User Manual - Thea Render
Contents
1. Adaptive AMC 10 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies COTHEA SeUDIeIS SS use By selecting the Preset option a new menu appears Figure 36 Presets showing the available render presets at a drop Option down list see them in Figure 37 The name of each preset indicates the engine that will be used for rendering For Adaptive BSD engine several presets exist for both exterior and interior scenes with a variation to the final quality from preview to fine Figure 37 Available Presets List At the next drop down list you can select among the available resolution presets for your Production Render Custom value uses the resolution that is given at Render Settings window see Figure 39 at Output so any resolution values and ratio can be sons added there and Thea will use them Figure 39 Render Settings Custom respectively Resolution Figure 38 Select Render Resolution 6 1 5 Rendered Image and Interactive Info Area C As we have already mentioned this area not only hosts the rendered image for both Interactive and Production rendering but is also active during Interactive Rendering as user can perform the following actions Alt Left Click Drag is used for rotating the scene Alt Right Click Drag is used as Dolly zooming in out the selected point Alt Mouse wheel scrolling zooms in and out the scene Alt Middle click Drag is used for panning As mentioned already with the Pick tools use2. Description Assign Refresh Material Lab Material Save gt Layer Scattering Diffuse Tip By enabling a component the corresponding tab also appears where the component available settings exist Reflectance Note 1 below the material preview window the material schema exists Figure 79 which allows the user to add substrates and coatings in the material and also modify the existing material properties Clipping Displace Emitter Medium gt Fresnel Y Structure Figure 81 Thea Material Settings Attributes panel Figure 79 Material Schema Note 2 below the material preview window three extra buttons for Refreshing the preview in case Auto Refresh at Preferences is disabled for opening the material inside Thea Material Lab and for saving the material exist Figure 80 Refresh Material Lab Material Save Figure 80 Refresh and Material Lab buttons Note 3 for more details on Thea materials and their settings please refer to Thea User Manual at the Material Lab chapter 23 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies Cr THEA S2ulDle TECHNOLOGIES At the Basic tab you are able to add remove components to FT mann the material as we said the maximum is 3 or 2 components SRT SRE EAN of each type At our example as seen in Figure 83 we have Mmm Ne wK enabled the Matte and Thin Film components Click the corresponding substrates or coating to switch between their attributes F
3. Main tab Figure 6 License Input Form window Plugins tab 5 GETTING STARTED MAIN WINDOWS After installing correctly the plugin you will be able to find its main options at the Plugins list as we have seen in Figure 2 from where you can open the Darkroom and start an Interactive or a Production rendering Thea Render can be also found at the Renderers list at the Render Settings window of Cinema4D You can go to Render gt Edit Render Settings or press CTRL B and at the available Renderers list select Thea Render see Figure 8 From this menu you can define the settings for Output Save and Multi Pass in the same way as for the native renderer and for Thea Render specifically At the next paragraphs we will see the available options for both Plugins menu and Render Settings window 4 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies Figure 7 Thea Render appearing at the Plugins E Figure 8 Render Settings window list 6 THEA PLUGIN MENU OPTIONS As we see in Figure 9 user can select to open Thea Darkroom for rendering interactively or normally inside Cinema4D Export the scene for open it later at Thea Studio Convert Cinema4d materials to the corresponding Thea ones define the used CPU and GPU devices for Presto engines check for existing plugin and resources Updates activate Thea License edit the main plugin Preferences and see some main information at About window Figure 9 Plugin Menu options 6 1 Thea Darkroom
4. Figure 20 at Output so any resolution values and ratio can be added there and Thea will use them respectively Figure 20 Render Settings Custom Resolution 7 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies Cr THEA Figure 21 Pick Region S LIDIRIS TECHNOLOGIES Once Interactive Rendering starts you are able to use the Pick Region tool and select a region click and drag to create a rectangle upon the rendered image Area C and let this region to be rendered You can select any additional region you need and see the regions history appearing at a drop down list as seen in Figure 22 By clicking on any region from the list you can see this one being rendered instead No region option let the whole image being rendered while Remove All option clears the regions history Tip after stopping the rendering the list of regions selected is still active you can double click on any region from the list and see the image being refreshed accordingly Note once the Pick Region Tool is enabled the button is highlighted with an orange color SME Adaptive AMG 800x600 Figure 22 Selected Region is being rendered and available Regions List can be seen 8 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TIOTHEA SeLIDIIS TECHNOLOGIES With Pick Material you are able to select any material from the rendered image Figure 23 Pick simple click on it with the Pick material enabled icon will be in orange color Mat
