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CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – DOF
7. Tips & Tricks
Rendering often requires you to make a choice between speed and quality. Especially scenes using Global
Illumination or Caustics can take a long time to render. This is why we recommend that you experiment with
the Parameters and to initially use low values. For example, set the Global Illumination “Diffuse Depth” value to
“1” to begin with and make a test render. If the illumination provided by GI is still too dark, increase the “Diffuse
Depth” value gradually until you achieve the desired result. However, avoid raising this value above “4” since
this will increase your render times enormously!
Make generous use of compositing tags. This makes it possible to reduce the exactness of the rendering, thus
reducing rendering times greatly.
As you already know, CINEMA 4D allows you to animate effect parameters so that you can make changes to
them at any time. Imagine caustics that change as you wish or the focusing of a camera.
Load a bitmap image in place of a color into the luminance channel of a material that you use to illuminate a
Global Illumination scene. The objects will then be lit with the colors of the image. This looks especially good
if you use HDRIs. HDRI is an image format that contains special image luminance information and is thus an
excellent choice for this effect. You can find information about HDRIs online.
You can pep up your scene even more with the post effects “Highlights“ and “Glow“. Using “Specular“ you
can give your material’s highlights any form you wish, like a star, for example. “Glow“ does just what the name
says – it lets a material glow. Try it!