Learn Redshift For Cinema 4D In 40 Minutes

in this video I will guide you through the basics of the redshift UI materials lights and render settings let's Jump Right In if you have been working with the internal renderers standard and physical Arena working with ratchet work gradually seem like a dream come true the end was waiting for intermediate or final random results is largely a thing of the past this is because redshift harnesses the power of your graphics card and thus benefits from highly parallelized computing power another reason you'll quickly feel at home in redshift is its nature as a biased renderer here bias means a possible distance to physical correctness because in redshift you have the freedom to bend your virtual reality a little here and there thus adapt it to your artistic needs because even to achieve further realism it doesn't have to be right it just has to look right and with that redshift almost feels like a state-of-the-art successor to good old standard and physical engines only faster easier and just way better [Music] to work with redshift open the render settings with Ctrl B and activate it in the drop down menu renderer then open the cinema for the preferences with Ctrl e and set the check mark under renderer redshift use interface redshift main menu this brings up the redshift entry in the cinema for the main menu with the ability to create redshift objects lights cameras materials and more also make sure that only your graphics cards are activated and that hybrid rendering is turned off by this you avoid to accidentally use redshift CPU which in comparison is extremely slow and under material material manager default material Select Auto with this function new materials will automatically be ratchet materials when redshift is activated foreign [Music] with redshift you'll be working with a specific material system your own light source types and your own render settings therefore it makes sense to work with a Cinema 4D layout designed for redshift follow along please make sure to download the layout and the other files from the link in the video description below for installing the layout the two layout files must be placed in your Cinema for the preferences folder under Library layout then restart Cinema 4D choose the layout render but run redshift and open the file redshift matte cam render Dot c4d the cinema for the layout you just installed contains the most important elements for everyday use that you would otherwise have to call up separately clockwise layout consists of viewpod redshift render View object manager attribute manager redshift node editor asset browser and material manager the redshift render view is an interactive render window that automatically responds to any changes in the scene and renders them updated the nice thing is with a reasonably up-to-date graphics card you can render scenes up to a certain level of complexity virtually in real time the render view has some useful buttons right above the render window the three most important are on the far left render causes a one-time non-interactive render in final quality that stop IPR starts and stops the interactive render preview IPR in preview quality this is the core function of the redshift renderview refresh rpr allows you to refresh the render View further to the right is the option to display either individual aovs meaning ratchet multi-passes separate color channels to render width and without denoising or to activate area rendering the drop down menu next to it defines the camera used and the lock icon can be used to make this permanent before we continue let's consider the styles of rendering in redshift actually there are two different styles Progressive rendering in passes from grainy to grainless by default used for preview rendering and bucket rendering in rendering tiles or buckets by default used for final rendering you can adjust this choice in render settings redshift advanced and this is what the bucket button is about it lets you toggle between interactive bucket and Progressive rendering the snowflake icons next to it provide options for freezing tessellation when using displacement offer freezing geometry changes this can further speed up the render View next to it is a drop down menu for rendering in beauty mode play mode or just displaying the samples used right beside that there are three options for selecting a focus point specific objects or a certain material by just clicking in the render View and the four buttons on the right serve to open a snapshot bar to compare them to create snapshots to create and display them in picture viewer and to copy the render view to the clipboard the zoom lever to the right and the selected Zoom mode define the size of the render View the render view itself can be moved by holding down alt then click and drag to move the view last but not least the gear icon on the far right contains functions for color or exposure Corrections effects or denoising please note the RT button for redshift real time and the function of the same name in the render settings are better left untouched as this feature is just not ready yet foreign [Music] system in redshift is node based this means materials are created by logical building blocks called nodes that are wired together this is done in the node editor ratchet node editor is the other big redshift related window in our layout it's your workspace for creating node materials here you can navigate in a similar way to the viewport hold down one click and drag to move the view hold down 2 click and drag to move closer to the view or further away in the node editor menu you will also find useful commands as an example node Show preview for showing or hiding previews for selected notes let's now create a new ratch of material with redshift activated in the runner settings double clicking or Ctrl n or hitting the plus button in the material manager will automatically create a new redshift material double clicking on the material icon will display the material in the node editor here we see the most basic node setup for ratch of material standard material node linked to an output node let's have a quick look at the standard material node as an example of nodes in general on its left side there are input parts that can receive information from other nodes on its right side there are output ports passing on information to other nodes Rich of