5. The Darkroom command opens a window that resembles Thea Darkroom as we see it in Figure 10 Thea Darkroom consists of several menus which help you render and post process your rendered image which appears in the middle of the window Area C At this window you can render the current scene inside Cinema4D using the defined Thea engine or make an interactive render At the next paragraphs all the available buttons and functionality are explained Figure 10 Thea Darkroom inside Cinema4D 5 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TIOTHEA SeUDIeIS 6 1 1 File and Window Menus Area A On top left on area A we can see the menus File and Window File menu opens the submenus Save which saves the rendered image in one of the available formats see Figure 11 and the Send to menu which opens the rendered image at Thea Studio Darkroom Image Editor or opens the Cinema4D scene at Thea Studio Viewport Scene Editor or opens the rendered image at Cinema4D Picture Viewer see the available option in Figure 12 Figure 12 Send to options Figure 11 Save options Window from this menu as seen in Figure 13 user is able to show hide the Render View Area C the Interactive Info devices details at the bottom of Area C the Progress Toolbar Area D and the Display Controls Area E Figure 13 Show Windows 6 1 2 Render Settings and Tools Area B At the right top of the Darkroom window user is able to select
6. The License option as we have already described allows an easy activation of your license from within Cinema4D The first time you want to activate the license you need to add here your full name email address your serial number and at the Plugins tab the Cinema4D serial number as well and then ask for an activation code The system will send you back the activation code and after restarting your application Thea will be registered For more details on activation procedure please refer to Thea User Manual 15 Please select the devices to be used by Presto engine Order Name lo Quadro K5000 V1 Intel R Core TM i7 2600 Memory Cores 4096 MB 8x192 12193 MB 8 Compute 3 0 Priority Low Low Main Plugins Mise will be used to send you any activation codes Full Name E mail Address Serial Number Activate License Please enter all the following data using ascii characters These data will be kept private and used only for contacting you about licensing Make sure that your e mail is correct and operational as it Application v Figure 60 License Input Form window Copyright Solid Iris Technologies Cr THEA 6 7 Preferences The Thea Preferences window allows you to specify the Default Extension for saving a Thea scene scn thea pack thea or xml and also enable disable the automatic opening of the scene either at Thea Studio Viewpo
7. a material library with ready to use materials please visit www thearender com cinema4d for more details After installing the library at the browser folder of Cinema4D you can find the library inside the content browser see Figure 88 or load the material from the materials window Create gt Load Material Preset gt Thea Materials see Figure 89 Tip 1 as we have already mentioned if you face problems to locate the correct folder where Cinema4d stores its material libraries lib4d format you can find the correct path by going to Edit gt Preferences and see that path at the bottom At this location inside the library folder you can find the browser folder where the Thea Library needs to be added i Figure 88 drag and drop a material fromthe Figure 89 Thea Libraries can be accessed too from content browser to your model the Materials window 9 4 Color Shaders in Thea Materials The same material can be reused in different objects That way it is transferred only once into Thea Render engine Nevertheless if a color effector random shader is used in a cloner Cinema4D will produce different color for each object generated by the cloner In this case a new material has to be created for each object and transferred to engine Plastic Ball 2 To prevent a material from being reused a Retransferred Materials object has to be added in the scene from the Material Menu Figure 90 It contai
8. panels 19 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies Cr THEA 7 4 Thea Channels Multi Pass Option At the Channels tab a list with all available channels depending on the engine that we have selected appears see Figure 71 For cases of a single frame rendering you will be able to see the rendered channels inside Darkroom at the Channels list see Figure 70 EE p n Mode nbiased RL None Figure 70 ehanhel inside Thea Darkroom window As we will also mention later for rendering animations one needs to use Cinema4D Picture Viewer with Thea Render engine enabled For cases we need to render multiple channels during an animation we need to enable apart from the render channels in Channels tab the Multi Pass option see Figure 72 At the Save menu the Multi Pass image options will appear to let you define the path of saved channels and their format In this way Thea can be used for rendering animations along with their rendered channels 20 SeUlDie TECHNOLOGIES General Channels Baking nmets Normal Material Normal Position LY Material VW Depth Alpha Material Id Mask Object Buffer Diffuse Color Material Color Raw Diffuse DL Raw Diffuse Gl Ambient Occlusion AQ Self lumination Material Luminance Direct Lighting DL Humination Global Humination Gy Reflection Refraction Select Unsetect All Channels Figure 71 Channels Tab Figure 72 Multi
9. to Cinema4D picture viewer window Figure 43 Send to Picture Viewer aw The Save button is used for saving the image with the given format you need to include the desired extension along with the name it can also be img thea Figure 44 Save for saving the whole buffer or clm for Colimo project files Image 12 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies ATHEA SeUDIzIS TECHNOLOGIES At this area user can get information on the time elapsed since Production rendering started Figure 45 Elapsed Time Refresh button is used for refreshing the image once a change at the Exposure Filtering or Channels selection has been made Figure 46 Refresh Image ase Pass 1 10000 W Phase info box shows the main information regarding rendering progress For Figure 47 Phase Interactive Rendering the Rendering message appears while for Production info Rendering the phase of the process for example Building Environment number of passes samples etc Start button starts either the Interactive Rendering IR which allows seeing any movement material change or light addition interactively button is as seen in Figure 48 or in case of Production Rendering PR starts the rendering process button is as seen in Figure 49 Pause and Stop buttons are used for pausing the rendering or stopping it and have the same functionality as those at the top right bar Figure 50 Pause Figure 51 Stop ors For Produc
