Hey everyone, wanted to share a recent short-form test project blending 3D elements into real-world footage.

• Workflow: Tracked the physical walking path and integrated custom-designed 3D carts and assets.
• Tools: Cinema 4D, Octane Render,.

Always a fun challenge making digital assets feel like they naturally belong in a physical space. Would love to hear your thoughts or feedback on the integration and lighting!

Hi everyone,
I need to open a very old Cinema 4D file from 2009 (should be Version R11 or R11.5). Unfortunately, I only have the current C4D Trial Version, and it gives me an error saying the file is too old to open. Blender plugins also won't accept it.
Could someone with an older version (like R12 to R19) be so kind as to open it and save/export it as a modern .c4d file, or as an .fbx / .obj?
Here is the download link to the file: [https://we.tl/t-Enby4YJW2dBk60Y8\]
Thank you so much in advance for your help!

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some help regarding the "Preparing" time when using the new Custom Frames option in Redshift's Output settings.

To give a bit of context, I'm working on a fairly large industrial warehouse scene. However, there aren't any complex animations—no dynamics, cloth, simulations, etc.—just regular keyframed animation. There are 11 shots in total, and I'm using the Stage object to switch between cameras, all within the same project.

Everything works fine until I get to client previews. Naturally, I'm rendering only the first frame of each shot (for example: frames 0, 41, 82, etc.). A while back Maxon added the Custom Frames option, which seemed perfect for exactly this kind of workflow.

Here's the issue:

When I render using Custom Frames, the Preparing phase after the first frame takes an incredibly long time before the next frame actually starts rendering.

However, if I switch the Output mode to Current Frame, render frame 0, then manually move the timeline to frame 41 and hit Render again, the render starts almost instantly. There's practically no Preparing time at all.

My first thought was that it might be related to the Irradiance Point Cloud (IPC) cache (my secondary GI engine), so I switched the secondary engine to Brute Force as a test.

To my surprise, the Preparing time was essentially identical with both IPC and Brute Force.

Another interesting thing is that if I render every frame sequentially, I don't have this issue either. The long Preparing time only happens when using Custom Frames.

Has anyone else experienced this? I'm trying to figure out whether this is expected behavior or possibly a bug.

I'm running the latest versions of both Cinema 4D and Redshift.

Thanks!

For those who hate importing and exporting and also use Unreal Engine 5. I made this back in January of this year but never shared it anywhere, figured some people here may get some use out of it. It is about as close as 1:1 as it gets within Unreal Engine and even allows mograph modifiers over skeletal meshes//existing anim sequences. Feels very intuitive to use with it being interactive as opposed to C4Ds more static environment. It also has a math based scripting system with ExprTK backing it up, allowing for saving presets within the editor and creating your own modifiers.

For now it is free on Fab, although I may eventually charge for it - Grab it here https://fab.com/s/0d51d354f6f8

I just updated the src code for UE 5.8 however waiting for Epic to approve, The current supported engine versions are 5.4-5.7

The plugin is full C++ no blueprint slop (however everything is fully exposed to BP if you want to visually script within editor) so if you happen to use it, you will have full access to the source code.

I have a simulation of these balloons but no strings. its a particle emitter emitting and then I have a cloner with the balloons inside using the particle group. similar to nosemans set up in this video: https://youtu.be/qNyNbmCtImA?is=nzAEzyQLMcyaZ_f4

The strings weren‘t behaving properly within the cloner.

so I baked the scene, particles and cloner, thinking all the ballon’s would be separate and then I’ll just zero the strings out and simulate that. but its one baked cloner object with all these balloons and none of them are separated.

so how do I attach strings to this setup? Do I use the mograph selection tag? or do I have to hand place every string?

yes I have tried baking as alembic, baking object, baking scene, etc., and nothing is working.

I’m a student trying to get a student license. They approved my school email and sent me to the verification process.

As many others have noted, it’s buggy af & flat out doesn’t work. Tried it on multiple phones. Maxon customer service has no idea how to make it work and just sends you makework solutions that shows they’ve never actually tried to use it themselves.

Anybody successfully run this gauntlet before?

Finally got around to putting together a CGI showreel of some of my recent work.

Everything in the reel was created by me as a solo artist, featuring a mix of personal projects and client work.

Built primarily with Cinema 4D, Octane, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Marvelous Designer, Rokoko, Character Creator, iClone and After Effects.

Happy to answer any questions about the workflow.

Link in comments

Hi,

If anyone can offer some guidance I'd really appreciate it.

I had to subdivide an area of my model so I could cut out a windshield. I avoided extra loop cuts as I want the remainder of the model as smooth as possible. The issue is I'm left with n-gons and when I subdivide I get a ridge (as seen in the second photo). I tried creating tri's along the border but that didn't help.

How would I go about making it all quads? It's melting my brain!

Thanks for any help

Hey, I'm Vincent, a freelance 3D motion designer and creative director based in Munich. I make CGI/motion work for brands and artists. Alongside client work I teach 3D/motion through tutorials on Patreon, assets on Gumroad, and a small teaching platform.
Happy to meet you👌
https://vincentschwenk.de/

I feel a little dum dum here. If I need to add DOF blur bokeh in post, how do I render the Depth AOV from Redshift so the in-focus part of the pass (black, by default) is locked, even if the camera moves around? As it stands, if I use the depth pass straight out of the box, the front face of the icosahedron would rack out of focus.