materials can therefore be read like a lying tree diagram from left to right in our case the material reads like this standard material node supplies all information about the material via its out color port to the surface part of the output node if this material is then applied to an object the material gets displayed to create nodes we use the Cinema 4D asset browser in this accessor to the former content browser the nodes tab contains all the nodes you need to work with redshift materials simply type the name of the node you need into the search field for example for the search term ramp you will see a ramp node as a result for the term noise a maximum noise Shader node will appear as soon as the corresponding node appears as a result drag it into the node editor there you can position the node with a mouse wherever you want ready for editing and linking nodes are usually named in a meaningful way and by that follow industry standards such as bump or ambient occlusion other nodes are more difficult to identify by name such as vertex attribute or color user data Etc these Specialties just have to be learned like a vocabulary we look at the most important notes in a moment three tips for creating nodes first to make sure that only redshift material nodes are displayed in the asset browser and not Cinema for these C nodes as well shortly click the node editor after entering the search term this will cause only material nodes to be displayed second to especially create texture nodes you can simply drag the image file from your desktop into the node editor the images then stored in the form of a texture node and can now be processed third newly created nodes can also be dragged onto existing wires they will then be inserted as a new intermediate node [Music] to work with nodes they offer a few options at their top end to simplify things you can solo nodes with a small s icon this means that only this node is calculated in a material and displayed during rendering this is a very valuable function for evaluating nodes clicking again switches off the solo mode the small landscape icon toggles the preview for the node on and off this can save space for multiple nodes you can do this under node editor menu node Show preview the symbol with the three small dashes inferences the display of the part three dashes all parts are visible two dashes only active parts are visible one dash means no parts visible there are two ways to wire nodes click on the output Port of the node and drag the connection to the input Port of the target node or click on the output part of the node drag the connection to the text free area of the target node release your mouse and choose your input from the appearing context menu by the way matching output on the input Parts have the same color for an example yellow and for removing connections just double click on the wire between the nodes [Music] let's take a look at the standard material node please open up the file redshift standard material node.c4d [Music] since it defines the Key properties of a material such as color specularity transparency Etc it is the most important node in the redshift material system and the direct counterpart to the material editor of the cinema for these standard materials clicking on the Node displays its properties as tabs in the attribute manager on the right all essential material attributes can be found in the base properties tab here base contains three important aspects diffuse reflection given by color and weight that means the non-viewing angle dependent reflection of the material weight in general means the proportion or percentage of a parameter below that the fuse model means the mathematical function for the distribution of light and darkness on an object's surface the default choice is orinaya a model specifically for Roth surfaces with micro facets but rnaya with a default zero percent roughness is basically a Lambert model for perfectly smooth surfaces so by dialing in roughness you can basically blend seamlessly between Lambert meaning zero percent roughness and oranaya meaning 100 roughness alternatively you can select the model DR lambertian spheres this model has a full roughness like oranaya but with a more crisp and slightly more saturated appearance metalness defines to What proportion the material is a metal or a non-metal zero means a dielectric material and non-metal where the diffuse and the reflection color can be controlled separately one describes a metal where the base color only determines the color of the reflection and the reflection color is ignored let's move on to the next area reflection contains settings for the specular that means viewing angle dependent reflection of the material reflection color weight roughness for sharper or softer reflections index of reflection ior and anisotropy transmission contains all parameters for refractive transparency such as color weight roughness and dispersion in addition there are parameters for the absorption of light such as depth color and and isotropy by the way the index of refraction is controlled by the index of reflection in the reflection area subsurface contains all parameters concerning light scattering under the surface of the object this is called subsurface scattering SSS color is the general color of the SSS while radius is simplified spoken the color of small areas such as wrinkles claws Etc scale refers to the penetration depth and anisotope to the directional stretching of the SSS the preset SSS mode random walk is the best choice for rendering small details and is therefore the most realistic SSS mode Sheen refers to a viewing anger dependent scattering effect that is typical for Fabrics in addition to color and weight the width of the scattering can also be defined here thin frame creates a refractive thin film depending on the selected ior value for an example water soap oil Etc thickness defines the strength of the effect code is basically a second refraction layer it can be used for an example to simulate a sharp reflective layer of clear lacquer over a rough reflective color lacquer the parameters are exactly the same as in reflection in addition however a separate bump map can be used a mission is simply the self-luminance of the material defined by color and weight geometry in this area opacity is used to punch out object areas for example by grayscale textures thin walled creates a transmission