For those who don’t know the tool: V-Ray runs inside SketchUp, Rhino, and 3ds Max. Update 3 pulls real-time from Vantage, feeds assets from Cosmos, and pushes approvals through Cloud, with traffic extras via Anima.

Real time, now without the app hopping

Chaos released V-Ray 7 Update 3 for SketchUp, Rhino, and 3ds Max. Update 3 adds real-time rendering directly in the V-Ray viewport through a Vantage Viewport Live Link workflow. The goal sits squarely on convenience: keep modeling, keep assigning materials, keep nudging lights, and see the result update instantly.

The live viewport workflow supports continuous scene edits. Walls, columns, material tweaks, and object selections update in real time. Assets dropped in from Cosmos appear immediately as high-quality models, including people, vegetation, and props.

Lighting edits also happen inside the viewport workflow. Cosmos light fixtures with built-in light sources work in this mode, and V-Ray lights can be placed and adjusted interactively, including intensity adjustments while the real-time view stays active.

The real-time viewport mode supports large scenes. Vantage can handle millions of polygons with no noticeable lag in the described workflow, and it uses full ray tracing, without rasterization or approximation in that workflow description.

The real-time viewport workflow includes camera and look controls for composition and presentation. It supports adjusting the sun and adding effects including lens flares, photometrics, fog, and depth of field, while staying inside the host application viewport.

Parallax interiors go native, and finally leave OSL behind

Parallax interiors in Update 3 target a familiar archviz cheat: add convincing depth behind windows without modeling full rooms. Update 3 adds a native parallax texture map that works across integrations and also works in Vantage. This matters for integrations that do not expose Open Shading Language, where older OSL-based approaches were less usable.

Cosmos includes parallax interior shaders designed for drag-and-drop use behind windows. The shaders maintain depth and perspective from any camera angle and support variation controls to avoid obvious repetition across facades.

Quick caustics and Gaussian splats get more practical

Quick Caustics in Update 3 bring sunlight caustics through water, a common request for pools, lakes, and other outdoor scenes. V-Ray includes a general caustics engine, and the update adds a specific option intended to quickly approximate caustics caused by sunlight going through water surfaces. The workflow is enabling Quick Caustics in the material and lighting with V-Ray Sun so caustics appear immediately.

The current Quick Caustics behavior works best with displaced surfaces. It works with the built-in V-Ray water texture in SketchUp and Rhino, and it also supports other displacement textures. A depth parameter controls how far the caustics effect reaches. Reflective caustics can be enabled for shimmering patterns, and the caustics render element can be isolated for easier adjustment after the render.

Gaussian Splats Relighting allows Gaussian splats to receive illumination from scene lights so they blend more naturally with the rest of the scene. A dedicated parameter controls how the lighting blend behaves, and V-Ray lights can be used with their full parameters in this workflow.

Node materials arrive, scatter gets a brush, decals get distributed

Update 3 adds a node-based material editor for V-Ray for SketchUp and V-Ray for Rhino in preview. The node editor supports creating, picking, and editing materials and textures in a visual graph. Cosmos assets can be dragged directly into the graph. Texture nodes can be added and combined, maps can be mixed, and materials can be combined visually. Material types including blend, two-sided, overrdie, and wrapper appear as nodes.

V-Ray 7.3 also adds a scatter brush workflow in V-Ray for SketchUp and V-Ray for Rhino. Objects can be scattered using a paintbrush approach for precise distribution of plants and similar objects. The workflow supports building a base layer and painting additional clusters, following predefined lines from plans or painting freely. Density can be adjusted via brush radius, and unwanted areas can be painted out. The workflow also supports shaping vegetation placement to match camera angles for composition.

AI Mood Match and AI Enhancer focus on faster look decisions

AI Mood Match expands the Light Gen workflow for V-Ray for SketchUp and V-Ray for Rhino. It adjusts environment lighting to match a visual reference instead of trial-and-error tweaks. The workflow describes uploading a reference image, generating multiple lighting scenarios, browsing results, choosing one, and applying it with a click, then refining lighting further as needed.

AI Enhancer adds improved accuracy and object-level control. The described workflow includes detecting characters, vegetation, and large surfaces after upload, then enhancing selected elements without affecting the rest of the image.

For people, the controls include parameters such as age, gender, ethnicity, hair color, and facial expression, with results applied as an enhancement. A creativity mode adds refinement while preserving the original look. Multiple selections can be enhanced at once, enhanced objects appear in an object enhancement list, and results can be saved as a new version.

Large Surface Coverage targets fast breakup of flat or repetitive surfaces. Controls include creativity to add intrical detail and an age option intended to introduce natural weathering, including stains, micro-cracks, and subtle color variation.

AI Materials now support 4K generation and higher-resolution maps. The described workflow includes a redesigned interface and an interactive 3D preview that can switch between sphere, box, and cylinder models, plus lighting direction adjustments and normal and roughness tweaks with instant updates.