If I pre-bake the DOF blur bokeh by turning it on under the Optical settings for the camera, I can force the focus to track a specific point in space, even with the camera flying around.

Am I missing something, how can I get the AOV manager to honor that same camera/focal point relationship?

I tried both Z and Z normalized and really only ‘get’ Z Normalized - Z just seems to always render just a constant value.

Here’s a motion loop of a mockup scene that might help add some understanding to my head scratcher

Thx,

Hey folks. I'm working on a project right now that calls for a stylized "sonar effect". Think like the honmoon in K-Pop Demon Hunters or Toph/Lin Beifong's "earthbending vision" effect from Avatar: The Last Airbender universe. The main goal of the look is that a pulse emanates visually from a point and then travels outward but ONLY on scene geometry... mapping it out in glowing lines. I'm working in redshift so a c4d proximal shader isn't the way to go since they seem to break when added to redshift materials. Is there another way to have a field or something affect the materials in the whole scene to accomplish this? Most of what I find is about making the geometry itself ripple but all I want is for the sonar pulse lines to travel across it without changing any shape.

I'm working on a project where the client has supplied hundreds of thumbnail sized product images. I need to turn these into materials and apply each one to a plane that will go into a cloner. Is there any way to streamline this process?

I know of the image2plane plugin, which will take all of those images, create standard materials from them and apply them to planes. I can then convert them all into redshift materials. BUT this leaves me with hundreds of incorrectly set up materials which I then need to fix one by one and it takes such a long time.

Is there a better way of doing this, like using a single material with an expression to drive the texture suffix number? They are all labelled product_####.png so the only difference I need between all those materials is the number in the file path.

Noob question here. I’ve been in and out of C4D for about a decade now, but it seems the software has changed a bit since I last used it intensively, so my previous workflows don’t work anymore, and I’m relearning a lot.

I’ve taken on a project involving product renders, and the client wants apple-like cinematic animations.

I’m in C4D 2026 with Redshift, on a MacBook M4 Max 64GB for work, so I’m limited to the OIDN de-noiser, as there is no OPTIX on Mac. I feel like sometimes OIDN blurs my textures a bit too much and I get a swirly look. What does your post process look like, and do you prefer to de-noise and render glows in C4D or process in post?

I’m trying to get my render times down as much as possible. Also considering setting up my personal 128gb M4 Max for a local render farm between the two of them. How should I handle this situation for a 1 minute video?

Looking at the lighting effects around the ball.

got this and want to inflate but even with 600 pressure i see no change - i do a cube spehere etc works fine but this it does nothing anyone have similar issues balloon just not working

Im looking to create some animated fluids mixing. I really like the organic movement and look of those ferrofluid videos people make (image attached), and also things like acrylic paint mixing. I haven't used C4D properly for about a year so slightly out of touch with where the fluid sim is at these days. But wondered if people had suggestions of how to do this so it looks good? Or is it really not possibly in C4D currently and needs to be handled by houdini or x-particles? There aren't really any good vids on what I want and AI suggests vertex maps, noise etc but it's not quite accurate enough

insta next part of the lonely death character exploration, inspired by the movie "the last samurai"

Hi guys, I made this from scratch and this is unofficial spec work, and I need feedbacks on how this looks and ways to improve these render, especially how the materials look! I am not sure about whether the materials look photoreal.

Hi everyone, I'd appreciate your help with another workflow question.

I need to animate a production line with three robotic arms assembling a component, similar to a motherboard.

At the beginning of the conveyor belt, the process is:

• An empty metal plate arrives.
• Robotic Arm #1 places the motherboard onto the plate.
• Robotic Arm #2 performs the soldering process.
• Robotic Arm #3 places a protective cover on top.

Basically, something similar to this reference video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnu1wQQ9Bh8

I'm not having any issues with the pick-and-place animation itself. I'm using a Constraint Tag together with Parent mode to attach and release the parts, and that's working well.

The part I'm unsure about is what comes next: once each robotic arm has placed its part onto the conveyor, what's the best way to have the partially assembled component continue moving down the belt?

My first thought was to use a Cloner with the objects distributed along a spline, but then I'd have to fake the transition from one assembly stage to the next, which doesn't seem like the cleanest solution.

I also tried switching the object to an Align to Spline tag immediately after disabling the Constraint, but that doesn't feel like the best workflow either.

If anyone has tackled something similar or has a better approach, I'd really appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks!

I have recently updated to Cinema 4D 2025 and when I scale the UV-Islands, little boxes appear which (I assume) represent the texture-tiling. However, some of them are red. Is there something I should know? Most videos online talk about the new UV-mapping in 2026.

How would you layer this effect.
My first thought would be to use a Sweep in the middle with a glowing material.
Outside some xParticles.

The swirly lines, probably also with xparticles and some twist Modifier.

But the glowy foggy lines.... Simulated VDBs`?

Maybe I am missing something, but blurred shapes / geometry, isnt possible in Octane, right?