behavior of a very thin one-sided object for example a leaf refraction will therefore be ignored bump map allows to connect a bump texture here [Music] we will now take a look at four simple example materials in our scene redshift mad cam rando.c4d Apple material in the Apple material you can see a texture node this contains the link to the Apple texture the texture note is connected with its out Color part to the base Color part of the standard material node and to the texture input part of a bump map node in the bump map node a value of 0.2 is entered in the texture height scale area for the strength of the bump effect the node is then connected to the geometry pump map part of the standard material node the bottom line a node can be connected to several other nodes at the same time this massively increases flexibility coffee cup material the standard material node of the coffee cup has no diffuse reflection or color on the base color but only subsurface Gathering bottom line subsurface Gathering itself also creates a diffuse reflection defining it additionally under base color is therefore superfluous by the way looking at the cup object in the object manager you will notice that the cup and the typeface are defined by separate materials being stacked onto each other and this is how you stack a semiopaque material like the typeface onto an opaque material like the cup you just drag and drop the material tag of the former to the right of the ladder just as with good old standard materials tomato material a Max on noise node for generating a noise Shader is connected to the reflection weight Port of the standard material node there it varies the quantity of the reflection with the noises grayscale information where black means no reflection while white means full reflection bottom line grayscale info can vary values quantitatively spoon material in the spoon material it's not a reflection strength but the roughness getting varied by grayscale information again a Max on noise node is used for this connected to the reflection roughness part of the standard material now this means black is zero percent roughness meaning crisp reflection while white is 100 roughness to make this a little more differentiated a ramp node is placed between the noise and the standard material node in the ramp node I change the black knot to medium gray and the white knot to light gray thus the black and white information of the noise gets remapped this ramp note is then plugged into the reflection roughness part of the standard material node there the wide percentage of the ramped knots is translated into a corresponding roughness percentage of the reflection bottom line grayscale info can also vary values qualitatively by the way if your note setup gets too cluttered just select some of the nodes of the same functional aspect and group them with node editor menu create group nodes in the same menu you can ungroup them foreign [Music] let's take a look at the nine most important notes beside the standard material node texture the texture note allows the referencing of image Textures in this path field the UV and remap Fields allow manipulation of the textures mirroring tiling size position and rotation this will work independently from the settings in the material tag Maxon noise this node brings Max on noise shaders to redshift noises can be used to give surfaces a random like variation by default the noises applied volumetrically to the object in the input source area making it independent from UV coordinates ramp with ramp node color gradients come into play these can be applied vertically horizontally Etc Rams are also useful for remapping input values pump map the bump map node uses the grayscale information of a connected texture or Shader node to create a height map connected to the bump map part of the standard material node a virtual surface deformation is created the displacement node also uses the grayscale information of an input but connected to the displacement part of the output node a real surface deformation is generated at render time please note for the displacement to work the corresponding object must have a redshift tag with activated tessellation in the geometry tab and when doing animation you should deactivate the option screen space adaptive in order to avoid artifacts coming from moving levels of detail color layer this note Works similar to the layers in Photoshop layers above base can be activated their opacity can be varied and they can be mixed with different layer modes color correct as the name suggests this node provides color and gradation Corrections such as gamma saturation contrast Etc triplanar this node is used for the triplanar projection of textures that means along three different axes basically it works like a cubic texture mapping in the material tag however three different textures can be used per x y and z-axis in addition it is possible to blend the texture projections softly into each other at their edges this way even more complex objects can be textured without sharp texture edges and without complex UV unwrapping material the material note is basically the predecessor of the standard material known in older versions of redshift it is still of a certain use because of its material presets in the base properties tab this makes it very easy to create Metals in the specular workflow for example by the way all the redshift versions displayed and created nodes in the style of Cinema for these espresso however the functionality is roughly the same as with current nodes expressious time materials can be converted into redshift nodes in the same way as Cinema for these standard materials you can find the corresponding commands on the main menu redshift materials tools getting started with redshift's material system might seem complex but in fact the initial complexity quickly turns into flexibility in daily use [Music] thank you ratchet has its own types of light sources which are mandatory for working with redshift would redshift activated in the Renault settings clicking on the light source icon in cinema for these object menu automatically creates a redshift area light but before we take a look at the details let's get an overview of available light source types in redshift first these are point for concentric light emission coming from a single point spot for conical emission coming from a point infinite for parallel light