Frame Buffer tweaks and per-camera controls in 3ds Max

V-Ray for 3ds Max adds Physical Camera tools intended to make scene variations and view management easier. Objects can be excluded from visibility per camera without affecting the rest of the scene. Focus can be set to object mode by picking an object to remain in focus, keeping it sharp regardless of camera target position, which changes depth of field control behavior.

Update 3 also improves the V-Ray Frame Buffer. A new histogram widget provides insight into color distribution and exposure. Background and foreground folders support reference images, watermarks, and backgrounds. Scaling and positioning tools improve alignment, and effects apply consistently to added elements in this workflow description.

Cloud reviews, video notes, and 3D streaming annotation

Cloud Reviews adds a review hub for sharing work with teams and clients. Reviews can be started from the render engine or created in a review tab workflow. Renders can be uploaded and stakeholders invited. Stakeholders can explore images or 360-degree experiences and leave comments directly on elements that need adjustment. Project status can be updated, new versions uploaded, and an approvers list used to finalize the design.

Video collaboration adds timeline-based commenting. Comments can be pinned to an exact second or a time span, and comments can be repositioned. Annotation tools include markers such as drawing, line, and rectangle tools for pointing out specific areas. Comments can fade out automatically after their time span for a cleaner preview.

3D streaming in the same ecosystem allows real-time navigation once a scene is uploaded. The workflow includes switching cameras and adjusting lighting dynamically, sharing a 3D stream for interactive exploration, and adding annotations. Comments save automatically, and annotations can include attached images or links for context. If your review chain includes external stakeholders, run a dry test early to catch permission and browser issues before a deadline catches you. Or you have an audience, when you try to remember your password.

Have a look at the tools here: Chaos Cloud Reviews documentation
https://documentation.chaos.com/space/VCLOUD/521797640/Reviews

Anima 6: parking lots and smarter vehicle lighting

Anima 6 adds tools aimed at faster traffic population and more believable vehicle behavior. A parking lot feature lets users define parking zones and fill them with vehicles. Zones can be resized, orientations adjusted, density changed, vehicles added or removed, and layouts regenerated.

Anima 6 also adds automatic vehicle lighting for traffic simulation. Brake lights activate when stopping and turn signals engage when changing direction. A road staying tendency parameter controls whether vehicles continue straight or take available turns. If you want to show somebody how they should be driving their bloody SUVs, Anima will help make it look like it should, not like the BMW drivers do mostly behave.

Cosmos sets and new assets

Cosmos adds Sets, described as curated groups of assets that can be placed as a set and then rearranged or duplicated as needed.

Update 3 adds over 700 new assets, including 400 high-detailed plant models from Globe Plants, plus additional branded models. Cosmos also includes new models from Evermotion, new people assets, and additional scatter presets and scan material range in the described workflow.

Pricing and availability

Update 3 releases first for V-Ray for SketchUp and V-Ray for Rhino. Real-time rendering in the V-Ray viewport requires an active Vantage license or an active V-Ray Collection license.

New features can shift habits fast. Test Update 3 on real scenes, real assets, and your actual hardware before it enters a production .

https://www.chaos.com/vray

The post Chaos V-Ray 7 Update 3 goes real time first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: D5 Works is a new marketplace from Dimension 5 built to feed D5 Render through D5 Launcher, with creators also uploading from DCCs like SketchUp and 3ds Max.

Inventory: the numbers D5 leads with

On its storefront UI, D5 Works currently advertises “3D Models 42K” and “Materials 2.2K”. Those are live catalogue counters, not a published audit, but they are the platform’s headline spec. And for a start, just under 45,000 assets, including environments, interiors, furniture, plants, humans, animals, and vehicles is not bad – especially if you can actually find them (He said while looking sad at his own unsorted heaping drive of ious footage and assets).

Zero commission, not zero deductions

D5’s documentation includes a “0% Commission” page stating it does not take commission on sales and aims to return value to creators via the platform design. The more mechanical wording in the creator rules states that proceeds are the full net sales amount, calculated as what the user actually paid after discounts, coupons, or membership pricing adjustments, and are subject to deductions for bank transaction fees and other applicable charges. So the platform claims no cut, but the payout base can be reduced by pricing mechanics and payment rail fees.

Those same rules set a $100 minimum before withdrawals can be processed and describe enforcement actions, including deductions or restricted withdrawal eligibility, for listed violations like model theft, unauthorised re-creation, multiple accounts per user, or bots. Dimension 5 says 0% commission will remain “at least in the foreseeable future”. That is a forward-looking statement, not a contractual guarantee in the sources supplied here.

Formats: D5A models, D5M materials, Windows-first hooks

D5 Works documentation defines D5-native delivery as .d5a for models and .d5m for materials, described as the official formats supported by D5 Render and D5 Lite. Creator-side conversion is described as: import a model into D5 Render, then use “Add to Local” in the Inspector to convert it into .d5a, saved under ‘D5 WorkSpace\model’. It is a very literal pipeline: your asset becomes D5-shaped and lands in a predictable folder.