10. Adaptive BSD Unbiased TR1 Unbiased TR2 Presto AO Presto MC or Adaptive AMC Several other options exist to enable disable at this tab depending once again on the engine that is used for rendering You can enable for example relight displacement and repaint options At Termination you can define time or samples pixel limits for the progressive engines 18 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TOTHEA SULIDIRIS TECHNOLOGIES For the case of the Adaptive BSD engine two extra tabs appear on top that help you edit Ray Tracing and Global Illumination Settings see the next figures These tabs Biased RT Ray Tracing and Biased GI Global Illumination show all the needed settings for the Adaptive BSD engine so that all the necessary adjustments can be made At the Biased Ray Tracing panel you can specify the Antialiasing options enable Clay Render and adjust any settings related to Blurred Reflections Ambient Occlusion and Termination Criteria At the Biased Global Illumination panel you can enable Field Mapping technique Caustics Final Gathering and adjust the needed Irradiance Cache settings For more detailed explanation of these settings please refer to Thea User Manual and Adaptive BSD engine pdf tutorial Figure 68 Biased RT Panel Figure 69 Biased GI Panel Tip by pressing the on the Advanced option triangle button a new menu appears with more advanced settings In this way you can show hide the needed unneeded
11. Pass enabled Copyright Solid Iris Technologies At the Baking panel user can select to enable disable or disable by default texture baking for the selected scene General Channels Mode Enabled Figure 73 Baking tab By enabling Baking all textures will be baked according to Normal and High resolution given below except if specified differently by a Thea tag for baking as we will describe later at the Thea Tags section Normal resolution affects all kind of channels textures while High resolution those used for bumping and background Note that according to these resolution settings if values are quite big a delay before rendering starts may occur By selecting to disable baking no textures will be baked at all The next option Disable by Default will disable baking except if one adds a special baking tag to a certain object where baking is enabled see Figure 75 In this way texture baking will be generally disabled but enabled for the tagged objects only 7 6 Shadow Catcher At the Shadow Catcher panel user can modify the ia settings of the camera s default ground plane By enabling Shadow Catcher an infinite ground plane is added to the camera on the selected Ground Plane Level for shadow capturing Reflection Enade By enabling Reflection a Glossy BSDF is added to the ground plane That way the shadow catcher can also capture the reflection of the rendered objects Strength 0 100
12. RENDER physically based unbiased biased amp gpu render engine www thearender com cinema4d TIOTHEA SeLIDI2IS l INTRODUCTION Thea for Cinema4D is an integrated version of Thea Render inside Maxon Cinema4D application With the use of Thea Material Lab Material Libraries Interactive Render and Instancing Support you are able to render your scene directly inside Cinema4D With the Export to Thea Studio functionality you can also stage your scene inside Thea Studio application and benefit of the advanced tools present there At this manual all the basic installation and getting started steps are explained along with Thea plugin settings panels and options inside Cinema4D For seeing the Getting Started video find Material Libraries and Download links please visit Thea for Cinema4D landing page at www thearender com cinema4d Note this manual is covering the plugin settings and options only so for a deeper and more detailed explanation of Thea Render settings materials engines etc you can refer to Thea Render User Manual 2 APPLICATION PREREQUISITES While the plugin can be used as a standalone application there are still dependencies of the plugin from the main Thea Render application These dependencies are typically the need to open Thea default material editor but also to be able to access Thea data folder materials rooms sample data etc This means that Thea Render should be already installed on your comp
13. among Interactive or Production modes select the render engine and find some useful tools According to Interactive or Production mode selection different options appear on this bar 6 1 3 Interactive Mode O40 ME 600x400 Figure 14 Render Settings and Tools for Interactive Mode When Interactive Render option is selected user is able to see the rendered image interactively updated inside Darkroom window The following options are now enabled 6 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies CTHEA S LIDIRIS pr eE Figure 15 Start IR i Figure 16 Pause IR Figure 17 Stop IR Figure 18 Select IR Engine Figure 19 Select IR Resolution With this button you are able to start Interactive Render Pause button allows pausing the rendering Upon clicking it a message box appears to inform you that rendering is paused and prompt you to press OK for continuing it Stop button helps you to stop completely the rendering This drop down list presents the available render engines that can be used for Interactive Rendering You can simply click and select the one you prefer Tip 1 for more details on render engines please refer to Thea Manual Tip 2 for more settings of each render engine you can go to Render Settings window At the next drop down list you can select among the available resolution presets for your Interactive Rendering Custom value uses the resolution that is given at Render Settings window see
