2020 - Cinema 4D Export Refuses to Export Symbols as Render Instances

[Wesley Burrows]

No matter what I do,  symbols are exported as individual geometry.   Anyone else?

[zoomer]

Ouch,

haven't looked into it so far ....

There is a checkbox to keep Symbols in export settings  - and it doesn't work ?

[Wesley Burrows]

Just now, zoomer said:

Ouch,

haven't looked into it so far ....

There is a checkbox to keep Symbols in export settings  - and it doesn't work ?

 

Box is indeed checked:

 

 

Saving the file as 2019, and re-exporting from 2019 works as desired.     I was liking 2020 pretty well so far,  but that's a bit of a show stopper in my workflow. 

[zoomer]

Hmmh ....

 

I currently checked IFC4.0 Export.

The file size is only ⅕ of an IFC23 export - and so do my imports look ....

 

 

Interesting if all these problems are related to migrated VW 2019 files only.

(wouldn't help much though)

[EAlexander]

*panics

[Wesley Burrows]

I submitted a bug report.   Just curious if anyone else has been able to confirm. 

[JuanP]

@Wesley Burrows checking with R&D about this issue.

[Dave Donley]

Is that render style an "Artistic" one?  Artistic renderings don't render instances so we don't use them for artistic modes.

 

[JuanP]

@Wesley Burrows This is from Tim in our QA team: "Symbols seem to be exporting fine in my tests, so this might be file-specific. The post says he submitted a bug report. Do you have access to his bug report? I'd like to take a look at his file to see if we can find a cause. Thanks"

 

Could you DM or post the file that you are having issues, please?

 

thanks,

 

[Wesley Burrows]

6 minutes ago, JuanP said:

@Wesley Burrows This is from Tim in our QA team: "Symbols seem to be exporting fine in my tests, so this might be file-specific. The post says he submitted a bug report. Do you have access to his bug report? I'd like to take a look at his file to see if we can find a cause. Thanks"

 

Could you DM or post the file that you are having issues, please?

 

thanks,

 

 

 

@JuanP,  DM sent.

[Wesley Burrows]

11 minutes ago, Dave Donley said:

Is that render style an "Artistic" one?  Artistic renderings don't render instances so we don't use them for artistic modes.

 

 

 

@Dave DonleyIt's not,  it's Realistic.

 

Edited September 13, 2019 by Wesley Burrows

[JuanP]

@Wesley Burrows I don't see any obvious reason why this is only happening with some symbols, but I definitely see the problem. This issue was logged under VB-165017. Will keep you posted!

[zoomer]

On 9/12/2019 at 10:22 PM, Wesley Burrows said:

No matter what I do,  symbols are exported as individual geometry.   Anyone else?

 

I did a test with a recent VW 2019 project.

Migrating VW File, clean Export

and my hidden Symbol Folder is there,

also my Render Instances.

VW 2020 - C4D R21

[Wesley Burrows]

1 minute ago, zoomer said:

 

I did a test with a recent VW 2019 project.

Migrating VW File, clean Export

and my hidden Symbol Folder is there,

also my Render Instances.

VW 2020 - C4D R21

 

Interesting.   I'm haven't made the transition to R21 yet,   Some of my plugins haven't been updated for it yet.  So this is occuring in R20 for me.

[zoomer]

VW Export File was saved in R21 already, but looks ok in R20 too.

 

 

BTW

R21 is a weak update (again),

beside that I got Studio, from C4D Vizualize, for free

(which I never wanted, but should pay the subscription price for

Studio now - if I would go on supporting them)

At least no artist harmed because of I recently continued my MSA.

But the new Licensing is really annoying, if you need to test it/work

on Mac and Windows.

 

 

Never knew that this existed,

but if I get that right, I downloaded a CentOS Linux version (*.RPM)
(CentOS is the Distribution, that is said to be used by larger 3D Studios)

Anyway, it does not install on my OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, although

RPM based, without larger fiddling)

But if C4D comes at one day officially on (all) Linux, I would even consider

their subscription.

Edited September 13, 2019 by zoomer

[Wesley Burrows]

I have studio too....  I don't mind everyone having the same version,  makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint.    I would be somewhat surprised if VW didn’t do something similar in the future.  

[zoomer]

14 hours ago, JuanP said:

@Wesley Burrows I don't see any obvious reason why this is only happening with some symbols, but I definitely see the problem. This issue was logged under VB-165017. Will keep you posted!

 

Well, I just checked/tested that I have Symbols and Instances.

I didn't count them if I miss any  🙂

 

But good that it was reproducible and is in the works.

[Guest Selin]

Hi @Wesley Burrows upon investigation I have realized the reason for that is because you have Data Visualization on in your Design Layer. I'm not so certain about the reasoning yet but I'm looking into it. Meanwhile, turning Data Viz. off just for the export would be a workaround.

[mjm]

1 hour ago, Selin said:

Hi @Wesley Burrows upon investigation I have realized the reason for that is because you have Data Visualization on in your Design Layer. I'm not so certain about the reasoning yet but I'm looking into it. Meanwhile, turning Data Viz. off just for the export would be a workaround.

Great to hear there's some kind of workaround in the immediate term

[zoomer]

That might be also the reason why it worked for me.

Never touched Data Visualization so far.

[Wesley Burrows]

18 hours ago, Selin said:

Hi @Wesley Burrows upon investigation I have realized the reason for that is because you have Data Visualization on in your Design Layer. I'm not so certain about the reasoning yet but I'm looking into it. Meanwhile, turning Data Viz. off just for the export would be a workaround.

 

@Selin, Interesting.   I don't know why that's even on,  (or how to turn it off actually)   I haven't had time to even look at it.   I did notice some weird new geometry that showed up in my template file with 2020 but hadn't had time to investigate.

 

Edited September 17, 2019 by Wesley Burrows

[Guest Selin]

3 minutes ago, Wesley Burrows said:

 

I don't know why that's even on,  (or how to turn it off actually) 

 

 

You can turn it off from the drop down menu next to the render mode drop down.

[Guest Selin]

I've looked deeper into this and it is actually working as designed. Data visualization overrides the appearance of all objects. Because instances adopt the appearance of symbol definitions rather than the overrides, if we ignore data visualization and let export create instances, they use the color of symbols pre-data viz. Though plain geometry still uses data viz. colors. This creates a mixed effect that is wrong in any way. For data viz. to be rendered correctly, we need to disable instancing.

Sorry for the confusion. When we can't have both, accurate renderings and exports are higher priority than file organization and other optimizations.

I suggest turning off data viz. for symbol heavy exports like this and achieving your 'override' effect by modifying the symbol definition directly from Cinema.

[zoomer]

What about switching Data Visualization (automatically) temporarily off while exporting ?

I can't imagine such a temporary worklfow like Data Visualization state as a useful

export option to C4D  in most cases.

But I can imagine that I want to export to C4D after I checked my state by Data Visualization

and may even want such a Data Viz state in permanent mode for Modeling.

[Dave Donley]

As a simple rule we are using WYSIWYG.  If you don't want the export to look like the design layer you will need to turn off data viz.  If data viz is on we assume you want the C4D export to look identical.  We feel that any other solution to this would just be confusing.  It is like the current layer and class visibilities being used for the exported model. 

 

Unfortunately a side effect of making the rendering have a consistent look is not compatible with also making these objects C4D instances on export.