Buyer-side behaviour splits between creator uploads and “D5 official assets”. The docs say creator-uploaded D5-format assets can be downloaded in a browser and imported into D5, while official assets expose a “Use in D5” route and appear in the D5 Material Library.

The “From Works To D5” doc states the full integration is intended for Windows and D5 Render versions greater than 2.11, and describes “Use in D5” deep-linking that can start a material download if it is not already local. Dimension 5’s own blog post claims drag-and-drop into SketchUp or D5 Render and automatic background conversion via D5 Launcher. It describes the intended behaviour but does not publish interchange guarantees for units, material translation, or conversion fidelity. Not independently verified at press time.

Licensing and availability: archive like an adult

D5 Works’ licence summary describes two options: Personal License for non-commercial use, and Project License for commercial work and client deliverables, with restrictions on reselling source files, redistribution where the asset is the primary value, sublicensing, and seat sharing. It also states the creator is the licensor and D5 Works is not a party to the licence agreement.

One operational note is blunt: if an item is removed due to copyright issues, it will no longer be available for download, and users are told to save and back up purchased items locally. If you want deterministic rebuilds, treat downloads as ingest, not a permalink.

// D5 Works storefront
https://www.d5works.com/

// D5 Works download guide
https://d5-render.gitbook.io/d5-works/buy-assets-on-works/download-assets-from-works

// Dimension 5 blog post about D5 Works
https://www.d5render.com/posts/d5-works-aec-3d-models

The post D5 Works launches with 42K models and no comission ? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: D5 Render from Dimension 5 is a realtime rendering engine used across architecture, design, and visualisation pipelines. It connects with 3ds Max, Blender, Cinema 4D, Revit, Rhino, SketchUp, ArchiCAD, and Vectorworks via direct sync plugins.

Oceans, clouds, and skies

Version 3.0 introduces two major environment tools: an Ocean object for animated water surfaces and a Volumetric Clouds system with multiple presets such as cumulus and cirrus. The ocean object allows control of wave scale, wind speed, and interaction near shorelines.

Volumetric clouds integrate with improved fog and light scattering options for more natural outdoor illumination. Enhancements to the existing Geo Sky model provide finer control over sky intensity and sun balance, improving consistency between time-of-day setups.

Rendering and material control

A new True Displacement option replaces parallax mapping with physically accurate surface relief. The trade-off is a higher render cost, but it yields more convincing depth in materials such as stone or concrete. Additional material updates include CMYK texture support and a toggle for HDRI resolution, allowing lighter scene loads when full 16K environment maps are unnecessary. Users can now also set a custom viewport background colour, aiding previs or presentation renders that do not require a full environment.

AI generation expands inside D5

Dimension 5 continues its exploration of integrated AI tools. The new Image-to-3D feature creates simple 3D models from one to three reference photos, processed directly inside D5. In the AI Agent suite, Scene Match allows textual adjustment of scene elements, while Asset Recommendation searches the asset library based on descriptive keywords or reference images. At press time, these AI tools remain early implementations, and output quality varies depending on subject complexity.

Experiments with Gaussian splats

D5 Render 3.0 introduces experimental import of Gaussian splats, a point-based 3D representation format derived from neural rendering research. The implementation is explicitly labelled experimental, and Dimension 5 advises users to expect incomplete material or lighting behaviour.

Workflow refinements and licensing

Navigation within scenes has been overhauled with a free-camera mode and refined controls. Several features previously restricted to Teams subscribers, such as Caesium geographic data and XR Tours, are now available in the Pro tier. The procedural city generator is also promoted from Teams to Pro.

D5 Render continues to be offered in three tiers: a Community edition that remains free, plus paid Pro and Teams subscriptions.

D5 Lite: a lightweight sibling

Alongside the main update, Dimension 5 announced D5 Lite, a compact edition designed for early-stage design work, initially integrated with SketchUp. D5 Lite runs in two modes: Real-Time Rendering for viewport previews and AI Generation for cloud-based image synthesis from screenshots. Future versions of D5 Lite are planned for 3ds Max, Revit, and Rhino, though no release schedule has been released.

Compatibility and system support

D5 Render 3.0 supports Windows 10 and later. The recommended GPU baseline is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, AMD Radeon RX 6400 XT, or Intel Arc A3 series. Integration plugins remain available for all major DCC and CAD tools. As with any major rendering update, users are advised to test D5 Render 3.0 and its AI features on non-critical projects before integrating them into live production.

The post Ocean, clouds, and splats: D5 Render 3.0 sets sail first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In the middle of last year, I received a request from a film production company to reconstruct the Art Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odessa. With the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022, the museum’s paintings were moved to a secret emergency storage facility and are now entering into a dialogue in Berlin with works from the Berlin collections. This encounter was to be documented in order to bring the history of the museum closer to the public.