14. and Bake 28 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TOTHEA SeLDIRIS 13 1 Thea Bake Tag As we have already mentioned at the Preferences Settings f eccrine window texture baking can be either enabled to the scene by Be T default be disabled or be disabled by default With this tab the EEan enable and disable by default options can be overridden to the selected materials For the certain material there is the option to enable baking disable it or leave the default option which follows the hierarchy selection of the option or general settings Below there is the option to select different resolutions and override the default ones by checking the corresponding box Figure 99 Thea Bake tag 13 2 Thea Camera Tag The next tag that we can use is the Camera tag This tag can be added at a Cinema4D camera and allow usage of Thea Camera settings for it if the option Override C4D Physical Camera is enabled spherical Projection dropdown allows the user to switch between thea camera s projections Inherit option should be used to inherit the C4D camera object projection Camera object s zoom value is used to control the view area of Thea camera parallel projection By enabling the Override Thea Display option some different settings than the general ones can be set for this selected camera This means that once this camera is used at Darkroom Display options will be changed Animation of these settings is also available t
15. as see in Figure 66 are appearing At Main panel user can define at first the engine that will be used for rendering Presto AO Presto MC or Adaptive AMC and below adjust the corresponding settings that appear per engine For example for all engines user can define the Tracing Depth enable disable Displacement and z Motion Blur for Presto AO there is also the option to Figure 66 Interactive Mode Settings enable or disable Ambient Occlusion and define its Distance and Intensity and for Adaptive AMC the Adaptive Bias percentage can be also specified For Presto engines the Devices options also appear in order to define the use of only GPU devices or only CPU or both for rendering and set priorities for each one of them Io Production Mode Once the Production Mode option is selected see Figure 67 all the needed settings for the PiS z final rendering appear within the General tab OT mode ME Clean Videopos Apply Preset Note that a new tab named Channels appears u now on top superampins at x At the Presets list you can select among the available presets and use its settings of the final rendering Note that by selecting a preset and press the Apply Preset button it actually overrides all the other settings By selecting the Manual option the settings as defined manually will be used for rendering At the Main panel user can select for rendering Figure 67 Production Mode tab among the available render engines
16. be taken into account 31 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TP THEA 13 6 Thea Section Cut Tag The last tag Thea Section Cut can be added to any Cinema4D Object By using the object s origin and Y axis as direction a clipping plane is created in the main camera The object with the section cut tag will not be rendered as well as all of the geometry starting from clipping plane s position towards its direction Y axis Figure 114 Thea Section Cut Tag An object carrying the Section Cut Tag will not be displayed even if the tag is disabled For more plugin details download links and resources please visit http www thearender com cinema4d 32 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies
17. corresponds to the index of refraction 1 10 of the Glossy Material Roughness default 10 can be used to modify the roughness of the ground plane s surface Figure 76 Shadow Catcher tab 21 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies COTHEA SeUDIRIS 8 CINEMA4D MATERIALS NATIVE Cinema4D materials are automatically converted to Thea materials when rendering begins without affecting your materials inside Cinema4D There are special heuristics that are used in the conversion process nevertheless the result may look quite different from how the material looks using Cineam4D internal renderer With the Convert Materials as we saw previously you are able to convert the Cinema4D materials to the corresponding Thea ones for allowing editing with the Thea Materials settings Other materials from other plugins are not supported In this case Thea will render them black Cinema4D procedural shaders are supported only through texture baking Texture baking can be controlled using Thea Render settings and Thea Bake tag 9 THEA MATERIALS Thea for Cinema4D can make full use of Thea Material Lab but also allows editing of materials from within Cinema4D With the use of the Material Library you can also simply drag and drop a Thea material at your model At the next paragraphs we will see the available ways to create edit and use a Thea Material inside Cinema4D 9 1 Editing a Thea Material within Cinema4D Material Editor The first ste
18. ding to your version and simply double click on it to be extracted Plugin is ready for use just afterwards rest unused files can be deleted P About It is recommended to install also the corresponding version of Figure 2 Thea Sender is gt available at Thea Render standalone as well Cinema4D plugins The next time that you will start Cinema4D the plugin should be there under the Plugins menu see Figure 2 3 3 Installing Material Library Additionally you can download a material library that allows easier and more direct use of Thea materials note that this library is platform independent For installing the Materials library you should simply extract the library to Cinema4D content browser user libraries Tip 1 if you face problems to locate the correct folder where Cinema4d stores its material libraries lib4d format you can m n find the correct path by going to Cinema4D Edit gt Preferences Figure 3 Thea Material Libraries and see that path at the bottom At this location inside the inside Content Browser library folder you can find the browser folder where the Thea Library can be added 3 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies Cr THEA SeulpDileisS TECHNOLOGIES Tip 2 if you have successfully installed Thea Materials library you should be able to access it in the Cinema4D content browser see Figure 3 With right click on one of the appearing materials you can select the Show in Explorer for W
