Free Preview & Prof Profile: Cinema 4D & Arnold

In recent years there has been almost a mini-explosion in the uptake of Cinema 4D from Maxon, which has done a great job partnering with other providers in the effects and motion graphics worlds to make the software even more accessible. For example, Maxon and Solid Angle have made Arnold for C4D work incredibly seamlessly. At fxphd, prof R.P. (Netinho) da Costa will be exploring this area in his C4D221: Using Arnold in Cinema 4D. We caught up with the Netherlands-based artist to find out more about his experience with Cinema 4D and Arnold and we preview his first class.

fxphd: Tell us about your own journey into CG and visual effects work. What is the industry like in the Netherlands?

Da Costa: I was born in Brazil and lived in cities like Natal and Rio de Janeiro, and later moved to the Netherlands. When I was very young I had some artwork of mine hanging in some cultural houses in my country. I remember at the age of 13 and 14 getting paid little amounts of money (and sometimes candy) to do some painting and decoration work. Decorating stage scenery walls for example. But when my career started I did not do a lot with these artistic talents. My career actually started out via a marketing route. Simply put, at first I was the one in a marketing position ordering CGI work, later in life I was the one producing it.

Furthermore, programming was a hobby of mine. I started programming in DOS very early. It was at a time when Microsoft Windows 3.1 was still available in 3.5 inch floppy disks. When I got more experienced I got to produce apps, scripts and plugins. Both of these hobbies got combined when I started working full time as a CGI artist, the first years as a freelancer. Later I produced all the idents when I helped a business partner in running a small TV studio in Amsterdam. After that I started as a full-time Motion Graphics/3D animator at wenneker.tv (also in Amsterdam). After that I got the position that I am in now, CGI Artist / TD at Lukkien in Ede (Netherlands). Lukkien is a company with over 40 years of experience in creating content and has 225 employees.

The Dutch CGI industry is relatively small but talented. In recent years I have seen for the first time VFX awards getting more attention, and VFX trade unions getting more mature. However, many freelance artists feel the need to go to other countries for bigger opportunities. Budgets are relatively small compared to larger countries or international productions. But in my view in the Netherlands there are enough studios and artists that can compete with many of the great ones out there.

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fxphd: When did you start using Cinema 4D? What do you find are its strengths in realizing imagery?

Da Costa: I first started playing around with Cinema 4D since version 6. Since then I have used almost all major 3D packages in production, 3Ds max, Maya, Houdini and Softimage to name a few. I started using Cinema 4D more often when the mograph module was introduced.

Like all other apps Cinema 4D offers many great features. But in my experience one of C4D’s main strengths (besides ease of use) might not be a sexy one, but it is stability. Cinema 4D rarely if ever crashes. If it does in 99% of all cases it’s due to an external plugin. To me that says a lot about the way in which C4D is developed. It might not sound that special until you have worked long hours on heavy scenes in other apps as well.

Actually after thinking about it for a bit I realized that most of the features that I like and that actually makes a difference in my day to day work (compared to other apps) are not that sexy. For example, the ability to have multiple files open at the same time (with the ability to copy stuff from one to the other) and stuff like that. In other words, I think that because of many usability features like these cinema is very user friendly.

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fxphd: What has it been like following the development of Arnold for Cinema 4D with Maxon and Solid Angle? How has this helped achieve photorealism with C4D projects?

Da Costa: Arnold was first released for Softimage a long time ago. As a ex-Softimage user I already saw a lot of amazing Arnold renders, both in the forums and from other Softimage users who I worked with in the past. So I was familiar with a lot of the features and advantages before I started as a beta tester for C4DtoA.

The speed of development was amazing. Whenever we found something and communicated it to the developers, before we knew it a feature was added or fixed. I was very impressed by that. I remember at one point when C4DtoA was relatively new I reported 7 bugs or improvement suggestions in one week, and within a week 4 of them were solved already. If you mail improvement suggestions, than the Solid Angle team actually listens. In my experience this has not been the case with every company that I have been a beta tester for.