However, the work on site proved to be extremely difficult due to the ongoing war, which comes as no surprise to anyone. Photographs of the building were only possible to a limited extent and frequent power cuts hindered both communication and data exchange. As no floor plans or technical drawings of the building were available, the decision was made to create a complete digital 3D reconstruction of the building and its interiors based solely on image templates – so that virtual insights could still be created. Digital tracking shots were to be created and used in the documentary as a visual introduction to the scenes. For me, this request was a perfect example of the sensible use of 3D visualisation – my ambition was immediately awakened.

Defining the level of detail

The architecture of the museum reflects the neoclassical style, known for its detailed ornamentation and stucco work. Together with the producers and the authors of the film, I considered how detailed the model should be, which areas could be simplified while still retaining the recognition value. For the construction of the façades, we decided to rely entirely on the images from Google Maps. These were up-to-date and we were able to use the image data to define the proportions and dimensions of the building.

My first approach was to use the OSM add-on in Blender to import the street map and create the visualisation on this basis. The Blender OSM addon allows you to import OpenStreetMap data into Blender, including buildings, streets, rivers and terrain. It allows the automatic creation of 3D city models with real elevation data and can optionally use satellite images as textures. A disadvantage and final criterion for the final use is that detailed OSM files in Blender lead to a high number of polygons. In addition, the models often only contain basic shapes without façade details or textures, so these have to be added manually. Not all cities have equally good OSM data, which is why some buildings are only imported as simple 2D contours without height information. I therefore only used the standard 3D view of Google Maps as the starting point for my image template.

Creating the assets with Rhino

Based on the previously defined requirements regarding the level of detail and the elements that should definitely be visible, I was able to start working. I analysed the facades of the model for recurring features and gained an overview of which and how many assets were needed to realistically represent the facade of the museum.

The windows on the ground floor and first floor differ only in height and frame. There were three different types of columns – but the capitals of the columns are the same for almost all of them, despite the different column shapes.

What initially looked like a multitude of different assets became more manageable on closer inspection and I began to better understand the architecture of the museum. Assets that are exposed and would probably also be seen in close-up due to the camera movements, I worked out more precisely to avoid sharp corners and thus create more realism. I only stylised stucco mouldings and frames to their basic geometric shapes. A good balance between detail and simplification still creates realism and saves render time.

I had agreed in advance with the production team on a level of detail that would show the most important elements of the building, but exclude elaborate areas such as stucco decorations and ornaments. It was therefore particularly important to make the assets shown as true to the original as possible. After brief research on the usual asset exchanges such as TurboSquid and KitBash, we quickly realised that we had to manage without external assets in order to achieve a high recognition value. I therefore created all the required assets myself in Rhino.

Defining the camera movements with Autodesk Viewer

I imported the Rhino file into Autodesk’s 3D viewer so that the production team and, above all, the film’s director could specify which camera movements should be created. Now it was possible to move virtually through the model and specify which areas of the building should be shown.

In this way, we agreed on several journeys that would end in the interior. This type of agreement allowed both sides to plan well. We didn’t have to re-render any rides afterwards and stayed on schedule. We deliberately decided to create the textures in the next step so that we could render test drives in advance without risking long rendering times.

To explain briefly: the Autodesk Viewer is a web-based viewer that allows CAD, BIM and 3D models to be viewed and commented on directly in the browser – without any special software installation. Instead of sending raw files, the viewer offers several advantages: Recipients do not need any special software to view models and can add comments, markups and measurements directly in the viewer. In addition, the original data remains protected as it is only accessed via the web. Large 3D files can be loaded more quickly without being rendered locally, and platform-independent use in the browser facilitates collaboration.

Texturing the model with Blender

Once the model was finalised in Rhino, I started creating the textures in Blender. I imported the entire model as an FBX file, which meant that the layers created in Rhino were available as a hierarchical structure in Blender. This made it easier to assign the shaders. I used the mapping node to adjust the size of the textures in the X, Y and Z dimensions.

I used the BlenderKit library as the basis for the textures, but customised and modified them as required. Together with the production team, we coordinated and defined the desired look and lighting mood. It was important to us to convey the striking features of the building via the textures in order to create a high recognition value.

Textures that were used as a basis
Fassade | Columns, windows and decorations | Metal | Glas

Textures used as the basis for the interiors
Mouldings | Fassade | Columns and decorations | Floor Ground Level | Floor Upper Level

Creating the tracking shots in Blender

The views for the camera movements were defined, now it was time to implement them in Blender. Blender offers the Track To Constraint function for this, with which the camera is aligned to a specific target object. I had previously created the path that the camera should take as a spline. Because the camera always remains focussed on a previously defined object, regardless of its position, I only had to determine the speed and start and end point of the camera movement using keyframes. Thanks to this approach, I was able to create the camera movements flexibly and edit them later if necessary.

Reconstruction of the interiors

By defining the tracking shots for the building, we decided to also provide insights into the interior. We chose the reception hall on the ground floor and the large gallery on the upper floor as the end point for some of the tracking shots. Unlike the exterior views, we were unable to use image data from Google Maps for this. The reconstruction of the interiors therefore had to be based on a few archive images. As the camera panning into the interior of the building is crucial for the atmosphere of the scenes, we also focussed on a simplified environment and placed the striking features of the rooms in the foreground. For the construction of the interiors, I used existing assets from my library or modified them to get as close as possible to the original image.