19. e gt O Unbiased TRI 600x400 Figure 28 Render Settings and Tools for Production Mode When Production Mode option is selected user is able to make a production final rendering that is not being refreshed upon scene staging The following options appear at this bar With this button you are able to start Production Render Figure 29 Start Render wT Pause button allows pausing the rendering Upon clicking it a pause icon is Figure 30 Pause appearing on the rendered image showing that the rendering is being paused Render By pressing it again you can continue rendering it Figure 31 Paused Render Stop button helps you to stop completely the rendering Figure 32 Stop This drop down list presents the available render engines that can be used for Production Rendering You can simply click and select the one you prefer before start rendering By selecting a Progressive engine two additional options appear that help you define Termination Criteria Time Limit and Samples per Pixel Limit see Figure 34 By clicking upon these icons you can enter the desired time and or Samples per i Pixel values see Figure 35 The first criterion that will be met will prompt Figure 33 Select rendering to stop Render Engine Tip 30s stands for 30 seconds 30m for 30 minutes 1h for 1 hour etc PSE 30m ii soo Figure 34 Time and Figure 35 Define Time and Samples Pixel limits Samples Pixel Limits Unbiased TR1
20. e 86 floating dialogue window In the same way as we have described above we can adjust here material components and layers and once we click on each layer see all the available settings appearing at the right side of the window Note 1 Due to C4D restrictions layer switching via Material Schema is not responsive in Material Editor Note 2 in case the option Auto Invoice Material Lab at the Preferences panel is enabled Thea Material Lab will open instead of Cinema4D Material Editor Figure 86 Material Editor 9 2 Editing a Thea Material with the Thea Material Lab Editing the material using Thea standard material lab is either possible by double clicking on the material icon inside Materials window in case the option Auto Invoice Material Lab at the Preferences panel is enabled or by pressing the button Material Lab that can be found below the material preview Either of these ways will employ Thea Material Lab as an external application and Cinema4D will freeze until you exit the application The material will then refresh with the changes that you have made in the material lab Accept or close button apply any changes made inside Figure 87 Thea Material Lab Thea Material lab while Reject button ignores the changes 25 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TIOTHEA SeLDIRIS 9 3 Adding a Thea Material from the Content Browser As we have already mentioned additionally to the plugin you can download
21. erial and see its properties appear at the Cinema4D attributes panel You can then make any changes to the material and see them being applied interactively Note as already mentioned once the Pick Region Tool is enabled the button is highlighted with an orange color Ea Pick Focus tool helps you define the focus point of your scene so that your Figure 24 Pick camera will focus to the desired point camera needs to have appropriate f Focus number to achieve nice depth of field effect At the following example renders with the use of Pick Focus tool we have selected two different focus points by simply click on them Note once the Pick Region Tool is enabled the button is highlighted with an orange color Figure 25 Selected Focus Point atthe Figure 26 Selected Focus Point at the middle of the scene front of the scene These three navigation controls which appear on the top right side of the w Darkroom work in the same way as Cinema4D corresponding ones Figure 27 Once mouse button is released Cinema4D Viewport is automatically updated to Navigation Controls the new view Left Click on this button Left Right Click on this Left Click on this button Drag pans the scene button Drag zooms in Drag rotates the scene Right Click Drag zooms and out the scene Right Click Drag rolls the in and out the scene scene 9 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies COTHEA SCUDIRIS 6 1 4 Production Mode Production Mod
22. his allows easy camera display settings change and adaption during an animation where lighting conditions may change Figure 100 Thea Camera tag 29 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies Cr THEA 13 3 Thea Light Tag Figure 101 Thea Light Tag Thea Light tag can be added at a Cinema4D light and make it behave light a Thea point light if the Override C4D Point Light option is enabled At the Type drop down list we can select to change the Thea Light type among Omni Spot IES and Projector This allows easy change of the lights type without the need to re insert it For each selection the corresponding options appear which allow you to control each light settings see Figure 102 13 4 Thea Sky Tag Setting Up Environment Sky and IBL Thea Sky tag can be added to Cinema4D Physical Sky As seen in Figure 103 Thea Sky tag is added as an extra tab and gives user the possibility to add and edit Thea Sun Thea Sky and Image Based Lighting Illumination At the General tab at Illumination drop down list user can select to enable Sun Sky option IBL Sky Only or IBL Sun for the scene Note in case a Thea sun tag is added to any light source of the scene the sun position coordinates defined at this tab see Physical Sky tab Sun Position in Figure 105 will be ignored Figure 102 Thea Lights per Type Figure 103 Thea Sky Tag Figure 104 Illumination Drop Down List Depending on this select