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fxphd: Similarly, where is Cinema 4D at do you think in terms of FX work?

Da Costa: In my view Cinema 4D has never been very well known for FX work. Maybe because of its strong initial position in broadcast design. But in the last few years I have seen this changing fast. For example, I have personally been using plugins like Navie Effex and Turbulence FD for simulations, Arnold and the latest version of Octane are giving C4D users the possibility to render VBD inside Cinema. We already know that Next Limit RealFlow announced RFcore for Cinema 4D. An integrated version of RealFlow inside of Cinema 4D so artists do not need to leave Cinema in order to create high-end liquid simulations.

But two other developments that I am keeping an eye on are the existing integration between the Houdini engine and C4D, and a bridge between Cinema 4D and Fabric Engine in the near future. Before the Fabric Engine to Cinema 4D bridge is ready, I expect there already to be more easy to use, high level, pre-built compounds (called extensions) for Fabric in the same way we had them in ICE in Softimage. That possibility alone makes me very excited about the future. And the possibility to now use Houdini as a plugin for Cinema 4D via the Houdini Engine is amazing.

All of these developments indicates that high-end FX work is more approachable than ever before for Cinema 4D users. Because of the speed of these developments (all in just a few years) I can only imagine that the FX future for Cinema 4D users is bright indeed. Third party applications are of course teaming up with Maxon because of its large user base. But as a programmer I know that Maxon offers a very developer friendly environment to work in. These things only bring with it many possibilities and expectations.

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fxphd: Can you talk about any recent projects where you’ve used Cinema 4D + Arnold + FX work?

Da Costa: I’ve recently started combining more technologies together more often. Specifically I have been very busy implementing more and more photogrammetry in some projects. The Lukkien building where I work is around 2000m2 and offers many different studios giving our CGI teams many tools to play with. At the same time I have been using Arnold more and more together with third party plugins like turbulenceFD and Navie Effex. But another thing I’m experimenting more with lately are VR renders with Arnold.

fxphd: Your C4D221 course looks very impressive – what do you hope students will get out of the training?

Da Costa: Of course, I will cover all the basics as you would expect in any 5 to 10 hour course about Arnold. But one thing that I hope I’m bringing to the table is more in-depth understanding about some aspects of Arnold. For example, in the render settings class, I explain the render settings, of course, but some people have read the excellent user manual provided by Solid Angle already and are still sometimes confused about some details. Some people still have some sticking points while making informed decisions in production. I know this because I have been answering user questions for a while now.

In this course I go into great length to not only explain how something works, but also why it works. For example, I do want you to understand 100% the difference between a ray and a sample in Arnold. I do want you to be able explain the AA settings on a pixel level. These are the little details and explanations that I think I can bring to the table when explaining Arnold. In other words, I tried to keep user sticking points on the back of my mind when deciding on the order and methods of explanation in this course. I hope students will find this to be a good overview of what Arnold has to offer and an easy and memorable course because of the way in which things were explained.

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fxphd: Any tips for C4D artists in terms of aspects of the software or other artistic endeavours they should focus on that would help in their careers?

Da Costa: As I have often discussed with many lighting, shading and rendering specialists – try to also study photography as a hobby. Learning about lighting (or more specifically beautiful shadows) and compositions are skills that will make renders nice in a way that mere software skills alone can never do. Software does not make artistic decisions for you. Since we have to deliver beautiful images, it’s not that far fetched to actually study beautiful imagery first. We sell images and renders, and not stock model preview images. So unless you sell models to Turbosquid or so, in my view you actually need these skills to make nice imagery.

Similarly, if you are more interested in animation for example, you then need a deep understanding of how things move in the natural world. In other words, research is in my view a large part of the core skill of any 3D artist. One that is not taught in many 3D tutorials or in books. By the same token don’t hesitate to ask experienced artists or teachers questions when you feel there is something that you tried but still failed to understand. Advice that you get in moments like these will be much more tailored to your situation.

You can find out more about DaCosta’s C4D221: Using Arnold in Cinema 4D, and sign up to fxphd right here.