Assembly of the scenes

After the final rendering of the sequences in Blender, they were edited in Premiere Pro. Each tracking shot, which filmed the exterior of the building, ended in the interior of the museum and served as an introduction for a subsequent sequence in the documentary. The transitions combine architecture, light and movement and create an atmospheric bridge between the locations. The result will be shown as a contribution in the documentary Masterpieces from Odessa – A Museum between Art and War in the Arte media library from February 2025.

Who is Mimicry / Aljosha Apitzsch ?

I am a 3D generalist from Hamburg and founder of mimicry. My entry into the 3D world began with Cinema 4D R16. With an increasing focus on product visualisation, I also became more involved with Nurbs modelling in Rhino. Although I’m still a big fan of Cinema 4D and have occasionally tried my hand at LightWave, I now prefer to use Blender for visualisation and rendering – also because I think the open source concept is worth supporting. I use Rhino to create assets. LinkedIn | Instagram

CGI @ mimicry – for film, documentary and advertising.
Reconstruction | Visual Production
www.mimicry.team

The post Architectural visualisation in a war zone first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The project “Ballerina” is a 30-second CG animation, Kay John Yim’s first personal project with an animated photorealistic CG character staged in a large baroque round hall. The ballerina character was created mainly with Character Creator, animated in iClone and rendered with Redshift and Cinema4D.

Kay John Yim is an architect at Spink Partners based in London. He has worked on a variety of projects in the UK, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, including property development and landscape design. His work has been published on Maxon, Artstation, CG Record and 80.LV.

Yim’s growing passion for designing architecture using technology gradually led him to become a CGI artist, developing visuals that serve not only as client presentations but also as a communication tool for the design and construction team. Since the COVID lockdown in 2021, he has attended courses in CG and has since won more than a dozen CG competitions.

This making-of tutorial article is an abridged version of “Ballerina: A CGI Fantasy”, written by Kay John Yim. The full version can be found at the Fox Renderfarm News Centre.

The making of Ballerina

The animation is a representation of the inner conflicts I have with all artistic endeavours, both metaphorical and literal. Ballet, an art form that is known to have strict beauty standards and is highly susceptible to public criticism and self-criticism, is the metaphor for my daily professional and artistic practice. As an architect, I work on architectural visualisations during the day, where every detail is scrutinised by my colleagues, senior architects and clients. As an artist, I work on my own CG projects at night, doing hundreds to thousands of iterations to find the perfect composition and colour scheme. No matter how much I grow in my professional and artistic skills, the inner struggle never goes away.

Months of trial and error have taught me a lot about efficient character animation and rendering. This article is a guide for all indie artists like me who want to develop their CG art.

The guide is divided into 4 main parts:
● The Architecture
● The character
● The animation
● The rendering

I used the following software, among others
● Rhino
● Moment of Inspiration 4 (MOI)
● Cinema4D (C4D)
● Redshift (RS)
● Character Creator (CC)
● iClone
● ZBrush & ZWrap
● XNormal
● Marvelous Designer 11 (MD)
● Houdini

1. The architecture

My main software for architectural modelling is Rhino. There are many different ways to approach architectural modelling. The main advantage of Rhino over some other popular DCCs like Cinema4D (C4D) or Houdini is the ability to edit very detailed curves in large quantities.

As an architect, every model I built always started with a curve, usually in the form of a wall section, cornice or plinth section drawn along another curve of a plan. Rhino’s command list may seem overwhelming at first glance, but I used almost exclusively a dozen of these commands to turn curves into 3D geometry:

● Rebuild
● Trim
● Blend
● Sweep
● Extrude
● Sweep 2 Rails
● Flow Along Surface
● Surface from Network of Curves

The key to architectural modelling is to use references wherever possible. I always have PureRef open in the bottom right hand corner of my screen to ensure I am modelling in the correct proportions and scale. This usually includes actual photos and architectural drawings.

For this particular project, I used the hunting room of the Amalienburg in Munich as the primary reference for the architecture.

Although the architecture consisted of three parts – the rotunda, the corridor and the end wall – it was basically the same module. Therefore, I first modelled a wall module consisting of a mirror and a window, duplicated it and bent it along a circle to obtain the walls of the rotunda.

The module was reused for both the corridor and the end wall to save time and (rendering) memory. As I had built up a library of architectural profiles and ornaments over the last year, I was able to reuse and recycle profiles and ornaments for modelling the architecture.

Modelling ornaments can be a difficult task, but with a few ornaments modelled, I simply duplicated and geometrically rearranged them to create unique shapes.

All objects within Rhino were then assigned to different layers based on the material; this made material assignment much easier later in C4D.