emission from a de facto infinitely distant source area for spatially extended light sources similar to real physical lights so for spherical light emission similar to Daylight coming from the sky for the metric IES for simulating real Lighting systems based on photometric data sets physical Sun for automated coloring and dimming of sunlight depending on its angle portal the portal object takes a special position among the light sources we will cover that in a moment in Daily practical use it turns out that area lights are the most frequently used light source types so we will now take a closer look at it [Music] everything important about the light source can be found in the object tab in form of different sections type and add graph under type you can select the type of the light source with ADD graph you can add a node or Shader graph to the light source clicking on edit graph opens the espresso like node editor this is because materials for light sources can currently only be edited in espresso style or simplification reasons we will continue without the Shaded reapplied intensity you can dial in the intensity of the light source you don't have to worry about the correct intensity falloff because this is already preset with quadratic the color view defines a color or a bitmap texture for the lighting shape here you can Define the physical shape of the area light by choosing between rectangle disc sphere cylinder and polygon mesh spread determines the emission angle the lower the value the more narrow the light shines and the sharper the Shadows get visible this area determines whether the light is visible to the camera with bi-directional you can activate forward and backward emission normalize intensity detaches the light intensity from the size of the light source because normally in redshift the larger the light source the more intense the light details tab in the details tab you can first Define shadows and the transparency more important however is the contribution field in this field you can Define which aspects of lighting are contributed that means the fuse lighting reflection transmission Etc this is a good example of the biased nature of redshift where artistic controls overrides the obligation to physical correctness caustics here the emission of caustic refraction and reflection artifacts can be activated for this purpose especially small light sources are suitable which have to emit a vast amount of photons to generate caustics these must be active in the runner settings in addition the caustics generating object maybe a glass must be given a redshift object tag with checkboxes visibility override and visibility Global illumination cast caustic photons activated by the way you will see caustics only when using bucket rendering mode not when using Progressive rendering mode project this tab allows you to exclude certain objects from illumination or vice versa to illuminate them exclusively to do so drag an object into the list and select the appropriate mode lighting and shadowing can be addressed separately using the icons to the right of the object the process is called light linking and is a great way to control your light in an artistic way all other light source types have largely the same settings exceptions are type-specific parameters which are self-explanatory due to the naming for example a cone angle in the fall off can be defined for spots or an IES profile for photometric IES lights please note light sources without a physically extension-like Point spot infinite and photomatic IES create a hard non-focusing Ray Trace Shadow by default you should change this into a focusing area Shadow under details shadow softness [Music] in addition you will find two more objects for simulating daylight or atmospheric effects under main menu redshift objects redshift sun and skyric this combination of the redshift sky and the physical Sun can be used to simulate a highly realistic outdoor lighting including a visible physically correct Sky Dome redshift environment this object creates kind of a fog or aerial perspective for this it is required that you have selected a value greater than zero in the contributing light sources under details contribution volume please note this value is always set to 1 by default so new light sources will always cause the environment fog to shine brightly speaking of visible skies for the use of HDR images as a texture you should use a dome light with ADD graph you then create an espresso Shader tree and load your HDR texture into the dome light node by this your HDR texture illuminates your scene and also creates Global illumination the use of self-luminous materials in combination with GI is also possible aside from hdri textures to do so you need to use a so-called incandescent material you can create this in the material manager menu under create redshift materials incandescent when assigned to an object this object generates GI light please note in a direct comparison between an incandescent light and an area light the area light wins because it delivers cleaner results in less time and offers more settings than the incandescent note to see the function of the pot light please open up redshift GI portal.c4d the portal light is not actually a light source but literally a portal used for interior rendering a portal optimizes and amplifies incident GI when being placed in front of a window or a door that means it speeds up rendering while improving quality [Music] we will now get back to our file redshift matte cam render.c4d let's have a quick look at the redshift camera object in the main menu under redshift cameras a ratchet camera type can be selected these camera objects include redshift specific settings the most common camera type is standard its most important settings are divided into three tabs in the camera's attribute manager object here you will find all the physical properties of the camera from focal length and sensor size to optional camera clipping Optical this tab contains all Optical properties like exposure depth of field of focus area and motion blur to create a proper depth of field you first have to define a focus object this can be a null object for example then simply drag and drop this object into the field depth of field object the cool thing is by using a movable Focus object you can now animate your focus area after that activate the checkbox bokeh and select a