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CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart
© Olcay Kayihan, [e-mail]
4. Quick Tutorial – Global Illumination
Light as we know it in the “real“ world spreads on its own. It is reflected by the objects it hits. This differs
depending on an object’s surface characteristics. Imagine a room with a window on one wall. Light is being
cast through the window onto the floor of the room. The light doesn’t stop there, but is reflected from the floor
onto other objects which, in turn, reflect the light themselves. The room is lit by “diffused“ (indirect) light.
The raytracing procedure takes into account diffused light. For example, if only one light is used, everything
lying in the shadows will not be visible. Maybe you have already built a virtual room into which a light source
is shining through a hole in the wall. The light in the virtual world hits an object, lights it – and that’s it. The
light spreads no further. Global Illumination rendering is different. Global Illumination rendering lets every
object within the scene act as a light source. As you will see, you can actually light a Global Illumination scene
without using a single light!
The CINEMA 4D GI rendering engine was completely re-written for Release 11 and is now more powerful than
ever! GI rendering has been made much faster and offers even better results thanks to reduced artefacting and
flicker-free animation rendering. The GI interface has been redesigned to make it intuitive to use, for novices
and professionals alike. Open a new (empty) file. Create a sky object (objects / scene / sky) and a floor object
(objects / scene / floor). The sky object encompasses the entire scene like a large sphere. The floor surface is
an infinite surface. Create a torus (objects / primitive / torus) and move it to a y-position of 100, slightly above
the floor.