Note: The best way to familiarise yourself with Rhino navigation is to model small objects. Simply Rhino offers a great beginner’s series for modelling a teapot in Rhino: for those who are stuck, there are pre-made ornaments that can be purchased from 3D model shops such as Textures.com; some ornament manufacturers offer free models for download on Sketchfab and 3dsky.

Exporting from Rhino to C4D

Rhino is primarily a NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines) software; and although NURBS models are very accurate in representing curve and surface data, most render engines or DCCs do not support NURBS.

For this reason, I exported the NURBS and MESHES to .3dm and .FBX respectively and used Moment of Inspiration (MOI) to convert the NURBS model to a mesh.

MOI provides the best conversion of NURBS to quad mesh (compared to Rhino or other DCCs) – it always provides a flawless mesh that can then be easily edited or UV mapped for rendering.

Import into C4D

Importing the FBX file into C4D was relatively easy, but there were a few things I paid attention to, specifically the import settings, model orientation and file unit, which are listed below in order of execution:
1. Open a new project in C4D (project unit in cm);
2. Merge FBX (merge FBX);
3. Select “Geometry” and “Material” in the merge panel;
4. Change the orientation of the imported geometry (P) by -90 degrees in the Y-axis;
5. Use the “AT Group All Materials” script to automatically organise Rhino materials into different groups.

I modelled half of the architecture in Rhino and then mirrored it as an instance in C4D as everything is symmetrical.

The floor (Versailles parquet tiles) was modelled using the photo texturing method propagated primarily by CG artist Ian Hubert. I took a photo of the Versailles parquet tiles as a texture on a layer and then sliced the layer with a “knife” tool to get the variations in reflective roughness along the tile joints. This allowed me to add subtle colour and dirt variations using Curvature in Redshift.

The floor tile was then placed under a cloner to duplicate it and stretch it across the entire floor.

Note: C4D and Rhino use different Y and Z orientations, so the FBX exported directly from Rhino must be rotated in C4D.

Architectural shading (Cinema4D Redshift)

Since I grouped all the meshes by materials in advance, assigning materials was as easy as dragging and dropping them onto the material groups as cubic maps or tri-planar maps. I used Textures.com, the EMC material pack from Greyscalegorilla and Quixel Megascans as base materials for all my shaders.

For ACES to work correctly in Redshift, each texture must be manually assigned to the correct colour space in the RS Texture Node; in general, diffuse/albedo maps belong to “sRGB” and the rest (roughness, displacement, normal maps) to “Raw”. My architectural shaders were mostly a 50/50 mix of photo texture and “dirt” texture to add an extra touch of realism.

2. The character

The underlying character was created in Character Creator 3 (CC3) using the Ultimate Morphs and SkinGen plugins, both of which are very user-friendly and offer self-explanatory parameters.

Ultimate Morphs offered precise sliders for each bone and muscle size of the character, while SkinGen offered a wide range of presets for skin colour, skin texture and make-up. I also used CC3’s Hair Builder to create a game-ready hair mesh for my character.

Facial texturing

The face was one of the most important areas of the CG character and required special attention. The best workflow I found to add photorealistic detail was the “killer workflow” using the VFace model from Texturing XYZ and Zwrap.

VFACE is a collection of state-of-the-art photogrammetric human head models produced by Texturing XYZ; each VFACE comes with 16K photoscanned skin textures, displacement and utility maps; Zwrap is a ZBrush plugin that allows you to automatically fit an existing topology to a custom model.

Using the “Killer Workflow”, I can transfer all the VFACE details to the CC3 head model once the two mesh shapes are aligned.

My customisation of the ” Killer Workflow ” can be described as follows:
2. Export T-Pose character from CC3 to C4D;
3. Delete all polygons except the head of the CC3 character;
4. Export CC3 head model and VFACE model to ZBrush;
5. Use MOVE/Smooth brush to adapt the VFACE model to the CC3 head model as far as possible;
6. Start ZWRAP and click and adjust as many points as possible, especially around the nose, eyes, mouth and ears;
7. ZWRAP processes the matching points;
8. ZWRARP should then be able to output a VFACE model that perfectly matches the CC3 head model;
9. Input both models into XNormal and bake the VFACE textures onto the CC3 head model.

Note: Full “Killer Workflow” tutorial on the official Textureing.XYZ Youtube channel: VFace – Getting Started with Amy Ash. I recommend saving the matching points to ZWRAP before processing. I also recommend baking all VFACE maps individually in XNormal as they are very high resolution and could cause XNormal to crash if baked in batch.

Skin Shading (Cinema4D Redshift)

Once I had finished the XYZ texture maps, I exported the rest of the character’s texture maps from CC3. I then imported the character into C4D and converted all the materials into Redshift materials.

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, Redshift did not yet support Randomwalk SSS (a very realistic and physically accurate model for subsurface scattering that can be found in other renderers such as Arnold), so I had to do a lot more tweaking when rendering the skin.

