Cinema 4d Materials

[Cora Auch]

Iuse Cinema 4D to model meshes and have come across the very annoying issue of not being able to import a mesh with two materials applied with it still having both applied in UE4? When I import any mesh with more than one materials applied in C4D it creates two materials, but only one slot for a material gets created? Has anyone else come across this problem or is it just me? And has anyone got a solution?

The options available are to upload the FBX to something like Dropbox and attach the link here for me to download or if you dont want to share the asset you can log into the forums and send me a private message with the link. Either way is fine and I will take a look and see what we can figure out.

I exported the FBX without any changes. It had the multi-material applied but was only using one of the textures > I imported that into UE4 > Import options were set to import textures and combine meshes > Two textures were imported but the materials only listed one channel.

This time, I applied the applied the white texture to the pillows > I then exported as FBX > Imported into UE4 > Import options were set to import textures and combine meshes > two textures were imported and there were two material ids.

But a ver big problem is how reverse this operation, I mean from Standard Shader to C4D Shaders.... Why? When yo export an scene in FBX with Arnold Shaders Materials applied seems that any assignation will be preserved. But with C4D standard materials all assignations become stored in FBX file.

This is a big problem if you have hundred of Arnold shaders materials assigned and you need pass those assignation throught FBX files. I have not found a method to convert an Arnold Shader to C4D material, It's not necesary preserve Arnold Shader appareancy (altought a random color by each C4D material restored would be great) in this case with a solid it's ok if like me you only need preserve material assignations.

The FBX contains the Standard Surface parameter settings? I'd be surprised.

Sounds like you need to replace a do-nothing stub material with a CINEMA 4D material, so you don't need any Arnold-specific expertise, just CINEMA 4D scripting?

No, FBX seems not store any Arnold Shader assignation from C4D. If you open FBX saved from a file with Arnold Shaders applied to objects, you can see that is like none material assignation was be applied.

If you need export fbx and need sort objects by material assignation and you had work with Arnold Shaders you are in a problem. Unless you have a Cinema 4D script to revert all Arnold Shaders to Standard C4D materials (due that this assignation are preserved in FBX).

If I understand correctly your goal is to preserve the material assignments in the FBX and the look is not relevant. What's your workflow? Where and how do you use the FBX? Does it have to be FBX? Arnold supports MaterialX to export material assignments (looks).

I need a fbx file with material assignments due that I import scene to TwinMotion (Unreal engine) and in this step I can sort all assets by materials. So I only need apply a material once time in TwinMotion... Think about if you need reapply "glass" material on every window of a big house or hotel... In my case this tedious work was done in C4toA, if you need to do again due material assignment are not preserved in FBX... you need do it twice.

Please check the attached script. It will iterate over the objects and replace the assigned Arnold materials with C4D materials. If the Arnold material has a standard_surface root shader, it will use its base color in the C4D material, otherwise the look is not preserved.

Create physically accurate materials with multiple layers of reflection using the Cinema 4D Reflectance Channel. Stack metallic flakes, anisotropic scratches and clear coat on top of a diffuse base layer, dial in the roughness and strength of each layer and enjoy materials that fully react to the lighting environment.

Powerful layering options at the shader level, within reflectance and for materials themselves offer unlimited options for combining basic elements to create incredibly complex and detailed materials.

I've made a model in cinema 4d (r11) and I want to import it to unity with the textures, I need to know how to get the textures, including the glass and metal textures I made in cinema, into unity, can anyone help?

You can't transfer the shader properties of C4D into Unity. These include the SLA shader materials like Danel or Banji as well as the different channels in the standard material editor and the effects in its menus (fresnel, etc). If you want an object to have a similar look to your glass in C4D, you'd need to source or write a shader that can replicate that effect.

For standard materials (ie colour/bump channel only) you just need the textures to be inside your project folder along with the mesh itself. Unity will create a new material and attempt to grab the texture used in the colour channel in C4D, and you'll need to alter this if you want to add things like reflections, transparency, particular shader effects, or separate bump textures. Unity can apply several different materials to a single object in a layered up manner, but all the fancy stuff has to be done with Unity shaders.

