Maps (Soft)”.
This is what a render looks like now:
Step 4
Now we are going to add the “Magic ingredient”. The thing that makes this scene look good: Global Illumination. Basically what GI does is create very realistic lighting by not only using the light that comes directly from the light source, but also the light rays that are reflected on other surfaces. In other words, GI lights up every part of the your scene. To add Global Illumination, go to Render > Render Settings (Ctrl + B | Command + B). Now click on the ‘Effects…’ button and from the drop down menu select “Global Illumination”.
As you will see, the scene looks very, very bright. To avoid this, lower the brightness of our light to around 23%. Render it again, and see the difference.
OK, now let’s add an object to our scene. Insert any primitive object and then apply any material to it, and see what your render looks like! If necessary, move the lights around and lower or increase the brightness of the light. The material I used includes a bump channel with an FMB noise applied.
Go to Render > Render Settings (Ctrl + B | Command + B) and go to “Anti-Aliasing”, change the Anti-Aliasing of Geometry to “Best”. This will make sure that the transparency and reflections have better definition, but be warned. More Anti-Aliasing = longer render times.
Step 5
Now lets create a camera. So go to Objects > Scene > Camera. And play around with its position until you find an angle you like.
Step 6
Go to Render > Render Settings (Ctrl + B | Command + B). Go to “Output”, and change the “Width” and “Height” to1280 x 720 pixels. This will give our final render a good resolution when rendering.
Then go to Render > Render to Picture Viewer (Shift + R). And finally save your final render as a JPG. And that is it!
Final Preview
Hope you liked the tutorial!
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By Santiago Degetau
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Be good for making Easter eggs. Not good for much else…
Its sad to see some awesome tutorials for 3DS Max like modelling a truck or whatever and then see a tutorial for render 3 spheres in C4D…
Hey Wesley,
This is not intended to be a complete in-depth tutorial. It’s only meant to be a “Quick Tip” covering a very short, basic topic or technique. These “Quick Tips” are limited to only a few steps or a few minutes of video, and therefore need to be brief.
In this case, Santiago is giving new users a very brief introduction to setting up a first render in Cinema4D. The spheres are only used for demonstration, and are not the focus of the tip.
Cheers
Hi Chris, I agree with you that the spheres is not the intent of the tutorial, and I agree with the fact that small tips don’t kill anyone =)
BUT!
As Jose Arcanteles said, this tips are pretty much basics, and stuff like that can be fount anywhere. CG Tuts always was known by the premium content of this tutorials, so this tips could fit very well in a larger, complete tutorial. ;)
i agree with both of you but more with wesley, this type of stuff can be searched for everywhere. it could have even be dealt with as a small part of a better tutorial, as in… modeling a truck…
on the other hand… it doesnt hurt to have basic stuff like this to go back to every now and then, although a never use floors (or this set up for that matter). For this, to me, its much better to use a plane as the floor and composite it with a background
This isn’t about modeling – I think this quick tip shows how GSG has influenced the C4D community with his HDRI and Studio Light Kits. For a basic sphere render – looks pretty good. Kinda makes me want to experiment with my own render setups. Many thanks for the ideas Santiago!
I have been a user of 3ds max for about 3 years. I’ve focused mainly on still rendering, lighting, modeling and materials. But animation is something I’ve never done. I’ve found 3ds max to be a bit clumsy and time consuming. Is C4D something I should look at for animating. What I would want to animate is architectural scenes. Not so much people and so forth.
I say, GO FOR IT
C4D fits me like an extension, its intuitive and fast pacing on the learning side
Thanks very much! I don’t need to model and texture in C4D as much as I simply need to render and so forth. I’ll take a gander and see if I can find some tuts on this matter.
I´m a designer and a newbie in CD4, so I think this tut will be helpful. If you feel like a pro.. go and find another site that fulfill your needs.
thanks
Unfortunatelly, CG Tuts used to be that kind of site. ;)
I’m bored. CG Tuts was known for impressive tutorials. This tiny piece of quick tip is a joke. Seriously, there a many “how-to-light-a-simple-scene” quicktips, tutorials what so ever on the web. I see nice Blender, Maya and 3DS Max tutorials on here…what about C4D? Thanks god, there is GSG…
Not for everyone, but lets not forget this is a quick tip, if youre a noob there is no need to go further than CG tuts, and no need to pay 70 dls for GSGs light kit pro, its a good lighting alternative for rendering stills.
I’ve been learning C4D, VRAY and the like at work and applying these tutorials at home. Nicely written simple tutorials have highlighted little important factors that are so easy to miss. I need tutorials like this, the more advanced tutorials assume you know things like this, why not have it up? Cheers for the tut.
I think this is a good “basic” rendering setup, but if you change your camera angle to anything other than directly right on top of the object, you get a horizon line and maybe some distraction from the background.
You could take this basic setup one step further by creating an “infinite floor” or “seamless background” effect like you would have in a traditional studio for product shots against white.
Here are some possible steps that someone could elaborate on with some tutorial images or something:
1. Add a floor object or plane. Don’t worry about the material at the moment.
2. Drop in a sphere with any material on level with the floor similar to what is already shown here. Obviously, this is merely for setup purposes.
3. Add a Background Object to the scene.
4. Add a new material to the background. In the Color channel for the background material, add a Circular gradient that goes from white in the center to light grayish-blue on the outside. This will create sort of a soft vignette effect for the background. If you render at this point the floor will blocking it.
5. Select the Floor Plane, go to the Tags menu and under the Cinema 4D Tags. From there you want to add a Compositing Tag to the Floor Object.
6. In the panel for the Compositing Tag turn the Composite Background on.
7. Go into the Material Tag on your Floor and change the UV Mapping to Frontal Mapping.
8. Follow the rest of the steps from the above example for setting up the Rendering settings with the GI, the light source and sky object.
9. However, the sky object, if used in the scene, will block out any Background Objects. To solve this problem attach another Compositing Tag to the sky object, and in the setting for that tag, turn off the “Seen By Camera”. That will hide the sky from the final render, but you will still get the benefit of the GI for rendering purposes.
One other thing that you could do if you don’t want to use a sky object is to create a kind of a “soft box” above your object with a white material that has a warm light source bouncing off of it reflecting back down at the object instead of pointing directly at the object.
This will help to defuse the light and soften the harshness of edges a bit. You have to remember to turn off the Seen By Camera and Casts Shadows in the Compositing Tag attached to the soft-box reflective object.
That’s it. Hope I didn’t confuse people more with this. Thanks.
It was just a quick tip for beginners. It is stated as such at the top of this page.
Hi for a beginner’s tutorial, this was not very basic. My final render did not look anywhere near as good as your final image. I’ve been back over the tutorial to check if I’ve missed anything but haven’t. Only think I can think of is I do not know what “a bump channel with an FMB noise applied” means and you did not explain this. It’s hard to see the effect without applying it to a finished shape.
It’s useful for me, I got not bad results for my first render, but how to decrease shadow?
thx mate
stfu Wesley