The 3 layers of subsurface scattering were controlled by a single diffuse material with different “colour correct” settings. The head shader was a mix of the CC3 textures and the VFACE textures; the VFACE multi-channel displacement map was mixed with the CC3 displacement map “microskin”.

A “redshift object” was transferred to the character to activate the displacement – only then did the VFACE displacements become visible during rendering.

Hair shading

After experimenting with C4D Ornatrix, Maya Xgen and Houdini, I decided that using the baked hair mesh from CC3 was more efficient across the board for the “Ballerina” project. I’m using a Redshift “glass” material with CC3 hair texture maps fed into the “Reflection” and “Refraction” colour slots, as hair (in real life) reacts to light like little glass tubes.

Note: For anyone interested in making CC3 hair even more realistic, CGcircuit has a great parchment tutorial on how to create and simulate hair.

3. Animation/Character Animation: iClone

I then exported the CC character to iClone for animation. I considered several options to achieve a realistic animation of the character, including:
1. using mocap data from the catalogue (Mixamo, Reallusion ActorCore);
2. Hiring a mocap studio to create a customised mocap animation;
3. Using a mocap suit (e.g. Rokoko or Xsens) for customised mocap animation;
4. Conventional keyframing.

After experimenting with various off-the-shelf mocap data, I realised that Mixamo’s mocaps were far too generic and mostly very robotic looking; Reallusion Actorcore had some very realistic movements, but I couldn’t find exactly what I needed for the project. Since I had no budget and (my) very specific requirements for the character’s movements, options 2 and 3 were out of the question. This led me to classic keyframing.

First, I recorded videos of ballet performances and laid them out frame by frame in PureRef. Then I overlaid the PureRef reference (with half opacity) over iClone and adjusted each joint of the character to my reference using“Edit Motion Layer“.

The animated characters were then exported to Alembic files.

Note: While my final project concept shows ballerinas in slow motion, my original idea was to keyframe a 20-second ballet dance, which I quickly realised was a bad idea for several reasons:
1. Slow motion allowed many frames to be interpolated, but real-time movement required many individual frames, so much more fine-tuning was needed;
2. more frames meant more rendering problems (flickering, tessellation problems, etc.).

As this is my first project to animate a character, I decided to create a slow motion style sequence instead – 2 unique poses with 160 frames of motion each.

Clothing simulation

The clothing simulation was by far the most difficult part of the project. The two main cloth sims/solvers I considered were Marvelous Designer (MD) and Houdini Vellum.

While Houdini Vellum was much more flexible and reliable than Marvelous Designer, I personally found it far too slow and therefore impractical without a farm (one frame of fabric simulation could take up to 3 minutes in Houdini Vellum versus 30 seconds in Marvelous Designer on a Threadripper PRO 3955WX with 128 GB Ram).

While fabric simulation in MD is generally much faster to set up than Houdini Vellum, it was not as easy as I had imagined. Simulated garments in MD always had some kind of error;

These included flapping fabrics, soaking through the character, or just outright contortions. Below are some of the settings I tweaked to minimise problems:
1. Using “Tack” to attach parts of the garment to the character;
2. Increasing the “Density” and “Air Damping” of the fabric to prevent the garment from moving too quickly and getting out of position;
3. Simulate parts of the garment in isolation – this is not physically accurate, but I was able to iterate and debug much faster.

In addition to the above changes, I reduced the “gravity” to achieve a slow motion look.

Note: On the official Marvelous Designer Youtube channel there are many livestreams on clothing modelling, which I find very helpful for learning MD. Alternatively, there are many 3D garments available online (especially on the official Marvelous Designer website or on the Artstation Marketplace) that I have used as the basis for many of my projects.

MD is extremely crash-prone. Also, there is a bug in both MD10 and MD11 that prevents simulated garments from being saved 90% of the time, so you should always export simulated garments as Alembic files and not rely on MD to save the simulation.

Cleaning up the simulation

After dozens of simulations, I imported the alembic files exported with MD into Houdini, where I did a lot of manual cleanup, including
1. manually correcting clashed fabrics and characters with “Soft Transform”;
2. Reducing simulation noise with “Attribute Blur”;
3. Blending together the best simulations from different Alembic files with “Time Blend”.

Alternative to clothing simulation

For those frustrated by the impractical simulation times for Houdini Vellum fabrics and MD errors, an alternative is to literally attach the garment to the character’s skin in CC3 – a technique most commonly used in game production.

Note: You can find Reallusion’s official guide to making game-appropriate clothing here.

Baking and shading garments

Once I was done with the fabric simulation in MD and the cleanup in Houdini, I imported the Alembic file into C4D. MD Alembic files always appear in C4D as an Alembic object without selection sets; this makes material assignment impossible.

This is where C4D baking came into play – a process with which I converted the Alembic file into a C4D object with PLA (Point Level Animation):
1. Drag the Alembic object into the C4D timeline;
2. Switch to the menu item “Functions”;
3. “Bake Objects;
4. Select “PLA”;
5. Then bake.