23. igure 82 Refresh Material Lab Material Save Refresh Material Lab Material Save Figure 82 Material Schema Panels At the General panel you can edit some basic material PNS settings such as Repaintable Tracing Depth etc and you can also alter the material room used for the material preview and its quality passes Note Matte Thin Film SSS Subsurface Scattering Glossy and Coating are the five basic Thea Materials components Each comes with different set of special settings which are presented at the corresponding panels To enable the animated textures go to General Component of Thea Material and enable the Animated Textures checkbox Then go to any texture parameter in this material and add an image with a number in its name e g effect_0000 jog Of course the rest of the frames have to be in the same folder effect_0001 jpg effect_O0002 jpg effect_0003 jpg etc Click the shader for more options and in Animation tab click calculate v Preview Figure 84 General Panel Note The mode Ping Pong is not supported yet Also animated textures are refreshed in every frame in the Darkroom s IR and in Picture viewer but not in the viewport unless you refresh the material manually 24 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies Cr THEA At the Description panel we can see and add a description E for the Thea material and at the Assign tab we can see on which model s the material is applied in Figur
24. indows or Show in Finder MacOSX for seeing the installation directory of the library You can now drag and drop the selected material on a Cinema4D model or on your materials window 4 LICENSING AND ACTIVATION To run the plugin in a no demo mode meaning without resolution limitation and watermarks you will need to activate your license This is done by going to Plugins gt Thea Render gt License see Figure 4 A new dialogue box opens to help you add your full name email address and serial number for activating the plugin see Figure 5 Do not forget to add also the Thea for Cinema4D plugin serial at Seay the plugins tab see Figure 6 Afterwards restart your Py bow application for the changes to be applied For finding more details on licensing please refer to Thea Render User Manual corresponding chapter orm Please enter any additional plugin serial numbers you have received You can add these serial numbers at a later time as well Main Plugins Misc Please enter all the following data using ascii characters These data will be kept private and used only for contacting you about licensing Make sure that your e mail is correct and operational as it will be used to send you any activation codes 3dsMax Plugin Full Name Cinemad4d Plugin E mail Address Rhino Plugin Serial Number SketchUp Plugin Activate Plugin Licenses Figure 5 License Input Form window
25. ion extra tabs appear with the corresponding set of settings User can define here Sky and Sun properties see Figure 105 as well as load a map for Image Based Lighting see Figure 106 In case both Sun and IBL are enabled both tabs will appear see Figure 108 30 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies i Figure 106 IBL Option iam Image Based Lighting tab iia Figure 105 Sun Sky Figure 107 Sky Only Option Physical Sky Option Physical Sky tab tab Figure 108 IBL Sun Option Physical Sky and Image Based Lighting tabs If user needs to have different maps for Background Reflections and Refractions the options appearing at the General tab Background Mapping Reflection and Refraction Mapping need to be enabled too This will open the additional tabs with map settings see Figure 109 Figure 110 and Figure 111 By enabling Global Medium the corresponding tab with Medium options appears too see Figure 112 ww Figure 109 Background Figure 110 Reflection Figure 111 Refraction Mapping tab Mapping tab Mapping tab Figure 112 Global Medium tab 13 5 Thea Sun Tag Thea Sun tag can be added to any Cinema4D light source and make it behave like Thea Sun In this way Thea sun position can change by dragging the light source accordingly If this tag is added to any light in the scene Sun position defines Figure 113 Thea Sun Tag at the Sky tag will be ignored and only this one will
26. lit among the server and the clients Thea client or Studio should be enabled to the client machines as well Note that co Figure 95 Frames rendering is split to server and operative rendering on the same frame using client Team Render is not yet supported currently you can only use Thea Render network rendering for aaa co operative rendering on still images and not suche Reeder Team Render Figure 96 Thea Server is disabled Network set to None when Team Render needs to be used Important Note for allowing Team Render to set up the network rendering and not Thea server itself at the Network settings of Thea see Distribution at General panel Network should be set to None to avoid any network conflicts 13 THEA RENDER TAGS Thea Render gives you the possibility to add some additional tags to the Cinema4D objects These are the following Thea Bake Thea Camera Thea Light Thea Sky and Thea Sun At the following tables we analyze each of these tags As seen in Figure 98 each tag can be applied to a Cinema4D object and give it specific Thea features Tip Cinema4D Composition tag is also partially supported The Ja meso options Cast Shadows Receive Shadows only for Adaptive BSD iji Mis engine and Seen by Camera options are supported by Thea Objects Tags Bookmarks Note for more detailed explanation of Thea Cameras and Lights settings please refer to Thea manual Figure 98 Thea Tags Sun Camera Light