I have had the same problems for weeks now, i am very new to unity, and i finally made it to import by bakes by this method, but it seems so crazy if this is the only way? I hope somebody finds this thread and can maybe sort things out for us...

First, finish your models without textures.Second, aply a generic texture and generate UVW coordinates.Third, set the polygon selections for the different textures, and aply textures.Fourth, use the "Save Project" option, to gather all texture images in a folder named "Tex".Fifth, from desktop, copy the project folder into the Assets folder on you Unity 3D project.

Hello, I would like to open a thread to collect some experiences and points of view about the workflow I've been using for the last two years, which is based on Sketchup (for modelling) and Cinema4d+Vray (for rendering, and adding entourage).

The reason why I want to ask other user to step in with their own points of view is that I find this workflow really underrated: it's so hard to find information on the web, expecially in contrast with the "skp to 3dsmax" w.f. which has been broadly discussed and demonstrated (for example by some great artists like Ronen Bekerman or Peter Guthrie).

In my case, I model the building (sometimes even part of the furniture) in sketchup, giving materials to every surface (usually I just use colours as placeholders, because I will apply the real materials later on in C4d). Important thing: in sketchup, I model everything as separated objects: for example if I have to model a bookcase, I will make every shelf as a group, as well as the main structure of the bookcase and then I will group everything together or even make a component. Doing so, helps me with keeping the model tidy but will also imply some ease of use in C4d.

After having modeled everything and applied colours/materials in Skp, I move to Cinema, by exporting the model as .3ds file with the option "by materials" -but now I would like to give the "full hierarchy" option a try (never used the "by layers" option since I rarely use layers in sketchup). There many more things to be said about the "export texture maps" option, and the fact that the .3ds file will have separated faces and edges so that you will have to optimize the meshes in cinema, but I would like to start the discussion with the basic facts moving to details later.

I am late to the party but still... Somehow I don't image a lot of people are doing this sketchup to cinema 4d thing, I might be wrong but usually most people do it all in one place. Sure the greats use sketchup and then refine in 3ds max but I haven't come across too many artists that go sketchup to cinema 4d route. Perhaps it's because the vis scene is a bit smaller or because most people opt to learn render engines wherever the engine producers focus their effort first... I'm just guessing here

I use SketcUp as my main modeller and Cinema purely for rendering...What I recently discovered is 3D Browser by Mootools. This makes our workflow almost seamlessly! You can check it out with a free trial...

The workflow from Sketchup to Cinema 4D seems pretty stable to me using Colada (DAE). Before that I used to use exactly the same workflow that you mentioned. but when the scene get larger, 3Ds seems to fail.

I don't do much of the modeling, but the architects that I work for, model everything in sketchup so I just clean the mesh first, in sketchup, checking all faces are pointing the same direction, purge un-used materials and textures, then export as collada. Cinema 4D take it from there no problems.

This is pretty interesting, can you tell me more about it? How does it actually work? Do you have the possibility to automatically update a model in sketchup while you're working in Cinema? This could be great..

I have found that .dae files from SketchUp will import with some objects doubled, which is to say a ghost version of itself in the object. You can see this by selecting a polygon and deleting it, this shows there is another one just like it left behind. What cures this is the Optimize tool. When it joins the points, the extra polys vanish. It's weird, but fixable.

Late to the party, but the sketchup to C4D workflow is one we have used for years. Using .dae keeps the instancing from Sketchup. Optimize + untriangulate everything. Last year we added rendering in Octane to the mix for even better results.

Thanks John. I think it's never too late to learn, so thank you. During last year I switched from .3ds to .fbx getting much better results, but I should give .dae another shot now that I'm more familiar with cinema 4d. Also thanks to the C4d supporters who answered before, I know that working just inside Cinema will be the best choice to bypass any compatibility issues. But I have to say, from my very personal working experience, Sketchup is more suited for architectural modeling: it's quick, responsive, and understandable by people who are not into the 3d world, like your boss or your client. In my opinion this last, very undiscussed thing, is very important if you are using a 3d sw during the design phase. If the people you are interacting with can at least understand the principles of the sw you're using it will be way easier to get to a better and more shared result. Again, this is just my personal experience and I'm not only a 3d artist, so it could very different from someone else. Thank you

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