The above steps gave me a baked C4D object from which I could easily select polygons and assign multiple materials using selection sets. I then exported an OBJ file from MD with materials, imported it into C4D and dragged the selection sets directly onto the baked garment object. This eliminated the need to manually reassign the materials in C4D.

I used a mixture of linen texture maps (from Quixel Megascans Bridge) and Redshift Car Shader to simulate the sequin fabric found on many professional ballet tutu dresses.

WARNING: Do not use AO or curvature nodes for the simulated clothing materials (or other animated objects), as these can potentially lead to disturbances in the final rendering.

4. Rendering

Lighting and environment

Although I tried to keep the lighting as minimal as possible, I had to do a lot of tinkering for the “Ballerina” project due to the nocturnal surroundings.

The nighttime HDRI didn’t provide enough ambient light for the interior, and the chandelier bulbs were far too dim as the main light source. In the end, I placed an invisible spotlight under the chandelier in the centre and used a spotlight to illuminate only the architectural ornaments. The spotlight provided an extra level of indirect light that provided just the right amount of illumination without destroying the moody atmosphere.

I also added a “Redshift environment” multiplied in the Z-axis with “Maxon Noise” to add depth to the scene. In the outdoor area, I added 2 variations of dogwood trees with C4D “Matrix” distributed in the environment. They were lit in the scene from the ground to create additional depth. The lighting of the scene includes:
1. Dome light (HDRI for night) x 1
2. Chandelier (mesh lights) x 3
3. Spotlight (centre) x 1
4. Exterior area lights x 4
5. Artificial area lighting under the chandelier (contains architectural ornaments only)

Note: The trees were generated with SpeedTree. It takes a lot of practice to perfect the lighting. In addition to my daily CG practice, I spent a lot of time watching clips from films – I was very inspired by Roger Deakin’s lighting and cinematography, for example, as well as Wes Anderson’s composition and colour combinations.

Camera movements

All my camera movements were very subtle. This included tracking shots, camera pans and rotations, all controlled with Greyscalegorilla’s C4D plugin Signal. I personally prefer using Signal because of its non-destructive nature, but old-school key-framing would also work very well for similar camera movements.

Draft Renderings

Once I had the character animations, cloth simulations and camera movements finalised, I started with low-resolution test renders to make sure I wouldn’t have any surprises in the final renders:
1. Flipbook renders (openGL) to make sure the timing of the animations was optimal;
2. Rendering a complete sequence with low resolution and low samples to make sure there are no glitches;
3. Rendering high resolution (2K) high sample still images with AOVs (diffuse, reflection, refraction, volume) to check what contributed to the predominant noise, if any;
4. Submitting test renders to Fox Renderfarm to ensure the final renders match my local renders.

This process took over 2 months of repeatedly creating renders and making corrections.

Final renderings & denoising

For the final renderings, I used a relatively high rendering setting, as interior scenes in Redshift are generally prone to noise.

I also had motion blur and bokeh turned on for the final renders – in general, motion blurs and bokehs look better (more physically accurate) in the render than motion blurs and bokehs added via compositing.

Half of the final 2K sequence was rendered on a local workstation, while the rest was rendered on Fox Renderfarm, totalling in about 6840 hours of render time on two RTX 3090 machines. I used Neat Video for denoising the final shot, while the close-ups were cleaned up with Single Altus (in Redshift).

Note: Always switch off “Random Noise Pattern” under Redshift “Unified Sampling” when using “Altus Single” for denoising.

Redshift Rendering GI trick

Redshift’s GI Irradiance Cache calculation can be quite costly; for example, my final renders have an average of 5 minutes of GI Irradiance Caching time per frame.

In Vray, there was an option in the IR/LC settings called “Use camera path” that was specifically designed for scenes where the camera is moving through a still scene. Once the “Use camera path” option was enabled, Vray calculated only one frame of the GI cache for an entire sequence. Following Vray, I use the following motion blur settings to calculate the first frame of the Irradiance cache:

The one Irradiance cache is then used to render the entire sequence. Two shots of the project were rendered with a single GI cache, resulting in an overall 10% faster render time.

Note : The GI trick is only applied to shots with very little movement. For example, when I applied it to the two close-up shots of the “Ballerina” project, I got slight blotches and ghosting on the character’s skin.

Conclusion

Working on the project for months gave me a new appreciation for traditional character animators – I never realised how much effort goes into creating character animations and how many subtle details are required to bring convincing CG characters to life.

Although I wouldn’t describe myself as a character artist, I believe that character animation is very effective in bringing CG environments to life and will therefore continue to be an essential part of my personal CG work in the future.

More information :
– Kay John Yim’s personal website https://johnyim.com/
– Kay John Yim’s ArtStation https://www.artstation.com/johnyim
– Character Creator https://www.reallusion.com/de/character-creator/download.html
– iClone https://www.reallusion.com/de/iclone/testversion.html
– Reallusion https://www.reallusion.com/de

The post Ballerina: CGI-Fantasie mit C4D, Character Creator und iClone first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.