sufficiently low aperture in order to see the depth blur coming into effect color correction here it is possible to intervene in the gradation of the rendering based on the camera in addition to tone mapping and Lookout tables there are also color control curves available foreign [Music] now let's move on to rendering you select redshift as the active render engine from the corresponding render settings drop down menu once this is done there are two render setting tabs available basic and advanced clicking on redshift opens the corresponding tab we will focus on the tab basic this tab provides simplified render settings for redshift this is about usability and a fast workflow these settings can be changed or fine-tuned in the advanced Tab and are retained after returning to the basic tab quality as described in the render view section rendering in redshift is done in two ways Progressive rendering for quick previews packet rendering for final quality and this is what bucket quality is about the section provides different quality levels from low to very high the levels are determined by the amount of noise that's still tolerable the only decisive parameter here's threshold visible after clicking on the small triangle if you dial in an individual threshold the active tab changes to custom Progressive passes this is about preview rendering as Progressive rendering takes place in passes from very noisy to Noise free the number of these passes can be selected here the more passes the less noise and the longer the render time denoising denoising is a technique that can remove noise from images after rendering and thus saving rendering time there are several denoises available for this purpose Nvidia Optics Alto single and dual and Intel open image denoiser Intel open imagenes and Optics both use deep learning algorithms and even work interactively with redshift render view however Optics is limited to Nvidia gpus while the Intel denoiser runs on virtually any graphics Hardware enoising should generally be used on renderings that are not too bad otherwise the result can appear softened motion blur for smooth rendering of animations motion blur can be useful for an example for vehicle Wheels in front of a moving background always results in higher render times with motion blur activated steps Define the subdivision of the motion blur effect deformation blur refers to animated deformers for an example for characters this should only be activated if such animations are present in the scene otherwise artifacts can occur [Music] please open up the file redshift GI portal.c4d the use of automated indirect Lighting in other words Global illumination or GI is made very easy in redshift's basic mode you just have to turn it on or off that's it the only other setting for this can be found in the area below the higher the ray depth the longer the rendering time that means lowering Ray depth can save rendering time for an example by setting reflection depth to 2. this also applies to GI a depth of 2 is often sufficient especially when you're dealing with high contrast scenes in combination with real light sources as Rays can be used multiple times for example for reflection and refraction the combined depth is the upper cutoff limit with the value of let's say six array that has already been refracted four times may only be used two more times for reflection or GI so combined depth can thus be used as an upper limit for the ReUse of rays its currency depth is independent from this and only affects Alpha like transparencies Hardware Ray tracing this tiny checkbox is the render turbo for NVIDIA RTX cards and activated Ray tracing is accelerated using the ray tracing Cross of your RTX cards this acceleration can speed a rendering by up to 20 percent [Music] redshift object tag this tag is an important addition to rendering of redshift on the one hand some effects can only be created with the help of the stack for an example caustics and displacement on the other hand the most important functions for bending the rendered reality are hidden in the visibility tab the functions in this tab have to be unlocked with override General cast Shadows or receive Shadows can be used to switch on or off the creation or reception of Shadows by an object the checkboxes in reflection and refraction define whether an object creates these aspects or is visible to them the settings in the global illumination section Define aspects of GI in caustics all of that is object-based as you can see this is the heart of the biased nature of redshift foreign [Music] er.c4d multi-passes and redshift are called aovs arbitrary output values to Output them go to render settings redshift and then to Advanced aovs enabled by clicking on show aov manager you will find a lot of possible aovs in the left column for an example shadow drag the aov into the list in the middle of the window and choose naming convention data format bit depth Etc on the right from my experience the most straightforward way to Output auvs is to activate the checkbox direct by this you get your aovs nice and simple as separate images or image sequences please note that color management is not covered in this video as it would go beyond the scope and time frame of this video once you've made your settings with or without aovs Define your output ranges formats and paths in the render settings under output and save then for now nothing will hold you back anymore from having fun with redshift up to this point it has already been a tough ride through the very basic knowledge of Ratchet for Cinema 4D if you want to level up you'll know how of redshift to production rate and also benefit from sofa 26 years of experience with Cinema 4D book your very own three-day ratchet training in my Max on authorized training center Studio Rena Baron this will cover Shader setups lighting techniques image composition tips and tricks to speed up your workflow and so much more see Link in the video description so I will see you in the redshift training happy learning foreign [Music]

Channel: renderbaron

Views: 36,213

Keywords: Cinema 4D, Maxon, Redshift, Redshift for Cinema 4D, Redshift C4D, Learn Redshift, renderbaron, Learning Redshift, Shading, Lighting, Rendering, Render engine, Standard Render, Physical Render, C4D, RS C4D, renderbaron Düsseldorf

Id: TPr1GjyHtn4

Length: 41min 56sec (2516 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023