27. ns a material list that indicates which materials will be retransferred to engine The Retransferred Materials object should contain only the materials that have Mograph Color Shader in any of their texture parameters amp Convert Materials Figure 90 Retransferred Materials Note The number of the different materials converted affects the total transferring time That means in a scene with a high number of cloned objects that use mograph color shaders the total transferring time will be affected as well 26 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TOTHEA SULIDIRIS 10 LIGHTS Cinema4D point lights are automatically supported by converting them to the corresponding Thea point light The area lights are also being supported and are always emitting light following inverse square law note at the moment only the following types are supported Area Disc Rectangle Sphere Cylinder Cylinder and Perpendicular If you want to use a Thea custom area emitter though you should create it as a Thea material and assign this like a normal material to a model Figure 91 dragging a light with a Thea Sun tag changes Thea sun position Besides the point lights Sky is also being supported enabling automatically Thea physical sky by adding the Thea Sky tag on a Cinema4D sky There is also the custom Thea Sun tag that we will see analytically later which you can assign to any point light in this way you can adjust Thea sun sky ea
28. p is to create a Thea Material For this you have to follow one of the following ways Version R12 Top Menu gt File gt Thea Material or from the Materials window ee mle Version R13 Top Menu gt File gt Shader gt Cente a Thea Material or from the Materials window Version R14 and R15 Top Menu gt Create gt Material gt Thea Material or at the Materials window Create gt Shader gt Thea Material see Figure 77 The material created in these ways will be initially a white basic material and will be added at the Materials window see Figure 78 Figure 78 Thea Material initially Figure 77 Create a Thea Material Another way to create a Thea material is the conversion of the Cinema4D material to the corresponding Thea material with the use of the Convert Materials button 22 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TOTHEA SeLIDI2IS After creating the material it is possible to edit it inside Cinema4D By clicking once on the material the custom material editor for Thea materials inside Cinema4D appears at the Attributes panel see Figure 81 This editor is a simplification of the standard Thea material lab Here you can edit a material that has at most two or three components of the same type at most 3 coatings 3 glossy 3 basic substrates or 2 thin films 2 SSS substrates Initially the empty material comes with the General and Matte components Below we see what options exist at each tab
29. r can select regions by clicking and dragging for defining the region and select materials and focus points by clicking once on the rendered image desired material focus point In all the above cases the rendered image is being interactively updated After mouse release Cinema4D viewport is automatically updated to current view 11 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies Cr THEA For Interactive Rendering option if a Presto engine is selected an additional table appears below the rendered image presenting information of the devices used for rendering their frames per second samples per pixel memory used and total memory For hiding this window you can go at Window menu of the Darkroom and unselect the Show Figure 40 Presto Engines Info during Interactive Rendering Interactive Info option Tip you can define the devices used by Presto engines by going to Plugins menu gt Thea Render gt Devices see details at paragraph 15 or by the Devices panel at Render Settings window see Figure 41 Effect Figure 41 Devices settings at Render Settings window 6 1 6 Render Status Bar Area D At area D of the Darkroom we can see the Render Status Bar Figure 42 Render Status Bar This bar shows the main information on rendering process and helps us start pause stop it save the rendered image or send it to Cinema4D Picture Viewer In more detail 7 Send to Picture Viewer button sends the rendered image directly
30. rt or Darkroom Additionally at the Material Editor Options you can enable the Auto Invoke Material Lab option that allows opening of Thea Material Lab with double clicking on the material preview This option is by default disabled and so double clicking on the material preview opens the Cinema4D Material Editor window Note that this change in order to be applied requires a restart of Cinema4D With the Auto Refresh Material option the material preview is automatically refreshed with any changes Otherwise one needs to press the Refresh button of the Thea Material Panel to see the new material preview see Figure 62 6 8 About The last option found at this menu is the About This submenu opens a window that gives you some main information for the plugin such as its current version 16 Studia Auto Invoke Material Lab Auto Refresh Material Requires Cinema4D Restart OK Cancel Figure 61 Preferences window oe yy oe ee latertal Thea Material Matte BR Siegt dtl E a Refresh Material Lab Figure 62 Refresh Material button Figure 63 About Thea Render window Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TIOTHEA SeLDIRIS 7 THEA RENDER SETTINGS WINDOW As we have already said by going to Render gt Edit Render Settings we can select Thea Render among the existing renderers At the right side of the window the available settings panels appear see Figure 64 General Baking and Shado
31. sily by dragging this common point light around the scene With the use of Thea light tag which you can add to any Cinema4D light you can override its settings and make it behave like a Thea point light see more details to Thea Tags section 11 ANIMATION Thea Render can support animation from Cinema4D by rendering the desired key frames of the animation bar After setting up your animation you can go and select as render engine Thea Render at Render Settings then at Output panel define the needed frames that will be rendered see Figure 93 At the Save panel specify also the Output folder where the rendered image sequence will be saved see Figure 94 If channels need to be rendered enable the Multi Pass option and define path for saving too Important Note currently for animations you need to start your rendering from the Picture Viewer of Cinema4D as Thea Darkroom will only render the current frame Figure 92 setting up the Figure 93 select the desired Figure 94 define the output animation frames folders 27 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TOTHEA SeLDIRIS 12 TEAM RENDER SUPPORT Thea Render can be also used by the Team Render of Cinema4D which allows using other machines for network rendering You only need to setup Team Render as always enable it run clients and add machines Select Thea Render as render engine and start rendering with Team Render at the Team Viewer The rendering of the frames will be sp
