barkest Posted April 24, 2017 Share Posted April 24, 2017 (edited) I am currently going through the process of VW to C4D and picking up things along the way. I am a novice with C4D but I am happy to share my experiences Video attached symbols_with_lights.mp4 Edited April 24, 2017 by barkest 1 Quote Link to comment
barkest Posted May 6, 2017 Author Share Posted May 6, 2017 I am learning more with regards to exporting to C4D I know its a big statement from someone with very little experience with C4D but I believe there is a fundamental flaw in the process. I made the video above but now know more about it. The video is still valid but therein lies the issue. If you have a symbol and several instances and send to C4D it will appear in C4D as an object with its several instances. In order to do this you have to check Export Symbols as Render Instances. IMHO this box should be change to Export Symbols and not as Render Instances. Render Instances should only be for symbols that have geometry and if you have a light in the symbol it will not work (see video). Also Render Instances are really a special kind of symbol so to make all instances from VW render instances makes no sense at all. When I eventually finish this voyage of VW to C4D discovery I will write it all up. Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted May 6, 2017 Share Posted May 6, 2017 Beside the problem with your lights in Symbols I am pretty happy that all my Symbols export as Render Instances. Looks like there is no way to select instances, starting from the parent. Would need to search for the Instance Symbols Names to switch RI off. Quote Link to comment
barkest Posted May 7, 2017 Author Share Posted May 7, 2017 (edited) Have to disagree. Render Instances are 'specialised' in other words they are not mainstream. Why would you generate instances that are specialised? 10 hours ago, zoomer said: Looks like there is no way to select instances, starting from the parent. Would need to search for the Instance Symbols Names to switch RI off. I use the selector Edited May 7, 2017 by barkest Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted May 7, 2017 Share Posted May 7, 2017 (edited) Because Render Instances are faster in Rendering and OpenGL and need less RAM. In all cases except included lights that is the better option. Especially as Render Instances work exactly the same way as Symbols in VW do. You can position, scale and rotate them, that's it. All show the same content as the parent Symbol. (OK, they work with Lights) Therefore, as long as there is no "automation" to make Only Symbols including lights to export as normal Instances, or an option to choose always Instances only instead of Render Instances, it is easer to reset the minority of Symbols with lights to instances in C4D, than to manually set all other Instances to Render Instances manually. And I think if VW would include settings for all these relatively not so important options, VW would soon look like any other complicated CAD System. If you don't like Render Instances at all it would be a easy in C4D to just select all Instances by filtering and deactivate that option. Not sure what that will mean for Exchange and updating the import. The Selector or Item List Filter lets you select ALL instances. But I did not find a way to just select the Instances coming from one of the Symbols parent. So that you could deactivate Render instances for just your Symbols containing Lights while keeping the Render Instances for normal Symbols where it makes sense. Edited May 7, 2017 by zoomer Quote Link to comment
barkest Posted May 7, 2017 Author Share Posted May 7, 2017 2 hours ago, zoomer said: Especially as Render Instances work exactly the same way as Symbols in VW do. You can make an instance in VW unique but in C4D you have to uncheck the Render Instance before it can become unique. Better still to have two export options 1. Instance 2. Render Instance Should be easy to do as its a checkbox Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted May 7, 2017 Share Posted May 7, 2017 How do you make an instance of VW unique ? By converting to a Group or Plugin Object ? 2 minutes ago, barkest said: Better still to have two export options 1. Instance 2. Render Instance Should be easy to do as its a checkbox Or checking Symbols for Lights and in this case always export as standard instance, while 3D Geometry Only Symbols as Render instances as is. Or are there any other cases where Render Instances aren't adequate ? Quote Link to comment
barkest Posted May 7, 2017 Author Share Posted May 7, 2017 1 hour ago, zoomer said: checking Symbols for Lights and in this case always export as standard instance, while 3D Geometry Onl Seems reasonable. A lot of my symbols contain lights. I still see no reason to have render instance checked Quote Link to comment
Guest Selin Posted September 21, 2017 Share Posted September 21, 2017 (edited) Apologies, I'm just getting caught up with the forum We used to export all symbols in VW as render instances without even asking the user. Because, they are the C4D equivalents of VW symbols in the sense that object geometry is being referenced instead of being duplicated. The geometry of C4D's instance objects DO get duplicated and the scene is being rendered as if all the instance objects were regular objects (this does not help with the render time whatsoever). Therefore it will take too much memory of a scene that has very many copies of one symbol in VW. So, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't see much of a difference between exporting everything as regular objects and exporting VW symbols as C4D instances besides the file size. Still, I think it's possible to work around this. Because your workflow contains putting light objects in symbols, I would export the symbols that have light objects in them as regular objects and make them instances in C4D. Then I'd export the rest of the scene with render instances and merge the two. It'd be easy to differentiate between the two kinds of symbols using class visibilities, layers or just by selecting them and doing an export with the corresponding options. Edited September 21, 2017 by Selin Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted September 22, 2017 Share Posted September 22, 2017 Exactly. Render Instances are the best way in most cases and I would keep this as a main default settings. But there are not so few people out there that work in a way that they ran into problems with the majority of their data. Either by already misusing Symbols in VW in a completely different creative way than they are thought, to workaround other problems, or just working mainly with objects that do not work in C4D Render Instances like Lights or Grass Shaders. From their point of view standard Instance Export may be better. So I see 2 ways for VW to allow flexibility, either a setting option to deactivate Render Instances completely, or better, automatically disabling Render Instances for Symbols that contain incompatible Objects. For now, or in the future if there are any reasons to never change the current export, beside exporting from VW in separate parts, In C4D you can Filter for Instances (+Locators) and switch Render/Standard mode of instances at a time. Quote Link to comment
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