32. tion Rendering the Progress bar shows visually the progress of each Figure 52 Progress rendering phase for example for each render pass info 6 1 7 Display Options Area E Below at area E all the available Display option such as Exposure Filtering Channels and Photometric Analysis options appear They work in the same way as inside Thea Studio Darkroom so for additional details please refer to Thea User Manual corresponding chapter Sharpness 50 Glare 6 Blades Analysis None Shutter Speed Figure 53 Darkroom Display options 13 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies Cr THEA 6 2 Export to Thea Figure 54 Plugin Menu Options 6 3 Convert Materials The Export see Figure 54 command prompts for saving a Thea scene that you can open afterwards within Thea Studio By selecting the Export option you are able to export your scene in scn thea pack thea or xml format A window opens that allows you to specify the scene name and location see Figure 55 Note 1 export the scene is not possible while rendering Note 2 at Preferences window as will be described later you can select the default extension for saving your scene and also enable disable opening directly your scene after exporting it at Thea Darkroom or Viewport Figure 55 Save Thea Scene window With this option you are able to convert the Cinema4D materials to the corresponding Thea Materials After pressing the Convert Materials but
33. ton a dialogue box appears see it in Figure 56 that allows you to define if you want to convert the selected or all the materials of your scene or simply cancel the procedure After converting a material to a Thea one from now on the Thea materials attributes will appear for editing the material Note Cinema4D materials are automatically read as Thea materials when rendering starts even if you have not converted them without affecting your materials settings and type Figure 56 Convert Materials dialogue box Convert Selected Only Cancel 14 Figure 57 Cinema4D materials and the converted Thea ones Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TP THEA 6 4 Devices The Devices option allows you to open the Select Devices window see Figure 58 Here you can see a list with the GPU and CPU devices of your machine which can be used by Presto engine At this window you can enable disable a device by clicking to the corresponding box and increase decrease its priority At this window apart from the names of the existing devices you can also see their cores their memory and other useful information 6 5 Update The Update button opens the Install Updates window as seen in Figure 59 At this window user can see the available plugin versions and resources and select which ones wants to install For more details and explanation of the existing options of the Updates window please refer to Thea User Manual 6 6 License
34. uter it doesn t matter whether you have installed the 32 bit or 64 bit variant though On MacOSX platform make sure that you have also run Thea application at least once after your drag amp drop it typically to your Application folder in order to complete the installation process Note that the plugin will work on OSX 10 6 and above Cinema4D version should be R12 R13 R14 R15 or R16 The plugin won t run in previous Cinema4D versions Note that the plugin is incompatible with the developed Thea plugin for R11 R11 5 so it won t be possible to transfer your work between the plugins 2 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies CTHEA S LIDIRIS 3 INSTALLATION 3 1 Windows The plugin comes with an installer that helps you define the version of Cinema4D to which you want to install the plugin and also its directory The installer guides you through all the necessary steps of installation Choose C a Choose which features of Thes for Onena you want to nstal thr Chek Oe rhea ae want to instal and uncheck he components you dont want to arue Figure 1 Installing Thea for Cinema4D 3 2 MacOSX Thea for Cinema4d for MacOSX comes with a dmg file Inside this dmg file you will find the Thea Render folder Drag and drop this folder inside plugins folder of Cinema4D installation or user preferences folder Then within this folder you will find four separated zip folders one for each Cinema4D version Select the needed one accor
35. w Catcher The settings inside Render Settings window and inside Darkroom window are linked and a change to one option is changing the corresponding option to the other window too PUTE te THEE ener EEEN Tip with the button Render Setting at the bottom by selecting the New option you can create and save the needed render presets for faster selection at the Render menu Tip with the button Clean Videopost we can remove unnecessary time consuming effects settings computed by Cinema4D_ during Rene INE Ain alization MKC OKereN OF Son At the next tables we see the options that exist at each panel and their main functionality Please refer to Thea manual for the parameterization and more detailed explanation of the existing settings Z General At the General Panel at Mode user can select among the Interactive and the Production Mode in order to adjust engine settings for these two cases see Figure 65 Although most of these settings are meant for engine configuration Execute Preceded Passes refers to hair animation inside C4D To support hair animation one has to enable this option This will cause the hair to be calculated for the current frame Figure 65 Mode tab Note This option affects the conversion time so it has to be used only when hair animation is necessary 17 Copyright Solid Iris Technologies TIOTHEA SeLDIRIS 7 2 Interactive Mode With Interactive Mode selected the settings
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